![]() I’ve worked with Tina for a while, to my great benefit. How did the WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT project come to you? ![]() That was a good first lesson in the industry: It doesn’t matter how you have it lined up. Three months later, I was – we were – out of a job. Dana, Robert Smigel, Louis, Heather Morgan, Bill Cotton. Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert were down the hall. I shared an office with John Glaser and Charlie Kaufman. I think they had some money lying around over there, so I went to New York. I had a sketch packet that had somehow found its way to him and he liked one of my sketches. ![]() I got my start thanks to Louis C.K., who was the head writer of the kind-of mythical THE DANA CARVEY SHOW. How did you get your first break as a writer? The WGAE spoke with Robert about writing his first adapted screenplay, his writing process and how working on a feature film differs from working on a television series. Robert’s script brings light to the passion and sacrifice made by journalists and soldiers and how they use humor to make sense of it all. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is worth a watch, but it could have been more of a contender.A dapting the true story of a war reporter in Afghanistan may seem like a left field project for Robert Carlock, who is best known for his work on FRIENDS, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, 30 ROCK and UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT, but WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT (Paramount Pictures) is as fearless and captivating as anything he’s ever written.īased on journalist Kim Barker’s memoirs, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT is an examination of what it’s like to be a war correspondent covering an ongoing conflict that America has tuned out. Fey is winning, displaying a burgeoning ability to balance both pathos and comedy, but treading that line isn't always successful, and the movie's humor chips away at some of the potency of the more serious moments. But Whiskey tries too hard to do so, giving it a more-dangerous-and-with-bigger-stakes Eat Pray Love vibe that it doesn't deserve. The yearning to keep things light when making a movie about a subject so dark is understandable. ![]() No doubt that's likely accurate, but there's an inordinate focus on that stuff (even though the film takes great pains to impart the fact that such extracurriculars don't really work that well, or for long) when larger questions loom: How do journalists' expectations and approach to their work shift when they witness the day-to-day existence of the citizens in the country they cover? How do they maintain ties back home? Can they?Īlso problematic, though not enough for it to entirely detract from the film's strengths, is the tone. Though it does show the characters slowly normalizing what's a decidedly not-normal existence, it would seem - at least based on what we see here - that the usual way anyone copes in such circumstances is through drinking, drugs, and casual sex. But here's where the film taps out: capturing what happens when they're settled in, so to speak. It doesn't just reveal the highs - the journalistic scoops, the adrenaline-spiking wins - it also frankly deals with the some of the lows, primarily the chaos and dislocation that both soldiers and the media encounter when dropped into embattled countries like Afghanistan. It's by no means perfect, but in some ways, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot goes further than other films in communicating what the war correspondent experience really is like. ![]()
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