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Oscar Wilde once wrote that only a reader with a heart of stone could refrain from laughing at the death of Dickens’s Little Nell.

At a critics’ screening of Evening, the critics showed themselves not to have hearts of stone. They laughed in unison when Glenn Close burst into wrenching weeping over the death of a relative.

And this was the second crying jag in as many weeks to elicit laughter. Just seven days earlier I laughed out loud at the caterwauling of A Mighty Heart‘s Angelina Jolie over the death of her character’s husband, a shrill high pitched aria not unlike a fire drill or a bomb siren. The film should be called A Mighty Wind, for that and other reasons.

Easily vying for the title of worst films of the year so far, these two releases are illustrative of certain corners that writers write themselves into. A Mighty Heart is a root a kidnapping tale. In other words, the bulk of the film is dedicated to people standing around waiting for the phone to ring with ransom instructions, all saying the same thing that they have said in innumerable previous kidnapping films. Evening is a death bed movie, perhaps even more boring of a genre. Even worse, it is a dying-person-remembers-the-past movie, so the narrative alternates between the depressing present and the cause of that depression, the past. This sort of thing has only be done well once, by Alain Resnais, in Providence, one of the greatest films ever made, part of the reason for its greatness is that the “memories” are all “false” (in fact, the dying guy is writing a novel in his head).

A Mighty Heart is, of course, the tale of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and his kidnapping in Karachi after being set up for an interview that turns out to be faked (one of the many holes in the film is that it fails to explain just why Pearl was so hot to do this interview, his “last,” dramatically conveniently enough, before leaving). The movie versions of the Pearls are horrible; Pearl is a preening elite who has made his love for his wife something of a life’s work; and Ms Pearl is a bossy, unpleasant person. Director Michael Winterbottom, who is something of a British Oliver Stone, is prone to covering hot spots, but here, as usual, and like Stone, his set ups are transparent. For example, an FBI agent is set up as a bureaucratic baddie. Just as Ms. Pearl says to the increasing number of officials crowding into her house that she hopes they can all share information, the FBI agent gets a call on her cellular and, saying that she has to take the call, demands that the room be cleared. Really? She couldn’t just step outside? Well, no, because that would violate Winterbottom’s bias. Later, a TV reporter (and all TV reporters are shallow, while only print journalists have dignity of profession) asks (rightly in my mind, since people are curious about such things), if Ms. Pearl has seen the tape of her husband’s execution. She gets all huffy and irate, demanding to know how he could ask such a question. I don’t know, but I am sure the incident is made up. In any case, Ms. Pearl said on Fresh Air this week that she indeed had seen the tape, and gave a good reason for doing so. But it serves Winterbottom’s ends to show her indignant.

Winterbottom also strives for a Soberbergh style effect from such films as Traffic. The camera roves realistically through crowded streets, and there are jump cuts. The film’s whole affect is one of listening in on events. But what the viewer needs is clarity and guidance, especially with such a complicated tale.

Evening is a chick flick but from a source that I had also assumed was high art. It is based on a novel by Susan Minot, another east coast elite who has published five or six books. Not having read any of them, I assumed that she was a respected literary novelist. The translation of the book to the film suggests that, perhaps stripped of the prose, she is not that far in effect from Jennifer Weiner. While Vanessa Redgrave is dying from some undisclosed disease, her two daughters (Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson), giving watch, are bickering with each other. Wholly unrelated in every way, a parallel story occurs, the tale of some important transition in Redgrave’s life, the wedding day of her then best friend (Mamie Gummer), as offered up in flashbacks presumably running through the dying woman’s mind. In this tale, which takes place in some spotless, unlived-in past among social elites, the young Redgrave, played by Claire Danes. While there for the wedding, Danes quasi falls in love with the male hunk everyone is in love with (a doctor, played by Patrick Wilson), and out of love with the bride’s sexually confused brother (Hugh Dancy). When Dancy drunkenly kisses Wilson’s character, I said, perhaps too loud, Yes, of course, naturally (the film is co-produced by Minot and fellow novelist Michael Cunningham; the trailer is very misleading when it says that the film is “from the author of The Hours, though the statement is technically true).

