>> rose: welcome to the broadcast. tonight a conversation about a thriller senate 2003 baghdad. it is called "green zone" >> we've got to go get our prisoner back. >> bethel will handle it. >> he can't see past the file on his desk. i'm going to use the book and trade up and get some help. >> what are you talking about? >> gerry, why the [no audio] do we keep coming up empty? there has to be a reason. >> chief, we're here to do a job and get home safe. the reasons don't matter. >> they matter to me. paul had what i thought was the great of casting every other person in uniform in this film just got back from iraq or afghanistan so it's an entire group of non-actors, real soldiers which was a whole other experience because you know it's humbling on one hand to sit and talk to these guys and hear their stories but on the other hand as an actor, selfishly speaking it's the greatest thing you could ask for to be absorbed by a group of 30 or so guys who are what you are saying you are. you can ask any actor from sean penn to chuck norris, it doesn't matter. every actor will tell you it's the best thing... if you go on a set there's a technical advisor, you'll see the actors crowded around that person henpecking them with question. >> rose: looking for awe then thys any >> looking for authenticity. >> we have this character of miller that he would go on this journey that we've all taken from kind of believing to finding there's none there and onwards. the problem is where is he going go to? it's a great premise for a thriller. one man against the system, one man searching for the truth, all those good fictional things and then i read rajiv's book "imperial life" and that gave me the sort of idea... >> rose: because it told you the facts on the ground. >> it wasn't so much that. it was more... i just remember reading the first five pages and it was as incredibly vivid brilliant description of the world of the green zone. ♪ if you've had a coke in the last 20 years, ( screams ) you've had a hand in giving college scholarships... and support to thousands of our nation's... most promising students. ♪ ( coca-cola 5-note mnemonic ) captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: matt damon and paul greengrass are here. rebecca winters keegan of "time" magazine has said about them paul and mat are joining the ranks of marty and leo, pedro and penelope, quentin and uma. modern pairs of actors and directors who find they speak a common language and choose to do it again and again on screen. damon and greengrass first teamed up for "the bourne supremacy" and then again in the next film in the series "the bourne ultimatum." now they have come together again to make a thriller senate 2003 baghdad. it is called "green zone" and here is the trailer. >> who are you? >> general, my name is roy miller, i'm a chief warrant officer with the u.s. army. >> why are you here, miller? >> i came here to bring you in. >> what do you think you're doing here, miller? you're off reservation for a reason. what is it? >> i came here to find weapons and save lives. >> it's a little more complicated than that. >> well, not to me it isn't. >> laurie jane, "wall street journal." does it make any sense still coming up'm any >> no. i read your articles you said a source name mad jell lynn met with you prior to war? >> i'm not discussing sources. >> who is magellan? >> the best source we've ever had. >> have you ever been to magellan's sites? >> no. there >> there's nothing there. >> we're here to do a job, reasons don't matter. >> they matter to me. people are diagnose out there, i want to know why. >> you've got to find magellan. you said up whatever you set up on your end, i'm bringing them in. i know what you did. >> as long as he's out there, he's a threat. >> we have a plan. >> eat yay? >> 12 minutes, sir. >> take him out. >> i've got him. >> this is a kill-- no capture-- mission. >> you have no idea who you're dealing with here. >> get with the program or get out of my way. >> you're my prisoner, i'm bringing you in. >> "green zone." >> rose: i'm pleased to have matt dimon and paul greengrass at this table. how did it happen? >> we wanted to do a film together and i was talking with helgeland whog did the screenplay. it seemed like the hunt for weapons of mass destruction was the great place to set a thriller because theyed that intrigue and the conspiracy and the faked intelligence and the high stakes and that gave us the character of chief miller that matt plays. because i wanted somebody at the heart of the film who would be easy to relate to and really would take us on a journey and in a way i wanted it to be my journey because, i mean, matt and i have talked about this many times. i'm one of the countless numbers of people who kind of went along with this thing. you know? i remember very clearly being in my office when prime minister blair made his famous speech in the house of commons when he said "we have the intelligence" and he said "it's detailed, authoritative and beyond question." or words to that effect. and i remember having an argument with somebody in my office who was going on the march the next day, you know, the march against the war. and i said "well, i can't go because in the end what's the point of having leaders if you don't listen to what they say?" and then, of course, it was amazing to me when they didn't find anything. i assumed that they would dig them up and he didn't. >> rose: >> there was something strange to me about how... just how hyper everybody seemed all of a sudden and how important it was and how suddenly go, go! and any time somebody is... you're standing on a ledge and somebody's going "jump, jump, jump!" i always go wait, hold on, what's going on. >> rose: (laughs) >> how is it that we haven't heard about any of this and now suddenly the next warning is it could be in the