VOA标准英语2009年-In 'The Informant!' Truth Can Be Stranger

By Alan Silverman
Hollywood
21 September 2009

 
Matt Damon stars as Mark Whitacre in the offbeat 1 comedy 'The Informant!
Director Steven Soderbergh dips into the "truth can be stranger than fiction" files for a fact-based farce 2 about a financial scandal that rocked an American agriculture conglomerate 3 in the 1990s.

In the mid-1990s, Mark Whitacre, a top executive at ADM - Archer-Daniels-Midland - became a 'whistle-blower,' informing the FBI about alleged 4 criminal activities by the giant agri-business corporation.

The amino acid lysine, derived 5 from crops like soybeans, is widely used in agriculture to help boost livestock 6 production. If multi-national corporations were conspiring 7 to fix the price of the chemical, it could increase the cost of food around the world; and it would be against the law. The probe launched by Whitacre's allegations uncovered massive fraud that led to the company paying a $100 million fine 10 years ago: to that time, the largest such anti-trust penalty in U.S. history. But along the way, questions popped up about the reliability 8 of the inside source.

One moment Whitacre is the hero; then he is the subject of another investigation 9, accused of embezzling 10 millions of dollars from his employer. The often-bizarre true story was detailed 11 in a best-selling book that caught the eye of filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who says "My sense was he would be this guy whether he was working at ADM or not, so I never looked at as a movie about corrupt 12 corporations. I really was just thinking about Whitacre."

Oscar-winner Soderbergh tackled the topic of corporate 13 wrongdoing in his 2000 drama "Erin Brockovich;" but he says the Mark Whitacre story just naturally lent itself to a comic treatment.

"I'm becoming more and more convinced that a good movie idea is rooted more in a character than a subject and there were so many times in the book when the 'shoe would drop' and you would just gasp 14 and have to reframe everything that you knew up that point. That's a really good situation to build a movie around. That's what I liked about it: unlike most films where you have external forces acting 15 upon your protagonist 16, the external forces acting on the protagonist were all generated by the protagonist. So it was a really fascinating situation. He's the good guy and the bad guy at the same time. That was another reason we started thinking in terms of the comedy," he says.

Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns adapted the book by New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald for "The Informant!" script.

"The amazing thing that happened …a sort of 'perfect storm' of events …is a person who constitutionally can't really tell the truth is sent in by a truth-seeking organization to explore a big corporation that is lying. That in itself is pretty comic," he says.

Matt Damon, whose roles include the sinewy 17 secret agent of the 'Jason Bourne' movies, packed on more than 15 kilos of weight to play "The Informant." He studied the books and news coverage 18 about the true story, but Damon says he decided 19 not to meet the real Whitacre before portraying 20 the film version.

"Once Steven made the decision to take it in a more comic direction tonally, for all of us it became less important to do rigorous character studies of the actual people. It became more about having fun with this terrific script. All the answers we needed were in the actual text, like when you do a play," he says.

A basic dilemma 21, however, is whether audiences see Whitacre as the selfless hero or the self-serving villain 22. Director and producer Soderbergh says 'why not both?'

"As I get older I realize that two opposing ideas can actually both be true. I think he was a hero. To my knowledge it is still the biggest case of its kind that has ever been prosecuted 23 in the United States. He also embezzled 24 money. So it is one of those weird 25 things. I had no interest in judging him. I just wanted to lay it out there and let people have their own reaction to it. I didn't think he was worthy 26 of condemnation 27, but it is also obvious that he had a very complicated relationship with the truth," he says.

"The Informant!" also features New Zealand-born character actress Melanie Lynskey as spouse 28 Ginger 29 Whitacre. Scott Bakula and Joel McHale play the FBI agents trying to discover the truth inside Mark Whitacre's increasingly strange tales. A jaunty 30 score from Oscar-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch punctuates 31 the comedy.