Steve Martin said it best: it’s all in the ti-MING. ti…MINGming.
It’s always risky shooting with locally cast talent. But after five tense days, the White House screening room erupted in fits of backslapping and high fives as the rushes showed Pakistan nailing its mark like Meryl Streep with a mustache and the bomb.
The interior ministry just announced–at midnight local time, which is 2pm in, say, Boston–the capture of a major Al Qaeda terrorist, his entourage, and his fearsome arsenal of weapons.
True, the guy’s name is “Foopie,” his entourage was his wife and children-with whom he had been living for some time in Pakistan, and his arsenal consisted of “two AK-47 rifles, plastic chemicals [huh? like caulking?], two computers, [and] computer diskettes,” and the arrest actually happened Sunday. But Scott can fix all that in post.
Besides, all they needed was an “Al Qaeda bigwig netted” hed stepping on the “Kerry slams Bush on terror ‘war'” lead this weekend; it could be any one of the terrorists in Pakistan’s Rolodex, really. And if the guy’s story’s really got legs, they can just get the nets to call him the Tanzanian Devil. [Note to self: contact TW/CNN re licensing and permissions.]
Related: White House Production Notes: Summer Blockbuster Edition
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the making of, by greg allen