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Anke Domscheit Time Traveler

Just a bit of Joshing around.


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TINSELTOWN (Rixstep) — Not everyone was negative about The Fifth Estate in the beginning.

Then they saw the screenplay.


From a purely neutral perspective, it's a mess. Screenwriter Josh Singer, with credits from West Wing, has reportedly never before written a screenplay for an entire movie. And it shows.

Singer started with minimal research into a subject matter, then let fantasy get the better of him.

The hapless moviegoers might miss a lot of this: the scenes will be 'smashed' onto their retinas, leaving only cursory impressions of what is going on. But a read of the actual screenplay itself shows things in an entirely different light. (Check this timeline for reference.)

Perhaps it's best to introduce the main character in this saga without further ado.

Anke Domscheit Time Traveler

The truth be damned. Screenwriter Josh Singer first introduces Anke in Rüsselsheim, at the offices of EDS, back in 2008 when DDB was playing tricks with printers.

For those unfamiliar with this story: Anke Domscheit appears in DDB's book on the evening of Sunday 7 February 2010 at the Dada Falafel restaurant at Linienstraße 132 in Berlin where she meets DDB for the first time. She and a friend accidentally on purpose run into a ragged and perhaps unstylish Daniel Berg who's just returned from Iceland and plans to hole up on a sofa at the Chaos Computer Club around the corner at Marienstraße 11. Anke has as much to do with the WikiLeaks saga of 2010 as DDB - that's to say nothing at all.

The alert reader (especially one familiar with DDB's magnum opus) will wonder about the EDS location given in the screenplay. Rüsselsheim is gone. Now the offices are in Berlin instead. Perhaps this makes time travel easier? No matter - it's another slaughter of the truth. The EDS offices are in Rüsselsheim.

As the Supervisor stares down at the folders, Daniel grabs his bike, takes off... exiting the cubicle and crossing with ANKE DOMSCHEIT (CUTE, 20s). Daniel's clearly into her.

ANKE
Charlie in maintenance said you left this by the scanner.

She holds out a German edition of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (WIE DER GRINCH). Daniel takes the book.

DANIEL
Happy New Year.

Daniel SMILES, pops on his headphones and wheels off. Anke, not quite sure what to make of him, watches as he heads past SEVERAL CHURNING PRINTERS. Tinny electronica SWELLS and...

The book's German title, WIE DER GRINCH WEIHNACHTEN GESTOHLEN HAT, probably made Josh Singer's ears bleed.

Beauty's in the eyes of the beholder, but Anke was born in 1968. Which would mean this scene took place in 1997 at the latest. But this scene takes place in 2008 in Rüsselsheim Germany, at the offices of Anke's employer EDS where DDB also works. Except Anke never worked for EDS, may never have been to Rüsselsheim in her life, and she first meets our hero DDB two years later in Berlin, all according to the movie's technical consultant DDB.

Oh heck. Let's move on. There's a lot of miles to go and years to trip through.

Anke next catches DDB hiding in a storeroom with his computers, doing WikiLeaks stuff. The year is still 2008, not 2010 when they sort of accidentally on purpose meet in downtown Berlin.

ANKE
Daniel? What are you doing in here?

Daniel turns. Anke is in the door. Just then, one of his computers BEEPS. A chat pops up.

ANKE
(CONTINUED)
Daniel, what's going on?

Daniel looks from the computer to Anke, AWKWARD.

DANIEL
I'm doing some... sensitive research.

The laptop BEEPS again. Daniel, UNCOMFORTABLE, turns to it.

Anke is CURIOUS. Daniel TYPES, tries to block her view.

And then suddenly screenwriter Josh Singer pulls off something no writer's ever done before: he has us inside the WikiLeaks submission system. Yes inside it. People walking about inside it, pitching tents, opening picnic baskets, spreading out blankets, relaxing under a clear blue sky as the trains whistle by and the occasional jet liner flies high above...

ANKE
(O.C.) <-- OFF CAMERA
Is this some kind of geeky, hacker version of Dungeons and Dragons?

Sure it is, girl! Now we are 'smashed' back to the good old humid EDS storeroom where the two lovebirds are working on making their budding relationship more mature.

SMASH BACK TO THE EDS STORE ROOM

Daniel turns, sees Anke LOOKING OVER HIS SHOULDER. He quickly shuts his laptop. Then, TRYING TO IMPRESS -

DANIEL
We're investigating corruption in a large Swiss bank.

Anke BLINKS, intrigued... a political side to Daniel.

