Stephen Gaghan, just before a ten-minute tangent

Far be it from me to call for a backlash, but somebody has got to let Syriana filmmaker Stephen Gaghan know he is overexposed. Maybe George Clooney can lead an intervention, or perhaps Steven Soderbergh knows a good doctor who can prescribe a dose of "shut the fuck up." Not that I do not love his movies, but waking up to Gaghan's chat with Lloyd Grove this morning provoked an eye-roll that I am still not done with:

Syriana writer-director Stephen Gaghan had an off-the-record lunch yesterday in Washington with White House officials who, he says, acknowledged that the U.S. occupation has gone from bad to worse.

"They think we're in a disastrous state of affairs in Iraq and that there was no plan for the aftermath," the 40-year-old Oscar-winner revealed to Lowdown. "They're the people who provide the talking points, and they said they were guilty of hubris at the highest level, that kind of stuff." ...

While the response to the movie from politicians has been mostly positive, Gaghan said: "Oddly, the people who have had trouble with it are journalists. They ask me, 'Isn't this going to go over the heads of America? Isn't this film too confusing? Don't you feel you had an agenda?' The criticism seems to come from people who have no knowledge of the world. I found myself starting to say to journalists, 'Tell me, do you know how Saudi Arabia became a country? No? How about Jordan? Who drew those boundaries?'"

I admit it: All the knowledge I have of the world is what I read in the film press, and of late, it seems as though Gaghan and Ang Lee are the only guys in it. The poor folks at Cinematical are still cleaning Gaghan's spleen off their office walls, and Movie City Indie has alerted us to Gaghan's new blog on The Huffington Post. Actual quote: "Corruption is the inducement of a government official to allocate state assets at a price below market value. ... You think you’re immune? Well, I suspect you just haven’t been induced yet, you haven’t met your devil with just the right, previously unimaginable, dollar figure."

No, we have not been introduced, and I do not know who drew those Middle Eastern national boundaries. But at what point will Gaghan quit with the didactics and just let Syriana speak for itself? He only spent four years working on it, and if he could make it clear enough for Roger Friedman to understand, then it should have no problem finding a conscientious audience. I mean, seriously--save some vitriol for your Oscar speech.

Tell you what, Gaghan. I will make you a deal: If Syriana does not overcome idiot journalists to do as well in wide release as it did in limited release, then I will take eight hours of dictation and transcribe it word for word on The Reeler. If it does do as well, then you have to direct the big-screen adaptation of CHiPs and give us all a break. Wilmer Valderrama already said he would gain 20 pounds for you.