The film is directed lifelessly by Lajos Koltai, a cinematographer of long standing and some repute. But from the first 12 seconds, with its tinkling seesaw piano score and tiny white whispering credits against a black background (this is serious art, you see), I was bored. The “philosophy” of the film is also ultimately rather passimisitc, and probably not what chick flick fans want. Streep’s character more or less says at the end that life is shit and then you die (the trailer only quotes her as saying, “We are mysterious creatures, aren’t we,” sure to entice chick flick viewers with flattery) If the flashback track of the film is slightly less boring, it is because something at least almost happens (some drunken speeches, a fatal car accident), even if it is among people we care little about. But, like A Mighty Heart, at least Evening is good for one mighty belly laugh.

Among the hubbub of excitement attendant upon the airing of the final episode of The Sopranos – the black-garbed mourning, the vexed questions about the final show’s last seconds, the online forum feeding frenzies, and the pundit throat-clearing – there was one element that received curiously little attention. The show’s penultimate episode brought to near-resolution one of the many themes and subplots that gripped the nation over the program’s nine years, 86 episodes, and (officially, anyway) six seasons, and the response was, well, baffling. Culturally speaking, that is.

This refers, of course, to the A. J. Issue. Readers will recall that Anthony junior was always a problem child. Throughout the years he went from lazy butterball to sullen back-talking teen to failed lover and stepfather to, finally, suicidal leftie protester with a special interest in the injustice of the war in Iraq. You could always rely on A.J. to do, say, or think the most selfish thing possible at any given moment. On popular Sopranos forums such as Television Without Pity, special hatred was reserved for this spoiled scion of hoodlums. It was Tony Soprano taking out a hit on Dr. Spock.

The Sopranos is a show whose fans pour over it like a fortuneteller over tealeaves, and no facial expression, cultural allusion, or throwaway remark goes unnoticed and subsequently analyzed ad infinitum. Not that A. J.’s boorish behavior was ever that subtle.

Nationwide A. J. hate reached its apotheosis in the next to last episode of The Sopranos, which aired on June 3. At one point Tony goes into A. J.’s bedroom, where he is lying in bed while his “just friends” girlfriend Rhiannon (Emily Wickersham) is doing a search about political matters on the computer. After kicking out Rhiannon, Tony reveals that “Uncle Bobby’s dead.” Instead of being willing to help his family in a life-or-death time of need, A. J. throws attitude. “This is really depressing to me,” he complains. “I was already having so much trouble maintaining.” This proves too much for Tony who abruptly drags the youth out of bed, wrecking a telephone and a CD player along the way, and throws him into the closet, where he leaves A. J. a quivering, weeping wreck, giving his son but a few minutes to get packed and prepared to leave.

Fans were ecstatic. The nation seemed to rise as one in joyous approval of Tony’s rage. Characteristic of most posters was the contributor who wrote, “Finally somebody had enough of that whiny piece of garbage! I got up and cheered when Tony dragged that punk across the floor and told him to pack a bag. DUDE, your whole damn family is under attack and your uncle just got killed and you’re worried about your depression levels? “¦ Please don’t anyone ever suggest AJ could go into mob life. I would be surprised if this kid could survive anything.”

But a silent minority may have found this reaction rather extreme and wholly inconsistent with some earlier real world explosions of rage at spoiled youth and its parenting. Wasn’t it just two months earlier that the nation was up in arms over Alec Baldwin calling his daughter Ireland a “rude, thoughtless little pig”? The 30 Rock actor is engaged in a custody dispute with his ex-wife Kim Basinger, and was angry at his daughter for missing one of their regularly schedule cross-country telephone conversations. Telling Ireland in a phone message that she doesn’t have “the brains or the decency as a human,” he warns her that he is going to fly to the west coast and “straighten” her out. Baldwin’s words, leaked to the Internet gossip site The TMZ , inspired raw national disapproval of the actor for what TMZ among many others sarcastically called “incredible parenting skills.” Yet little Ireland’s iPods and Uggs didn’t go flying across the room as her father grabbed her by the ponytail and thrashed her. In fact, we don’t know what he did, if anything.

In addition, moralists have no problem rooting for the public humiliation of other wild children of the media. When Lindsay Lohan started pulling a Monroe on the set of Georgia Rule last summer, producer James G. Robinson sent her an excoriating letter that somehow found its way to the media. In part, Robinson, head of Morgan Creek, wrote in the letter, printed in full on The Smoking Gun, that Lohan’s behavior was “discourteous, irresponsible and unprofessional,” and that Lohan “acted like a spoiled child” and “alienated many of your co-workers and endangered the quality” of the film. Again, the public warmed to the public spanking the 70-year-old executive administered to the then-20-year-old starlet.

