Freak of Nature

I am narrating this to you, dear readers, because let's face it -- we all need to narrate our lives. And the person I usually narrate my life to is not answering my calls, delusionally thinking that three calls a day is enough after we saw this movie together last night. (In other news, go rent Stranger than Fiction. So wonderful.)

So I was just in the Caffeine Corporation, aka Starbucks, aka My Office. I wanted to slink in, get a latte, and come back home, especially since Creepy-Guy-I-Made-Out-With-Once was working. (This is the problem with Grad City. It's made up of these neighborhoods so that unless you're committed to driving across town the guy you made out with once is going to be smack dab next to the student who thinks you're the devil and the professor who hates you. What's really crazy is when they're all sitting at the same table. What can I say? I've been earnest and driven about more than just my studies.) But then Creepy Guy asked me how the movie was last night, since Witty and Sardonic Friend, whom I saw the movie with, didn't realize that the creepy guy was in fact Creepy Guy and started a convo about the movie we were going to see.

And that's when I got all excited and started babbling non-stop about the flaws of Breach and the real scoop about the Robert Hanssen story, revealing myself to be a freak of nature.

Let me start at the beginning. Last night, I saw Breach, about the FBI investigation of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who sold secrets to the Soviets and Russians over twenty years. But the movie arc really focuses on Eric O'Neill, a kid who starts off eager to become an agent and, through the course of helping to bring down Hanssen, ends up leaving the FBI. Chris Cooper, who played Hanssen, was great. But the arc was not so great, making young characterless O'Neill some kind of hero. In fact, this arc was annoying, but I figured that maybe it was just the kind of artistic license that has to be allowed in order to make a good movie arc, since Hanssen seemed to be a very enigmatic character. But because WSF and I are the types who watch the credits even when the dorks at the multiplex bring up the house lights in the middle of them, we noticed that Eric O'Neill was credited as Special Consultant and that a David O'Neill (his brother) was Associate Producer. So WSF and I got suspicious and started looking things up.

And what I found, because I am a graduate student and therefore a research queen, is that there is more than enough fascinating material on the guy to make a fantastic movie, without any input from O'Neill brothers (agents and studio executives, feel free to email me at earnestenglish@gmail.com anytime). Here is a teaser: a scene where Hanssen's very sweet and religious wife finds out he's been selling secrets to the Soviets and makes him go to confession. Put that next to the fact that unbeknownst to her he videotaped them having sex and passed the tape around to friends.

I have to go write a screenplay now. I think I hear agents calling.