Analyze This

Whether people would stick around after a recent USC screening for a discussion of his political thriller “Deterrence” was a matter of concern for writer-director Rod Lurie.

After all, it was a Friday night, when a college crowd might have something less serious in mind.

To Lurie’s delight the student audience did stay for a lively and thoughtful debate about the film’s disturbing conclusion and its ultimate message about the use of nuclear weapons. They remained so long, in fact, that Lurie finally dismissed them after fielding questions for about 90 minutes, chiding them to start their weekends and go have some fun.

Lurie hopes “Deterrence,” his debut feature distributed by Paramount Classics and opening Friday in Los Angeles, will spark a similarly animated debate among a wider audience of thoughtful filmgoers.

“Deterrence” stars Kevin Pollak as Walter Emerson, a U.S. president stranded during a snowstorm at a roadside diner in a small Colorado town during a rapidly escalating nuclear missile crisis. The president is relatively isolated during these events, surrounded only by two key aides, played by Timothy Hutton and Sheryl Lee Ralph, and a few diner customers.

The film takes place entirely inside the diner and is intended as a cerebral examination of the political and human elements of the nuclear weapons issue. Lurie knew he was taking a risk by presenting a film that’s more of a highbrow mental exercise as opposed to pure popcorn entertainment.

“I’m not making this for the ‘Armageddon’ crowd, or for people who are going to go see ‘The Phantom Menace’ 15 times,” Lurie said during a recent phone interview. “I’m expecting people who can analyze and sub-analyze a film.”

That’s exactly the type of crowd Lurie got for the recent USC screening. The student audience, mostly political science and international relations majors, peppered him with questions ranging from the nuances of the launch sequence for nuclear weapons to other avenues of sometimes unwelcome scrutiny.

“Why did you have the stereotype of all the men being older, fat and balding, and the women all young and very beautiful?” a woman asked, drawing a laugh from Lurie.

“Kevin Pollak is only a couple of years older than me, so that must mean I’m getting fat and balding,” Lurie answered, ruefully rubbing the front of his head. “And I won’t tell Tim Hutton you said that, because he doesn’t see himself as fat and balding.”

Another student asked Lurie if it wasn’t sexist to have the national security advisor, played by Ralph, reveal that she had been interviewed by Playboy magazine.

No, Lurie answered, it wasn’t sexist because Playboy interviews have prestige.

For Lurie, a former film critic for KABC radio in Los Angeles and Los Angeles magazine, creating a political movie with strong military overtones was a natural step. He’s a West Point graduate and a political junkie.

“I grew up with an infestation of politics. I’m just nuts about it,” said Lurie, whose father is a political cartoonist. “It’s our form of gladiators in the arena, only they are not in quite as good a shape.”

Lurie got the idea for the film three years ago while watching Saddam Hussein’s continuing defiance of U.N. peacekeepers at a time when the U.S. military was already engaged in peacekeeping duty in Yugoslavia. What would happen, Lurie wondered, if the U.S. was forced to fight wars on two military fronts?

Filmmaker Suggests Suspending Disbelief

In the film, set in the near future, American troops are monitoring a tense standoff between North and South Korea when Iraq invades Kuwait and threatens the use of chemical and biological weapons. The swirling plot holds out the possibility that the United States will launch a nuclear assault on Iraq. The moral and political consequences of such an attack are hotly debated by everyone in the diner and, Lurie hopes, eventually by everyone who sees the movie.

That will depend on whether audiences accept the plausibility of the plot, which proved an obstacle for some at the USC screening.

“I couldn’t get into this film at all. What really hurt me watching it was that I never believed for a moment that the situation he set up was remotely possible,” said John Cleary, a USC international relations major, after attending the screening and discussion.

Others in the audience raised the same issue with the director, and Lurie finally said if they would allow themselves to suspend their “disbelief, the ride is much more comfortable.”

USC political science professor Stanley Rosen, who sent out invitations to the USC screening, wondered if a political film about nuclear weapons was appropriate in these post-detente times.

“You could make the case that during the Cold War, films such as ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ ‘Fail Safe’ and ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ made a lot of sense,” Rosen said. But now, Rosen says, Lurie is “tapping into a debate that the American public is not even aware of.”

But Lurie says that’s just his point. He hopes his film will get people talking about nuclear weapons, despite their current back-burner status as a political issue.

“Just because the boogeyman of the Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore, it doesn’t mean the world is living angelically,” Lurie said. “People tend to forget about nuclear weapons. We think they are going to remain in silos for the rest of time. As long as they exist, they are going to be used.”

Several people at the screening were bothered by the film’s unsettling and ambiguous ending. They wondered if it was possible to read different meanings into the movie’s resolution. Absolutely, Lurie told them.

In a statement released with publicity notes about the film, Lurie said the movie was intended as “a Rorschach test about the politics and socialism of the individual filmgoer. The way that one feels about the story line of ‘Deterrence’ can tell us, I believe, about each person’s conservatism or liberalism and precisely how tolerant he or she is of racism.”

But Rosen contended that the film’s ambiguous message may be its fault.

“I like the subtlety of the film, but I felt that his message got lost in the subtlety,” Rosen said.

Lurie maintains that it wasn’t his goal to hammer home a message.

“I have a lot of respect for the audience. They don’t have to be told what is right and wrong. They can figure it out,” he said.

Lurie’s banking on the idea that the American public would like to see more serious political fare. Lurie explores another political issue in his next film, “The Contender,” which stars Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman. It’s due out by the end of the year. In this film, however, Lurie goes beyond the nuances of nuclear weapons strategies to a topic with much wider audience appeal: a sex scandal in Washington.