OK, so what’s the difference? Why does Tony Soprano, a fictional gangster who has killed numerous characters over the years, get a pass, while Baldwin, an esteemed actor going through an uncomfortably public brawl with an ex-wife, is excoriated by pundits and platitudinists who in reality know little about the nature of his marriage, his parenting, or his problems?

Well, for one thing, viewers feel that they “know” Tony and A. J. and the others whom they touch. This is testimony to Sopranos creator David Chase and the various writers he has employed over the years (Chase and Matthew Weiner wrote the A. J. episode), who created viewer intimacy with characters unique in its intensity. The Sopranos, often acting as a sort of thermometer inserted into the body politic, captured the ambivalence that America may feel about its offspring. A rooting interest in A. J.’s comeuppance not only held the show together, among many other threads, but tapped into otherwise unbidden parental frustrations. (Also, another factor that makes a difference is that Ireland is a female, and America seems to recoil, publicly anyway, from daughter mistreatment of any kind.)

In The Sopranos, television did what television does best (when allowed to). It created a whole world around a group of fictional characters whose problems and reactions to them were achingly real and clumsy. Though set in the tense morally compromised world of crime, The Sopranos dealt with issues that many modern American families face, from spoiled children to marital woes to income decreases to therapeutic intervention. In fact, the Sopranos weren’t all that different in spirit from the Loud family, subject of a 1973 reality television series on PBS. What the Louds, not to mention the Bunkers, were to 1970s America, the Sopranos were to Americans at the turn of a dire century. It will be interesting to see what, if any, television show in the future captures the hours and the times with the same intensity and intimacy.

By the way, don’t worry about any real lasting harm to A. J. from Tony’s hands-on perorations. When last seen, A. J. was in the movie business, driving too fast through the Jersey streets in his new BMW and picking up his high school aged fashion model girlfriend.

Readers will recall my column from a few times back about the weird coincidence of Rules of Engagement and How I Met Your Mother airing episodes with the same plot on the same. Yes, it would be helpful if more shows did that, but they don’t “¦ or do they?

A quick bit of research reveals that, yes, this Amazing Coincidence has happened again, just this season. Each entrant in the Law and Order franchise, the shows that rip their stories from the headlines and then disclaim this truth in an opening title card, has aired an episode based on the case of Ted Haggard, the former evangelical preacher attached to the New Life Church, who was caught up in a meth and gay sex scandal. The original Law and Order aired “Church” on February 9th; Law and Order: Criminal Intent aired “Brother’s Keeper: on February 20th; and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit aired “Sin” on March 27th. Each of them is a variation on the Haggard case.

All these programs are produced by Dick Wolf, who must be quite a busy fellow not to notice what was happening, but do any of the writers talk to each other? How could such a coincidence occur, especially after the first one aired? Are bizarre cases really that short in supply? Aren’t the writers in competition with each other? Do their childish hands all reach out in unison for the same tabloid tales hot off the presses, with Wolf, like an exasperated parent, appeasing them by saying, “OK, OK, you can all have a piece of this one”? There is probably a similar competition over there at CBS among its CSI folk.

The original Law and Order is a show with such a seemingly strong premise that it can withstand multiple cast changes over its, thus far, 17 years on NBC. Based unofficially on a short-lived early 1960s ABC show called Arrest and Trial, its bifurcated narrative strategy (first the crime, then the trial) unburdens its cast members of excessive weekly labors. The eight-year-old Law and Order: Special Victims Unit was an early spin off, a straightforward policier incorporating a cast member from the cultish but cancelled Homicide: Life on the Streets. The six-season-old Law and Order: Criminal Intent is still another variation on the L&O template. While still maintaining the franchise’s essential characteristics – a quasi-realism born of its New York settings, and its hatred of defense lawyers – CI began as a modernization of Sherlock Holmes, in which a puzzle-solving brainiac is observed in his deductions by a more meat and potatoes minded companion.

All the L&O Haggards are varied and each illuminates its franchise’s differing approaches to crime stories. Law and Order‘s Haggard is played by franchise regular Anson Mount. SVU‘s is played by former sitcom star Tim Daly. And in a bit of novelty casting, Tom Arnold plays the CI Haggard. The CI treatment also incorporates broad elements of a 2006 conflict between Haggard and University of Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins. SVU and CI play up the male escort website angle, while Law and Order and CI place some of the characters in the world of acting.