ANKE
Well, in that case, I can cover for you.

Off Daniel, a HINT OF A SMILE -

Anke makes up her mind that fast. And the heroic DDB regards the heroic Anke approvingly. This will be love that lasts.



And now we're back in the storeroom a bit later on.

INT. EDS, NINTH FLOOR STORE ROOM - BERLIN, GERMANY - DAY

Daniel back on his mop bucket, staring at two laptops on the shelf. On one, a THREATENING E-MAIL from Julius Baer lawyers.

ANKE
And I thought grinching the printers was impressive.

Daniel turns and finds Anke standing over him with a print out of the Julius Baer doc. She eyes his computer.

ANKE
(CONTINUED)
Their lawyers are threatening you?

DANIEL
Julian says you can spend your life in cushy cubicles or you can march. You can brave the truncheons and breathe the tear gas or -

ANKE
Take a girl to dinner?

An INVITATION. Daniel smiles.

Note that DDB's book puts the same storeroom on both the eighth and ninth floors. Note as well that the above effectively makes Anke complicit in (accessory to) DDB's act of vandalism against EDS.

But so begins their seamy relationship. A thought for the reader: Anke Domscheit has a son, name Jacob, born approximately 2000. Where's Jacob when Anke's with DDB in the storeroom? Berlin? Rüsselsheim?

Now Josh takes us quickly across time and space to Berlin two years later to show us what happens to the couple after they have dinner two years earlier in another city. Remember: this is the same story thread. And it's a real treat. So hold on.

INT. DANIEL'S APARTMENT - BERLIN, GERMANY - NIGHT

CLOSE on Anke, asleep, NAKED under a cheap coverlet. We hear TAPPING on a keyboard. Anke stirs, blinks up at the CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB POSTERS over the bed.

The sex part is important. Sex sells. It also tells us they've had ecological sex together and are now a COUPLE. After having just come home from dinner in 2008. To a flat which coincidentally doesn't exist. Oh what fun.

Anke smiles, turns to see... Daniel at a messy desk, tapping on his laptop and pulling on his jeans.

ANKE
Hey.

Daniel, distracted, TRIPS and FALLS. Anke LAUGHS.

ANKE
(CONTINUED)
Sorry, I've just never had a guy try to sneak out of his own apartment.

DANIEL
The bank got a judge in California to shut down our primary domain.

So even though the Bär case took place in 2008, and even though just a few seconds ago we were in RÜSSELSHEIM in a STOREROOM, and even though DDB does not have an APARTMENT in BERLIN, and even though ANKE never lived in RÜSSELSHEIM, suddenly we - and this is the same Bank Julius Bär case, remember - are in DDB's flat in BERLIN two years later still working on the same BANK JULIUS BÄR CASE? Who hired Josh Singer anyway?

He nods to his LAPTOP. A WEB BROWSER points to wikileaks.org but the site is down: THE REQUESTED PAGE IS UNAVAILABLE.

ANKE
A judge in California?

DANIEL
It's where our domain is registered.

ANKE
Right, but I thought Americans put free speech up there with mom and apple pie.

DANIEL
So did we. Julian wants to meet up right away.

Whoa. Wait! You're not in Rüsselsheim now? You're in Berlin? And you're going to meet up with Julian RIGHT AWAY? Where the fuck is Julian and how the fuck did he get to Berlin? Did Josh Singer just fly him in for the scene?

Daniel throws his laptop in his backpack then pauses.

DANIEL
(CONTINUED)
You know this isn't what I imagined for our first... get together.

Did that line of dialogue actually add anything?

ANKE
How often did you imagine it?

Ah she's so sexy, that Anke! But it's quantity and not quality for that girl. Doesn't matter what he imagined, only that he did it lots of times.

Daniel smiles, CAUGHT. He grabs his bag.

DANIEL
You don't have a Cryptophone do you?

To use for what?

ANKE
No, but that may be the best excuse I've ever heard for not calling.

What does Singer know about his own scene?

But no time to reflect on that - we gotta SMASH to the Berlin airport!

INT. BERLIN TEGEL AIRPORT - BERLIN, GERMANY - NIGHT

Julian glides down a people mover, TAPPING his phone. As he does, e-mail SCROLLS UP THE SCREEN:

Friends - Solzhenitsyn says no one can bar the road to truth. WikiLeaks.org has been forcibly shut down but you can still learn the truth about Julius Baer on our mirror sites. Send press to http://wikileaks.be, http://88.80.13.160 -

And Julian glides along. Glides. Time for another smash.

