Whiskey Tango Foxtrot isn’t a great movie, but it is something rare and important: a woman’s story of self-discovery – having nothing to do with her finding a husband – that has gotten room on the big screen.
Advertisement
Kim Barker is renamed Kim Baker for the sake of Fey’s portrayal as we flashback to her first assignment to Kabul in 2003, just as another more prominent war is breaking out in Iraq.
Written by frequent Fey collaborator Robert Carlock, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is based on the true story of journalist Kim Baker, who eagerly abandoned her post as a news script-writer to become a field reporter in Afghanistan. Billy Bob Thornton is enjoyable as a Marine colonel whose attempts to help the locals nearly literally blow up in his face. “He’s like, ‘There’s a bed in my office now, ‘ ” said Fey. That she gets inside the tangled mind of a complex woman on a perpetual hot seat is something new but not that surprising. In reality, Barker was a print journalist who worked for the Chicago Tribune.
When asked about a sex scene in “Foxtrot”, Fey said, “The only way I would ever agree to do any kind of scene, romantic scene like that, sex scene, is if it’s a comedic scene”.
Tina Fey goes to a war zone in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. After reading it, Fey persuaded her good friend from her “Saturday Night Live” days, “SNL” creator/producer Lorne Michaels, to co-produce the movie with her and also pushed the Paramount studio to option the rights to the book.
While taking part in a New York Times panel in New York on March 2, Fey said that she, composer Jeff Richmond and lyricist Nell Benjamin “have been working on it”, reports The Huffington Post. Fey, not so much: Combing through the reviews for her pictures, one sees an infinite variation on the old critical hedge: This movie is pretty lame, but we love Tina Fey and at least it’s better than X. But there are also exactly two red flags: the casting choices for primary Afghan characters Fahim Ahmadzai (Christopher Abbott) and Ali Massoud Sadiq (Alfred Molina). No”, she said. “I don’t think it’s misogynistic.
“The thing I feared the most is that we would be ‘Anchorman in Afghanistan, ‘ ” a silly comedy.
The changes don’t bother Barker, who now works for the New York Times – she had already braced herself for them. I thought I was leaving journalism.
Advertisement
“It’s hard to even think about”, she says, “people seeing this in a theatre”.
