Whenever I have nightmares about the documentary I am attempting to make about Whittaker Chambers, one thought keeps me going.
Rachel Maddow as Alger Hiss.
No, I have no intention of putting Rachel Maddow in my film. In fact, the entire idea began as a joke. I was talking to a potential backer of the project about how marvelous this could — will? — be, and we began to speculate about what Hollywood would do with “Witness,” the classic book by Whittaker Chambers, an ex-communist and great spiritual sage of the 20th century.
“I wouldn’t mind Philip Seymour Hoffman as Chambers,” I said.
Then it hit me: Rachel Maddow as Alger Hiss.
If Hollywood filmmakers were allowed to make “Witness,” it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they’d cast Maddow as Hiss. Indeed, they would do it, and celebrate it as a breakthrough. I began to weep. My God, I thought. They would actually do it. I can see it now: Hoffman playing Chambers as a repressed, self-hating homosexual, as someone who is solely and only driven by sexuality — which, to liberals, is what motivates absolutely everything. Maddow as the noble public servant Alger Hiss, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Piece, the Harvey Milk to Chambers’s Dan White.
You could write the logrolling blurbs yourself. A.O. Scott: “Maddow was a bit if bravura casting that pays off big time. She brings both acting chops and real empathy to the role.” Peter Travers: “Think a chick can’t play one of the most famous figures of the 20th century, a man no less? Think again. This witness is ready to testify.” I don’t even want to think what Rex Reed and Michael Musto would do, but I ain’t cleaning it up afterwards.
Thoughts like that keep me going. The gifted director I am working with and I simply want to do what Hollywood seems incapable of: making a film that tells the exact truth. It will not be agitprop. We are not conservative Michael Moores. We will interview all the right players, and they will be allowed to speak. We are doing this because we are passionate about the spiritual power of “Witness,” one of the greatest stories ever told by a master storyteller. Of course, we think that history and the facts have long since vindicated Chambers. But we will treat the other side with fairness and humanity. Besides, it will be a documentary. We have no intention of portraying anything short of the truth.
We have started a Kickstarter page to try and get this thing off the ground. It can be found here.
I opened the paper this morning and saw that Meryl Streep is in Washington, my hometown and where we will be shooting much of the film. Streep is here promoting “The Iron Lady,” the new movie about Margaret Thatcher. Of course, in the film Streep plays Thatcher as slightly nuts. It is obvious from the trailer — the off-kilter facial expressions, the loopy accent, which is nothing like Thatcher’s wonderful delivery, which managed to be both creamy and steely. The slightly disjointed eyes. The thousand-yard blank stare.
Then there was the recent story in The Washington Post, which reported that many FBI agents are furious with Clint Eastwood, who promised not to sex up his biopic about J. Edgar Hoover and then proceeded to do just that. The agents have taken to the Internet and YouTube to renounce the Gay Pride J. Edgar. What was so sad was the defeatist resignation of some of the agents: “Well, you know Hollywood. They sexed it up.”
That doesn’t make it right. It’s the kind of thing that can drive you nuts. Filmmaking technology has changed to the point where, for Leonardo DiCaprio’s room service budget on “J. Edgar” or Meryl Streep’s promotional party for “The Iron Lady,” we can make a movie about “Witness” — a movie that is superior to those other films in every way. I wonder if some conservatives have gotten the memo. The playing field is basically level. All we need to do is get behind our artists. If I had a donation for every “Great job,” “Can’t wait” and “Attaboy” I’ve gotten, we’d already be shooting.
Rachel Maddow as Alger Hiss.
Sweet Jesus, please don’t let these people anywhere near Whittaker Chambers.
Mark Judge is the author of A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.