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Political Thriller.
Tim Blake Nelson as Danny Dalton to Jeffrey Wright as Bennett Holiday
From writer/director Stephen Gaghan, winner of the Best Screenplay Academy Award for Traffic,
comes Syriana, a political thriller that unfolds against the intrigues and corruption of the global oil industry.
From the players brokering back-room deals in Washington to the men toiling in the oil fields of the
Persian Gulf, the film’s multiple storylines weave together to illuminate the human consequences of the
fierce pursuit of wealth and power.
The intrigue takes place against the backdrop of an oil-producing Gulf country, where young, charismatic and
reform-minded Prince Nasir (ALEXANDER SIDDIG) is seeking to change long-established relationships
with U.S. business interests. Nasir, the apparent heir to the throne, has just granted natural gas drilling
rights – long held by Connex, a Texas energy giant – to a higher Chinese bid. This is a huge blow to
Connex and American business interests in the region. Killen, a smaller Texas oil company owned by Jimmy Pope
(CHRIS COOPER), has just won the very competitive drilling rights to coveted fields in Kazakhstan. This makes
Killen very attractive to Connex, who now needs new territory to maintain its production capacity. When the two
companies merge, the pending deal attracts the scrutiny of the Justice Dept., and Sloan Whiting, a powerful
white-shoe Washington law firm, is brought in to perform due diligence.
Bob Barnes (GEORGE CLOONEY) is a veteran CIA agent nearing the
end of a long and respectable career, with a son headed for college (MAX MINGHELLA) and the possibility of
spending the latter days of his service in a cushy desk job. A devoted company man,
Bob’s always been a true believer that his work benefits his government and makes his country a safer place.
In Bob’s last assignment, an assassination of two arms dealers in Tehran, a Stinger
missile falls into the hands of a mysterious blue-eyed Egyptian. On his return to
Washington, Bob is promised a promotion after one last undercover mission – assassinating
Prince Nasir. But when one of his field contacts turns on him and the assassination attempt goes terribly awry,
Bob is scapegoated by the CIA, betrayed by the organization to which he has devoted his life. As he searches to
understand what has happened, he begins to realize that he has been lied to – used as a pawn and
never privy to the real motivation for the assignments he has blindly carried out for years.
Bennett Holiday (JEFFREY WRIGHT) is an ambitious Washington attorney at Sloan Whiting, in
charge of the delicate task of guiding the Connex-Killen merger
through the deep waters of D.C. He needs to give the
Justice Department enough material to make their case against Killen for its shady dealings in Kazakhstan without
jeopardizing the entire deal. It’s in the company and the country’s interest that the merger go through. It
also serves Bennett’s ambitions – ambitions fueled by a father (WILLIAM C. MITCHELL) he is
constantly at odds with.
Energy analyst Bryan Woodman (MATT DAMON) is a rising star at an Energy Trading Company, living with his
wife Julie (AMANDA PEET) and their two young sons in Geneva. When he attends a party thrown by
Prince Nasir’s family, a tragic accident results in the death of Bryan’s young son. Nasir attempts
to make amends for what happened, offering Bryan a business opportunity to help the young leader realize his
reformist ideas – an opportunity Bryan embraces, to the dismay of his grieving wife.
Dean Whiting (CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER), Bennett’s boss, the head of Sloan Whiting and one of the
most powerful men in Washington, is trying to undo Nasir’s deal with the Chinese. He knows that Nasir’s
younger, more callow brother, Prince Meshal (AKBAR KURTHA), will be more amenable to American business
interests and he pressures the aging Emir to choose his younger son to succeed him, effectively engineering
Nasir’s political demise.
At the other end of the wage scale in Nasir’s country are the migrant laborers toiling in its
energy fields, whose lives are directly and drastically affected by the royal family’s policies and
the vagaries of the industry. Connex workers Saleem Ahmed Kahn (SHAHID AHMED) and his son Wasim
(MAZHAR MUNIR) have just been laid off from their jobs in the fields when the Chinese take them
over, and their future becomes increasingly uncertain as they search in vain for work before
their visas run out. Saleem dreams of someday returning to Pakistan; his son
hopes for a better life but quickly becomes disillusioned and angry at the way he and his father are
treated as immigrant workers in the Gulf. Wasim and his friend Farooq (SONNELL DADRAL) find
solace at the local madrassa, a place where they are treated with dignity in an
otherwise bleak and unfamiliar world. At the madrassa, Wasim and Farooq are taken under the wing of a
charismatic and dangerous recruiter – the blue-eyed Egyptian with the missing Stinger missile.
Sheiks and field workers, government inspectors and international spies, rich and poor, the famous and infamous – each
plays their small part in the vast and complex system that powers the industry, none
realizing the true extent of the explosive impact their lives will have upon the world.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in association with Participant Productions, a
4M film, a Section Eight production, GEORGE CLOONEY,
MATT DAMON and JEFFREY WRIGHT in Syriana. The
film also stars CHRIS COOPER, WILLIAM HURT, MAZHAR MUNIR, TIM BLAKE NELSON, AMANDA PEET, CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER and
ALEXANDER SIDDIG.
Written and directed by STEPHEN GAGHAN, the film was suggested by the book See No Evil by ROBERT BAER,
and is produced by JENNIFER FOX, MICHAEL NOZIK and GEORGIA KACANDES. The executive producers
are GEORGE CLOONEY, STEVEN SODERBERGH, BEN COSGROVE and JEFF SKOLL. The director of
photography is ROBERT ELSWIT, A.S.C.; the production designer is DAN WEIL; and the editor is
TIM SQUYRES. Music by ALEXANDRE DESPLAT.
Syriana will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
This film has been rated “R” by the MPAA for “violence and language.”
CAST AND CHARACTERS
GEORGE CLOONEY / Bob Barnes: Veteran CIA operative working out of the Middle East
Killen: Small Texas oil company that is being considered to merge with oil giant Connex
JEFFREY WRIGHT / Bennett Holiday: Lawyer investigating Connex/Killen merger
MATT DAMON / Bryan Woodman: Energy analyst at an energy trading company, living in Geneva with his wife and two
young sons.
MAZHAR MUNIR / Wasim Ahmed Khan: Young migrant worker from Pakistan trying to find work with his
father in the oil fields of Prince Nasir’s country. He and his father were recently
laid off from their jobs in the Connex oil fields when the Prince granted drilling rights to a Chinese corporation
ABOUT THE FILM
Syriana was written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, winner of the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for
Traffic. Gaghan started thinking about the machinations of the global oil industry
while doing research for that earlier film. He had met a host of powerful
people in Washington, including those at the Pentagon who enforce America’s
anti-narcotics policies. It was then that he began noticing some interesting parallels between the trafficking of
drugs and the power plays of the oil industry.
“At that time,” says Gaghan, “the Pentagon’s anti-terrorism and anti-narcotics branches were the
same branch. And I started thinking that maybe the biggest addiction in our
country is how we’re hooked on cheap foreign oil. And that our easy access to
oil is what gives us a good deal of our edge.”
When Traffic director Steven Soderbergh, actor/producer George Clooney and their production
company, Section Eight, introduced Gaghan to See No Evil, a memoir written by former CIA agent
Robert Baer, it was a perfect way for Gaghan to develop this interest. The book chronicles
Baer’s experiences working out of the Middle East as a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency’s
Directorate of Operations from 1976 to 1997. “Steve Gaghan once said to me that he thought oil was the world’s
crack addiction,” says Soderbergh, “and I knew he would find a novel way of exploring that idea.”
While the book provided the initial impetus for Syriana, Baer’s experiences as a CIA field officer are
what really served as a jumping-off point for the broader story that the filmmakers wanted to tell.
“The book itself was fascinating,” says Clooney, “and the more time we spent with it, the more we discovered
there was actually another story to be told beyond the one in the book. We saw the potential for
Syriana to be made in the fashion of the films of the mid-60s and early 70s that were willing to discuss the
failures of government as if they were failures of all of us, not just a particular party or group.”
“I think what we’ve done is preserve the essence of Bob, even though his storyline is fictional,” Gaghan says. “He
also helped me understand the web of players in the Middle East and in the oil business that ultimately
led to the choice to tell this story through multiple narratives.”
