>> rose: welcome to the broadcast. tonight a conversation about a thriller senate 2003 baghdad. it is called "green zone" >> we've got to go get our prisoner back. >> bethel will handle it. >> he can't see past the file on his desk. i'm going to use the book and trade up and get some help. >> what are you talking about? >> gerry, why the [no audio] do we keep coming up empty? there has to be a reason. >> chief, we're here to do a job and get home safe. the reasons don't matter. >> they matter to me. paul had what i thought was the grt of casting every other person in uniform in this film just got back from iraq or afghanistan so it's an entire group of non-actors, real soldiers which was a whole other experience because you know it's humbling on one hand to sit and talk to these guys and hear their stories but on the other hand as an actor, selfishly speaking it's the greatest thing you could ask for to be absorbed by a group of 30 or so guys who are what you are saying you are. you can ask any actor from sean penn to chuck norris, it doesn't matter. every actor will tell you it's the best thing... if you go on a set there's a technical advisor, you'll see the actors crowded around that person henpecking them with question. >> rose: looking for awe then thys any >> looking for authenticity. >> we have this character of miller that he would go on this journey that we've all taken from kind of believing to finding there's none there and onwards. the problem is where is he going go to? it's a great premise for a thriller. one man against the system, one man searching for the truth, all those good fictional things and then i read rajiv's book "imperial life" and that gave me the sort of idea... >> rose: because it told you the facts on the ground. >> it wasn't so much that. it was more... i just remember reading the first five pages and it was as incredibly vivid brilliant description of the world of the green zone. ♪ if you've had a coke in the last 20 years, ( screams ) you've had a hand in giving college scholarships... and support to thousands of our nation's... most promising students. ♪ ( coca-cola 5-note mnemonic ) captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: matt damon and paul greengrass are here. rebecca winters keegan of "time" magazine has said about them paul and mat are joining the ranks of marty and leo, pedro and penelope, quentin and uma. modern pairs of actors and directors who find they speak a common language and choose to do it again and again on scen. damon and greengrass first teamed up for "the bourne supremacy" and then again in the next film in the series "the bourne ultimatum." now they have come together again to make a thriller senate 2003 baghdad. it is called "green zone" and here is the trailer. >> who are you? >> general, my name is roy miller, i'm a chief warrant officer with the u.s. army. >> why are you here, miller? >> i came here to bring you in. >> what do you think you're doing here, miller? you're off reservation for a reason. what is it? >> i came here to find weapons and save lives. >> it's a little more complicated than that. >> well, not to me it isn't. >> laurie jane, "wall street journal." does it make any sense still coming up'm any >> no. i read your articles you said a source nam mad jell lynn met with you prior to war? >> i'm not discussing sources. >> who is magellan? >> the best source we've ever had. >> have you ever been to magellan's sites? >> no. there >> there's nothing there. >> we're here to do a job, reasons don't matter. >> they matter to me. people are diagnose out there, i want to know why. >> you've got to find magellan. you said up whatever you set up on your end, i'm bringing them in. i know what you did. >> as long as he's out there, he's a threat. >> we have a plan. >> eat yay? >> 12 minutes, sir. >> take him out. >> i've got him. >> this is a kill-- no capture-- mission. >> you have no idea who you're dealing with here. >> get with the program or get out of my way. >> you're my prisoner, i'm bringing you in. >> "green zone." >> rose: i'm pleased to have matt dimon and paul greengrass at this table. how did it happen? >> we wanted to do a film together and i was talking with helgeland whog did the screenplay. it seemed like the hunt for weapons of mass destruction was the great place to s a thriller because theyed that intrigue and the conspiracy and the faked intelligence and the high stakes and that gave us the character of cef miller that matt plays. because i wanted somebody at the heart of the film who would be easy to relate to and really would take us on a journey and in a way i wanted it to be my journey because, i mean, matt and i have talked about this many times. i'm one of the countless numbers of people who kind of went along with this thing. you know? i remember very clearly being in my office when prime minister blair made his famous speech in the house of commons when he said "we have the