Bridge of Spies: Spielberg and the Coen Brothers Punch Up History

[Drew Phipps]

IRL didn't Dulles still spend a lot of time at Langley, or at the Farm, even after he was "fired"?

[Jim DiEugenio]

It was at the Farm. Or he would have meetings at his house in Georgetown.

But this meeting in the film takes place at CIA headquarters.

The idea that Kennedy would let Dulles brief Donovan and meet with him at CIA HQ on something that was really Kennedy's pet project does not fly.

That's great Phil, about the china being wrong, but they missed that having Dulles there was wrong.

[Jim DiEugenio]

The Washington Post let Talbot talk about this:

http://www.wacotrib.com/opinion/columns/...bf0d0.html


BTW, that scene with Donovan's daughter being shot at in he reliving room watching TV was so phony that I literally saw the assistant director, standing in front of Hanks telling him when he should go ahead and enter the scene on camera.

There are legitimate uses of dramatic license. But making stuff up out of whole cloth is not one of them.

[Martin White]

The thing that hit me most when I watched this film was the contrast between Hanks' character pulling out all the stops to make sure that Abel got a fair trial, to Hanks' pushing his film based on Bugliosi's book. I wonder if it ever crossed Good Ole Tom's mind that there was once a time in the USA where even an accused Russian spy could get a fair trial, but a US citizen couldn't even be represented fairly after his death?

[Jim DiEugenio]

Isn't that rich in irony?

And I will wager Tom is not even aware of it.