INT. STRASSENBANH [SIC] BERLIN TRAM - BERLIN, GERMANY - NIGHT

Daniel rides the tram talking on his Cryptophone.

But he doesn't have a Cryptophone!!1! He just told Anke he doesn't have one? Or did he? Or did he want to speak with her on her own Cryptophone? What is this story about anyway?

But the good news is Singer got Julian to Berlin and somehow got Anke and DDB to Berlin too, and quick as a jiff he found a flat for DDB and already before they moved in the same night he had big CCC posters above the bed where Anke and DDB were able to consummate their fiery relationship.

Or did we only imagine all that? For next thing you know, Anke and DDB are back in 2008 in RÜSSELSHEIM again!

INT. EDS (ELECTRONIC DATA SYSTEMS) - BERLIN, GERMANY - DAY

Daniel's cubicle. A mess as before. Exactly as before. Daniel's supervisor stands at the door. IRRITATED.

ANKE
(INTO THE PHONE)
I thought you were coming back today.

REVEAL Anke, on her phone, a few cubicles away. CONCERNED.

INTERCUT WITH:

EXT. ROOFTOP, HERTZ PARKING STRUCTURE - BERLIN - DAY

Daniel, on the phone, stands by a RENTAL MERCEDES STATION WAGON, filling out a form. Julian is in the car, door open.

DANIEL
(INTO THE PHONE)
Little detour. Why, do you miss me?

At EDS, Anke eyes Daniel's Supervisor, who walks towards her.

ANKE
No, but our friend Andreas seems to.

DANIEL
Andreas is a wanker.

ANKE
... and my sister was looking forward to meeting you.

DANIEL
Shit. I forgot.

ANKE
She'll understand, she's an understanding person. Fortunately for you, so am I. But Andreas...

DANIEL
Tell him I'm still sick.

ANKE
(for Andreas' benefit)
Pneumonia? Is it serious?

DANIEL
Very. See if your sister's free for dinner on Friday.

ANKE
By Friday, I'll want you to myself.

Daniel smiles, hangs up and hands the form to a RENTAL AGENT.

RENTAL AGENT
Where'd you say you were going?

JULIAN
We didn't.

No Julian didn't say where they were going (or what they had in the automobile) but we who've read DDB's book know, don't we? They're off to spread servers about Germany and Switzerland! And who would have known? DDB actually had a conversation with a broody Anke on his way out of town! That comes as such a surprise as DDB nowhere mentions this in his book, and he couldn't possibly either, as he'd not yet met the wench! What's going on? Josh Singer's smoking Mexican banana peels again?

No time to fret over that: we're back to the storeroom again. Who knows what year Singer thinks it is, but we know it has to be 2008. At least for a while. Dear readers: hold on, for the GREAT SEX SCENE is coming up - as soon as we finish things up in the storeroom and get back to Berlin again.

INT. EDS, NINTH FLOOR STORE ROOM - BERLIN, GERMANY - DAY

Daniel, headphones on, plugged in, hunched over a laptop... eyeing a list, members of the BRITISH NATIONALIST PARTY.

REVEAL DANIEL'S SUPERVISOR in the door, peering past Daniel at the WIKILEAKS ICON on his screen. PISSED. Daniel turns, HOLDS his gaze then TURNS BACK TO HIS LAPTOP.

INT. EDS, NINTH FLOOR - DANIEL'S CUBICLE - BERLIN - DAY

CLOSE ON Daniel, who finishes what he was doing then closes his laptop. As he tosses it in his backpack we PULL OUT and see HIS DESK IS EMPTY, his things packed up in a few BOXES.

Anke walks in, grabs a box. Daniel grabs the other, exits past his supervisor, who shakes his head.

ANKE
(O.C.)
Daniel?

Daniel keeps reading. We see the paper over his shoulder: BNP MEMBERSHIP LIST NAMES POLICE OFFICERS AND OFFICIALS.

ANKE
(O.C.)
(CONTINUED)
Daniel.

Now Daniel hears her. He rubs his eyes and we're in -

Ah! So that's how it's done! And it's not Singer doing it - it's DDB! By rubbing his eyes!

INT. DANIEL'S APARTMENT - BERLIN, GERMANY - NIGHT

Same computer, now in Daniel's bedroom. A WIKILEAKS WAR ZONE. Documents, newspapers, bottles everywhere. Daniel surveys the carnage then stands, carrying THE GUARDIAN into -

THE LIVING ROOM. A table set for a ROMANTIC DINNER, a VOTIVE burning low, Anke passing time on a laptop with OPEN DATA STICKERS (EFF, FSF, CC). Daniel walks in, kisses her cheek.