Gaghan researched the film for a year before beginning work on the screenplay, investigating the
inner workings of the industry in the United States, as well as journeying to the UK, France, Italy, Switzerland,
Lebanon, Syria, Dubai, and North Africa to speak with people at every level of the power chain that makes up the
petroleum industry.
Bob Baer himself took Gaghan to explore the regions of the Middle East where
he worked gathering intelligence for 21 years, introducing the director to a multitude of
figures that exist on all sides of the industry, including oil traders, CIA operatives, arms dealers, and the
leader of the Islamic movement Hezbollah. “I discovered really hospitable people with very articulate points of view,” says
Gaghan of his travels. “I found that if you ask the same question to
five different people, you get five different stories – and it’s still not the whole story. Starting
from there, I tried to focus in on how this whole world of clandestine information worked.”
After his intensive travel and study, Gaghan began work on the screenplay, in which he would
weave together multiple independent storylines that illuminate the inner workings of the industry and the figures who
keep it running, whether through the wielding of their considerable influence, the force of their will or the
exploitation of their labor.
The filmmakers’ chief intent was to tell a compelling story that also reflected the complexity and
ambiguity of our current situation – one that that explores diverse points of
view, while not championing any one perspective as the truth. “We’re not trying to
preach to anyone with this film,” says Clooney. “Movies, at their best, can
initiate discussions – obviously, in this case, discussions about world dependency on
oil, but Syriana also opens discussions about corruption, about the effectiveness of the
CIA, about any number of things. You want people to be standing around the
water cooler the next day talking about it, saying here’s what I agree with or here’s where they’re wrong. We need that
discussion.”
Gaghan also hopes Syriana will make issues and characters that seem alien and distant to American
audiences much more accessible. “Any time the lens by which you’re viewing the whole
can also be the lens by which you view the specific, you’re in better shape,” says Gaghan. “We’re able
to go from Wasim, working with his father in the Persian Gulf, where he says, someday we’ll get a
real house and get your mother here, to Robby Barnes visiting a college campus with his dad, Bob. The power of those
specific images next to each other is that you hopefully start to feel connections that show you the
whole: how we all inhabit the same world, and we all just want better lives for our children.
“This movie uses ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances to explore the idea that
personal responsibility does matter, that our daily choices contributes to where we are on a global level,” continues
Gaghan. “Bob Barnes is ultimately a company man who’s trying to do his job well
and put his son through college. Bryan Woodman’s got a wife and two children, and then he faces the worst thing a
father can go through when he loses his son. Bennett Holiday has a very difficult relationship with his
father, so he’s trying to deal with these complicated issues in his work while also holding it together at home – which is
a situation we all find ourselves in. So it’s through these characters’ everyday lives that we’re able to
enter into a world that at first blush seems abstract to most people, but is incredibly relevant because this nexus of oil
interests, terrorism, and the possibility of democracy in the Middle East powerfully affects our economy as well as our
psyche and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
“While ‘Syriana’ is a very real term used by Washington think-tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle
East, as our title it is used more abstractly. ‘Syriana,’ the concept – the fallacious dream that you can
successfully remake nation-states in your own image – is a mirage. Syriana is a fitting title for a film
that could exist at any time and be about any set of circumstances that deal with man’s unchecked ambition, hubris, and the
fantasy of empire.”
GLOBAL CASTING
With over 70 speaking parts in Syriana, the filmmakers cast roles with talented actors culled from over a dozen locations
around the globe, including Los Angeles, New York, London, Cairo, Bahrain, Dubai, Kuwait and Damascus. Gaghan’s
absorbing script enticed a host of exceptional performers to come together as part of a large ensemble – esteemed
actors such as Oscar-winners Chris Cooper and William Hurt were eager to join the cast.
“Gaghan’s such an excellent writer that when we sent the script out, the first thing that happened was everyone we sent it
to wanted in,” says Clooney. “And that doesn’t happen very often. We were saying to actors who were used to
carrying movies, Listen, it’s not a large part, and they’d come back saying, I don’t care. I just want to
be in this.
It’s truly an ensemble piece. The star of this film is the screenplay that Gaghan wrote.”
For his part, Gaghan feels that the actors’ performances were instrumental in taking his script to the screen in such a
stellar fashion. “You get actors of this caliber and they just bring so much to the script with their performances,”
he says. “It happened with the whole cast throughout shooting.”
Clooney plays veteran CIA operative Bob Barnes, who made his career working deep within the Middle East in
the 1980s. As a member of a rapidly dwindling number of operatives in the Middle East, Bob is one of only a handful
of agents capable of infiltrating on that level.
“One of the aspects of Bob’s storyline is the systematic deconstruction of the CIA and what the effects of that are,”
says Clooney. “It results in there not being many Arab-speaking operatives left in the Middle East, which is a
danger. The idea is that we are finished with the Cold War and that we don’t need surveillance anymore, we don’t need
boots on the ground, i.e., CIA operatives. And so Bob gets caught in what is basically a downsizing.”
Bob has always put his career first, even before his family, not only out of dedication and a belief in the value of
what
he is doing, but also out of necessity. “CIA officers lie to everybody, for their entire careers,” Gaghan points
out. “They lie to their families, they lie to their children, they lie to their wives, they lie to their friends. They
lie everywhere they go.” As a result, Bob is estranged from his wife and has a difficult relationship with his
son Robby, who resents the life he’s been made to lead, constantly moving and having to start a new life everywhere
his father travels. As Robby prepares to go to college, Bob fears he may finally be losing his son
forever.
However, no matter how much he’s sacrificed along the way, Bob’s dedication to his work and his intricate
understanding of the region mean nothing if he is not willing to play the game in Washington – i.e., telling powerful
people what they want to hear, even if it’s not the truth he’s witnessed in the field. And when his honesty becomes a
liability, his government has no problem cutting him loose.
“Bob is a fascinating character because he’s a true believer,” says Clooney. “He’s not a cynic – he believes that
his work is the right thing to do, that it helps his country. But he becomes disillusioned because, basically, the
company he’s devoted his life to lets him down.”
While Robert Baer served as the departure point for the character of Bob Barnes, Clooney did not base
his characterization on Baer. Rather, he took the essence of the CIA foot soldier and interpreted it into an unique
character that isn’t strictly beholden to any real-life model.
“We wanted to let the character serve the story rather than the other way around,” says the actor. “That freed me up quite
a bit because I was no longer playing a living person; instead, I was dealing directly with the issues that the movie
brought up. I didn’t have to be concerned with an accurate depiction of a particular person, so I could concentrate more on
reacting honestly to the broader questions that we’re raising.”
Clooney’s appearance also served to define his character, as the actor put on 30 pounds in 30 days and grew a thick
beard for his role as the middle-aged agent nearing the end of his career in the field. “The thing about CIA officers is
that they blend in everywhere,” explains Gaghan. “They disappear inside a role, just like an actor. A CIA officer
is a guy who can walk into a bar in Macao, or a mosque in Riyadh, and you’re not going to recognize him because he blends in.
This is the exact opposite of what movie stars do – people are drawn to movie stars precisely because they don’t blend in.
George is a great actor, but he’s also a very glamorous guy. But once he gained that weight and grew the beard and shaved
his hairline back, he just disappeared inside of the character. He was completely believable as this very unglamorous man.”
“It was interesting being completely anonymous,” says Clooney. “I’ve tried other disguises before and they haven’t
worked. But put on 30 pounds and grow a beard and you can walk into any restaurant in town and not get a table.”
While Barnes is trying in vain to tell the players in Washington truths that they don’t want to hear, corporate
lawyer Bennett Holiday is furthering his career by taking on a prestigious assignment investigating a business
transaction that could prove extremely lucrative for a great many people in power. Bennett,
played by Golden-Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor Jeffrey Wright, is an up-and-coming attorney in the prestigious
Washington law firm of influential D.C. power player Dean Whiting, played by venerated
actor Christopher Plummer. Bennett has been assigned to investigate the merger of oil giants Connex and
Killen – with the tacit understanding that he will do everything in his power to ensure that the deal goes through.
“Bennett has the conscience of the moment to some extent,” says Wright, who first came to audience’s attention with
his riveting performance in Basquiat. “He’s not unlike a lot of folks who try to fit themselves into a certain
profession or institution to become part of the military-industrial machinery. He’s ambitious and this assignment marks a
very critical point for him in his career – he’s a lawyer who’s supposedly investigating the merger of two oil companies,
but who has actually been hired by the companies to protect them.”