form of a mushroom cloud. like, really? that seems a little much. i didn't... but, look, everybody will say the weapons are there, the weapons are there. guys like scott ritter were saying they weren't but i couldn't have told you they weren't going to find weapons there. i didn't know. and the character that i was playing in this is based on a real guy who told me he went absolutely racing the other team leaders to... you know, they wanted to be the first guy to hold it up on cnn you know? hold up the evidence. >> rose: there it is. >> they absolutely thought they were there. >> rose: and is the thought now based on what programs we do here at the table that saddam... because it's always a question i ask, you know. why did he knowing or fearing an invasion go along with that line when he knew he didn't have it? people say he feared... >> he had to look strong. >> rose: that's what the generals say. >> you can't be weak and say "hey, guys i'm weak, everybody." >> rose: so he had to pretend he had them. >> if people think you've got them, you don't get invaded. that's unfortunate. >> rose: and the point is worth making that a lot of people thought he did. other governments, it wasn't just the u.s. and britain but bill clinton and lots of other people said they thought... >> i think everybody assumed he had them. but you know there was that one... they did... c.i.a. did this thing where they contacted 30 family members of scientists and they taught them some trade craft and these people took incredible risks, these expats who were iraqi, they went back in, they made contact with their relatives who were working on these programs and they all came back with the same story. 30 different people independent of one another came back with the same story "there's nothing there." and yet what it did was convinced people even more, well, there's got to be something there because that's clearly a cover story. >> rose: and then saddam's son-in-law came out and said "we don't have it." remember that? he didn't come out until later. >> i think the interesting thing from my point of view was that it's not really in a sense about whether you're for or against it. >> rose: or t war or... >> the war. the problem, i think, for me is that something about that event strained all the bonds and sinews that connect us all together. it think it happened... >> rose: what was it? >> well, for me it's to do with the fact that they said they had the intelligence and then it emerged later that they did not. >> rose: but it also emerged based on the movie they did did not know better. in other words, your storyline that has them knowing better and still going with the idea. >> i think that the problem was that this was the pretext. they had... i think there's quite abundant evidence now that they decided what they were going to do at quite an early stage but the problem was how to sell it. and in order to sell it, they needed the intelligence. that was the thing, the w.m.d. case. and i think... i'm sure they believed that they would get that intelligence and i'm sure that they believed that that sblel swrens would be well founded but i think when you're getting close to that thing you can see now the degree of pan that i can sets in as they realize they don't have it. and that's when all the fabrication starts. >> rose: and this takes place at a time of chaos in baghdad. you had conversations with matt about it. there was a gene play out there? >> brian and i were working on it and we had this character of millner our heads that he would go on this journey that we've all taken from keen of believing to finding that there's none there and then onwards. the problem was where was he going to go to? it's a great premise for a thriller, one man against the system, one man searching for the truth, all those sort of good fictional things. then i read rajiv's book "imperial life." >> rose: because it told you the facts on ground as he'd written them in a non-fiction book? >> it wasn't so much that. i just remember reading the first five pages and it was this incredibly vivid brilliant description of the world of the green zone and this little oasis in the middle of baghdad with saddam's palaces and the provisional coalition authority ensconced there and all the sort of little pocket of america in war-torn baghdad and everything that followed from there and you could see the disconnect. and as soon as i read it, the palm trees, the swimming pools, the faction fighting, the intrigue, you just knew that miller was going go there for his answers. >> rose: we know that there was a report of real life... a reporter who wrote things that turned out not to be true about weapons of mass destruction and had sources. we know that there was a man named chalabi who went to iraq, hadn't been outside the country for a number of years living in london and who had the support of the department but not the c.i.a. we know a lot of stuff about that which you have built in here which makes it fascinating to explore this idea of how do things go wrong when one country has so much power-- the united states. >> yup. >> rose: and you weave them together. >> i'm always interested in that place where fact and fiction meet. going way, way back... >> rose: take a certain number of facts and then engage a narrative? >> well, there's a sort of... because the truth is today's facts are tomorrow's fiction and vicer have, is a aren't they? there are facts, of course, but somewhere by finding that boundary there's a wonderful area there where things start to happen and you can weave stories that work, that tell you about what the underlying dynamics are. >> rose: you were on it from the beginning >> well, when he found rajiv's book... we talked about it. we shot "the bourne supremacy" the second bourne film at the end 2003, beginning of 2004 so all this stuff