ANKE
You're alive.

Be careful what you wish for, time traveler. Yes, he's alive. He's jumping back and forth between 2008 and 2010, between Rüsselsheim and Berlin, he must look really ragged. Time travel does that to people. Grueling.

DANIEL
And starving.

Time travel does that too. Nothing like jumping a few years to and fro to work up an appetite. Ask George Carlin.

He hands Anke the paper then picks up a knife, starts to carve the roast on the table. He serves Anke...

DANIEL
(CONTINUED)
The British press is going nuts over the National Party member list.

Anke looks less than enthusiastic, but Daniel doesn't notice. He makes himself a plate and sits.

DANIEL
(CONTINUED)
People are donating money. Not a lot, but some. And we keep getting more leaks. Toxic dumping in Ivory Coast, corruption in Kosovo...

Daniel takes a bite, pauses, trying not to make a face.

ANKE
What? You don't like it?

That explains it a bit. Obviously Anke must have left the storeroom before DDB, so she could scoot to 2010 and Berlin to get dinner ready. But how come no mention that she's not looking worse for wear?

DANIEL
No, it's delicious. Just a little cold.

ANKE
Yes, it's been sitting there for an hour.

DANIEL
(ah)
Sorry. I didn't hear you.
(then)
You could have gotten me. Anke?

How could she do that? She's in 2010, numbnuts! And in Berlin! You were back in 2008 in Rüsselsheim! How was she supposed to get you? Josh Singer may be able to pull it off, but she can't!

ANKE
It's just the addresses I don't get.

DANIEL
...sorry?

ANKE
The National Party members. I mean, those people should be exposed, but you published their personal information. Phone numbers, home addresses...

DANIEL
They were in the document.

ANKE
Yes, but why not cut them out? Those people have families, children... Someone could get hurt.

DANIEL
Editing reflects bias. Our sources, people on the site, they trust us cause we don't screw with the docs. As Julian says, a free people must have knowledge.

ANKE
Or as Orwell says, Big Brother is watching.

DANIEL
(beat)
Is this cause I stayed in on Friday?

ANKE
I couldn't care less about Friday, I had a perfectly good time with Nik and Claudia, despite the fact that Nik tried to get me to go home with him again.
(off Daniel's look)
Don't look so concerned, he bores the shit out of me.

DANIEL
Maybe that's what you want.

ANKE
(don't do that)
I'm the one who told you to quit your job. And I'm glad you did. I'm just saying that if you're gonna nail yourself to a cross you should probably know what it's made of.

Ah so Anke, who was never with DDB at EDS and didn't meet him until over a year after he quit EDS, is the one who advised him to quit his job?

Anke raises an eyebrow. Daniel looks down, notes his own disheveled appearance.

That must be rough on a guy who prides himself on his designer clothes.

DANIEL
(CONTINUED)
But I guess I could use a shower. Care to join me?

Daniel smiles, suggestive. Anke softens.

So DDB didn't shower before dinner? Gross! And hey - did they finish dinner already? What was it? Roast and what? Any drinks? Desserts? Cheeses? What year is this anyway? You keeping track, Josh?

ANKE
Do you even remember the last time we had sex?

Ask Josh, Anke. He's in charge. Maybe he knows. Just don't get your hopes up.

DANIEL
I'm sure I'll remember the next time.

He kisses her. A hint of Julian.

A hint of Julian? A hint of Julian? A HINT OF JULIAN? Someone find Singer's shrink and break into the office.

ANKE
So goddamn clever.

DANIEL
It's a little clever.

Yeah not so clever really: it's ripping off Maverick and Charley.

He moves in, PULLS A STRING at her back. Her dress SLIPS to the floor. She smiles, despite herself.

Oh DDB you DAWG! But she only smiled despite herself. So time for another SMASH.

SMASH TO -

THE FLOOR. A CHAIR FALLS as Daniel pulls Anke down.

No flight in space and time here, just another camera angle for macho D HOT ECOLOGICAL SEX.

ANKE
Cold floor.

DANIEL
We can go into the -

ANKE
No. I like it.

Germans like cold sex.

Sexy. Things start to get even sexier when... Anke FREEZES.

From the floor? No. We're about to get a visitor, folks, and Josh Singer's about to drop him in. From Australia. From 2008. Punch and Judy got nothing on DreamWorks.

