http://www.austin360.com/movies/content/movies/stories/2009/06/0622waco.html
Ex-FBI official lashes out at 'Waco' script, but moviemakers defend accuracy By Chris Garcia <http://www.austin360.com/movies/content/movies/stories/2009/06/mailto:[email protected]> AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, June 23, 2009 When Bob Hudgins, director of the Texas Film Commission, recently said that he had personally rejected a screenplay called "Waco" --- a thriller about the siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco in 1993 --- for the state's new tax incentives, he said there were gross inaccuracies in the script that at best muddled the facts and at worst rewrote the historical record. Hudgins didn't provide specifics. But his decision produced a firestorm of criticism from the producers of the $30 million "Waco," who defended the script's accuracy, and from some local film industry employees, who said they felt betrayed. One of the members of law enforcement who reviewed the finished script was Byron Sage, the FBI's lead negotiator during the siege . Hudgins says he gave the script to another retired law enforcement agent, who passed it on to Sage. In his first interview about the subject since the controversy erupted in May, Sage is blunt about the "Waco" script, which he says fabricates relationships, takes liberties with dialogue, twists the dynamics and flat-out makes things up. "It is inaccurate from page one, literally," he says. "I've gone through it page by page. The further I got into it, the more astounded I became." Sage has been facing an uphill battle in popular culture during the past few years, defending the FBI against allegations that it and other federal agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, acted improperly in the siege and possibly started the conflagration at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco that eventually killed 76 people, including children. The FBI has contended that the Davidians started the fire in a mass suicide. While Sage accuses the people behind the new "Waco" movie of having an agenda, he is also bound to his own agenda --- that of making sure people see it the FBI's way. "I am absolutely committed to making sure that the truth and facts are presented to the American public. There's been a very skillful manipulation of the facts for whatever reason that unfortunately has resulted in a handful of people rewriting history," he says, referring to such documentaries as "Waco: Rules of Engagement." Mike McNulty, the producer of "Rules of Engagement," is also a producer on the latest movie. And "Rules of Engagement" suggested federal culpability in the blaze. Sage is especially upset, he says, because he spoke extensively with the script's lead writer Rupert Wainwright while Wainwright was researching the material. About three years ago, Wainwright met Sage in Texas and interviewed him for several hours. They also had numerous phone conversations. "His questions were very professional and probing," recalls Sage, now retired from the FBI. " He had definitely done his homework. But I told him if his idea was to mislead or produce some kind of Oliver Stone version of events, I didn't want anything to do with it." Sage, of course, is a main character in the script, and indeed the movie opens with Sage having a phone conversation with Steve Schneider, the so-called deputy to Branch Davidian leader David Koresh. As written, Sage tells Schneider, "I need you to listen. Things are no longer in my hands. Do you understand?" This never happened, Sage says. Wainwright, who says he did years of exhaustive research, including interviews with surviving Branch Davidians, disputes Sage's take on the script, though he admits that Sage's character is a composite of many FBI negotiators. When it comes to stories based on history, Hollywood is known to distill and compress, elide and edit, even put its own spin on the facts. Broad strokes are used, actual events scrunched into a film's two-hour running time. Composite characters are a common device and chronology might be shuffled for dramatic effect. "He's reading the screenplay and there's a character named Byron Sage, and he thinks, 'Well, I didn't eat bacon and eggs on Tuesday. I had a bagel. This is wrong!' " Wainwright says. "I think it would be easier for him if the lead character didn't have his name. He wouldn't take every single individual detail quite so specifically." Other examples of inaccuracies, according to Sage, include placing prominent agents at the siege for the full 51 days when they were there for one or two days and showing agents firing "flash-bangs" into the compound, suggesting that the FBI started the deadly fire. Sage says that much of the script is accurate. But too much of it is "simply not true and blown totally out of proportion." Overall, he says, "it's absolute crap ." Wainwright responds: "I have utmost respect for Byron, but I'm afraid that he doesn't have the right to say that he's the only person in the world who knows what happened at any time." Sage contends that the new film makes him look good, even saintly, but he's more concerned that it paints the FBI as aggressors --- and possibly at fault in the fatal fire. "If people want to know what truly happened at Waco, they can talk to some old white-haired guy like myself and read the congressional record and review the Danforth Investigation and all the court accounts." Sage contacted Wainwright after he read the script. "I told him I was very upset with the inaccuracies and outright fabrications in the script, and if this was to move forward as the foundation of the movie, then I did not want my name associated with it in any way, shape or form." Commissioner Hudgins found himself defending his rejection based on the script's alleged falsehoods. Under a statute passed by the Legislature in 2007, also known as a content provision, projects that put Texas in a negative light can be denied incentives. The provision was introduced by state Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan and states that filmmakers taking incentives cannot show "Texas or Texans in a negative fashion." Ogden added the provision in 2007 after controversy erupted around the Texas-filmed 2006 sports drama "Glory Road," which tells the story of the 1966 Texas Western Miners and, according to school supporters, exaggerates racism at East Texas State University. Hudgins cites historical inaccuracies in that case as a precedent to his rejection of the "Waco" script.The provision, however, puts Texas in rare company. Only one other state, Utah, has a similar restriction on approving movies for incentives. And representatives of "Waco" production company Entertainment 7 and others have raised questions about whether Texas should put itself in the position of making judgments about scripts and their effect on perceptions. Entertainment 7 executives also challenge the notion that the new movie would reflect poorly on Texas. Sage, however, applauds Hudgins for taking a position when it might have been easier to grant permission to the project. "He had the professionalism and character and fortitude to make a very difficult decision, knowing full well that it was probably going to get them some very negative press," Sage says. "It's my absolute hope that the professional Rupert Wainwright whom I talked with will reconsider the inaccuracies of this script," Sage says. "As it's written now, I don't want to be associated with it in any fashion, because it is just flat wrong." 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