was happening. so everybody was talking about it. it's what you talked about when you weren't at work. it's what you talked about when you were at work. we were in a war. and still are. so i knew paul was interested in that. when we went to support the bourne supremacy we were in france and we had lunch and paul said he was interested in doing something with iraq and then something with 9/11 and it was that lunch that he pitched me his treatment of united 93 and, you know, which was fantastic and that's what he went and did. then we did the bourne you want may tum and it was during this movie that he handed me rajiv's book and ied that same reaction. >> rose: we have a theme here which we can engage. >> a terrific canvass, too. you can put... i mean, this is an unbelievable world to set a movie in. >> it's a wonderful group of actors. >> i was very, very lucky. >> rose: you got who you wanted? >> yeah. it was all the thing in the story of trying to get matt's character miller to go on a journey, a journey of education. and i wanted to chart the steps in a way that i'd been on and i think most people have been on from going in, finding nothing, asking, hang on a second, what's going on? and then slowly but surely you put the pieces together. so then you have to sort of... that kind of gives you your characters. well, he's got to be exposed to that great faction fight between c.i.a. on the one hand and the pentagon on the other, you know, that really drove that world. and then he's got to be... he's got to meet a journalist because that was such an important part of it. he's got to meet a young iraqi guy and then onwards looking for the general. and so it was a question of finding the right kinds of actors who'd sit and make a real complex film. >> rose: so you've got a director you like, you've got a script you like, you've got it based on the book that you like and you've got text that you like. so do you go beyond that? >> one of our producers who used to be at "60 minutes," michael broner... >> rose: i know him well. >> so broner has been in iraq and he had a bunch of contacts and he compiled a huge... i mean hundreds of pages of notes based on interviews and those were incredibly helpful. just this kind of research. and then beyond that, besides monty gonzalez, the guy who was the chief warrant officer who did lead team alpha in looking for these weapons, paul had what i thought was the great idea of casting besides nicoye banks and myself every other person in uniform in this film just got back from iraq or afghanistan. so it is an entire group of non-actors, real soldiers which was a whole other experience because it's humbling on one hand to sit and talk to these guys and hear their stories but on the other hand it's just... as an actor, selfishly speaking it's the greatest thing you could possibly ask for to be absorbed by a group of 30 or so guys who are what you are staying you are. i mean, you can ask any actors from shawn penn to chuck norris, you know, or... it doesn't matter, you know, every actor will tell you it's the best thing you can... if you go on a set, there's a technical advisor. you eel see the actors crowded around that person henpecking them with questions. >> rose: looking for authenticity. >> looking for authenticity, yeah. >> rose: take a look. this is a scene in which you see the question raised about how good is the intelligence we have in searching for weapons of mass destruction. here it is. >> i had a couple questions about the intel for tomorrow. are we sure this is accurate? >> it's solid. it's good to go. >> what's the source? >> well, it's a human source intel. but it's solid. it's current. as of 0400. >> rose: >> was it the same source we've been using on every site we've hit on the way up here we rolled a doughnut >> chief, how about we do this. let's talk offline, give me a list of the places where you went and we'll make sure you had the right information written down and that you went to the right places, okay? >> the issue isn't the grid, sir, the issue there's nothing there. >> stand down, chief, we need to move on here. >> hold on. hold it a second. let's hear what the chief has to say. >> okay, sir, i'll give you an example. we rolled into a site last week, 101st took casualties securing it for us. we not go there and found it was a toilet factory. i'm saying there's a disconnect between what's in these pacts and what we're seeing on the ground. there's a problem with the intelligence, sir. >> >> you know, paul rieckhoff there, he's ahead of the iraq and afghanistan... >> rose: been at this table, too. >> so we went through that organization to get all the vets. and there's a couple other actors, michael o'kneel in that scene. there were a couple other act norse there but paul likes to blend all of us together. >> rose: so what did you learn from these guys? >> well, everything. i mean every detail. just from my end of it, you know subjectively everything i have to do from how you give orders, you know, when you walk... okay, if i'm walkling into this room and i'm tasked to do such and such, how do i do that? how would i go about doing that? and you've got 30 people around you telling you you do this first, you this. and procedurally all the things you have to the. how you stand, how you... i mean it... innumerable ways. too many to count. >> rose: could you have shot this in baghdad if you wanted to? >> sadly not. >> rose: because of the risk... >> yeah. we'd never get insurance. so we had to go to morocco. but, you know, we found all the locations and one of the things i'm very proud of i think in this film that is baghdad, right down to the ruined republican palace and the pool and, you know, the whole kind of look of it and feel of it. >> rose: you came out of journalism and a documentary filmmaker and had a kind of cinema verite kind of