![]() Gavin Hood: It’s a question of how conditioned are we to the conventional Hollywood structure. It was an interesting experience because you couldn't really go bending things the way you thought would be more dramatic, you just have to make the story itself and hope there was enough drama there.ĭavid Dayen: And you were dealing with a story that was about a leak that didn't stop a war and leading to a trial that didn't happen. It was the first time I had worked with characters who were still alive, and they very much wanted it to be accurate or they wouldn't sign over their life rights. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. Every day we worked together for about five to six hours and then I referred back to her many times, subsequently, but I had literally just said, let's start at the beginning and let me hear first-hand from you your story and then I'll tell that story. ![]() Then, we all started watching the invasion and we weren’t how we got into the war.īut, did it change the way I approached it? I don't know that consciously it did, it's just that I didn't know the story and so, for me, it was I asked Katharine, I flew to London, I met her for five days. Two hours later after this deep dive, I called Ged back and said, “How come we don’t know this story?” I guess the answer to that is that her story was big news for the day, and then very quickly got crushed by a bigger story, which was the story of the invasion. I didn’t know the story and I googled her. The truth is that I didn’t know who Katharine Gun was until my producer Ged Doherty called me up one day, we made Eye In The Sky together, and said, “Have you ever heard of Katharine Gun?” That’s one of those moments where you think: Sounds like I ought to have, but I hadn’t. Did that change your approach to presenting the film knowing that this was actually going to be somewhat of a surprise to people? This is a special case because this story is very little-known in the United States. Spoilers to follow as well.ĭavid Dayen: The first thing I thought about when looking at this movie is that in most recent historical epics, the audience knows what's happening next. A transcript, lightly edited with explainers where necessary, follows. There were some audience questions as well. Last week in Los Angeles, I got to interview the director, South African-born Gavin Hood, after a screening. press, which really just blacked out the Gun leak entirely. It's a fascinating film that really evokes the dangers of speaking out in the post-9/11 age, as well as the press's inability to challenge the official story on Iraq, particularly the U.S. What happened to Gun afterwards forms the basis of the film Official Secrets, which opened in New York and Los Angeles earlier this month and goes into wider release today. But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. As a result, there never was any second UN resolution. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. Gun, a translator with the British intelligence service known as Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), received a document just before the war from an NSA manager, seeking British intelligence support in spying on members of the UN Security Council, to effectively blackmail them into voting for a second resolution that would make legal the invasion of Iraq. ![]() Y ou may not know the name Katharine Gun unless you live in the United Kingdom, but she was a pivotal figure in the run-up to the Iraq War. President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006.
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