It’s when Bennett comes across some incriminating information that threatens to jeopardize the merger that he
genuinely begins to understand how the industry functions, and what his role in the hierarchy truly is.
“What happens to Bennett,” Wright explains, “is that he finds himself in a dangerous situation in which the
pressures that were originally exerted on the companies are potentially exerted on him, and he has to extricate himself
from that. So his job becomes as much about protecting himself as protecting the company.”
Wright sees parallels between Clooney’s character and his own.
“Bennett and Bob both realize at some point in the film that there’s a machine at work that doesn’t necessarily have their
best interests at heart, when in fact they had thought they were a very respected and much needed cog within that machine.
I think that’s the nature of the world in which the film takes place – it’s a murky, powerful world, and it’s much larger
than the individuals who are a part of it.”
Bennett’s upward mobility is complicated by his difficult relationship with his father, an alcoholic who faults his
son for working for the establishment. While he has always denounced his father as a failure, as Bennett is drawn
deeper into the morally ambiguous world of the industry, he starts to doubt his right to judge his father’s character.
“I think their relationship is a wonderful reminder of the larger cultural struggle that Bennett is a part of,” says
Wright. “As a lawyer, Bennett has to probe, to look into dark places, and as someone who is trying to become a
part of the private sector of the oil industry, he’s going to discover parts of himself and parts of the world that he
might not necessarily have wanted to discover. He goes through this journey to uncover the truth about this merger, and
simultaneously goes on a journey in becoming a player in that network of power.”
George Clooney’s Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve co-star Matt Damon plays Bryan
Woodman, a rising oil industry analyst who has been steadily climbing within his firm, living in
Geneva with his wife Julie and their two young sons. It’s a great honor when he is asked to represent the
company at a gala event at the estate of the powerful Emir of an oil-rich Gulf Coast country. Bryan hopes to share
some of his ideas with the Emir, but when he arrives, rather than getting an audience with the Emir, he is instead asked to
briefly sum up his remarks to two of his representatives.
“At the Emir’s event, Bryan basically pitches him the same ideas that the guy gets pitched by eight other companies every
day,” says Damon. “Bryan does have these other ideas that are a little more radical that he might put
forward if he had the courage or the will, but he’s afraid of getting thrown out of the guy’s estate, so he doesn’t.”
But during the party, Bryan’s young son is killed in a tragic accident, spinning him and his wife into turmoil and
setting Bryan’s life on an unexpected new path. In the wake of his devastating loss, Bryan throws himself
into his work and becomes increasingly alienated from Julie, played by Amanda Peet.
“At the beginning of the story, Julie and Bryan are very much in love and have a beautiful little family,” says the
actress. “Then, our son’s death makes Bryan want to run away and fix things from the outside. He gets preoccupied with
his career and it starts to consume him. I think a lot of marriages don’t survive the death of a child and I think it’s
probably because one person wants to run away, and even being in the same room as their spouse brings out the remembrance
of the loss.”
Trying to consume himself with his work, Bryan remains lost in his grief until he is invited to come speak with the
Emir’s son, Prince Nasir, who in an attempt to apologize for his family’s role in Bryan’s loss, makes a
lucrative offer to work with Bryan’s company. Stung by the implications of the deal, Bryan confronts the
Prince, chastising him for the ways in which his royal family has been squandering their incredible resources.
“There’s a kind of reckless nihilism to him once he loses his son,” says Damon. “At that point he’s willing to
basically just say the hell with it, and tells him what he really thinks.”
What Bryan scathingly points out to Nasir is that by selling their oil cheaply to powers like the
United States, Russia and China, who in turn sell it to other nations, they are allowing these foreign nations to reap the
benefits of a natural resource that rightfully belongs to the Arabs. This setup benefits the royal family, which is made
wealthy by their dealings with foreign powers, but robs Nasir’s people of wealth that could vastly improve the
quality of their lives. Bryan suggests that if Nasir’s country instead refines and transports the
oil
themselves, they could set their own price, taking the power away from other nations and rebuilding their country into the
superpower it once was. However, Bryan doubts that Nasir has any interest in helping his people when he
himself benefits from the current scenario, which favors the wealthy elite.
But the Emir’s son turns out to be quite different than the decadent royal Bryan took him to be. Intrigued by
Bryan’s ideas, Nasir begins to share with him his own hopes for his people.
“Bryan’s very judgmental of Nasir at first,” says Damon, “thinking he’s just another one of these royals who are
squandering their country’s resources and spending the money they’re making in dealing with foreign countries to pay for
their opulent lifestyles. But he comes to understand that he’s much, much more and Bryan actually ends up becoming really
inspired by him.”
The visionary Prince Nasir is played by actor Alexander Siddig.
“Nasir has so many new ideas he would like to implement,” says the actor, “such as freedoms for women, freedom of the
press, all of these very progressive ideas that this new plan could make a reality. These two characters find each other
at this one moment in their lives where they really catalyze each other.”
Nasir’s ambitions are complicated by outside pressure from the foreign corporations whose massive profits depend on
business as usual. The Emir is getting on in age, and soon will have to name his successor. Nasir has worked at his
father’s side for years, building hopes for a stronger country and better lives for his people when he ascends to the
throne. But the Emir has been made vulnerable by strife within the royal family, and when Nasir becomes more vocal
about the empowering future he sees for his people, American interests are quick to step in and put pressure on his father
to name Nasir’s more materialistic, compliant younger brother Meshal as his successor.
“Meshal is willing to be more of a puppet,” says Akbar Kurtha, who plays the younger prince. “He’s quite happy to
play that game. He and Nasir don’t have a very comfortable relationship. While Nasir is pro-reform, Meshal would
probably prefer to have an even more flamboyant lifestyle than he already has. And there’s a resentment there, because
while Nasir has been groomed all his life to be king, Meshal has pretty much been left by the wayside.”
As soon as he read the script, Alexander Siddig was eager to take on the role of Prince Nasir. “I unashamedly
chased down this part because Nasir is the voice of the Arab world that I wanted to represent right now,” he says. “It’s
the sense of humanity that he has. Some contemporary Arab leaders have an enormous humanity, but in the West, it’s a point
that’s easily missed these days. When I grew up, the only time you would see Arabs onscreen would be in something like
Sinbad where they’re climbing over the side of the ship with a saber in their mouth. When you have the opportunity to
speak through a character like this who wants to use his power as a force for good, for real progress, you have a chance
to let the Western world know that men like these exist in the Arab world. That’s the kind of contribution to a greater
dialogue an actor doesn’t often get a chance to make.”
Damon felt similarly compelled to be a part of such an ambitious film. “Stephen gave me a lot of background
reading for the movie and I used it as an excuse to learn as much as I could in a short time,” says the actor. “It’s an
interesting subject and it’s set in a fascinating part of the world. The more I know about it, just as a human being, the
better off I am.”
The film’s final storyline follows the trajectory of Wasim, a young Pakistani who, along with his father, has been
fruitlessly trying to earn a living in the oil fields of Nasir’s country, but finds nothing but poverty,
disappointment and alienation at every turn. When they are laid off from their jobs working in the field, their situation
turns more desperate.
Their story mirrors that of the thousands of Pakistani laborers who have left their homes and families to try and find work
in the Gulf. When they are met with job scarcity, sub-human living conditions, and struggles with immigration officials to
stay in the country long enough to find employment, the disillusioned young men are drawn to the madrassas, or Islamic
schools, some of which may seek to indoctrinate them into a radical interpretation of Islam. A number of these boys may
become involved with terrorist organizations, and a few are ultimately persuaded to sacrifice their lives as suicide
bombers. Such is the path that Wasim finds himself on as his life in the Gulf unfolds.
When his friend Farooq introduces him to a cleric at a nearby madrassa, for the first time Wasim feels he has
a place in the unfamiliar country, and becomes more and more drawn into the cleric’s radical teachings. He and Farooq
are soon preparing themselves for a deadly act from which they will not return.
Wasim is played by Mazhar Munir, a young actor making his major motion picture debut in Syriana. Born
and raised in London, he has appeared on several British television series, including the award-winning Doctors.