intelligence" and he said "it's detailed, authoritative and beyond question." or words to that effect. and i remember having an argument with somebody in my office who was going on the march the next day, you know, the march against the war. and i said "well, i can't go because in the end what's the point of having leaders if you don't listen to what they say?" and then, of course, it was amazing to me when they didn't find anything. i assumed that they wou dig them up and he didn't. >> rose: >> there was something strange to me about how... just how hyper everybody seemed all of a sudden and how importanit was and how suddenly go, go! and any time somebody is... you're standing on a ledge and somebody's going "jump, jump, jump!" i always go wait, hold on, what's going on. >> rose: (laughs) >> how is it that we haven't heard about any of this and now suddenly the next warning is it could be in the form of a mushroom cloud. like, really? that seems a little much. i didn't... but, look, everybody will say the weapons are there, the weapons are there. guys like scott ritter were saying they weren't but i couldn't have told you they weren't going to find weapons there. i didn't know. and the character that i was playing in this is based on a real guy who told me he went absolutely racing the other team leaders to... you know, they wanted to be the first guy to hold it up on cnn you know? hold up the evidence. >> rose: there it is. >> they absolutely thought they were there. >> rose: and is the thought now based on what programs we do here at the table that saddam... because it's always a question i ask, you know. why did he knowing or fearing an invasion go along with that line when he knew he didn't have it? people say he feared... >> he had to look strong. >> rose: that's what the generals say. >> you can't be weak and say "hey, guys i'm weak, everybody." >> rose: so he had to pretend he had them. >> if people think you've got them, you don't get invaded. that's unfortunate. >> rose: and the point is worth making that a lot of people thought he did. other governments, it wasn't just the u.s. and britain but bill clinton and lots of other people said they thought... >> i think everybody assumed he had them. but you know there was that one... they did... c.i.a. did this thing where they contacted 30 family members of scientists and they taught them some trade craft and these people took incredible risks, these expats who were iraqi, they went back in, they made contact with their relatives who were working on these programs and they all came back with the same story. 30 different people independent of one another came back with the same story "there's nothing there." and yet what it did was convinced people even more, well, there's got to be something there because that's clearly a cover story. >> rose: and then saddam's son-in-law came out and said "we don't have it." remember that? he didn't come out until later. >> i think the interesting thing from my point of view was that it's not really in a sense about whether you're for or against it. >> rose: or t war or... >> the war. the problem, i think, for me is that something about that event strained all the bonds and sinews that connect us all together. it think it happened... >> rose: what was it? >> well, for me it's to do with the fact that they said they had the intelligence and then it emerged later that they did not. >> rose: but it also emerged based on the movie they did did not know better. in other words, your storyline that has them knowing better and still going with the idea. >> i think that the problem was that this was the pretext. they had... i think there's quite abundant evidence now that they decided what they were going to do at quite an early stage but the problem was how to sell it. and in order to sell it, they needed the intelligence. that was the thing, the w.m.d. case. and i think... i'm sure they believed that they would get that intelligence and i'm sure that they believed that that sblel swrens would be well founded but i think when you'r getting close to that thing you can see now the degree of pan that i can sets in as they realize they don't have it. and that's when all the fabrication starts. >> rose: and this takes place at a time of chaos in baghdad. you had conversations with matt about it. there was a gene play out there? >> brian and i were working on it and we had this character of millner our heads that he would go on this journey that we've all taken from keen of believing to finding that there's none there and then onwards. the problem was where was he going to go to? it's a great premise for a thriller, one man against the system, one man searching for the truth, all those sort of good fictional things. then i read rajiv's book "imperial life." >> rose: because it told yo the facts on ground as he'd written themn a non-fiction book? >> it wasn't so much that. i just remember reading the first five pages and