style which you see here. what's the secret to making a kind of action drama that you make? >> i think if you'd taken a poll of britain's 100 directors five or six years ago, i think i'd having 98 on the list of who would come over here and make commercial films. >> rose: that changed after "bourne"? >> yeah. i think it was something maybe about where sin that ma is that there's a sort of first for the real and i think that's somewhere in it, you know? and i think something may be about my sensibility colliding with big action movies made it feel fresh. >> rose: but does that make some people say "he knows how to create action and he's better at that than working with actors"? >> you get a lot of actors to disagree that. >> rose: (laughs) >> i'd hope not. i never know. >> rose: so what do you mean by that? how does he work with actors? >> what he does, which is incredible is... i'll give you an example. there were scenes where, you know,... the scene where we hit the house and there's the high-value target down stairs and it's a tense sequence which ends with the interrogation of the guy who owns the house and it's really chaotic and i call freddie in for the translator and i'm trying to get this guy to listen to me and they're speaking arabic and it's just a very tense scene and most of the people except for said and myself are all soldiers, not actors. and what paul did, and he did this on "united 93" as well. there's no marks. if you miss it by an inch you won't get your light coming this way. and all those technical considers are just gone so you don't have to think about that at all. you're not really sure what the camera's shooting necessarily. but you're dealing with... and like a good... like a standard scene will be written, it will be two pages long. that's about what they'd like in hollywood, about two pages, two minutes, no more. >> rose: (laughs) >> paul would take these two-minute scenes that he and brian had written and would extend them for 30 minutes. and he would say, okay, we know what these pieces are in here that brian's laid out for us. in that scene, for instance, we needed to establish the book, we needed the jack of clubs, we needed to establish that that went out the back door and at the end of the scene i needed to take said with me and say "you're coming with me." >> rose: said being the guy who became your interpreter and the book meaning... >> tuaolocations. >> rose: his safe houses. >> exactly. so we had a 30-minute improvisation where a camera rolls out at 11 minutes after two cameras there. and one's getting ready to roll out, the other one comes up and the other guy is down reloading and that one comes up and it just does not stop. and what you get out of that is none of the planning, none of the here's where i'm going to level my steely gaze at him. >> rose: (laughs) >> all the ways actors can outthink themselves. there's no chance to do that. sur sharing the screen with eight or ten other people who have a very strong sense of why they're there and what's in their way so you get these things colliding against each other. everybody's agenda is just colliding against each other. it's not like you're worried about overlapping on somebody else's line or all the things that really get in the way of acting. the camera's there to capture something that's a real event. >> rose: so what are you working with here with this guy? >> well, you need a certain... >> a handicap. >> rose: (laughs) >> all directors, i think, you're looking for people who understand what you're trying to do. you're building collective endeavor, that's what films are. so you're looking for actors who share what you're trying to do and can handle the leap into the unknown. because the truth about film making is it's the collision of two or the attempt to bring together two absolutely irreconcilable forces. on the one hand, you've got the force of structure and rigidity and order. and that is your screenplay. your planning. the set that you've built. the amount of money that you've got to spend. all the things that are there to create tracks that will lead you to your destination that you've pre-planned. you know, your map, if you like. and they're absolutely vital. without them you can't get anywhere. but the other force that you're trying to bring absolutefully collision with it is the force of anarchy. what happens in the immediate moment. what you don't plan for. what the actor can find in that instant because that's what acting is. acting is that mysterious situational art where you trip from we're not in this table now, we're now in baghdad. and it's an act of faith, it's an act of the imagination, it's a leap. and what you have to try and do is bring those two to dlid in a way that everybody loses their inhibitions and in that collision you reach a different place. and so if you can set action so that your screenplay is given all of us a sense... as matt was saying, of who we are. i'm chief miller and i want this. and i'm going to try and get this guy. and this guy wants that. then there comes a moment when you say forget all... it's like letting go of the side of the swimming pool. let go, we're in the deep end and we'll go with it. if we're lucky-- and it doesn't always work, sometimes it falls flat but it's just how i like to do it-- you can hit this wonderful place we're your alive in an alternative reality. you really do for those... >> rose: you're living within the alternative reality? >> yeah, you really are. you really are. and i've seen it many, many times. but it takes actors as good as this guy to do it. then at the other end you're exposing that free moment to the structure and rigidity of your editorial cutting process. >> rose: take a look at this. >> here's the situation. this iraqi just showed up with information that's about two or three "k" west of here there's a