“Wasim is no different from any other teenager,” says Munir of his character. “But where someone of his age should
be concerned about the new pimple growing on his forehead, he has to worry about making money to feed his family, and just
trying to survive. He understands that there is more to life and wants better things for himself and his family, but each
time he makes an effort to improve his life, forces beyond his control prevent him from doing so.”
There were several days of shooting in Dubai during which Munir and the rest of the production got a firsthand look
at the quality of life experienced by immigrant workers like Wasim and his father. “It was scary,” recounts the
actor. “There were six or seven men and boys squashed into these freight containers that were converted into some form of
housing quarters, in 100 degree heat and with no adequate ventilation systems and very little light. I hope when audiences
see what the lives of such people are like, they’ll understand what draws them down such a road and try to understand and
not judge Wasim. Hopefully, the film will enable viewers to begin to understand how people are manipulated into performing
such horrible acts.”
“To me, the audience’s greatest emotional connection in the film is through these two young boys,” George Clooney
muses. “I think it’s a really interesting thing when you take the two most likeable characters in the film and then watch
as they’re sucked into this fundamentalist group. And you begin to understand how something like that could happen. It’s
not an excuse for it at all, but it is saying that you can’t just categorize things. They are human beings and they make
decisions – some of them wrong, but we understand what led to those decisions.”
That Munir made his motion picture debut in a complex and thoughtful film like Syriana made his experience
that much more fulfilling. “The story of Wasim needs to be told, and I don’t think this story has ever been told in this
way. For the first time you get to see the entire process of how one gets involved in such terror. It’s really sad how
such evil minds recruit and play God with these children, using religion as their justification. Knowing that there are
boys like Wasim who are subjected to this kind of manipulation made it quite emotional for me to play this role. I’m glad
this movie has been made, and working alongside great artistic minds like Stephen Gaghan was a treat.”
Gaghan has similar feelings about his experience working with his entire ensemble of talented actors. “One of the
incredible things about this cast,” says Gaghan, “is that every time you’re working on a storyline that involves one
of these guys, you want to see what happens when he walks out of the room. Christopher Plummer, playing this über-lawyer,
you look at him in his black tie at this Washington party and you want to know who’s on his phone list, who he’s calling.
I can’t imagine anybody working with Chris Cooper who wouldn’t walk away saying I’ve got to write a movie for this
character. I had a clear image of one scene that William Hurt does with George Clooney in a theater, and the way these
guys played it was 50 times better than the way I’d envisioned it. Working with this cast was an amazing experience.”
BREAKING LANGUAGE BARRIERS
Throughout the making of Syriana, it was of the utmost importance to everyone involved that the film achieve the
greatest degree of realism and cultural and regional accuracy possible. Throughout the film, many of the characters speak
fluently in their native languages, while others speak languages other than their own, but inflected with the appropriate
accent for the character’s place of origin. Great care was taken to ensure that not only the words but the accents and
inflections were accurate.
“It was important to all of us that the Arabs in this movie be portrayed as realistically as possible,” explains producer
Georgia Kacandes. “We were sensitive to the fact that people’s language is a point of pride to them and we wanted
to show that respect to the Arabic people who would be watching this movie. Otherwise, it would be like having someone
who’s supposed to be from Brooklyn speak with an accent from Mississippi. At the very least, it takes you out of the
reality of the movie; at worst it makes it appear the filmmakers didn’t care about the people they were representing.”
The production hired a team of translators and dialect coaches. Some of them took on the task of working with the
English-speaking actors of Arabic decent – some of whom had never set foot in the countries of their parents’ birth. While
most of the Middle Eastern-bred actors were able to speak some Arabic or Urdu, there was one actor who would be
required to speak Arabic and Farsi who had grown up in Kentucky and likely never heard the language anywhere except on
television.
The job of teaching George Clooney how to speak fluent Arabic fell to Samia Adnan, a Sudanese linguistics
professor from London who served as the film’s main dialect coach. “It’s interesting, you know, because there’s no
Latin derivative, nothing you can latch on to,” Clooney relates. “If you’re speaking Italian, which I’m trying to
learn, or any of the European languages, there are words, there are sounds that are sort of familiar. I had to learn some
Farsi; I had to learn to say some things in Arabic which, at first, I just learned phonetically. But it can’t just be
this disconnected jumble of words. So, you have to find ways to connect them, to make them expressive. It was tricky. It
was also interesting – and fun.”
For Samia Adnan, teaching the English-speaking actors to speak an Arabic dialect as if it was their second language
was understandably easier than teaching those playing Arabic characters how to sound as natural as a native speaker.
“Prince Nasir and Prince Meshal, for example, are two of the most important native Arabic roles in the movie,” she
explains, “but neither of the actors knew Arabic before they began, and Alexander Siddig did not know the Arabic
alphabet. Both were raised in England and first had to overcome their English accent. They both worked very hard, not
only to speak with a standard accent, but also to sound like princes.”
“Being an English actor,” says Alexander Siddig, who plays Nasir, “my challenge when delivering lines in
Arabic was that an Arabic audience will not only understand what those lines mean, they will understand all the nuances of
this prince character that culturally is part of their mindset. So in a way, it necessitated employing two acting styles
for different idioms at the same time.”
The young oil worker characters Wasim and Farooq are Urdu-speaking Pakistanis. Mazhar Munir, who
plays Wasim, speaks several languages including Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi, but not Arabic. “Part of their story was
that they speak broken Arabic,” says Samia Adnan. “Well, that wasn’t hard: I taught them Gulf Arabic and just
let them break it by their nature.”
While Matt Damon speaks English throughout the film, as expert oil analyst Bryan Woodman he was faced with
some sophisticated industry dialogue that needed a bit of translation. Damon made sure he understood every word
that came out of his mouth. “Even if ninety percent of the people who see the movie believe you, the two percent who you
really want to believe you are the experts in the field,” notes the actor. “I wanted the people who actually do
Bryan’s job to look at the movie and feel like everything was believable.”
COSTUME DESIGN
Authenticity was just as vital when it came to costuming the actors, and the filmmakers took great care in ensuring that
the many cultures represented in Syriana were accurately depicted throughout the film. That considerable
responsibility fell to costume designer Louise Frogley, whose previous films include Traffic, Spy Game
and the acclaimed television movie Live From Baghdad. Frogley was charged with maintaining authenticity
while creating an enormous, international array of wardrobe changes that crossed cultural and class lines.
“We made great effort to be as ethnically correct with our costumes as possible, because each state, each country is so
incredibly different,” explains Frogley. “For example, in the madrassa scenes, the boys are mostly Pakistani. So
we made contact with a man in Pakistan and bought some sportswear from his factory. He also went into the village and
bought lots of second hand clothes, which he then shipped to us, so it was all authentic.
At times, it was important not to include details that would call out a particular segment of society. “We also created a
number of generic looks,” explains Frogley, “either because we didn’t want to offend a particular group – for
example, we might not have wanted all the terrorists to look Saudi, so we dressed them as generic Arabs – or because
we wanted to avoid getting too specific with the region being represented – for instance, if you’re in a specific part of
Pakistan, you might see a lot of jeweled hats.”
Wardrobe was reflective not only of region, but specific to the characters’ personalities and histories. For instance,
Prince Nasir and his brother Meshal were educated in Europe, and so while their father wears traditional
Arab clothing, his sons dress in a distinctly western style. Nasir’s wife wears a headscarf and covers her arms and
legs, but did not wear a traditional burka, in a nod to her and her husband’s progressive views in regards to
women.
George Clooney as Bob Barnes was dressed down in cheaper suits, while industrious lawyer Bennett Holiday
displays a distinctly sharper style. “We thought Bennett’s character would be a very snappy dresser,” says Frogley.
“He’s the type of person who would probably line up his pencils in a row, so we extended that attitude to
his style. And it worked.”
Frogley’s department created over 2,000 costumes for characters whose origins ranged from corporate
America to the slums of the Gulf States.
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Syriana was filmed on location, rather than on a soundstage, with production traveling around the globe to
capture the inimitable essence of the landscape and societies they would be depicting. “For example, the light in the
Persian Gulf is pretty irreplaceable,” says Gaghan. “There’s so much construction going on all the time in
Dubai that it throws an immense amount of dust into the air. So whether you’re there in summer or winter, the
sky is really leaden. You can’t recreate that in the states.”
