Weaving a Web Of Secrecy and Lies In The Spy Thriller Black Bag

In Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag, a top British counterintelligence agent, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), is alerted to a potential mole who threatens to derail the deployment of Severus, a new, highly destructive piece of malware. To ferret out the leak, George hosts a dinner for the five most likely suspects—four are his colleagues and friends (Regé-Jean Page, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, and Tom Burke) and the fifth is his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). Racing to avert disaster, George must sift through the endless secrets and lies that are the common currency of spies to find the traitor and, if possible, save his marriage.

Black Bag marks the latest collaboration between two giants of contemporary cinema—director Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp. As the writer behind some of the biggest blockbusters in the last three decades, including the original Mission Impossible film, the first Spider-Man movie, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—Koepp is a master at writing smart, suspenseful, and utterly entertaining stories. For Soderbergh, Koepp’s screenplay felt just right. “I love that it’s smart, like so many of David’s scripts,” Soderbergh says in the Production Notes. “Black Bag seemed to be the same kind of opportunity that the Ocean’s films presented.”

We spoke with Koepp about the origin of the story and what makes spy stories so much fun to write.

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What was the inspiration for Black Bag?

In the mid-90s, when I was doing research for the first Mission Impossible film, I spoke with various CIA advisors. In addition to spycraft, many of them talked about how difficult it was to maintain a healthy relationship when secrecy is what you do for a living. How do you open up to someone when you lie professionally? It really ups the possibilities for cheating. In the film, Clarissa (Abela) sums up the problem when she says, “If you can lie about everything, how do you tell the truth?” If you know that you can lie, how do you ever tell the truth about yourself?

I thought, “That's a cool idea.” I haven't seen that in a spy movie before. I wanted to put it in the context of a marriage because marriages are very high stakes. But I didn't want to make it so that they were cheating on each other. I wanted the tension to be that they were fully committed to each other but unable to be fully open to the other. The couple [George and Kathryn] are part of a group of six characters that begin the movie at a dinner party. Among these six, I wanted the relations of all the characters to be super complex and messed up in different ways. I carried that idea around for nearly 30 years before this movie.

What does the title “Black Bag” mean?

I sort of made that up because I thought it sounded cool. There was a film producer who I knew in New York who would say, “That goes in the black bag,” whenever he got something bad or negative that he didn’t like. You throw it in the black bag, then you throw the bag in the river and never see it again. I like that as a metaphor for where things go that are never going to be discussed. I repurposed it as a piece of spy slang that doesn’t actually exist—but maybe it should.

The film has a very smart, sophisticated vibe. Were there spy films that inspired you?

I have seen a ton of spy movies, but more than any movie, it was the work of John le Carré that I connected to. He was one of the first writers I read as a teenager, and I felt he wrote a specific type of thing that I really liked. The personal lives of his characters are rather messy. In his novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, I think he refers to spies as “shabby men.” I thought that was pretty vivid. And I loved the byzantine structure of his plots.

Talk about who George and Kathryn are as individuals and as a couple.

Both are largely defined by their jobs. Kathryn is operational, meaning she's out doing things like hatching plots or thwarting them in the real world. George is counterintelligence, which means he's constantly looking for who might be betraying us from the inside. I modeled George a little bit after James Jesus Angleton, who ran American counterintelligence for years. Like George, Angleton was a bass fisherman which required concerted patience. It’s also a great metaphor for what they do. Kathryn is a much more skilled organizational player, while George is solitary and never uses three words when two will do.

Who are the other main characters?

The other four characters and their jobs are a bit different. Col James Stokes (Page) is a little like Kathryn. Freddie Small (Burke) is part of George's world and very much wants to do what George does but has too many failings, too many areas where he could be blackmailed. Clarissa Dubose (Abela) is the audience's surrogate, although I don't think she is long for the intelligence community. Appalled by the personal behavior of her friends, she gets to voice the opinion of probably many of the audience members, that, "You people are so messed up." Finally, Dr Zoe Vaughan (Harris) is the company therapist. It was fascinating to learn that many large intelligence organizations have a therapist or psychiatrist on staff. It makes complete sense because you don't want to have agents go out and talk to anyone. What an interesting mix of interests you must have to be a therapist and work in the intelligence community.

How much do you connect the story to actual current events?

You have to ground in the real world if you want it to feel real. Part of the idea for Severus, for example, was inspired by Stuxnet, the US/Israeli malware that caused centrifuges in Iranian reactors to spin out of control. Malware like that seems like a great idea until it bounces back. Stuxnet went on to wreak havoc all over the world. What was important for me is that the story was simple enough that its political impact could be quickly understood by the audience and we could get back to the six characters, who are the real focus of the film.

What makes writing spy stories so much fun?

First off, all spies tell lies and writing lies is fantastic. You could probably retitle any spy movie “Secrets and Lies.” What makes this film so much fun is having these complex characters manipulate each other with language.

What do you hope people take away from this film?

It is a lot of fun and I hope they see it as a very messed-up marriage but one that works. I wanted to write an encouraging story about marriage.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.