Law and Order‘s version walks us (usually literally, given the show’s signature if unlikely walk-and-talk police interviews) through the murder of a gay actor, who turns out to have been a consort of Mount’s reverend Sterling. After some wasted public dollars on a wrong suspect, Assistant DA McCoy (Sam Waterston) finally figures out that the murder is someone close to Sterling, out to protect the church as a whole. In Law and Order there is usually some kind of legal crux and in this case it’s the sanctity of confession, but given the case’s eventual outcome, this amounts to a red herring, which the series in its dotage now all too often resorts to.

Arguably the most popular of the three, SVU, as befits its premise, concentrates on “the children.” The episode’s Reverend Curtis of New Souls Church has 10 kids; some of them go to Iraq to fight, while some of them work out their theatrical inclinations by working on a Satan’s House; and in the end, the Reverend was nobly seeking only to protect his own child. There is a legal crux when the pesky 5th and 14th amendments get in the way of a righteous bust, but after a few complex red herrings and flourishes of misdirection, the killer turns out to be yet another congregation official forsaking the law for a higher purpose. Unlike in the other two franchises, in SVU‘s the Haggard representative happens not to be gay.

Sadly, the Haggard case underscores some of the increasing flaws in the baby of the family, CI. The show’s first three seasons were excellent, and each mystery, prefaced by a clue-ridden teaser, was surprisingly clever, the show’s Holmes, Major Case Squad detective Robert Goren (played by a tic-infested Vincent D’Onofrio), eventually disentangling the real mystery buried beneath the surface puzzles. Now the show feels at sea, and has imported two new detectives to alternate with Goren and his partner Alex Eames (Kathryn Erbe), thrusting the show’s plots closer to the black and white morality of the crime half of Law and Order itself. And it can’t resist a soap opera subplot with Goren’s ongoing burden of a schizoid mother and a homeless brother.

As with the Mother – Rules coincidence, the three L&Os’ exploitation of the Haggard case highlights subtle and not so subtle differences among the shows. The original Law and Order is about the quirks of the law. SVU trades in a higher irony and in the intersection of criminal law and everyday morality. The colder CI, having forsaken the sublime puzzles of its earlier years, falls more into the fold of the original series. SVU, as befits its title, shows the most sympathy for the victims, and even the victimizers, which may account for its higher ratings. It also has the most twists, which used to be the prerogative of CI. Law and Order‘s account of the case is the most formulaic within both traditional television and the laws and orders of the franchise itself.

Lindsay Anderson’s If “¦ marks that transition in British cinema from the ash-stained drinking glasses and filthy bathrooms of the so-called Kitchen Sink movies of the late 1950s, thru to the mid 1960s, to the more surrealistic 1970s, with its drugs and hippies. Like Performance, it is a benchmark, so far ahead of its time that it is almost rendered old fashioned upon contemporaneous viewing. Anderson’s previous film, This Sporting Life the most sunken of Kitchen Sink movies, bleak, black and white, and starring Richard Harris at his most simian. Subsequent Anderson films, O Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital are much more Bunuelian, nearly to the point of incomprehension. But If “¦, smack in the middle, has a foot in each camp. Indeed, about half the film is in black and white rather than color. The Criterion Collection’s two disc edition of If “¦, which hits the street on June 19th for $39.95, in a stunning transfer (with beautiful photography by Miroslav Ondrícek), gives the viewer ample opportunity to acquaint or re-familiarize himself with this key film, which bubbles with rebellion, resistance, and repression.

Anderson is one of those rarities, like Truffaut, Peter Bogdanovich and Bertrand Tavernier, a critic turned director. But of course, while writing his criticism (mostly on John Ford), Anderson, just like his comrades, didn’t view himself as a critic per se, but rather as a filmmaker ab ovo. Anderson had full careers equally as a documentarian and as a stage director. Though based on a script by David Sherwin, If “¦ does also include reflections of Anderson himself, Scottish and, as we now know, gay, and thus doubly at odds with prevailing British society.

The narrative concerns Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), unwilling resident of an elite boys school. He has two fellow nonconformist friends, Johnny (David Wood), and the gay Wallace (Richard Warwick), whose conversations often turn to death and decay. The film examines the rigidity of the class system in the school, is frank about the levels of homosexuality present, and is contemptuous of authority, against which the three boys, along with a truck stop girl (Christine Noonan) they meet, rebel, in a series of fantasy sequences.