The locations also served to focus the actors and filmmakers on what they were attempting to capture. “The minute you go
on location you sense exactly what you’re trying to do,” explains Clooney. “Being in a Third World country, for
example, is not a feeling you can capture filming on a soundstage. You’re in Morocco and five times a day a siren goes off
and everybody stops their cars and gets out in the middle of the streets and kneels down and prays. Being
in a place informs any artistic work that’s set there.”
Giving the film’s interweaving storylines a visual continuity was cinematographer Robert Elswit, whose
credits include Magnolia, Tomorrow Never Dies and Boogie Nights, who shot the entire
movie using a pair of hand-held cameras. This unusual cinematographic approach was intended to give
the film a quasi-documentary style, providing a sense of backroom intimacy and ripped-from-the-headlines
urgency that slicker, mounted-camera shots couldn’t provide.
Production designer Dan Weil (The Bourne Identity, The Fifth Element) spanned
a multitude of national and economic boundaries in creating sets ranging from an Emir’s palace to
the humble barracks where itinerant oilfield workers are housed.
A crew of approximately 200 and a cast of more than 100 covered three continents over a period of five months to complete
filming of Syriana. Production began at a game preserve that location manager Todd Christensen found in
Hondo, Texas, about an hour west of San Antonio. The 777 Ranch has one of the largest herds of exotic animals in North
America on its 15,000 acres. It has been a destination resort for hunters and photographers for over 40 years and features
over 50 species of deer, antelope, gazelle, oryx, ibex, goat, sheep and bison, among other animals from plains, jungles and
forests around the globe.
Filming moved to the eastern U.S. locales of Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Annapolis where George Clooney and
Matt Damon began filming.
Despite heavy post 9/11 security, the production was allowed to shoot on the streets of D.C., not far from the White House
and Capitol Dome. The filmmakers had hoped that the political balance of the script would help in negotiating permissions
to film in the politically sensitive environment of the nation’s governing nerve center. Location manager Christensen
had to meet with a panel of 12 personnel from the Justice Department who would decide if and how filming would occur in
D.C. While all the locations involved certain restrictions, the company was able to achieve what it wanted within those
parameters.
The production also gained a rare permission to film around the Maryland State Capitol building in Annapolis. Other
U.S. locations included the Enoch Pratt Library in Washington which served as Donald Farish’s Justice Department
office, a 1940s diner in downtown Baltimore called the Sip ‘n Bite where Bob Barnes has an intense late night
meeting with Dean Whiting, and the woodsy setting of the Piper Rudnick law firm, which served as CIA headquarters.
The company also created the Tengiz oil field out of an industrial construction site in southern Baltimore.
Production then left the country to begin shooting in Casablanca. Morocco’s largest city and commercial capital,
Casablanca rests on one of the biggest and busiest man-made ports in the world. Although Islam is the dominant
religion – with the grandest Muslim temple besides those found in Mecca – Casablanca boasts a large and vibrant Jewish
community as proof of its tradition of tolerance. In 2003, on the day after suicide bombers attacked multiple targets in
the city, including a Jewish-owned business and a Jewish cemetery, two million people took to the streets to protest
radical fundamentalism. Syriana was the first movie to film there since the bombings and security measures were
extensive.
Casablanca would fill in as three different locales where filming would not be possible for even greater safety reasons:
Tehran, Beirut and an unnamed, oil-producing Persian Gulf country. Interestingly, Casablanca is almost identical to Beirut
in its layout, a city on a bay with dominantly French architecture. Much of Beirut has been rebuilt and looks like a
modern city, which might’ve been difficult to duplicate in Morocco, but Gaghan wasn’t interested in doing
‘postcard’ establishing shots, opting instead to capture an environment that was close in feeling to the older parts of
Beirut.
Likewise, Tehran is more of a stripped down version of Casablanca but surrounded by huge mountains that can be seen from
any part of the city. Production wasn’t looking for vistas, but rather for buildings that evoked the feeling of Tehran
without any specific identifying characteristics. The greatest challenge in re-creating Tehran in Casablanca involved the
stripping away of layers of French and Moroccan influence.
The production did have to put up a poster of the Ayatollah Khomeini in a particularly populated portion of the
city, which raised a few eyebrows in this secularly-governed Islamic country. Other details also had to be tended to in
order to authentically re-create a country governed by orthodox religious laws. A playing card motif in a kabob shop had to
be removed because gambling would not be allowed in Iran, and actresses had to remember to put scarves on their heads
before going out on the streets.
There were also some political sensitivities that the filmmakers had to work around. Taking down Moroccan flags and
putting up Lebanese flags was acceptable, but putting up the Iranian flag was problematic. Production also had to get
permission to put an oil tanker in the harbor near Morocco’s biggest refinery and close it down for three days, which
required quite a bit of diplomatic maneuvering.
Parisian-based production designer Dan Weil has had a good deal of exposure to the Middle East and incorporated much
of what he had observed in his travels in establishing the realism that Gaghan demanded. Weil, whose
designs
have run the gamut from the super-stylistic The Fifth Element to the very cinéma vérité The Bourne Identity,
explained the importance of shooting on location rather than building sets on a stage for Syriana.
“Beirut was quite easy to shoot in Casablanca, but using the city to stand in for Tehran was more complicated,” the
production designer notes. “We in the West have this idea of Tehran as an Arabic city when actually it’s more like a
Ukrainian city. When you look at photos, it reminds you more of Kiev or Odessa. Also, the people are Muslim but they are
not Arab.”
Among the locations utilized in Casablanca were an historic French military headquarters in the Old Medina, a beachfront
along a resort coastline, the city’s government buildings, and an inner city neighborhood where most of the
inhabitants didn’t own TVs and many didn’t have electricity.
After wrapping in Casablanca, production moved on to Geneva. Despite its physical beauty and historical importance, there
hadn’t been a major movie shot in this European city since GoldenEye had filmed a few days there a decade earlier.
The Presidential Suite in the grand Hotel President Wilson, adjacent to the site of the former League of Nations, was the
setting for several scenes in which the Emir and his sons conduct business.
Scenes were also set in the English Garden, created in 1854 and set on the left bank of Lake Geneva against the backdrop of
the city’s trademark Le Jet D’Eau. Other key scenes were shot in a bank that stood in for the brokerage where
Bryan Woodman works, and at a private house that served as the home where the Woodmans lived happily before
the tragedy that transforms their lives. That particular neighborhood included homes owned by the eldest
son of the founder of Saudi Arabia and an Indian prince. The production also utilized the city’s largest cemetery,
Cimetiere des Rois (King’s Cemetery), founded in the 16th Century, as the site of Max Woodman’s funeral.
From Geneva, the company moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The Emirates is one of the world’s newer nations,
officially declaring the unification of its nation-states as a single national entity in 1971 when seven Emirs ruling
seven different portions of adjacent territory joined forces under an enlightened leader to form the United Arab Emirates,
of which Dubai is one state.
The terrain of the U.A.E., combined with its pro-Western inclinations, makes an ideal location for movies. Dubai, in
particular, has all the elements a movie might wish to incorporate into its narrative: beach, mountains, desert and a
mega-modern city.
There had never been a major Western movie filmed in Dubai with official permissions. Michael Winterbottom had
broken new ground with shooting some of his futuristic Code 46 in and around the concrete corridors of this rapidly
expanding metropolis, but it was mainly guerilla filmmaking, without permits and certainly without the high-tech equipment
and high profile of Syriana.
The film packed a unique load of potential diplomatic dynamite for a trailblazing movie production in this
Arabic country: The Emirates are close allies with Yemen, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose governments might not take
kindly to some of the portrayals of Islamic fundamentalism and discontent among the migrant labor pool.
Further, the movie would be shooting there during the holiest of Muslim holidays: the month-long festival of Ramadan, the
month of fasting and prayer during which no food or drink, smoking or gum-chewing are permitted in daylight hours. Many
members of the crew, as well as the locally-cast extras, were observing the holiday, and production made every effort to be
respectful and accommodating. Special tents were set up where non-observing members of the production team could eat and
drink out of sight of those who were fasting, and as soon as the sun went down, production slowed and a break-fast meal was
served before shooting continued.