ANKE
(CONTINUED)
Did you hear that?

Daniel looks at her confused when... THUMP. Daniel FREEZES.

ANKE
(CONTINUED)
Was that the door?

THUMP THUMP. Shit. WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?

ANKE
(CONTINUED)
You weren't expecting anyone?

Get real, people! This is a Josh Singer screenplay! So you gotta be ready to expect ANYONE at ANY TIME! Coming in from ANYWHERE from ANY YEAR! It's called 'drama'.

Daniel TOTALLY FREAKED, reaches up, KILLS THE LIGHTS.

ANKE
Neo-nazis wouldn't knock, right?

Anke, NERVOUS, grabs her dress as Daniel picks up a heavy WIRE CUTTER. SHAKING, he peers past the Tibetan flag he uses as a blind... and then RELAXES.

DANIEL
Jesus.

OK, skipping from 2008 to 2010 and back again is one thing, but Josh, now you're trying a two thousand year leap?

Anke confused, watches him open the door... JULIAN blows in.

DANIEL
(CONTINUED)
Weren't you in Australia?

Ask Josh, DDB! Seriously: how did the director and editor deal with this mess?

JULIAN
I thought it best not to telegraph my movements. By the way, you should take your name off the door.

And now we're in Anke's flat in Berlin. What happened to DDB's? Oh yeah right. IT NEVER EXISTED. Odds are also good this is 2010 and not 2008 too. Don't forget: Anke traveled back in time from 2010 to 2008 to get a position at EDS so she could tell DDB to quit his job. Author!



But they're making up, folks! Last we saw them (censored from this piece) Anke was storming out of DDB's flat (which doesn't exist) because she was HALF NAKED when Josh Singer dropped Julian in from nowhere. Now they're making up. In the same flat except it's not the same flat. Continuity.

INT. ANKE'S APARTMENT, FOYER - BERLIN, GERMANY - NIGHT

The foyer of a familiar apartment, small but WARM. We HEAR A WOMAN on the phone in another room. Just as we start to recognize her voice, there's a KNOCK at the door.

Familiar to whom?

Anke walks in cradling the phone. She looks at her watch, surprised - it's late, she clearly wasn't expecting anyone.

At the door, she peers into the peephole. Then REACTS. And opens the door. Daniel stands with his bags. EXHAUSTED.

Where's he coming from?

DANIEL
Hey.

He stands there, PRAYING she'll let him in. A beat, then Anke reaches out, PUTS A HAND ON HIS CHEEK.

We CUT TO -

INT. ANKE'S APARTMENT, BEDROOM - BERLIN, GERMANY - NIGHT

CLOSE ON a finger tracing a HUGE WIKILEAKS TATTOO.

ANKE
Never thought I'd fall for a rock star.

No worries, girl, you didn't. But anyway: we know this is after Iceland. At least in February 2010. Are we going to revert to accurate history now, or can we expect further time travel surprises?

REVEAL Anke and Daniel, naked. Anke runs her finger over the WIKILEAKS TATTOO that SPANS DANIEL'S BACK. Daniel smiles.

Clearly this movie is all about SEX. And an ecologically sexy couple.

ANKE
He's an asshole, Daniel. He's a manipulative asshole.

DANIEL
He must be. Why else would I have given up everything I cared about.

WUT! The logic of DDB to the fore. Or is it Josh Singer? Or someone who told Singer to put that in there?

But wait - this is February 2010, right? Or shortly thereafter? DDB didn't 'quit' WikiLeaks until September, several months later. And actually, as told by his own book, it was more that he was too embarrassed after being caught out twice in acts of sabotage that he realised he'd never be accepted again.

ANKE
I've got a new job, too.

Things move right along. Whatever: Anke first worked at McKinsey, where she's known to have had CIA contacts, although it's not known for certain if she collaborated. She then took a post at good old Microsoft.

ANKE
Yes, but we try to work with governments instead of terrorizing them.

Ouch.

The 'ouch' is a screen direction by Singer, not a part of the dialogue. No one cares about Anke's new job. Singer seems to have an agenda, as he just made up an entire scene and an entire conversation out of thin air to make that point. Ouch indeed.

ANKE
(CONTINUED)
I did see your talk, though.
(off Daniel's surprise)
I spent the past year thinking about you, I wanted to know if it had been worth it.

Anke hasn't seen DDB in a year? Where's she been? Pandora? So let's try to piece this together.