This aspect of the film remains the most controversial, but for different reasons in different era. Then, to embrace revolution, even if by the end of a gun, was to welcome change. Today, post-Columbine, the sequence is unsettling to those who don’t perhaps understand or who have repressed memories of the sort of rage that high school or school in general engender in most people. Without endorsing the actions of school assassins, or knowing the direct motivations, one can certainly understand the almost inexpressible anger that educational institutions traffic in, indeed use as a form of control. Though some may find it difficult to cheer when the Headmaster is shot in the head, for those who still husband anger at what they endured in school it is a moment of great liberation, though not without its own form of sadness.

The disc is packed with supplements. Malcolm McDowell’s audio commentary, which he shares with Anderson expert David Robinson, is priceless. McDowell describes first meeting Anderson (Robinson notes in his parallel track that Anderson fell in love with all his leading actors, including MM), notes that he had a huge crush on Noonan, and that he went into the editing room with Anderson’s blessing to remove stray shots of his penis from the nude wrestling scene. McDowell also reveals that Anderson helped him figure out how to play Alex in A Clockwork Orange, pointing out a moment in If “¦ (which occurs at 1:13:24) and telling McDowell, “Play it like that.”

Kicking off disc two is an episode of a Scottish TV show fronted by Kristy Wark, Cast and Crew (42:04), which reunited filmmakers over significant movies. Aired in 2003, this one gathered If “¦ DP Ondricek, editor Ian Rakoff, director’s assistant Stephen Frears, producer Michael Medwin, and screenwriter Sherwin. McDowell appears in a separate interview. Sherwin reveals, among other things, that the script was originally called Crusaders.

In addition, there is also a new video interview (14:36) with actor Graham Crowden, who played the equally rebellious, if beaten down, History Master, and there is Thursday’s Children (22:08), the Oscar winning short film by Anderson and Guy Brenton, made in 1954, about a school for deaf children, narrated by Richard Burton. Apparently Oscar’s history of favoring children and the disabled stretches back to the dawn of time.

Supplementally speaking, all that’s missing from the disc is Is That All There Is?, a final program that Anderson made about himself in the twilight of his career. Perhaps it will appear on some forthcoming Lindsay Anderson disc from Criterion. Home, Whales of August, a version of Look Back in Anger, and Britannia Hospital have all been released on DVD already, leaving as available potential Criterion’s This Sporting Life, The White Bus, O Lucky Man!, and In Celebration.

Inside the box is a 32-page insert featuring cast and crew, transfer info, and chapter titles, plus an essay by David Ehrenstein, diary excerpts by writer Sherwin, and interview excerpts with Anderson. There is also a 12-page promotional pamphlet, advertising Criterion’s Technicolor films.

Everybody says that they like ’70s American cinema but when modern filmmakers take the trouble to honor the films of their youth no one goes to see them. Three recent examples are Zodiac, Breach, and The Good Shepherd. All three are expensive, well-mounted, serious, moody films about real events and each one adopts different aspects of ’70s films as colors on its palette. Breach‘s look and feel has its roots in All the President’s Men, The Good Shepherd evokes memories of The Godfather Part II, and Zodiac draws on numerous ’70s films set in San Francisco, such as Dirty Harry for its look, especially in its interiors.

All these films “flopped” at the box office, probably because word of mouth said they were slow and anti-dramatic. But guess what? Most of the films from the ’70s now heralded as masterpieces also were flops. And many of them tended to be slow and static. The Paper Chase, for example, one of the few indie style hits of the time, proved on a recent re-viewing to be surprisingly slow paced, ponderous, and oblique in its storytelling, along with passages of shallow, out of date humor.

On the other hand, The Paper Chase was photographed by the great Gordon Willis. And upon reflection, the 1970s may be more a cinematographer’s decade than a director’s. We remember the look of so many of those films better than anything else, from Willis in the Godfather films to John Alonzo in Chinatown to David Watkin in Catch 22, among so many others. Even when the plots were clunky or ill-thought out, the photography saved the day, making memorable cinematic material that might otherwise have appeared even more shallow if given the typical Universal, say, treatment of the day, TV lighting and garish interiors.