The fact that there was no precedent upon which to gauge possible outcomes from filming was cause for the filmmakers’
initial hesitation in committing to filming in Dubai. But the growth of Western business interests in the U.A.E., an
enlightened leadership and the presence of an experienced television commercial production company in Dubai combined to
give the production confidence they could make it work.
While it presented unique challenges, Dubai also offered cinematic opportunities that couldn’t be found anywhere else in
the
world. In fact, while initially Syriana was only going to be in Dubai for about four days, with the city serving
primarily as city backdrops, once the producers got a look at all the city had to offer, they decided to extend
four days shooting into four weeks.
“It’s a very interesting place in that it’s a very modern city – perhaps the only major city to have been built in the
21st Century,” says Weil. “I found it interesting that it looks very much like certain modern American cities like
Houston – also built around oil riches. But you couldn’t shoot this in America because there is a specific look to the
Gulf States that you don’t find anywhere else.”
The civic authorities of Dubai, an independent governing body from the U.A.E., had some concerns about the film’s content
and timing that had to be overcome. But they ultimately concluded that giving permission for the company to shoot – even
during the Holy month of Ramadan – would benefit the state more than it would hurt it. Dubai wants to develop its film
industry and its leaders wanted to demonstrate that they were open to a large degree of freedom of creative expression.
“Dubai is really unique,” says Gaghan. “They’re undertaking a pretty amazing experiment. They’re trying to build
an economy that’s not dependent on oil – they’re pursuing this idea of trying to make it a technological center.”
Dubai proved its versatility for several key scenes. The Royal Mirage Hotel, the grandest resort on Dubai’s Jumeira Beach,
served as the Marbella Estate home of the Emir. The Al-Maha Resort, set on a 225 square kilometer reserve and billed as
the “first Arabian eco-tourism resort,” was the setting for Prince Nasir’s catalytic meeting with Bryan Woodman. The
Shangri-La Hotel not only housed the cast and crew but was used for several of the interior scenes, as well as a part of a
climactic sequence at the Emir’s party.
Production also incorporated the vast desert, as well as the opulent city backdrop, the creek which divides Dubai from
adjacent Deira, and a barracks near a construction site where migrant workers are housed. In the scorching
heat of the desert, at times temperatures hit 120°.
GEORGE CLOONEY (Bob Barnes) has gone from television actor to motion picture actor to
producer, executive producer, and writer and director in both mediums.
Clooney is partnered with Steven Soderbergh in the film and television production company Section Eight.
The company most recently produced Good Night, and Good Luck. Clooney co-wrote, directed and co-stars in
Good Night, and Good Luck, a feature about the renowned broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s
legendary on-air confrontations with Senator Joseph McCarthy – confrontations that helped bring down the infamous
politician.
Section Eight also produced Ocean’s Twelve, Ocean’s Eleven, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Jacket, Full
Frontal and Welcome to Collinwood. Clooney was an executive producer of two critically acclaimed
Section Eight films, Warner Bros. Pictures’ Insomnia and Far From Heaven.
Clooney also works with Section Eight’s television division. He was an executive producer and
directed five of the episodes of Unscripted, a reality-based show that debuted on HBO in January. He also was an
executive producer and cameraman for K-Street, also for HBO.
Clooney made his directorial debut in 2002 with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, for which he won the
Special Achievement in Film Award from the National Board of Review.
Clooney starred in the Warner Bros. Pictures’ blockbuster hits Ocean’s Twelve
and Ocean’s Eleven. He also starred in the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and won the 2000
Golden Globe Award as Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Clooney earned critical acclaim in the award-winning drama Three Kings and in the
Oscar-nominated Out of Sight. His previous feature films include Solaris, The Peacemaker, Batman & Robin, One
Fine Day and From Dusk Till Dawn.
He has starred in several television series but is best known to TV audiences for his five years on the hit NBC drama ER.
His portrayal of Dr. Douglas Ross earned him Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, People’s Choice and Emmy nominations.
Clooney was executive producer and co-star of the live television broadcast of
Fail Safe, an Emmy-winning telefilm developed through his Maysville Pictures.
Fail Safe was nominated for a 2000 Golden Globe Award as Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television.
The film was based on the early 1960s novel of the same name.
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This fall, along with Syriana, Cooper appears in two
additional films: Capote, for director Bennett Miller
and Jarhead, for director Sam Mendes, which will
release in November. Up next, Cooper will soon begin
production on the film Breach for director Billy Ray
(Shattered Glass), in which he will play the lead character of Robert Hanssen, a
former
FBI agent turned traitor, based on a true story.
Cooper was most recently seen in Silver City, a political drama and murder
mystery that chronicles the story of a small town in Colorado and the events leading up to a
local election. Written and directed by John Sayles, the
impressive cast includes Maria Bello, Thora Birch, Richard Dreyfuss, Tim Roth,
Daryl Hannah and Billy Zane. The film
screened at the Toronto Film Festival.
In 2003, Cooper starred in Seabiscuit, based
on the best-selling novel. Cooper was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for
his portrayal of Seabiscuit’s trainer, Tom Smith.
Seabiscuit was directed by Gary Ross and also starred Tobey Maguire and
Jeff Bridges. In the same year, Cooper was nominated for an Emmy Award for his
supporting performance in the HBO film My House in Umbria, starring Maggie Smith.
In 2002, Cooper was seen in The Bourne Identity in the strong supporting role as
the mastermind of the CIA’s controversial clandestine operation,
Treadstone. In 2004, he appeared in the flashback
scenes in the second installment, The Bourne Supremacy.
In 2000, Cooper portrayed Colonel Burwell opposite Mel Gibson
in The Patriot, a Revolutionary War epic directed by
Roland Emmerich. In the same year, Cooper appeared with
Jim Carrey in the comedy Me, Myself & Irene,
for directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly.
In 1999, Cooper received a Screen Actor’s Guild Award
for his supporting performance alongside Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening in the
Academy Award-winning film American Beauty. In a stunning and dramatic display, Cooper
portrayed a stern ex-Marine Colonel who persistently monitored his son’s every move.
In 1999, Cooper starred as the father of an amateur rocket enthusiast in the acclaimed
coming-of-age drama October Sky, which was screened at the 1999 Venice and Deauville
Film Festivals with great notice. He had previously earned a Best Actor nomination in 1997
from the Independent Spirit Awards for his work in John Sayles’ Lone Star. Nearly a
decade earlier, Cooper made his feature film debut in Sayles’ Matewan.
Among his film credits are Robert
Redford’s The Horse Whisperer, Great Expectations, A Time to Kill, Money Train,
This Boy’s Life, Guilty by Suspicion and City of Hope.
On the small screen, he has starred in a number of
longform projects, including the miniseries Lonesome Dove and Return to Lonesome Dove.
He most recently starred in HBO’s Breast Men, and
includes among his other credits Alone, One More Mountain,
Ned Blessing, Bed of Lies, Darrow, In Broad Daylight, A Little Piece of Sunshine,
Law and Order and Journey to Genius.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Cooper attended the University of Missouri School of
Drama and started his professional career on the New York stage. His theater credits include
Of the Fields Lately on Broadway, The Ballad of Soapy
Smith and A Different Moon.
Cooper resides in Massachusetts.
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Though mainly self-taught as an actor, he began his career by attending weekly drama
workshops at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. It was here that he was contacted by the
prestigious Hampstead Theatre in London and offered his first important stage role in
Local Boy. It was during this production that he landed an agent. He appeared on
several British television series including The Bill, Mile High and the award-winning
Doctors, while earning a marketing degree from Middlesex Business School.
Munir speaks several languages including Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi as part of his mixed
British and Kashmiri heritage.
When he is a resting actor he continues to educate himself in the arts, takes part in
modeling engagements and works closely with children at local primary schools and nurseries.
Nelson’s The Grey Zone, which he wrote and
directed, starred Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, Mira Sorvino,
David Arquette, Allan Corduner and Natasha Lyonne. The film premiered at the
2001 Toronto Film Festival and opened in October 2002. The Grey Zone is a dramatic
story of the Sonderkommandos, special squads of Jews who processed corpses in the crematoria
at Birkenau. Shot in Bulgaria, The Grey Zone is based on his Award-winning play. The
National Board of Review (2002) honored The Grey Zone with a “Special Recognition of
Films that Reflect the Freedom of Expression.”
