Green Zone
Not long after they wrapped principal photography on their second collaboration, Matt Damon agreed to a third project with the man who directed him in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.
"Working with Paul is an invigorating process because he insists on capturing something real for the camera," commends Damon."It’s no surprise when you look at his other work. Not a moment of Bloody Sunday is contrived or promotes a personal agenda.
"United 93 practically vibrates with tension as its characters recognize the truth of their situation. Paul wants the audience to feel that truth and tension along with the characters."
The opportunity to partner again with his longtime friend wasn’t Damon’s only motivation in signing on to Green Zone. He explains: "Besides working with Paul, who I admire and whose movies I really like, the big thing for me was the chance to work with a bunch of veterans who had just come back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"They were the ones who really made our cast. They helped create an environment that felt very authentic. To be around people who are alert and who have been in those situations before is invaluable as an actor."
As Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, Damon portrays a career soldier who served in the 1990 Gulf War and is now doing duty in a very different Iraq. He returns to the region in 2003 to lead a gung ho team of WMD hunters known as MET D (Mobile Exploitation Team Delta). His soldiers have one objective: evacuate a long list of reputed WMD sites.
Much like Jason Bourne, Roy Miller wants only to find out the truth in his precarious situation. Damon elaborates on this character’s motivations: "Miller becomes obsessed with figuring out what’s going on and getting to the bottom of all this.
"He gets himself reassigned to work for the station chief for the CIA in Baghdad and starts working with him to try and figure out where the weapons are, if they exist at all."
Greengrass adds: "Miller is a man of action who has had this frustration that builds and builds at not finding the weapons. Then suddenly somebody gives him the opportunity to do something. And he takes it, because he wants to get something done."
The filmmaker was happy the actor he’d almost run down with subway cars in the London’s Waterloo Station and sent freewheeling through rooftop windows in the Medina area of Tangier was willing to trust him for their third time together.
"Matt drives this movie with a great performance," notes the director. "This is the kind of role people want to see him in. He’s one of the world’s great physical actors. If you put Matt in a big action-thriller, he commands attention because you know he’s going to go to exciting places to be absolutely determined to get to the truth and exhibit courage.
He’s going to be running and jumping and chasing and fighting and doing all those things that you want to see Matt Damon do. But he does them with class and integrity and also tells a great story."
Cast as Miller’s nemesis, Defense Intelligence agent Clark Poundstone, was Greg Kinnear. The actor quickly adapted to Greengrass’ unique shooting style of allowing his actors situational improv, and Kinnear’s co-star was a big help in achieving that skill. "Matt advised me on how all this would work," Kinnear says.
"It’s a big change from most traditional movie sets. As you adjust, you start to realize that it’s exhilarating and very unpredictable."
The Defense Intelligence agent has ostensibly come to Iraq to repair the damage that’s been done to it; he will achieve this goal by any means necessary. "Poundstone believes this place can be put back together very quickly, and that it’s all about the end game, not the means of getting there," reveals Kinnear.
"This story has multiple points of view, and with Paul’s way of working, everybody’s argument is given space."
Irish-native Brendan Gleeson was asked by the filmmakers to portray Martin Brown, the CIA station chief to whom Roy Miller turns when he believes there is no one else he can trust. Of the character, Greengrass laughs, "From my point of view, it’s good to have a CIA character that’s a good guy, after the Bourne movies."
The journalist who finds herself unknowingly serving as Poundstone’s mouthpiece is prominent Wall Street Journal writer Lawrie Dayne. Chosen to play the newswoman was performer Amy Ryan, introduced to many audiences in her much awarded breakout role in Gone Baby Gone.
By the spring of 2003, Dayne has become an expert on the subject of chemical warfare and is embedded in the Green Zone, where she is unwittingly being fed stories by the duplicitous Poundstone.
Greengrass encouraged flexibility in how his actors interpreted their roles, and Ryan had a specific take on Dayne. The actress offers: "Lawrie spent the majority of her career writing about WMDs.
"Now, she is in a situation in Iraq where she’s searching for answers to something she’s believed in her whole professional life. This will be the biggest moment in Lawrie’s career, if she can be there when, and if, the WMDs are found."
Chosen to play Freddy, an unemployed Iraqi veteran who struggles with a prosthetic leg and a battered Toyota Corolla, was Khalid Abdalla. The actor, born in Scotland to Egyptian parents, first worked with Greengrass when he gave everything in the role of hijacker Ziad Jarrah in United 93. "The first time I heard about 93, I wanted nothing to do with it," Abdalla admits.
"I heard it was a film about 9/11, and thought, ‘No, thank you.’ But then I found out it was Paul, and I saw Bloody Sunday and I met him. It was clear to me that he wanted to make a film in the right way, and that he was an extraordinary person I could trust. Working with Paul is like being on a volcanic island, and I absolutely love it."
By tipping Miller to the whereabouts of several high-level Baath Party members Miller has been seeking, Freddy sets the dominoes falling in Green Zone. "He’s one of many Iraqis who was happy to see Saddam gone and willing to trust, at the beginning, that things might get better," says Abdalla.
"Freddy is not quite an Iraqi everyman, but he’s a guy off the street, and the main Iraqi we follow in the film."