For the record, the DPs for the three films under consideration are Harris Savides (Zodiac), Tak Fujimoto (Breach), and Robert Richardson (The Good Shepherd). Zodiac comes out on DVD in July and I’ll probably buy a copy to review it since Paramount seems to have dropped me from its list (while other reviewers I know never review Paramount product yet receive everything the company puts out by rote “¦ end of snit).

The Good Shepherd came out on DVD from Universal on April 3rd (for $29.95; there is also a full frame and an HD version of the disc), and also Newmarket Press published the script (166 pages, $19.95, ISBN 978 1 55704 774 8). On disc, the film continues to fascinate and move me, and the supplemental scenes, of which there are about 16 minutes worth, encompass a whole subplot that underscores again one thread of the story, that Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) has been betrayed by everyone around him: father, wife, son, and mentors. The Newmarket script has more deleted scenes, plus a slightly different order of events especially at the end. The script clarifies certain facets of the film that for some reason weren’t clear, or at least clear to me, in the theater (for example, what is really going on when Wilson gives a Soviet toady a dollar bill in the Smithsonian).

The script helped me realize two things. One, that Angelina Jolie was totally miscast as Wilson’s wife (also, the young actor who plays Wilson’s adult son strikes me as a bit over the top). She is dark and aggressive when the character should be blonde and patrician. Then, her sexual aggression toward Wilson would have come as a surprise, and made clear what is hinted at in the finished film, that members of his secret society meet annually in part to find mates for each other, to breed and keep their social class closed to outsiders. Someone like Julie Bowen might have done the part effortlessly, making the shotgun marriage aspect of the story more subtle.

Second, the terribly poignant plot thread concerning Wilson’s first girlfriend, Laura (Tammy Blanchard) is one of the keys to Wilson’s character. She is deaf, and for a withdrawn, silent fellow, that makes her the perfect mate. But he is sucked into Skull and Bones, and thus the CIA, and must reject her, though in the script, not before she teaches him the helpful arts of lip reading. It is unclear from both the script or the finished film if later encounters with her are part of a plot by his counterpart in the Soviet Union to undermine Wilson’s life. The only thing the script didn’t solve is just who gives Wilson the mysterious folder of covert photos and tapes at the start (I’ve guessing it was his Soviet counterpart, again).

In time, Breach may well be esteemed as one of the best films of 2007, but for now it is a “disappointment” that made only $33 million dollars for Universal and went to DVD in four months, debuting on disc on Tuesday, June 12 (in both widescreen and full frame for $29.95). Co-writer and director Billy Ray did for the case of FBI agent and Soviet asset Robert Hanssen what he did for New Republic writer Stephen Glass in his earlier Shattered Glass, in other words, showed how one complexly motivated individual can confound an overly trusting or oblivious institution. In both films, Ray evinces certain very agreeable qualities, such as a knack for perfect casting and a visual style and pace inspired by the best of the ’70s films. But Breach had something else: breaking news. The movie was the first public account of the role of FBI agent Eric O’Neill in the downfall of Hanssen. Recruited from an undercover assignment, O’Neill’s task was to work under Hanssen in the spy’s new virtually self-contained office, the Information Assurance Division, where he ostensibly safeguards the Bureau’s IT system from cyberterrorism and infiltration. O’Neill at first believed that he was spying on Hanssen because of his sexual conduct and in order to ferret out fellow agents who might, all together, embarrass the FBI. But soon enough a confused O’Neill learns from his handler (Laura Linney) that the otherwise squeaky-clean seeming Hanssen is under suspicion for handing over secrets to the Soviets since the 1980s.

That’s what undercover agents do. They make everyone else around them lead double lives. Both Hanssen and O’Neill, in the movie anyway, inveigle their own wives into weird compromising situations. When the Hanssen case broke, O’Neill’s role was minimized or kept out of press, for the simple reason that the government wasn’t sure what Hanssen would do. In the end, Hanssen pled guilty and O’Neill didn’t need to testify.

Another aspect of the case that the movie mentions only in passing is just how the FBI finally got clued into the otherwise impeccably repped Hanssen’s activities in the first place. The general suspicion among armchair analysts is that one of several KGB or other Russian defectors in late 2000, among them Sergei Tretyakov, a first secretary in Russia’s UN mission, or Yevgeny Toropov, another Russian intelligence officer who defected in Ottawa. Supposedly, someone provided the FBI with a case file that finally implicated Hanssen. In the film, Laura Linney’s character mentions that the FBI paid $17 million dollars to whichever defector it was who came over, bearing case files that proved Hanssen’s involvement.