Nelson also directed O, a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s
Othello, starring Martin Sheen, Julia Stiles, Josh Hartnett and Mekhi Phifer.
O premiered at the 2001 Seattle Film Festival, where Nelson was awarded
Best Director.
Nelson wrote and directed the film Eye of God, starring Martha Plimpton, Hal
Holbrook and Kevin Anderson, which appeared at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, and
was released theatrically in the United States later that year. The film received the top
award at the 1997 Seattle Film Festival, as well as the Tokyo Bronze Prize at the Tokyo Film
Festival.
As a playwright, Nelson’s produced plays include The Grey Zone, Eye of God and
Anna Darko. He has also acted extensively in New York theatre. Most recently he
starred in the critically acclaimed play Beard of Avon,
portraying William Shakespeare at the New York Theatre
Workshop. Nelson’s other credits include Oedipus,
with Frances McDormand and Billy Crudup, Troilus and Cressida, Les
Bourgeois Avant-Garde, Mac Wellman’s Dracula, The Amazon’s Voice, An Imaginary Life,
The Baltimore Waltz, Mad Forest, The Innocents’ Crusade, Richard III and Twelfth Night.
Nelson was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Brown University
and the Julliard Theater Center. He resides in New York City with his wife and two sons.
Peet will next be seen in theaters opposite John Cusack in
the drama The Martian Child and with Zach Braff and
Jason Bateman in the romantic comedy Fast Track. She is currently in production
on Griffin and Phoenix with Dermot Mulroney.
Peet most recently starred in the Neil LaBute
off-Broadway play This is How it Goes, opposite Ben
Stiller and Jeffrey Wright, for which she earned critical acclaim and garnered
stellar reviews from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Variety, to name a few.
In December 2005, Peet will begin rehearsals
for the Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s comedy Barefoot in the Park, in which
she and Patrick Wilson star as newlyweds who move into a small Greenwich Village
apartment in the 1960s. Other co-stars include Tony Roberts and Tony Award-nominee
Jill Clayburgh. This will be Peet’s Broadway debut.
On screen, Peet most recently starred alongside Ashton Kutcher in
A Lot Like Love. Directed by Nigel Cole, the story revolves around a guy and a
girl who manage to resist their mutual attraction over the years, only to see fate throwing
them back together. She also co-starred in Woody Allen’s
Melinda and Melinda opposite Will Ferrell. Other cast members include
Chloe Sevigny, Jonny Lee Miller and Radha Mitchell.
Melinda & Melinda had its world premiere at the 2004 San Sebastian Film Festival in
September 2004.
Peet reprised her role opposite Bruce Willis and
Matthew Perry in Warner Bros. Pictures’ The Whole Ten Yards for director
Howard Deutch. The film is the continuation of
The Whole Nine Yards, the box office hit from 2000. In 2003,
Peet was seen in director Nancy Meyers’ Something’s
Gotta Give. Peet plays the much younger girlfriend of
Jack Nicholson’s character, who proceeds to fall for Peet’s character’s mother,
played by Diane Keaton. Frances McDormand and Keanu Reeves round out the
cast. Also in 2003, Peet starred alongside John Cusack
and Ray Liotta in the thriller Identity for
director James Mangold. In 2002, Peet starred with
Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd in the
thriller High Crimes for director Carl Franklin,
and in Changing Lanes, opposite Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Affleck and Sydney
Pollack. That same year, she appeared as Jeff Goldblum’s mistress, a beautiful and
privileged young woman who is hooked on drugs, in Igby Goes Down, directed by
Burr Steers.
Television audiences warmed to her when she starred as Jack on the
WB drama, Jack and Jill.
A native of New York, Peet graduated from Columbia University with a degree in
American History. While there, she also studied acting under Uta Hagen, which
ultimately led her to pursue acting as a career.
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Siddig was born in Sudan and raised there until political turmoil forced
his British mother to flee to the U.K., where she sent for him a short time later. His
English schooling was financed by his uncle, actor Malcolm
McDowell. Siddig attended a university to study geography and anthropology,
thinking the future ability to help his native country might lie in the sciences, not on the
stage. But during school, he became interested in acting and directing and left his
university to begin studies at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic
Arts.
Being one of the few trained dramatic actors of Arabic descent in London at the time, he was
soon cast as a young Palestinian in the television miniseries
The Big Battalions, which led to his winning the role of
Faisal in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia. That movie was subsequently
broadcast on American television and his performance caught the attention
of Star Trek producer Rick Berman.
Siddig spent the first part of this year co-starring in the London West End production
of Whose Life Is It, Anyway? starring Kim Cattrall.
STEPHEN GAGHAN (Director / Writer) ranks among Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters
and, with Syriana, takes a big step toward establishing himself as a director of
similar regard. Since being recognized for Best Dramatic Writing at the 1997 Emmy Awards,
Gaghan has gone on to collaborate with a number of prominent filmmakers, culminating
in his Academy Award, British Academy Award, WGA Award and Golden Globe for Best Adapted
Screenplay for Steven Soderbergh’s multiple award-winning Traffic, a gritty
glimpse into the high stakes and high risks of the drug trade. The film became something of a
cultural phenomenon, provoking serious debate about our nation’s drug policy while grossing
over $200 million worldwide and earning four Oscars, including Best Director and Best
Supporting Actor for Benicio Del Toro. It was
Gaghan’s most ambitious project – before tackling an even greater challenge in
Syriana.
Gaghan got his start as a screenwriter in 1997 when he set up his insightful teen
drama Havoc at New Line Cinema. While doing research for Traffic,
Gaghan took time out to write Rules of Engagement
for director William Friedkin and producers
Richard Zanuck and Scott Rudin. Based on a story by former Secretary of the
Navy James Webb, the taut military drama starred
Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson
and was released to favorable reviews in 2000. In 2002, he wrote and directed the
psychological thriller Abandon.
After getting himself expelled from high school on the last day of his senior year for
driving a go-cart through the administration building, Gaghan
knocked around Europe, India, Nepal, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, and worked a
series of odd jobs, including graphic designer, assistant to a National Geographic
photographer and political fundraiser. Gaghan also worked at the prestigious literary
journal The Paris Review and published short fiction in journals such as The Iowa Review.
Following a move to Los Angeles where he sold a spec script to producer Joel Silver
at Warner Bros. Pictures and wrote a freelance episode of New York Undercover,
Gaghan landed a job on ABC’s critically acclaimed American Gothic, writing seven
of the series’ 21 episodes. Shortly after, Gaghan
began working with writer Michael Tolkin (The Player) on a satiric comedy about
Bill Gates and Microsoft for HBO. The
project ultimately evolved into a feature
script called $20 Billion that was sold to Paramount and earned a place on
Premiere’s “10 Best Unproduced Screenplays” list. Gaghan
also wrote several episodes of David Kelly’s
award-winning drama The Practice, and his NYPD Blue
episode, “Where’s ‘Swaldo?,” won the 1997 Emmy Award for Best Dramatic Writing.
In 2001, after Soderbergh partnered with George Clooney
to form Section Eight, their Warner Bros. Pictures’
based production company, he approached Fox about leaving Universal to join them as
president. She is currently overseeing a number of projects,
including Tony Gilroy’s directorial debut
Michael Clayton, starring George Clooney; Scott Burns’ directorial debut
PU-239 and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly
(based on the novel by Philip K. Dick); as well as
Soderbergh’s two upcoming Section Eight films
The Good German, starring George Clooney;
and The Informant, starring Matt Damon.
Most recently, Fox served as executive producer on Criminal,
directed by Gregory Jacobs; The Jacket,
directed by John Maybury; Good Night, and Good Luck,
directed by George Clooney; and Rumor has it...,
directed by Rob Reiner.
Section Eight has produced Ocean’s Eleven, Welcome to Collinwood, Far From Heaven,
Insomnia, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Criminal, Ocean’s Twelve, The Jacket,
Good Night, and Good Luck and Rumor has it...
A veteran of 14 years of producing, Nozik received an
Academy Award-nomination for his work as the producer of Quiz Show,
directed by Robert Redford and starring Ralph Fiennes.
Nozik produced People I Know, starring
Al Pacino, Kim Basinger
and Tea Leoni; the Redford-directed The Legend of Bagger Vance,
starring Matt Damon and Will Smith; How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog,
starring Kenneth Branagh and Robin Wright Penn; Slums of Beverly Hills,
starring Alan Arkin and Marisa Tomei;
and She’s the One, starring Edward Burns, Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston.
