PLUS: UMA THURMAN, JENNIFER GARNER AND OTHER STARS GET FIRED UP ABOUT COOKING

interview | ANGELINA JOLIE
In the five months since the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, several
journalists covering the war on terror
had already been kidnapped right off
the streets of Pakistan. Still, reporter
Daniel Pearl was assured by colleagues
and informants that he would be safe at
the very public restaurant where he was to
interview Sheikh Mubarik ali Gilani, the
leader of the fundamentalist Islamic sect
Jamaat ul-Fuqra.
It was January 23, 2002, and Pearl, a
12-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal,
was researching a potentially explosive
story about Richard Reid, “the shoe
bomber,” and was hoping Gilani could
confirm that Reid had ties to his group.
Pearl, a 38-year-old New Jersey native,
was anxious to get the interview over with
since he and his pregnant, French wife,
Mariane (whom he’d met while stationed
in the paper’s Paris bureau), were scheduled
to leave Karachi the next day for an
extended trip back to the West.
Daniel even invited Mariane to join
him for a meal at the restaurant once his
interview was over. But Mariane’s pregnancy
had her feeling under the weather,
and she said she might join her husband
later for a late-night meal. They kissed,
she wished him well, and he left.
As Mariane recounts in her book
famous 26 | june 2007
Doing
her
JUSTICE
Bringing the story of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl and his widow Mariane to the
screen is, to say the least, a touchy assignment. But Angelina Jolie says if they hadn’t
been able to do it right, they wouldn’t have done it at all I BY EARL DITTMAN
A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of
My Husband Danny Pearl, she and Daniel
would never kiss again. According to
eyewitness reports, Pearl was dragged
into a vehicle only blocks from the
Karachi apartment he and Mariane
called home. When it became apparent
that he had been kidnapped, his wife
recruited a CIA operative, many of his coworkers
from the Wall Street Journal and a
Pakistani policeman to help find him.
With time and the far-reaching influence
of Al-Qaeda against them, hopes of
finding Pearl alive began to dim. Within
days, however, photos of Pearl were
posted on the internet and released to
100 2 5 25 50 75 95 98 100 2 5 25 50 75 95 98 100 2 5 25 50 75 95 98 100 2 5 25 50 75 95 98 R G B 3/C
the media by his captors, who accused
him of being a spy for Israel. Pearl was
Jewish, which was no small factor in his
kidnapping and brutal treatment. Pearl’s
captors offered to release him, but only
after American officials released Pakistani
prisoners being held at the U.S. Navy
base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
For weeks, images of a starving and
bound Daniel Pearl were flashed on news
programs across the globe. At one point,
Mariane took to the airwaves to appeal
to her husband’s captors to free him,
ending her plea by telling her husband,
“I love you.”
When a videotape arrived at the Home
Government Department in the Pakistani
province of Sindh on February 22, 2002,
it became clear Pearl’s captors had never
intended to set him free.
After American and Pakistani officials
viewed the tape, they announced that
Pearl had been barbarically beheaded
by a terrorist group allegedly led by
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. A copy of
the tape, titled “The Slaughter of the
Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl,”
found its way onto the internet.
While most of the world was appalled
at the savage killing, instead of denouncing
those who had taken her husband’s
life, Mariane simply told CNN, “Danny
has not been defeated. His pain and my
pain will help change the world.” After
the birth of their son, Adam, she decided
Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl and
Dan Futterman as her husband
Daniel in A Mighty Heart
to write Daniel’s story in A Mighty Heart.
While the book was still in manuscript
form, Brad Pitt bought the movie rights
for Plan B Productions, the film development/production
company he shared
with then-wife Jennifer Aniston. But
Pearl was not so anxious to transform her
husband’s story into a film. “To be honest,
I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do a
movie,” Pearl said in an interview with
Glamour magazine. “Everybody was using
terrorism for their own political agenda
at that time, and really, this is a story
about Danny. But when I met Brad, well,
out of all the studios, he was the only one
who had actually read the book.”
Originally lined up to play Mariane,
Jennifer Aniston reportedly met with
Pearl several times to study her mannerisms.
But when Pitt and Aniston’s marriage
ended, Brad’s new love, Angelina Jolie,
took over the role.
“I thought that it was an incredible
book, and I’m such a fan of her writing,”
says Jolie in a recent New York interview.
“I thought that it was so amazing and, in
many ways, very controversial. So bringing
it to the screen made it a very complicated
project to tackle.” More than anything,
Jolie was concerned that in the wrong
hands the film could become a sappy,
overtly political melodrama. “From the
beginning, I felt like it needed to be done
just right, so there was a lot of talk as to
how that could be and what the important
famous 27 | june 2007
“From the
beginning, I felt
like it needed to
be done just
right,” says Jolie,
“so there was a
lot of talk as to
how that could be
and what the
important reasons
for making it
really were”
reasons for making it really were.”
Michael Winterbottom (The Road to
Guantanamo) was enlisted to co-write the
screenplay and direct, and Dan Futterman
— the Oscar-nominated writer of Capote,
who’s best known as an actor for playing
Barry on TV’s Will & Grace — was cast as
Daniel. But Jolie says that, even then, if
the screenplay hadn’t been up to par, she
and Brad were willing to walk away from
the project.
“Everyone involved — from the producers,
the director, myself, the other
actors and Mariane — we all sat down
around a table, and we all agreed that if
we couldn’t do it right, if we couldn’t do it
justice, and if along the way any one piece
didn’t come together, we would all just
fold up production and not do it,” says
Jolie. “So to make sure we got the film we
wanted, we took it step-by-step and made
damn sure that it was done right.”
Jolie, who took home an Oscar for
Girl, Interrupted, considers her performance
in A Mighty Heart one of her best.
“Since I spent so much time with
Mariane, I didn’t want to look like I was
just imitating her, because that would
have been so one-dimensional…. I really
wanted to dig deep and show audiences
Mariane’s true emotions and the essence
of who she is as a person. She’s a great
mother, a hard-working woman and a
person who really stands behind her
beliefs and causes she champions.
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