it was this incredibly vivid brilliant description of the world of the green zone and this little oasis in the middle of baghdad with saddam's palaces and the provisional coalition authority ensconced there and all the sort of little pocket of america in war-torn baghdad and everything that followed from there and you uld see the disconnect. and as soon as i read it, the palm trees, the swimming pools, the faction fighting, the intrigue, you just knew that miller was going go there for his answers. >> rose: we know that there was a report of real lif.. a reporter who wrote things that turned out not to be true about weapons of mass destruction and had sources. we know that there was a man named chalabi who went to iraq, hadn't been outside the country for a number of years living in london and who had the support of the department but not the c.i.a. we know a lot of stuff about that which you have built in here which makes it fascinating to explore this idea of how do things go wrong when one country has so much power-- the united states. >> yup. >> rose: and you weave them together. >> i'm always interested in that place where fact and fiction meet. going way, way back... >> rose: take a certain number of facts and then engage a narrative? >> well, there's a sort of... because the truth is today's facts are tomorrow's fiction and vicer have, is a aren't they? there are facts, of course, but somewhere by finding that boundary there's a wonderful area there where things start to happen and you can weave stories that work, that tell you about what the underlying dynamics are. >> rose: you were on it from the beginning >> well, when he found rajiv's book... we talked about it. we shot "the bourne supremacy" the second bourne film at the end 2003, beginning of 2004 so all this stuff was happening. so everybody was talking about it. it's what you talked about when you weren't at work. it's what you talked about when you were at work. we were in a war. and still are. so i knew paul was interested in that. when we went to support the bourne supremacy we were in france and we had lunch and paul said he was interested in doing something with iraq and then something with 9/11 and it was that lunch that he pitched me his treatment of united 93 and, you know, which was fantastic and that's what he went and did. then we did the bourne you want may tum and it was during this movie that he handed me rajiv's book and ied that same reaction. >> rose: we have a theme here which we can engage. >> a terrific canvass, too. you can put... i mean, this is an unbelievable world to set a movie in. >> it's a wonderfu group of actors. >> i was very, very lucky. >> rose: you got who you wanted? >> yeah. it was all the thing in the story of trying to get matt's character miller to go on a journey, a journey of ecation. and i wanted to chart the steps in a way that i'd been on and i think most people have been on from going in, finding nothing, asking, hang on a second, what's going on? and then slowly but surely you put the pieces together. so then you have to sort of... that kind of gives you your characters. well, he's got to be exposed to that great faction fight between c.i.a. on the one hand and the pentagon on the other, you know, that really drove that world. and then he's got to be... he's got to meet a journalist because that was such an important part of it. he's got to meet a young iraqi guy and then onwards looking for the general. and so it was a question of finding the right kinds of actors who'd si and make a real complex film. >> rose: so you've got a director you like, you've got a script you like, you've got it based on the book that you like and you've got text that you like. so do you go beyond that? >> one of our producers who used to be at "60 minutes," michael broner... >> rose: i know him well. >> so broner has been in iraq and he had a bunch of contacts and he compiled a huge... i mean hundreds of pages of notes based on interviews and those were incredibly helpful. just this kind of research. and then beyond that, besides monty gonzalez, the guy who was the chief warrant officer who did lead team alpha in looking for these weapons, paul had what i thought was the great idea of casting besides nicoye banks and myself every other person in uniform in this film just got back from iraq or afghanistan. so it is an entire group of non-actors, real soldiers which was a whole other experience because it's humbling on one hand to sit and talk to these guys and hear their stories but on the other hand it's just... as an actor, selfishly speaking it's the greatest thing you could possibly ask for to be absorbed by a group of 30 or so guys who are what you are staying you are. i mean, you can ask any actors from shawn penn to chuck norris, you know, or... it doesn't matter, you know, every actor will tell you it's the best thing you can... if you go on a set, there's a technical advisor. you eel see the