Other producing credits include three films for award-winning director Mira Nair – The
Perez Family, Mississippi Masala and the Academy Award-nominated Salaam
Bombay – as well as Thunderheart, starring Val Kilmer;
and Crossing Delancey with Amy Irving.
Previously, Nozik was Robert Redford’s
producing partner and was president of his
film production companies – Wildwood Enterprises and South Fork Pictures.
Since completing Syriana, Kacandes has served as executive producer on the
upcoming feature Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny.
Among her other credits, Kacandes was executive producer on
Ted Demme’s Blow and Criminal, directed by
Gregory Jacobs. She served as line producer on
Andrew Niccol’s feature debut Gattaca, and
Girl, Interrupted, directed by James Mangold.
In 2002, Section Eight released three
additional films: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,
directed by and starring George Clooney
with an ensemble cast including Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore
and Julia Roberts; Insomnia, d
irected by Christopher Nolan and starring Al Pacino,
Robin Williams and Hilary Swank; and Welcome to Collinwood, written and
directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo. The
ensemble comedy’s cast included William H. Macy,
Isaiah Washington, Luis Guzman, Jennifer Esposito, Sam Rockwell and Clooney.
Syriana is one of three Section Eight
films opening in the fall of 2005. Additionally, Good Night, and Good
Luck, directed by and starring George Clooney
from a script by Clooney and Grant Heslov,
premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was released
domestically on October 7th. The film
also stars David Strathairn, Robert Downey, Jr.,
Patricia Clarkson, Frank Langella and Jeff
Daniels. Strathairn received the
Osella Cup for his portrayal of legendary
CBS anchorman Edward R. Murrow, while
Clooney and Haslov received the award for Best Screenplay. On December 25th,
Section Eight will also release Rumor has it...,
directed by Rob Reiner and starring
Jennifer Aniston, Mark Ruffalo, Kevin Costner and Shirley MacLaine.
Other Section Eight productions include The Jacket,
directed by John Maybury and starring
Adrian Brody, Keira Knightley and
Jennifer Jason Leigh; Ocean’s
Twelve, which reunited the entire cast of
the 2001 hit plus Catherine Zeta-Jones
and internationally acclaimed actor Vincent Cassel;
and Criminal, starring John C. Reilly, Diego Luna
and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Gregory Jacobs,
who had collaborated with Soderbergh
on ten prior films, made his directorial debut on
the film, which was screened at the 2004 Venice, Deauville and London Film Festivals.
Soderbergh’s other credits as producer
include Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers
(1997) and Gary Ross’ Pleasantville (1998).
He was executive producer on David Siegel and
Scott McGhee’s Suture (1994), Godfrey Reggio’s
Naqoyqatsi and Lodge Kerrigan’s Keane,
which recently played at the Telluride, Toronto and New York Film Festivals.
In 2003, Section Eight and HBO produced
the television docudrama / political reality program
K Street, starring real-life
political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin. Co-starring were a mix
of actors including John Slattery and Mary McCormack, as well as real-life
politicians. This past January, Section Eight and HBO premiered the fiction series
Unscripted, which details the lives of a small group of aspiring actors.
At TriStar, Cosgrove worked on numerous projects including Jumanji, The Mask of
Zorro and Devil in a Blue Dress. Following his tenure at TriStar, he joined
Maysville Pictures, George Clooney’s Warner Bros. Pictures’ based production
company. When Clooney partnered with Steven Soderbergh
to form Section Eight, he became president of the new company.
Section Eight has produced
Ocean’s Eleven, Welcome to Collinwood, Far From Heaven, Insomnia, Confessions of a
Dangerous Mind, Criminal, Ocean’s Twelve, The Jacket, A Scanner Darkly, Rumor has it... and
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Skoll has been a leader in technology and philanthropy for many years. In
1996, Skoll joined eBay as its first President and first full-time employee, and
developed the business plan that the company still follows.
In the months before eBay went public in 1998, Skoll led the company’s effort to
give back to the community, creating the eBay Foundation through an allocation of
pre-IPO shares, an innovation that inspired a wave of similar commitments nationwide.
But Skoll didn’t stop there. In 1999, he launched his own philanthropic organization,
the Skoll Foundation, for which he serves as chief visionary and chairman. He created
the foundation in alignment with his core belief that it is in everyone’s interest to shift
the overwhelming imbalance between the “haves” and “have-nots.” The foundation takes up this
challenge by focusing on social entrepreneurs – people who couple innovative ideas with
extraordinary determination, tackling the world’s toughest problems to make things better for
us all. In five short years, Skoll and the foundation have emerged as social sector
leaders; in 2002 through 2005, Skoll was recognized as one of today’s most innovative
philanthropists by Business Week, and he is frequently cited for his leadership in advancing
the work and field of social entrepreneurship.
Skoll also serves on the Board of Directors for the eBay
Foundation, the Community Foundation Silicon Valley, and is a member of
the
Advisory Board of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, among others. He holds a B.S. in
Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and an M.B.A. from the
Stanford Graduate School of Business.
His recent honors and awards include a 2001 Visionary Award from the Software Development
Forum; the 2002 Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the Silicon Valley chapter of the
Association of Fundraising Professionals; the 2003 Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the
International Association of Fundraising Professionals; and, in 2003, an honorary Doctor of
Laws degree from the University of Toronto. In 2004 the Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley
awarded him its National Leadership Award.
In April 2005, Skoll launched the Gandhi Project in partnership with Silicon Valley
entrepreneur Kamran Elahian. Working with Palestinian voice actors and artists, an
award-winning director dubbed the epic film into Arabic. It is being screened throughout
Palestine in order to advance civil society goals of peaceful resistance, self-reliance,
economic development and local empowerment, and plans are underway to expand screenings
throughout the Arab world.
Throughout the course of his impressive career, Elswit has
worked with numerous acclaimed directors including
Paul Thomas Anderson, David Mamet, Don Roos, Joel
Schumacher, Curtis Hanson, Stephen Gyllenhaal and Rob Reiner,
among others. His cinematography credits include Runaway Jury,
Gigli, Punchdrunk Love, Imposter, The Heist, Bounce, Magnolia,
8 Millimeter, Tomorrow Never Dies, Boogie Nights, Boys,
The Pallbearer, Hard Eight, The River Wild, A Dangerous Woman,
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Waterland, Paris Trout, Bad Influence,
Killing in a Small Town, Amazing Grace and Chuck, Desert Hearts and The Sure Thing.
Weil’s other credits as production designer
include Le Libertin, The Dancer, Belle Maman, Le Cousin,
The Fifth Element, Total Eclipse,
The Professional, Moi Ivan, Toi Abraham, Hors La Vie,
Jesuite Joe, La Femme Nikita, Moitié-moitié,
The Big Blue, Kamikaze, Black Mic Mac and Tristesse et Beauté.
Squyres’ other collaborations with Lee
include: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and an ACE Eddie Award;
Ride With the Devil; The Ice Storm; Sense and Sensibility; Eat
Drink Man Woman; The Wedding Banquet and Pushing Hands.
Squyres is also credited as editor on Lulu on the Bridge and
Blowback. He was supervising sound editor on Anna, Dogfight and True Love.
His documentary editing credits include Going Upriver: The Long
War of John Kerry, Bill Moyers: What Can We Do About Violence?,
Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home and American Heroes.
Following in close succession, Desplat wrote the scores to
The Upside of Anger, starring Joan Allen
and Kevin Costner, and Hostage, starring
Bruce Willis. Desplat is currently composing the
original music to Lasse Holström’s film
Casanova, starring Heath Ledger and Jeremy Irons.
Balancing his busy Hollywood schedule, Desplat
still makes time to lend his talents to select European films. His most recent score for
De Battre Mon Coeur s’est Arrêté (The Beat that My Heart Skipped)
earned him a Silver Bear Award for Best Score at the Berlin Film Festival in 2005.
Desplat’s Greek mother and French father met while attending college at Berkeley in the
United States. The multilingual Desplat was classically trained, but fed a constant
diet of American Jazz and Hollywood movie scores. These influences have been fused in his
music to create a fresh and unique new voice in film music.
GALLERY
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