Vanity Fair Game

Doug Liman's Fair Game, starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, just debuted at Cannes. It's the story of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Since it seems to be pure Bush-bashing, I expect they enjoyed it.

Liman claims "This is not an advocacy film. Fair Game is just trying to tell a story about something that happened. I didn’t have an agenda apart from just showing what the Wilsons went through.”

So, in other words, this is an advocacy film that wouldn't exist except for its agenda.

Producer Jerry Zucker says Wilson was someone who always told the truth, and "a democracy can’t survive unless there’s truth.”

Any film that features Joe Wilson as the central truth teller is pure fiction. Maybe science fiction. (The movie is based on Wilson's and Plame's books--two of the many ways they were able to cash in on their notoriety (though being portrayed as heroes in a movie is even better). I can thus understand it showing things from their point of view, but why should Zucker be taken in?)

Naomi Watts says “the story is about an incredible betrayal and how [Valerie Plame] survived against all the odds.”

Survived against the odds? It was the best thing that ever happened to her. When The New York Times outs a CIA agent or releases classified information, everyone celebrates and prizes are awarded. (They also editorialized against the specific law that made outing certain agents illegal.) But when Bush opponent Richard Armitage outed Plame, it turned her into a celebrity so lionized she and her husband got a spread in Vanity Fair.