Matt Damon's new film character is a kind of undercover agent, but he's a far cry from Jason Bourne. In "The Informant!," the actor plays Mark Whitacre, a real-life corporate whistle-blower who worked with the FBI in the 1990s to uncover a price-fixing scandal involving his employer, agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. Slapped with a mega-fine and a class-action suit, ADM eventually paid out $500 million. Several executives went to prison.
Under normal circumstances, all this would make Whitaker a hero, but there was one problem. When indictments were handed down, Whitaker himself was among those on the receiving end. He was charged with embezzling $9 million from ADM, and despite his work for the government, he eventually served eight years in prison.
The two products involved in ADM's troubles were lysine and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The latter substance has been linked to the increase in obesity in the United States.
The film, which also features Scott Bakula, was directed by Steven Soderbergh as a dark comedy. Much of it was shot in Decatur, Ill., the site of ADM's headquarters. The movie is based on a book of the same title -- minus the exclamation point -- written by journalist Kurt Eichenwald and published in 2000.
Damon spoke by phone from New York.
Q: Your "Informant!" character is an odd duck: He sees himself as the guy in the white hat, but he's slightly ridiculous, and an embezzler and chronic liar.
A: There's a lot going on with him. In movies, you have two hours to tell a story. As an actor, the challenge is to try to flesh out a part that's like a color in a bigger painting. You're asked not to complicate things too much. Your character is there to serve a purpose in the bigger story. This is a case where the central character had a lot going on, was really a complicated person. That's one of the things that drew all of us to (the story).
Q: Have you met the real Mark Whitacre?
A: No, I didn't meet him. Once we decided to take this (comic) tone, Steven's feeling was that "The Insider" had been made and made very well, so rather than repeat that tone, we should try to find something to make the film unique. Which is great, because you're aiming at a much smaller bull's-eye with a tone like this. My normal method of going and talking to people, and researching, kind of went out the window when we decided to go that way, and I really relied heavily on the script.
Q: "The Informant!" is ostensibly a comedy, but if you nudged the tone slightly it could be a straight-ahead thriller about corporate intrigue.
A: Right, which is exactly what "The Insider" was, and exactly why Steven moved away from that. Had "The Insider" not been made, I think we would have taken a much straighter tone. Certainly Kurt's book is very straightforward, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in corporate intrigue. I read the book in one day, it's an absolute page-turner. It's in the vein of (John) Grisham or (John) le Carre. And what's remarkable (with "The Informant!") is that it's all true.
Q: At the time the movie was set, not many people knew about high-fructose corn syrup. Today, most people have heard that it's not so good for you. In fact, last year the Corn Refiners Association went on the offensive, running ads saying that HFCS in moderation is OK.
A: People are slowly becoming more aware that there is a very big lobby that has quite a bit of sway with our elected representatives. And their main goal is profit, like just about any company. And people need to be more mindful about what they're putting in their bodies, because there are things out there that are readily available that might not be so good for us. But the movie doesn't really talk about that too much, though in the book Eichenwald does mention this switch from sugar to high-fructose corn syrup, and mentions the role of Dwayne Andreas, the former head of ADM, in being a very active political contributor to both parties, and kind of manipulating (companies) into making a switch in some of the hugest (products).
You know, Coke started tasting different when I was a kid because they took the sugar out and put corn syrup in. And that's Dwayne Andreas. The incredible thing about this case is that there was so much at stake, we're talking about so many billions of dollars these companies were making by fixing these prices, and the amount of control they had over the world market. It was staggering that they were doing this. I heard one of the FBI guys involved, in a NPR interview, say that, from then on, he saw four white guys in suits going into a hotel in the middle of the day as a potential crime scene (laughs). It rocked his whole world.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit the San Francisco Chronicle
Post new comment