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The Seattle Times
October 12, 2003
Eye on spies: Pop culture once again makes undercover agents hot
by Mark Rahner
Look over your shoulder at any given moment these days, and you're liable to see a spy lurking.
Around a corner: TV shows ranging from "Alias" to the breakout British import "MI-5."
Down an alley: movies such as "The Recruit" and "Die Another Day," video games from the "Metal Gear" series to novelist Tom Clancy's "Splinter Cell," not to mention the latest real-world intelligence snafu in the headlines.
And at the intersection of fantasy and reality: "Alias" star Jennifer Garner is shooting real-life recruitment videos for the CIA.
It's the biggest resurgence of spies and espionage in pop culture since the Cold War slayday of James Bond, "Our Man Flint" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." What's caused the latest spy craze, and how is it different from the one a generation ago? We didn't have "Q" to consult, but we debriefed a few other experts.
Dossier: Quentin Tarantino
Activity: The pop-culture savant and director of "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill," who also did a guest stint as a torture-instrument-toting bad-guy agent in an "Alias" two-parter.
Report: "I definitely think it's true, and there could be even more as far as I'm concerned," he says.
Tarantino had once said that "Alias" delivered on what "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." only promised and he was drawn to the role as a longtime aficionado of the Cold War spy craze. "Some of my favorite spy movies from that period aren't even the James Bond ones. I love a lot of the ones that came out of Italy. I love 'Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die,' " Tarantino says. "It's the bomb! Did you ever see the Richard Johnson 'Bulldog Drummond' movies?"
Current television is crawling with the linear descendants of those agents, in "24," "CTU — Counter Terrorist Unit," "The Agency" (CIA); "Threat Matrix" (Homeland Security); "Jake 2.0" (National Security Agency); and the excellent "MI-5" (the U.K.'s Security Service).
Now beginning its third season, "Alias" leads the pack.
Dossier: J.J. Abrams
Activity: "Alias" creator, currently also writing a "Superman" movie screenplay.
Report: "It's very weird. The idea of doing a show about a spy on the face of it doesn't really interest me. But the idea of doing a story about these really twisted relationships and bizarre family dramas and strained romances — that kind of stuff does interest me. And setting it against the spy world felt like a fun challenge."
And so you have global intrigue (à la "I Spy") mixed with a little soap from the guy who brought us "Felicity": Between beating up enemies and chasing after various McGuffins, CIA agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) endures tortured (literally) dealings with her senior-agent dad (Victor Garber), rogue-agent mom (Lena Olin) and partner-agent boyfriend (Michael Vartan). This season began after Sydney lost two years of her life.
The intel on what's to come: "It's almost like a new series in some ways. The story for Sydney this year is in many ways threefold. One is: What the (expletive) happened to me the past two years? Secondly, it's dealing with the fact that the personal and professional partner she had is now married to this woman. ... And the third thing for her is that the landscape has changed. There are new bad guys in the crosshairs of the CIA, and there are people who these characters must work together with to take down. The relationship between Sydney and her father and her mother is at a really interesting new level, and her mother will be coming back for a handful of episodes."
As for the spy trend, Abrams says, "This has happened so often, where I'll work on something and it'll turn out that there are two or three other similar genre projects in the works. What is it? The zeitgeist? How does that happen? And I think that what it is, is that writers are living and breathing in the same world as everyone else, and they're aware of the stuff that's available."
Some of what makes up the zeitgeist is obvious: There are new bad guys in the real intelligence community's crosshairs.
[...]
Dossier: Chase Brandon
Activity: Central Intelligence Agency film-industry liaison. Now in his 32nd year with the agency, 25 of which he spent overseas, undercover.
Report: Asked if applications are up these days, Brandon says, "Oh my God, yes!"
Though he doesn't specifically quantify the rise, Brandon says it's "thousands and thousands and thousands a week."
At about the time you're reading this, Brandon should be shooting Jennifer Garner. Not with a silencer, but with a film crew, for a CIA recruitment video. She and "Alias" co-star Carl Lumbly (Dixon) will read lines from a teleprompter. Then either an interview or some introductory comments from Garner "will be followed by some in-house agency footage, possibly some interviews with other agency people, and some exposition on why this is a great place to work," Brandon says.
The 8- to 12-minute video will surface at job fairs, college campuses and in other recruitment efforts. It won't air on TV. Why choose the star of a fantasy spy show for real CIA recruitment?
"The reason she was asked was, in my estimation as the agency's film-industry person, and in fact reflecting the agency's enjoyment of the series — I and we feel like her character, Sydney Bristow, really does embody a lot of the character traits that we look for in people we recruit: integrity, honesty, dedication, patriotism, willing to take risks, interest in foreign affairs, flexibility, adaptability, creativity."
Including the ability to slide down zip lines and speed through ducts on rocket sleds?
Although Brandon admits he doesn't even need to finish reading some of the letters of application before round-filing them, he says, "Anyone that is smart enough to make it through our litmus test is smart enough to differentiate the fantasy business from the movies and the reality of what they get when they get here."
But the differences are shrinking a bit, due to a policy of increased openness that for about the past six years has resulted in assorted cable documentaries allowed inside CIA doors, not to mention pop-culture interviews. "I think all that created a reality base on which feature films had to follow suit," he says.
It's also resulted in Brandon's acting as an agency consultant for movies and TV shows — including "The Recruit" and "Alias." Among the things he says he's advised Abrams and company on:
"How would a double agent be handled, and how would operational activities take place? What kind of planning, what kind of technical support would be involved? How do people talk in the middle of an operation? How does surveillance look? Do you in fact wear disguises? Can you in fact pick locks?"
Still, the show, like most, is largely fantasy. "They took what I gave them, and sort of like Emeril, kicked it up a notch." Brandon says the tense Brit ensemble drama "MI-5," shown Tuesdays on A&E, is "probably most realistic."
Having also advised "Alias" on techno-geek Marshall's gadgets, which are realistic without being "actualistic," Brandon makes one last tantalizing statement:
"I guarantee you, in the real world we have stuff that blows the movie props off the screen. It's the Central Intelligence Agency. The middle name of our company is 'Intelligence,' for Pete's sake. We have more Ph.D.s here than several universities combined."
© The Seattle Times Company 2003
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