On Movies: Fascinated by a real-life spy's double life

'This film's origins are not political for me," explains

Doug Liman

, director of

Fair Game

, the movie about real-life CIA operative

Valerie Plame

and her career-ending exposure by officials high up in the

Bush

White House.

"I was aware of the story in 2003 when it was unfolding, but I was in the middle of making Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and you can imagine, having cast Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, I had my own problems to worry about.

"So I promptly forgot about Valerie Plame's problems and went back to dealing with my own. Which is like most of the world. It's a huge luxury to be able to dwell on the problems of Washington. Most of us have to spend time worrying about the problems in our own lives."

But a few years later, Liman - whose credits include Swingers, Go and the inaugural title in a modest little spy franchise by the name of Bourne - was sent a screenplay. It was an adaptation of Plame's book, Fair Game, and her husband Joe Wilson's The Politics of Truth, and it described the couple's epic tussle with the likes of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, the CIA and the news media, when Plame's name and true occupation were leaked to a couple of high-profile journalists.

"What hooked me in was, basically, the first two scenes of the script," says Liman. "Seeing Valerie Plame in the field, and then seeing her in Georgetown with her friends and realizing her friends had no idea what she does for a living. Right then and there, I was like I'm making this movie!"

And he did. Fair Game opened Friday at the Ritz Five and Rave Motion Pictures Ritz Center/NJ. It goes to additional theaters Nov. 12.

And he cast Naomi Watts, in an Oscar-worthy turn, as Plame, and Sean Penn, her 21 Grams costar, as Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador whose New York Times op-ed piece questioning the rationale behind the invasion of Iraq was the catalyst that led to Plame's outing.

"Obviously, I'd done other spy movies," says Liman, whose 2002 Matt Damon hit, The Bourne Identity, is arguably one of the best espionage thrillers of the decade. "And I couldn't believe that this particular aspect of being a spy had escaped me. . . . In a way it's the most interesting part of being a spy: what happens when you go home.

"And this was the best of all versions, because then after you see her lie to her friends, you realize she's a wife and a mother. And just because you're a spy, doesn't mean you get out of your wifely and motherly duties. . . .

"How do you juxtapose going on 'business trips,' where you can't tell your husband where you're going or how long you'll be gone, and he just needs to know whether or not he has to call a babysitter?"

Liman was so compelled by the idea that he went on to develop a TV series - the USA Network's Covert Affairs, with Piper Perabo as a CIA trainee-turned-operative. It's just been renewed for a second season.

"Annie Walker, the lead character, is basically on a trajectory to become Valerie Plame, who found herself, after 20 years in the CIA, not even sure whether her friends were her friends any more. Because if you've been lying to your best friend for 20 years, and they have no idea who you really are, are they even your best friend?"

With both Plame and Wilson cooperating with Liman and his Fair Game screenwriters - Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth - the director found himself doubly determined to keep the story factual, both in terms of Plame's role as a deep-cover CIA operative and in terms of the couple's relationship under unimaginable stress and media scrutiny.

"This is my first time doing a 'this is a true story,' but I've seen movies based on true events," he says, "and you get the feeling like, OK, they got the facts right, but the dramatic scenes are probably made up. Because who would have recorded those scenes?

"I had the opposite situation in Fair Game. Valerie and Joe gave me access to the dramatic scenes, they gave me access to what was happening behind closed doors, and what was happening inside the Wilson household and how things felt, but what they couldn't give me access to were the facts of the story. . . . Valerie could not tell me the operational details of her life. We had to go elsewhere to get that information. . . . So I had the exact opposite source material to work with than one would normally have when telling a true story."

The other thing Liman discovered, spending time with Plame, was that she really would much rather still be at her job, traveling Europe and the Middle East under cover, doing the work she did for her country.

"Valerie is the real-deal spy," he says. "I've met spies who have reached out to Hollywood to try to be consultants. Valerie is not somebody who reached out to Hollywood. She didn't choose this life. If she had a magic wand, all of this would go away."

When he was researching the film, and trying to piece together the details of Plame's covert work, Liman met with others in the CIA - people who had trained with Plame.

"One of the people had been her boss at one point, in the '90s," Liman recalls, "and he said, 'I hope you're not going to make her out as some kind of superhero. She was just a good CIA officer. . . . She just did X, Y, and Z.'

"And then he told me what X, Y, and Z were. It was like, she was only, you know, sabotaging nuclear bombs in North Korea. . . . And I'm thinking, if that's normal in the CIA, that place is even cooler than I thought! Because what he just detailed that made her 'average' was extraordinary in my book."