Freddy eventually becomes MET D translator for Miller’s men. Still, translating the highly technical terms and regional-specific lingo was a challenge for the fluent Arabic speaker.
"The world that this film is situated in is very real," offers Abdalla. "You get to see Iraq in a way that most people haven’t. My advisor was brought up in Iraq and was in Baghdad for a good portion of the war, so stories have come to us through him in ways that we didn’t expect."
British performer Jason Isaacs came aboard the production as Lt. Col. Briggs, the Special Forces team leader who is out to rein in Miller. The actor appreciated the disciplined academic work that goes into a Greengrass film.
"Paul’s films are meticulously researched," Isaacs reflects. "He has an incredible team around him who gave me a big package of documentary footage, YouTube clips, audio clips and books for my research.
"Useful as that was, though, it didn’t compare to the human resources on set."
In Green Zone, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army (wiping the slate clean) is announced at a packed press conference by Kinnear as Poundstone. Featured along with Ryan and dozens of extras playing journalists were Rajiv Chandrasekaran, as well as former CBS newsman and co-producer Michael Bronner.
Both men had attended similar briefings in 2003, and they asked similar questions on screen. Bronner, who had spent time in Iraq during the war while on assignment for CBS News/60 Minutes, joined the production to conduct research for Greengrass.
"I sat through countless press briefings in the Green Zone," Chandrasekaran recalls. "Some of us copied an old nickname the Vietnam War press core used in Saigon the ‘five o’clock follies.’ The reality that the officials tried to convey from behind the podium in the Green Zone was very different than the reality outside its walls."
Bronner conducted the WMD research for Green Zone. "Every soldier I talked to who was part of these WMD search teams, and every CIA and DIA officer who flew in during the first wave, went in thinking there would be some kind of WMD," he recalls.
"I don’t think they believed Saddam would nuke America any time soon, but even I thought he’d at least have some old chemical junk he’d hurl at the troops. They were dumbstruck when they didn’t find it.
"They had highly detailed intelligence in some cases, and it was wrong. How do you have highly detailed intelligence that’s totally wrong? That’s a strong mystery to motivate a character to keep pushing and try to figure it out."
Green Zone is out now.
Not long after they wrapped principal photography on their second collaboration, Matt Damon agreed to a third project with the man who directed him in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.
"Working with Paul is an invigorating process because he insists on capturing something real for the camera," commends Damon."It’s no surprise when you look at his other work. Not a moment of Bloody Sunday is contrived or promotes a personal agenda.
"United 93 practically vibrates with tension as its characters recognize the truth of their situation. Paul wants the audience to feel that truth and tension along with the characters."
The opportunity to partner again with his longtime friend wasn’t Damon’s only motivation in signing on to Green Zone. He explains: "Besides working with Paul, who I admire and whose movies I really like, the big thing for me was the chance to work with a bunch of veterans who had just come back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"They were the ones who really made our cast. They helped create an environment that felt very authentic. To be around people who are alert and who have been in those situations before is invaluable as an actor."
As Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, Damon portrays a career soldier who served in the 1990 Gulf War and is now doing duty in a very different Iraq. He returns to the region in 2003 to lead a gung ho team of WMD hunters known as MET D (Mobile Exploitation Team Delta). His soldiers have one objective: evacuate a long list of reputed WMD sites.
Much like Jason Bourne, Roy Miller wants only to find out the truth in his precarious situation. Damon elaborates on this character’s motivations: "Miller becomes obsessed with figuring out what’s going on and getting to the bottom of all this.
"He gets himself reassigned to work for the station chief for the CIA in Baghdad and starts working with him to try and figure out where the weapons are, if they exist at all."
Greengrass adds: "Miller is a man of action who has had this frustration that builds and builds at not finding the weapons. Then suddenly somebody gives him the opportunity to do something. And he takes it, because he wants to get something done."
The filmmaker was happy the actor he’d almost run down with subway cars in the London’s Waterloo Station and sent freewheeling through rooftop windows in the Medina area of Tangier was willing to trust him for their third time together.
"Matt drives this movie with a great performance," notes the director. "This is the kind of role people want to see him in. He’s one of the world’s great physical actors. If you put Matt in a big action-thriller, he commands attention because you know he’s going to go to exciting places to be absolutely determined to get to the truth and exhibit courage.
He’s going to be running and jumping and chasing and fighting and doing all those things that you want to see Matt Damon do. But he does them with class and integrity and also tells a great story."
Cast as Miller’s nemesis, Defense Intelligence agent Clark Poundstone, was Greg Kinnear. The actor quickly adapted to Greengrass’ unique shooting style of allowing his actors situational improv, and Kinnear’s co-star was a big help in achieving that skill. "Matt advised me on how all this would work," Kinnear says.
"It’s a big change from most traditional movie sets. As you adjust, you start to realize that it’s exhilarating and very unpredictable."
The Defense Intelligence agent has ostensibly come to Iraq to repair the damage that’s been done to it; he will achieve this goal by any means necessary. "Poundstone believes this place can be put back together very quickly, and that it’s all about the end game, not the means of getting there," reveals Kinnear.
Tagged in Matt Damon