meeting taking place right now. possible high value targets involved. i want to move on it. and the first car i want to take is the iraqi guy. freddie, keating, you'll drive, i'll ride shotgun, you're in the back covering freddie. the rest of you guys will roll in the pickup truck. any questions? >> chief, how do we know this guy isn't leading us into an ambush? >> we don't. put your game face on. >> roger. let's roll. >> rose: so tell me what's happening there and how much of that was improvised. >> it was... it was all based on what brian had written but but some of it was improvised. paul told adam, the guy who i end up having a little altercation with at the end... >> rose: get your game face on guy. >> he said listen ask him how do we know this guy isn't leading us into an ambush because i've made in this split section decision we're going to go go on this information. and the suggestion to adam that he do that caused one of the marine there is, the guy who probably had at that point done the toughest tour in iraq, he was in fallujah and he literally just had to leave that little circle we were in because it was like he got sick to his stomach. and so i kind of jogged out after him and said "mike, what's up?" and he said "are you kidding me?" he said "that type of insubordination now when we're here?" he said "if i have a problem with your leadership, you would have known about it by now. i'm not going to wait until you're here. when we're out here and being insubordinate like that" he said get your bleeping game face on. i said "really. " he said get your bleeping game face on. so i whispered it to paul and paul said okay. so when adam who was the sniper in the national guard in iraq, when adam said this line of how do we know he's not leading us into an ambush, i summon mid-courage up because i was talking to real soldiers and i'm an actor and i said it. i said, we don't, get your bleeping game face on. and the camera was on adam and that reaction was a real... he apologized. he just reflectively just went "sorry." and it was a really nice... but that's the... because adam really was a soldier and was used to the chain of command and realized instantly that he'd kind of questioned... that he was out of line and because mike was a marine and had a certain perspective, that scene came alive because they each helped us. >> rose: and this is the turning point in the movie. this is the point where concern >> well, he meets the bad guy. >> rose: but he makes a decision that he's no longer searching for weapons of mass destruction. he's searching for the truth. >> he destidz act because he says at that point, do you want to dig holes all day in i want to get something done. it's like any great thriller because that's what it is. you know, you've got to get your... up? what are the elements of a great thriller? >> well, i've... it's a particularly germane issue with this film. i've always said all the way along, you know, it's... i don't mean to be cute about it but i mean it. it's not a film about iraq, it's a thriller set in iraq and that's a different thing. why? because you know, if... if someone had said in 1972 i want to do about a... film about the drugs trade in new york, they would have said "not so much." so he said "i want to do the french connection." and they said okay. but it's probably best about the drugs trade and the moral bankruptcy and all those things. so if you're trying to tell stories that will attract audiences, you know, i wanted the audience to come and see this film. obviously. that's the audience being asked to fight this thing. and ins tently on the other end of the speck sprupl and it's probably the office that's been vociferously opposed to it. you know, you want that audience. that's the great debate. you want them to come to this film obviously so you have to tell them a story. you've got to tell them a story in a genre that they're going to understand. >> rose: okay. so at the end of the movie you clearly want to have told them a story. you want them to have been engaged, informed, entertained by a story. what else do you want them to have done? >> i made this film because i went on that journey for sure. and it meant something very, very profoundly to me. so i wanted to express what i felt. and if in the end when you make films, i got to talk to young directors at film school in london and i always say you have to have a point of view. every director whoever made films... >> rose: but here's the risk of that. >> you've got commit. you've got to say this is what i think. this is how i see it and you tell your story with passion and conviction. >> this is what i think and i'm going to be true to that notion. otherwise i'm inauthentic? >> definitely. how can you... what you're saying to the actors is the same thing. commit, it's the whole process. >> rose: and you guys are collaborators here, how do you make sure that it doesn't come off as white... you know, a cowboy movie with white hats and black hats. >> well... sununu witness, obviously. >> yeah, how do you keep the nuance. i think it's obviously thing that paul does. getting the real soldiers, all of those things i think kind of marry the big movie making with the smaller films that he's done that have been absolutely realistic. and that was kind of the ask on this one was can we use those things? can we make a big action conspiracy thriller and set in the what we all recognize is the real world. >> rose: and tell some truths about war. >> yeah, and tell some truths about... look, the situation, a guy who goes looking for weapons of mass destruction and believes they're there and then realizes they're not, i mean, that's not necessarily incendiary. >> rose: it's more than realizing they're not. it's like he's going to places where they could not ever have been. >> yes. and so he asks the logical question, you