The first thing writer-director Rod Lurie wants you to know about his new film "Nothing but the Truth" is that it wasn't inspired by Judith Miller.
In fact, he's tired of denying that it has to do with the former New York Times reporter based in Washington, D.C., who was jailed for contempt of court in July 2005 for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent. (Miller hadn't written an article revealing Plame but was supposedly in possession of relevant information regarding the leak.)
Why the comparisons?
Because Lurie's estimated $11.5-million indie movie -- which opens Friday at the Crest in Westwood for an awards-qualifying run and is being distributed by Yari Film Group -- revolves around a Washington, D.C., investigative reporter (Kate Beckinsale) who goes to jail for refusing to give up her source for her story exposing the name of a covert CIA agent.
The stories may be cut from the same cloth, but Lurie insists Miller didn't influence his creation.
"Kate Beckinsale's character is absolutely not Judith Miller," says Lurie in his cozy office in a venerable building on Hollywood Boulevard. (Beckinsale, though, did have lunch with Miller and shadowed reporters at the L.A. Times.)
"I will tell you what person actually inspired her behavior -- Susan McDougal."
McDougal served time in prison as a result of the Whitewater controversy, when she refused to answer three questions for a grand jury about whether President Bill Clinton had lied during his testimony in the Whitewater trial.
"Susan McDougal really stood her ground in a way I thought was extremely heroic," Lurie says. "It is as if Susan McDougal was in Judith Miller's shoes. I was intrigued by a CIA agent [character], but I didn't know a thing about Valerie Plame. I haven't read her book. All I know about her is that she's an attractive woman."
Truth be told, says Lurie -- a former reporter himself -- he had long wanted to do a story about a journalist going to jail over 1st Amendment rights, adding that he had written an episode on that very subject for his 2005-06 ABC series "Commander in Chief," starring Geena Davis as America's first female president.
"It was a show about a journalist who writes a book about Geena Davis' character and goes to jail because he won't reveal his source," Lurie says. The twist was the president didn't want any journalist serving jail time during her term, so she was going to pardon the writer.