But what was it like for the real O’Neill, first to live through the tense experience itself, and then to have a movie made about the situation. O’Neill discusses some of this on an audio commentary he shares with Bill Ray (the disc also has 10 alternate or deleted scenes with optional commentary by Ray and editor Jeffrey Ford, along with two making ofs, and a report about Hanssen from Dateline that aired in March of 2001 a month after Hanssen’s arrest (and which doesn’t mention O’Neill). His audio commentary track goes into some of this, but when the opportunity to interview Mr. O’Neill came along I decided to explore a few other implications of the story. What follows is an expanded version of an interview posted in part elsewhere.

Where is Hanssen now and what is he doing? Is he cooperating, as per the terms of his plea agreement?

Hanssen is serving a life sentence in Florence, Colorado supermax penitentiary. He spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement – mostly reading books. He is not allowed visitors or mail. Last I heard, he began to have “memory problems” and stopped cooperating with officials.

When, if ever, will we know more details about the case, such as who on the Soviet side, after 15 years, turned him in and to whom – and why?

We know who turned him in. Well, I do, but you don’t and it will probably be some time until the ex-KGB agent who defected decides its time to write a book of her/his own.

The movie leaves out the sex stuff, except very briefly. This shows great restraint and a measure of taste, but does it deny the viewer anything significant about understanding Hanssen or his complexities?

The sex stuff doesn’t help the movie and belaboring would not help audiences understand Hanssen better or get into his head any more than we already provided. It would have just served as a red herring that would distract the audience from the central Robert Hanssen question – why did Hanssen spy? We even leave that open for discussion. Also, by the time the temporal events of the movie take place, Hanssen had already stopped seeing the stripper [] and wasn’t spending long afternoons in strip clubs.

What did you like and dislike about post-Hoover FBI culture?

I was never a part of the Hoover culture, only the post-Hoover culture (I’m only 34) so I really couldn’t say.

What’s something about being an “under cover agent” that surprised you?

You never have any time to yourself. The case consumes every waking thought, and most of your sleeping ones.

In the looking glass world of spying, did you ever get the feeling that the fact that your wife was East German cast any suspicions about you?

When I announced that I was engaged to marry a German the first question was “which kind.” I said that it’s all one Germany now, and my superiors responded, “not to us.” My security clearance was pulled while the FBI spent some days investigating Juliana from the Berlin office.

One of the deleted scenes on the DVD makes clear that one of Hanssen’s irritations was that his superiors both didn’t listen to him and were out of date and unlettered in computer technology. In some twisted way was Hanssen a patriot?

Hanssen was not a patriot. I disagree with a number of people on this point, including Billy Ray! But that’s what makes the movie magic. We don’t try to force feed the audience – we don’t tell them what to think of feel. We provide them with the facts, and let the audience use their minds to make their own decisions – and then hopefully go to a coffee shop, or a bar, or sit down over a glass of wine and think about the movie and discuss it. I believe that Hanssen did what he did because he felt anger at the FBI for not listening to him. He was the quintessential nerd that rubbed all the jocks at the FBI’s noses in the dirt of his betrayal. He made everyone a complete fool. There is power in that.

It’s minimized in the movie, but what do you think the role of Opus Dei was in influencing Hanssen or making him a rebel?

I think that the stringent financial requirements of belonging to Opus Dei might have worked with Hanssen’s inflated sense of self worth and ego to initially set him on the path of spying. This is in no part a fault of the Opus Dei (or especially) the Catholic religion, but one of zealotry. Hanssen was a zealot, and this made him go overboard in following his religion. Too many kids too fast, a requirement to tithe to the church, and a need to be somewhere in society that most of us work hard to rise to – all these things led to Hanssen’s eventual betrayal. He may have started that way, but I think he continued to spy out of a fundamental need for the rush that spying gave him. The Russians made him feel sexy, cool, and most importantly, they made him belong to something. While he might have been the FBI’s nerd, he was the Soviet Unions’ quarterback.

Hanssen was arrested in Feb of 2001; a few months later the 9/11 attacks occurred. Is there any feasible connection between Hanssen’s spying and impediments within the FBI concerning the events of that day, or about staying on top of terrorists in general?