know, how could that happen? >> rose: and he looks at intel and says, are you at the right place? sow so how could you have intel tell many know go to this place when it never was. >> did this generate from us? what's going on? and look, that's the guy that i play said the same thing to me. he said at the first site he walked into... didn't walk into it but got into. he... it was listed as a dual use facility. it's a porcelain factory. it was a porcelain factory but they also make weapons there. and he got in there and looked around and looked at his intel packet and he went "there's no way that any rational person could have looked that the and said they make anything but porcelain here. something's terribly wrong." and then he starts calling the other team leaders, they all start calling each other, they're all over iraq going "no, no." they're all rolling a doughnut, there's nothing there. >> rose: so in real life, who was giving this... who was behind deciding to put that stuff in the intel? >> what happens was that in the runup to the war-- in fact, somewhat earlier than that-- a process began whereby the normal process by which your government collections intelligence-- and mine, too-- which is then gather by its intelligence agencies, vetted, analyzed and vetted before it's passed up to policymakers. what happened was that officials up at the top there lost faith or didn't want to hear what the caution estimates and analysis that were being passed up. so what they did was set up an alternative little intelligence gem which we now know was the office of special plans. and they began to fish in the waters of intelligence that were being rejected by the orthodox channels. and there any scrap of discredited intelligence-- which the c.i.a. or whatever was saying "we don't believe this" they would say oh, this is great and it was going right to the top. literally to the top. that's where all this went wrong. chalabi, who had had a long long reputation for passing terribly unreliable, ulterly unreliable information to the state department, they broke off contact with him immediately. these guys paid him a big check. >> rose: at the pentagon. >> and started getting his stuff and saying this is brilliant, can you believe it? he's telling us they've got weapons of mass destruction. fantastic! that's how it went. but the point is then the entire government in your country and main became convulse bid this faction. >> rose: and then colin powell went before the united nations. >> and didn't he regret it afterwards. >> rose: the journalistic aspect of it. what do we learn here? >> they they dropped the ball and famously the "new york times" apologized for it. >> rose: right. >> and, you know, and should have and... but i think that we end on a very optimistic tone with the press that... because i do believe people in the press recommitted themselves to... >> rose: asking better questions. >> asking tougher questions. and so that... and that is where we leave them >> i always felt myself that we, the press, were more sinned against than sinning. >> rose: sinned against by bad sources? >> yes. in the end it's... you know, our press is a... of course it's strong and vigorous but it can be damaged. it can particularly be damaged if governments set out to spin. >> rose: sinned against with this own caveat. all of us love a great story and we think... >> of course. >> rose: we think somebody's leading us to one hell of a story and that's where it breaks down in a sense. >> i agree with you about that. but what i'm saying is the suborning of the press-- because that's effectively what happened-- began with the process of spinning and the second point matt referred to, i think since 2005 in this country and in the u.k. i think there's been some prodigious and sustained journalistic investigations based on insiders like the miller of our story. that's how we know basically what happened. that's the truth that's set us free in this issue. whether it's the los angeles curveball investigation or bob woodward's reporting in the "washington post" or james riseen in the "new york times" or "60 minutes" or rex with the occupation, suskind. there's been an a most enormous effort to try and redeem that and i think some of the most extraordinary pieces of journalism have been published in the last three or four years on exactly the subject. >> rose: roll tape. here scene between the reporter in question played by amy ryan in the movie. she works for the "wall street journal." and here's where they first come together. here here it is. >> the 85th w.m.d. unit, right? >> how'd you know that? >> it's right there on your rifle. lori dane, "wall street journal." how's it going? >> you know, we haven't found [no audio] yet. sergeant perry... >> we'll find it. frustrating, right? >> little bit. >> what are you and marty talking about? >> you know i can't talk to you about that. >> oh, come on. come in fresh off the field to have a lemonade with martin brown? something's got to be going on. >> well, you could ask him. >> i'm asking you. the does it make sense to you that we're still coming up empty >> no, no it doesn't. >> rose: what was the hardest thing to do in this this movie in >> honestly and truly the hardest thing was to keep focused on a story. >> rose: keep focus tonight story? >> because the events are so turbulent and soor power that to keep the space open to tell a story. >> rose: and for you? >> ask >> probably clearing that first hurdle of being comfortable giving orders to those guys. >> rose: (laughs) >> seriously. that was... really. and it was those soldiers and marines that helped me. they wanted the movie to be good and they wanted me to believe believable and they said "you're representing us here." and between action and cut you give us an order we're going to follow it. >> rose: greg kinnear