actors crowded around that person henpecking them with questions. >> rose: looking for authenticity. >> looking for authenticity, yeah. >> rose: take a look. this is a scene in which you see the question raised about how good is the intelligence we have in searching for weapons of mass destruction. here it is. >> i had a couple questions about the intel for tomorrow. are we sure this is accurate? >> it's solid. it's good to go. >> what's the source? >> well, it's a human source intel. but it's solid. it's current. as of 0400. >> rose: >> was it the same source we've been using on every site we've hit on the way up here we rolled a doughnut >> chief, how about we do this. let's talk offline, give me a list of the places where you went and we'll make sure you had the right information written down and tha you went to the right places, okay? >> the issue isn't the grid, sir, the issue there's nothing there. >> stand down, chief, we need to move on here. >> hold on. hold it a second. let's hear what the chief has to say. >> okay, sir, i'll give you an example. we rolled into a site last week, 101st took casualties securing it for us. we not go there and found it was a toilet factory. i'm saying there's a disconnect between what's in these pacts and what we're seeing on the ground. there's a problem with the intelligence, sir. >> >> you know, paul rieckhoff there, he's ahead of the iraq and afghanistan... >> rose: been at this table, too. >> so we went through that organization to get all the vets. and there's a couple other actors, michael o'kneel in that scene. there were a couple other act norse there but paul likes to blend all of us together. >> rose: so what did you learn from these guys? >> wl, everything. i mean every detail. just from my end of it, you know subjectively everything i have to do from how you give orders, you know, when you walk... okay, if i'm walkling into this room and i'm tasked to do such and such, how do i do that? how would i go about doing that? and you've got 30 people around you telling you you do this first, you this. and procedurally all the things you have to the. how you stand, how you... i mean it... innumerable ways. too many to count. >> rose: could you have shot this in baghdad if you wanted to? >> sadly not. >> rose: because of the risk... >> yeah. we'd never get insurance. so we had to go to morocco. but, you know, we found all the locations and one of the things i'm very proud of i think in this film that is baghdad, right down to the ruined republican palace and the pool and, you know, the whole kind of look of it and feel of it. >> rose: you came out of journalism and a documentary filmmaker and had a kind of cinema verite kind of style which you see here. what's the secret to making a kind of action drama that you make? >> i think if you'd taken a poll of britain's 100 directors five or six years ago, i think i'd having 98 on the list of who would come over here and make commercial films. >> rose: that changed after "bourne"? >> yeah. i think it was something maybe about where sin that ma is that there's a sort of first for the real and i think that's somewhere in it, you know? and i think something may be about my sensibility colliding with big action movies made it feel fresh. >> rose: but does that make some people say "he knows how to create action and he's better at that than working with actors"? >> you get a lot of actors to disagree that. >> rose: (laughs) >> i'd hope not. i never know. >> rose: so what do you mean by that? how does he work with actors? >> what he does, which is incredible is... i'll give you an example. there were scenes where, you know,... the scene where we hit the house and there's the high-value target down stairs and it's a tense sequence which ends with the interrogation of the guy who owns the house and it's really chaotic and i call freddie in for the translator and i'm trying to get this guy to listen to me and they're speaking arabic and it's just a very tense scene and most of the people except for said and myself are all soldiers, not actors. and what paul did, and he did this on "united 93" as well. there's no marks. if you miss it by an inch you won't get your light coming this way. and all those technical considers are just gone so you don't have to think about that at all. you're not really sure what the camera's shooting necessarily. but you're dealing with... and like a good... like a standard scene will be written, it will be two pages long. that's about what they'd like in hollywood, about two pages, two minutes, no re. >> rose: (laughs) >> paul would take these two-minute scenes that he and brian had written and would extend them for 30 minutes. and he would say, okay, we know what these pieces are in here that brian's laid out for us. in that scene, for instance, we needed to establish the book, we needed the jack of clubs, we needed to establish that that went out the back door and at the end of the