I’m sure there are some connections. Hanssen sold secrets to the Soviet Union who were notorious for selling American secrets to terrorist organizations. Considering that Hanssen blew holes in our counter intelligence capability – it stands to reason that Terrorist organizations have and continue to benefit from the betrayal of Robert Hanssen.

Were you suspicious of Hollywood’s ability to remain true to the real life story?

I never believed that Hollywood would have the capacity to remain so true to my story. I should probably play the lottery – the sheer luck I had in meeting such talented writers, producers and director, with such a perfect studio is astronomical.

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Paris, je t’aime is a French anthology film from last year that is finally making the art house circuit in the United States. And for all intents and purposes, it was financed by the Paris Boosters Society (Le Societé du boostiers du Paris), as even the grimiest of its 18 segments, such as the one about a mugging, or the tale of a female vampire taking a new victim, serve to glamorize the already world capital of glamor. What’s wrong, has tourism been down? Has American hatred of all things French finally had its impact? Have Freedom Fries finally conquered French Fries?

For the most part, these short segments come across like either piss poor Chanel perfume ads or the sort of bad short films that even get hooted off YouTube. Take the first one, “Montmartre,” credited to Bruno Podalydes (one of numerous directors asked to participate that I happen not to have heard of). A lonely guy finally finds a parking lot, and then helps a woman who has stumbled on the street near his car. Love blooms. Clearly the point is that Paris is a petrie dish of romance, so come on down!

On the other hand, segments such as “Tuileries,” credited to the Coen Brothers, come across like Hostel Lite, in this case a cautionary tale of the bad side of tourism as Steve Buscemi is shown abused by a scary couple and a twerp with a pea shooter in a subway station. A segment with Juliette Binoche, directed by Nobuhiro Suwa (“Place des Victoires”), concerns a woman grieving over her dead son (who is presumably taken to heaven by God, who arrives in the form of Willem Defoe as a mounted cowboy). Drug use is rife in Olivier Assayas’s “Quartier des Enfants Rouges,” with Maggie Gyllenhaal as an actress trying to get through an historical epic with the obliterating crutch of dope, even just hours before going to the set, perhaps an homage to recent historical films made in France, or to the American obsession with the doings of young celebrities.

Though mostly knocked off, segments by some of the directors, such as Gus Van Sant, are instantly identifiable, if only they revisit boring old obsessions (though at least Van Sant’s film has something akin to a comic, Maupassant punchline). Tom Tykwer’s segment, “Faubourg Saint-Denis” with Natalie Portman, looks like its going in the Run Lola Run direction, before digressing into the most heavily edited of the shorts. Others seem to bear no resemblance to the director’s earlier work, such as Wes Craven’s “Pere-Lachaise,” in which (oddly) the ghost of Oscar Wilde helps save a young man’s marriage (Rufus Sewell and Emily Mortimer play the pair). “Loin du 16ème,” credited to Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, makes a less than subtle political point. The nadir of the whole enterprise is a story about, yes, God help us, mimes.

Inevitably, the viewer turns such omnibi films into horse races. One sifts and weighs directors against the very each other against the communal spirit of the enterprise, if only out of boredom (it is amazing how quickly, in mere seconds, it takes for a short film to bore you). Though I got a kick out of the Coen Brothers segment, if only for its visual acuity, the best segment belongs to Alexander Payne. His “14th arrondissement” starts out, as do all of his films, as if it is going to ridicule ordinary people, in this case Margo Martindale as a lonely postal employee on solo vacation in Paris, whose voice over, in accent-free French, constitutes her French language class report. It’s beautifully done, takes you unawares, and says a lot in a short amount of time.

In the end, Paris, je t’aime, which seems to be generally supervised by Tristan Carné and Emmanuel Benbihy, makes a vague effort to connect some of the short subjects, and also to reassure us that all those scary segments shouldn’t be taken seriously (vampire victim Elijah Wood isn’t “really” dead, it turns out!). What’s weird is how little the film feels like “Paris.” The Coen Brothers segment, for example, could have taken place in London or Manhattan. And “love” is “universal,” not solely product of the City of Lights. I could imagine something funny coming out of a blending of The Red Balloon with Breathless and Tintin: that might have provided a caricaturally Parisian feel. But maybe “Paris,” both literally and imaginatively, cannot be caught in a two or three minute segment. After all, it took Bernardo Bertolucci two full length feature films to isolate his own feelings and observations about the city. Apparently, 12-odd Frenchmen and their international acolytes can be wrong.