Friday, April 29, 2005
Charlie Wilson's War
Great book, now hopefully a great movie:
I'm already excited for it. CWW reads like a Tom Clancy novel, but unlike Clancy, it's all true.
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July 21, 2003 - According to Variety, Oscar-winner Tom Hanks will star in Universal's feature film adaptation of 60 Minutes producer George Crile's book, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. Hanks will also produce the pic along with Gary Goetzman under their Playtone banner. Universal optioned the book on Friday with Playtone tapping Band of Brothers scribe John Orloff to pen the screenplay.
Hanks will star as Wilson, a former Texas congressman who "persuaded the CIA to train and arm resistance fighters in Afghanistan, engineering a victory that hastened the fall of the Soviet Union. Wilson teamed with a rogue CIA agent named Gust Avrakotos to keep the Red Army from overrunning Afghanistan. Wilson found an outlet to use his gift for maneuvering around red tape in Afghanistan. He and Avrakotos supplied money and put together a team of experts to mold an army that fought the Red Army to a stalemate."
Publishers Weekly's review of Charlie Wilson's War describes the title character as "a six-feet-four-inch Texas congressman, liberal on social issues but rabidly anti-Communist, a boozer, engaged in serial affairs and wheeler-dealer of consummate skill." Gust Avrakotos was "a blue-collar Greek immigrant who joined the CIA when it was an Ivy League preserve and fought his elitist colleagues almost as ruthlessly as he fought the Soviet Union in the Cold War's waning years."
I'm already excited for it. CWW reads like a Tom Clancy novel, but unlike Clancy, it's all true.