does a great job, too. >> as he always does. >> rose: so he who does he play? >> he's playing a character named clark poundstone who's... would have been, we would say, probably one of brehmer's deputies. >> we've got a problem. my local assets are down. i've got a report saying it was u.s. army took him out and nobody called it in. >> where's miller? >> he's moved northwest. >> e.t. snavplt >> 12 minutes. >> e.t.a. 12 minutes. >> he's meeting with him. son of a bitch, he's on his way right now. >> what do you want me to do? >> follow miller he want eel lead you right to him. and when you find him, you take that son of a bitch out. >> what about miller? >> he's off reservation. miller can't bring him in. don't let him get in the way. >> rose: a little bit about how you drew the character of the iraqi general. who has not been captured, who had worked for saddam. and yet he had... and he is now waiting for the americans to reach out to him because if they do not and you can tell he has the... he clearly has the loyalty of the people around him in the army. and real leadership abilities, hofbly, the way... and the actor captures that. who is he? >> yigal naor, a great actor. any. initially he thinks he's trying to find him because he thinks the guy knows about the w.m.d. and obviously as the story unfolds, he starts to realize that the guy far from having that intelligence is going to have the reverse. and that's why they're trying to kill him. he plays it so well because he's essentially a very dark character because he's a ba'athist general but he captures the reality of what that was like. >> rose: this is a case in which matt's character, miller, attacks his captor, here it is. >> what the... (speaking arabic) >> that's the kind of stuff charlie rose audience loves. (laughter) >> rose: come on! you've got to give us credit! speaking of, that you have said in a... i guess with "bourne" in a sense you were going... moving into new ground where you... >> yes, yeah, yeah. definitely. >> rose: and a continue continuation of that sense of this movie rests... >> yeah, but there's a great role at the heart of it that kind of comforted me. you know, i'm not somebody who would go kind of willy-nilly into that genre. i think i'm always cast a bit against type when i go there. there's a role that's a... you know, a big action movie without an interesting central character i wouldn't go near it. and there are guys who can do that really well. and they can fill that void with who they are and i'm somebody who needs a good role at the heart of it. >> i think that's what brings us sergeant to a sort of mutual... i mean, i'm sure you agree. it's fantastic to be in that big big action arena and try to bring the real world into it. that's what we tried to do with bourne. i mean, this is a much more profound step through to the other side. but in the end one of the interesting things about the big action movies at the moment is that the turbulence of the outside world is knocking to get in. if you look at "dark knight" for instance, that was filled with the kind of sense of the outside world. it keeps that genre alive. that's why those films work for people because somewhere in our sort of restless unconscious minds we go to the movies and the stories are coming back at us that seem to be distilled in a way that we understand from the turbulence of the outside world. it makes it relevant. it makes it kind of... yeah, but that old world zeitgeist, it feels like it's of our moment. so movies to me, you know, you go to the film sometimes to escape the outside world, of course. you know, you go... we all love those movies, too. but for cinema to be alive, it's got to connect up. >> rose: and reflect the outside world. >> it has no choice. it's not like, oh, let's let it in. it's climbing in through the windows. that's the truth of it. >> rose: what's interesting about this, this story continues. tony blair when i was in london recently was testifying that day. >> oh, yeah. we were there, too, yeah. >> rose: and he said... you know he came out and he said it's not this, it's not this, it's not this, it's a decision. do you remember that quote he had? >> yeah, i mean, listen historically i've been a great admirer of his. i part with him profoundly on this issue. >> it really goes back to the beginning of our discussion about this. if you're british this was very painful of course because if, like me i'm a member of the labour party. i worked very hard to get tony blair elected. we had a fantastic, credible government. he was a brilliant prime minister. >> rose: until? >> until this one foreign policy. it's much more like lyndon johnson in this country. >> rose: i was thinking exactly that. >> it destroyed a great credible government and a great prime minister and unfortunately that thing will clank around on his foot until the end of the days. because it's not just a decision. you pay those guys to make the right decision. obviously they've got to make decisions. you're paying them to make the right decision and it was the wrong decision. that was the problem. >> rose: no leader makes the right decision every time, does he? >> no. >> rose: but you hope they make the right decision on the big things. >> but the problem... and that's why the nightmare job for them is... >> rose: so having said all you heard us say, take me to how you see afghanistan. >> well. it's funny that you said that about decision making. look, as everybody on your sure has said, numbers over and over again there are no good choices there but i... look, i don't see everything the president sees. i think ultimately when you elect a president you are electing a thought process and i appreciate the fact that he did not make his decisions rashly and i know he's a deep thinker and i know that's very important. i disagree that decision but i