Intrigue at the United Nations

Director Sydney Pollack isn’t pointing fingers. But when he agreed to direct the “The Interpreter” -- a politically charged thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn -- he said he was led to believe that the project already had permission to shoot inside one of New York City’s famed sights, the United Nations.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to do it if I didn’t believe that,” Pollack said. “I think everybody just took it for granted we had the U.N. We went to look at the building, and I thought I was scouting the U.N. Then I was told we had to make a formal request. ‘What do you mean, formal request?’ ”

After numerous official rebuffs, permission was granted only after the Academy Award-winning director of “Out of Africa,” which also won the Oscar for best picture, took it upon himself to appeal to the U.N. secretary-general.

“It took about a month to find someone who could get me a meeting with Kofi Annan,” Pollack said. “You don’t just look him up in the Yellow Pages.”

Once a meeting was arranged, though, “I felt on the spot because I didn’t want to lie to him, ‘Boy, have I got a deal for you,’ ” Pollack said. “I wanted to be as honest as I could and say, ‘Look, this is an expensive Hollywood movie, a thriller with movie stars, and I’m going to stretch the truth a little. I don’t think there’s anything that will be embarrassing to you, and I think it’s better for you as well as me that it be as authentic as possible.’ ”

Obviously, Pollack’s years in Hollywood have made him a persuasive pitchman.

“The Interpreter,” which opens Friday in Los Angeles, is the first feature film ever shot within the United Nations building. Despite all the problems of logistics and continuity that arose from shooting at the U.N., Pollack said, he couldn’t imagine the film without it. As shot by acclaimed cinematographer Darius Khondji, the building itself nearly becomes a character in the film. Shooting took place over 17 weekends, under the scrutiny of U.N. officials and on condition that permission -- including permission to use any footage shot -- could be rescinded at any time.

Walking through the corridors of Pollack’s offices in Beverly Hills, one passes posters for films that have come to define their times, from the late-’60s confusion of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” and the paranoid ‘70s of “Three Days of the Condor” to the off-kilter ‘80s in “Tootsie” and the go-go ‘90s in “The Firm.” Pollack himself has won two Academy Awards (one as producer of “Out of Africa,” one as director of that film), and his films have garnered dozens of other nominations in a slew of categories. He has been near the top of the Hollywood food chain for decades.

After greeting a visitor with his exceedingly firm handshake, Pollack, 70, takes a seat in front of his desk, which spills over with books, scripts and assorted papers, before launching into an explanation of how he became involved with “The Interpreter” project, navigating it from Charles Randolph’s original script through numerous other writers and revisions.

The final screenplay -- credited to Randolph, Scott Frank and Steve Zaillian -- is about two attractive people (Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn) brought together by a series of events beyond their control. They find themselves caught up in a dangerous game of cat and mouse against a backdrop of international intrigue, current events and New York City.

It’s a description that also easily fits Pollack’s 1975 film “Three Days of the Condor,” a thriller about a CIA agent who learns he is a hunted man, starring Faye Dunaway and Robert Redford. It’s also a comparison that the director is quick to shake off.

“Getting into the U.N. to play with this plot, everybody kept mentioning ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ and it was driving me crazy,” Pollack said. “ ‘Three Days of the Condor’ is ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ and I was trying to make another movie.”

That said, Pollack conceded that there are some similarities between the two films, such as having Kidman in “The Interpreter” and Redford in “Condor” get to work by riding motor scooters through the bustling traffic of New York City, a coincidence that he said did not initially occur to him.

One connection, however, was decidedly on purpose.

At key moments in both films, someone offers a variation on the line, “You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth.” Penn says it to Kidman in “The Interpreter,” and during a recent screening of “Condor” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, there was a spontaneous outburst of applause after Redford delivers it to Cliff Robertson.

The line’s lineage goes back even further, said Pollack. “This is the fourth time I’ve used that line. It was in my first film, ‘The Slender Thread.’ In my second film, ‘This Property Is Condemned,’ Redford said the line, then Redford said it again in ‘Condor,’ and now Sean in ‘The Interpreter.’ ”

Scott Frank remembers when the line was added when he was working on the script with Pollack and Pollack’s frequently uncredited collaborator, David Rayfiel.

“I asked him, are you sure you want to use that same line? And he thought it would be so perfect. It’s such a great line, and because ‘Three Days of the Condor’ wasn’t released yesterday, you don’t mind it,” Frank said. “I do love that line.”

Among Frank’s previous work is an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel “Out of Sight,” which famously features a reference to the love affair in “Three Days of the Condor” and the seeming speed with which the two main characters, thrown together by extreme circumstance, become romantic.

It is of interest to note, therefore, that there is no significant romantic relationship between Penn and Kidman in “The Interpreter.”

“I worry about” -- and for an extended moment, Pollack’s animated, gesturing patter paused for the only time in an hour of conversation -- “credibility, I guess. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that audiences buy other parts of the story, so I don’t worry much about the two of them not getting together.”

“There was a period of time where we were trying to get them together,” recalled Frank. “There was always a stronger argument to have sexual tension, but given the circumstances, it would not become an actual love story.”

Pollack said descriptions of “The Interpreter” as a “politically charged thriller” make him keenly aware of the challenges in balancing both sides of that description.

“The U.N. has its problems, but the idea of the U.N., the reason it was formed and the idealistic aspirations of it are worth trying to preserve. I do believe that. But I also don’t believe I have the right to be given this much money to use as a political platform. It’s not fair, but not only that, it’s boring. I don’t think it’s good entertainment, and I don’t think it’s good art.

“The truth is, I’m paid to be entertaining. I know that I’m just trying to squeeze the other stuff into the space I have to work with. There are some little holes I can fill for myself.

“When ‘Condor’ came out, I didn’t want people to focus on it as a critique of the CIA. I don’t want people to think ‘The Interpreter’ is a message movie for the U.N.