Burn After Reading

In the dark spy-comedy, Mr. Malkovich plays an ousted CIA official whose memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise Washington, D.C. gym employees intent on exploiting their find.
– VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Joel Coen: ”If you want to call it a comedy I wouldn’t protest. It’s sort of about the CIA, the culture of physical fitness and internet dating.” Ethan Coen discussing how they came up with the idea: ”Sort of what would happen if you threw those people [the cast] together. We just sort of said, ‘Let’s say that John Malkovich is a signals analyst for the CIA who gets fi red at the beginning of the movie because he is an alcoholic, Fran is the manager of a gym in Virginia, and Brad is a trainer at the gym – how do you make a story out of all those things?” Joel: ”It took a little while to get all these people together. Tilda we found late in the game, we didn’t really know who would be in that part. But otherwise we wrote specifi cally for those actors. They had to be available to do the fi lm at the same time.”
– YOUKNOW-FORKIDS