appreciate the fact that we have a deep thinker in that office again and not somebody who's going to go from their gut which is what the last guy did and i don't think... i think the job requires a deep thinker, somebody who's very thoughtful. >> rose: but you think he's wrong on afghanistan, to send in more troops h.. >> well, i mean, if you're going to talk about afghanistan you kind of have to talk about pakistan, don't you think? >> rose: yeah, of course. >> so we're putting all these resources there and whatñr are e doing about pakistan? i just...... yes, i wish he did not send more troops to afghanistan. absolutely. absolutely. i don't think this is going to be solved in this next four years, though. >> rose: how do you feel about him? you were such an enthusiastic supporter and you just admired him for the way goes in about making decisions. >> yes. and i think it's a... i think... it's the hardest job in the world and i admire the way he goes about making decisions. i just don't agree with every decisions he's made and i'm sure that's the way with most of his constituents because when you run on a platform of hope and change, that's vague and it means different things to different people. and i don't... look, being american is not about leaving it up to your leaders, it's just not. it's about agitating at the bottom because that's when your leaders listen to you. your leaders respond to you, not the other way around. and anybody who's waiting for barack obama or george bush or anybody to lead them to the promised land is going to be waiting a long time. you've got to be involved. and change comes from the bottom and not from the top. >> rose: if you don't believe that, look at the civil rights movement. >> that's absolutely right. that's absolutely right. freedom writers and... >> rose: people who risked their lives and put their life on the line because this happened in other places as well. i want to end with this. where i started. this remarkable chemistry between the two of you. when i talked about marty and leo and others. >> i saw myself more as the penelope and pedro. i liked that one. (laughter) two friends, by the way and two of the most talented people out there. >> rose: penelope and pedro? you get no argument here. but what is it about? i mean, you've been really interesting here, paul. talking about the craft of making movies. >> i think we share instincts, really. and i think she share instants for the sorts of material that we both like, instincts for what you can do, particularly in the mainstream to open up space to do interesting things. i think we have a lot of fun and i think in a way... we're going to make some more movies. >> rose: and does that include "bourne"? >> not so much for me. (laughs) listen, the problem with these things... >> rose: what things? asking the question or the answer? >> you get to a point with these franchises where they have to be revived. new supreme got to come in. >> rose: are we at that point on "bourne?" >> i think we are. yeah. i think for me anyway and i think that what's interesting... and that's why i loved making green zone. for matt and i to go and make other films that explore the sorts of instincts that we've got. the kinds of subject matter with we want to make those. >> rose: and you on "bourne"? >> i'm with the big guy. >> rose: what does that mean? you're saying not for me right now? >> it would feel wrong. >> rose: it would feel wrong without him or feel wrong to go back to do it one more time. >> wrong without paul and i still hold out hope there's way to do one in maybe ten years, five or ten years from now because then i think that... i'd wonder what happened to the guy in the intervening years. right now it seems like we would be... >> rose: it's a very interesting thing. when this thing came up people didn't expect it to be what it's become. what is it? it's you and him but it's something else. you guys captured something in a bottle. >> you know, it goes back to... doug lyman who directed the first one and doug said to me the very first time we had breakfast about this, he said you know, "i don't relate to james bond." he said "and i'm sure that there is this whole empty kind of vacuum out there for a character like a superspy that i would relate to and that you would relate to and that our whole generation would be age to identify with." and that kind of fundamental... that thought turned out to be absolutely true. and the character i think success of that very much out of the decade in which those movies it was a response to all the things that happened. and all of that. as paul said before, going into 9/11, then going into iraq and that kind of mistrust that that bread and the paranoia and all of those things that were out thereto in the either this we were tapped into. so they're the outside pounding on the door to get in. >> but that's why it's so hard. because if that's true-- and i think it is-- he's the kind of character walking through this paranoid world and it's very much of his time and the trick that bond succeeded in doing is to renew itself bourne's got to do. and if you're in my position you just go "i did it then" and now i want to get it done. >> rose: >> of course we have a couple of flops and we'll be back on the show going "let us tell you about why it suddenly seemed right to do it." (laughter) >> here's why "the bourne redundancy" is one of the best movies i've ever seen. (laughter) >> rose: that's exactly what you'll be saying! (laughter) i don't worry. congratulations on "green zone." thank you for coming. great to meet you. thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org ♪ ♪ if you've had a coke in the last 20 years, ( screams ) you've had a hand in giving college scholarships... and support to thousands of our nation's... most promising students. ♪ ( coca-cola 5-note mnemonic )