Reporters in the United States need not have worried about having a lack of interesting stories to cover with the conclusion of that thick oil well of news known as the US election.
That's because of the story blew up about retired army Gen. David Petraeus and his affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell, and his subsequent resignation as head of the Central Intelligence Agency a result.
The story has escalated from there to involve emails sent to a Tampa socialite, Jill Kelley, and reports there were FBI investigations going on. Now even marine corps Gen. John Allen has been roped into this scandal. There are so many revelations and twists to this story I am having trouble keeping up with it all.
This whole mess has generated speculation and questions from the media. Among them is the inevitable one: how soon will the movie get made?
I read somewhere they are talking up Harrison Ford to play Petraeus and that maybe Julianne Moore would be good as Paula Broadwell. It sounds good, but personally I'm still waiting for that flick to come out about the mysterious, glamourous Russian secret agent Anna Chapman and the rest of that Russia spy ring that was busted and deported a while back.
Now, that would be one to see. In fact, there were many comparisons between Chapman and Angelina Jolie's character in the movie SALT, which came out around the same time all that Russian spy news broke.
The timing of this Petraeus news is particularly interesting, and not only because it follows on the heels of what happened in Benghazi. It's coming during a period in popular culture when spies and spy movies are all the rage.
You see it in popular TV shows like Covert Affairs, Burn Notice, the animated Archer, or most notably the Emmy-winning Homeland with its storylines depicting the CIA and terrorism. You also see it at your friendly neighbourhood movie theatre.
Just this past week I had a chance to see the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall, starring Daniel Craig. It's playing locally at the Capitol at the moment, but I watched it on the UltraAVX big screen at the Galaxy in Saskatoon.
The movie is exactly the kind of gritty and action-filled picture we have come to expect in the Craig era. Of course, Bond was busy gallivanting around the world again, chasing bad guys in Istanbul, Shanghai and Macau. What would a Bond movie be without glamorous and spectacular locations? You can't go wrong with Shanghai or Macau.
With this being the 50th anniversary of Bond movies from EON Productions, there were a few nods to the past, with even a vintage Aston-Martin showing up.
But there was also a nod in the movie to the scary present. The British spy agency MI6 is under attack from a rogue former M16 spy-turned-terrorist, played by Javier Bardem. His character, with his penchant for hacking and revealing secrets to the world on the Internet, has been compared to Julian Assange. And with terrorist attacks on the MI6 headquarters and the like, we are reminded we live in a world of rogue terrorists and rogue individuals. The Cold War is definitely over.
Also pretty much in line with the world we live in is this whole notion of a spy agency and its leadership under attack. Now, where have we seen that before? Oh, yes - right now with Petraeus and the CIA.
The only thing missing from Skyfall was, oddly enough, the Bond girls and the usual bikinis and skirt-chasing that we have come to expect from the franchise over the years. We saw hardly any of that in Skyfall; instead we got far more focus on action and intrigue.
It's kind of odd when real-life spies in the real world are doing more skirt-chasing than James Bond. These Bond movies really do need to be more realistic in their depiction of the espionage game.
The troubles of the current CIA leadership are bound to get American spy fans down. Folks nostalgic for the days of CIA glory would be interested in Argo, directed by Ben Affleck, which has been open for a few weeks now. I have yet to see the movie, but being a spy movie freak, I really ought to.
This is a story about the covert operation from 1980 where the CIA used the cover of a fake Hollywood sci-fi movie called "Argo," supposedly produced by a made-up Canadian film crew, and smuggled six US diplomats out of Iran during the hostage crisis there.
This intersection of glamorous Hollywood and covert operations sounds almost too good to be true, but it really happened! There really were phony ads placed in Variety and even phony write ups in the paper to promote this fake "Argo" production. This was sophisticated stuff.
Still, it would have been nice if the folks who made the "real" 2012 release of Argo were a little less phony when it came time to writing their screenplay. From what I gather, the filmmakers got in hot water for glossing over the fairly significant involvement of another country in this operation. It's one you no doubt have heard of. That's right: Canada.
It was our ambassador, Ken Taylor, who played a pivotal role in hiding these U.S. diplomats in his home in Iran and helping get them out safely, with he and his staff assuming tremendous personal risk in the process.
This whole episode is widely known as the "Canadian Caper," and is the stuff of legend in our country. This Argo movie ended up taking serious flak for making it look like the CIA did all the work while Canada was some bit player. The filmmakers took considerable heat for that and had to go so far as to amend the closing credits so Canada's role could be acknowledged.
Argo looks interesting and seems like my kind of movie, but when I finally do see it I'll need to keep in mind that the whole depiction is seen through the rose-colored glasses of the CIA. I'll need to keep the real story in mind at all times.
It's flicks like Argo and Skyfall, combined with the real-life intrigue going on at the CIA, that makes this fall a more intriguing one than usual for spy movie junkies like myself.