  • DDB's at EDS in 2007 when he first hears about WikiLeaks, but according to his Wired interview, a full year after he cofounds the organisation.
  • Anke's also at EDS in 2007, presumably with her 7yo Jacob in tow somehow, or at the latest in 2008 when Jacob is 8, and she's continually flirting with DDB in the storeroom, where DDB has his ARMADA of LAPTOPS so he can follow events Julian creates.
  • When the two of them want to have sex (preferably cold and evidently not often) they scoot from the year 2008 in Rüsselsheim to the year 2010 in Berlin where DDB has a flat he never had.
  • But duty can call at EDS, so they have to scoot back to 2008 and more or less pretend they hardly know each other.

These aren't mere time jumps, dear folks. These are jumps in one and the same story thread each time. Was Sorkin unavailable? Or perhaps too expensive? How many serious writing students won't claim they can do heaps better?

Time to give credit where it isn't due.

ANKE
(CONTINUED)
What you've done, it's staggering. Julian didn't create that alone. The two of you, you're a team. Sure, he's the mad prophet, there's one at the heart of every revolution. But that's why most of them end badly.
(and then)
He needs boundaries, Daniel. He needs a line. You're the line.

There you have it. The mad prophet Julian had a bit of an idea but it's really the Leberkäse Kid doing it all. Mostly from the EDS storeroom. And Julian really needs DDB. Perhaps Julian wants to know how DDB and Anke can travel through time.

DANIEL
You know, I had this fantasy about driving into the Alps and spending a month naked in front of a fire...

ANKE
Close your eyes, I'll turn up the heater.

As she moves to kiss him, we PRELAP -

Wikipedia: Prelap is a screenwriting term that means the dialogue from the incoming scene precedes the cut, and you hear the beginning of the dialogue in the outgoing scene.

And as far as dialogue goes, that should be enough for anyone.

No Joshing Around

THE FIFTH ESTATE: The official trailer opens with four people watching the Collateral Murder video: Julian Assange, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, and Daniel Berg (DDB) are three. Marcus, perhaps the mythical architect, is the fourth. There's only one problem.

DDB wasn't there - he said so in his own book.

The first viewings took place on Iceland. DDB was already back in Germany by then, meeting his future 'wife and equal' purely by coincidence on his first night back, at a fast food restaurant but a stone's throw from the Chaos Computer Club he decided would once again be his home.

Oops. And DDB was himself a consultant on the movie? And he's known to be a pathological liar. So didn't anyone check his fables? Didn't anyone check Josh Singer's screenplay?

The scene supposedly takes place at the Fosshotel outside Reykjavík, but that's where the IMMI research group stayed earlier in the year until DDB freaked and flew back to Berlin. Anakata and Kristinn joined the others in a downtown flat once DDB was gone, and that's where they worked on the Collateral Murder video. Not at the Fosshotel out in the sticks.

The movie trailer might not seem that harmful. And it sure seems dramatic. But hold on. This is a movie about living persons. Most movies end with a disclaimer about similarities to persons living or dead being coincidental. And major movies based on living persons, like Wikipedia with its special tags, must of needs be careful.

But similarities aren't coincidental here.

Aaron Sorkin talked about the care needed to complete the screenplay for The Social Network. And how hordes of legal eagles scrutinised his screenplay, lest the movie company be sued out of existence by the billionaire Zuckerberg.

No such worries evidently for Spielberg with a nonprofit WikiLeaks. It takes a lot of money to blast libel away in the courts in the US. It'd be a thrill to see a fund set up to take Spielberg's DreamWorks to court over this one. For this screenplay isn't even close to the truth. You don't have to be a supporter of WikiLeaks or Julian Assange to see it. All you have to do is read DDB's ludicrous book and see that Josh Singer couldn't even follow that waste of space.

And then you remember that Spielberg hired on DDB as a consultant. And that's when vertigo starts to set in.

Anke Domscheit met DDB for the first time in late winter 2010 at Dada Falafel in Berlin. That's known because it's in DDB's book. Yet here we have Anke pulling DDB into the storeroom at EDS in Rüsselheim where they both worked. She wasn't there.

The story of WikiLeaks and the story of Julian Assange and the story of 2010 are all interesting enough so they don't have to be warped to captivate the audience. Those stories are very captivating, and we should know, all of us around the world, as we were there. The film Underground got criticised on a single point. One factual error. Christine Assange pointed it out. Otherwise it was meticulous in sticking to facts. And it played well and it was very dramatic.

The type of wanton writing used in The Fifth Estate isn't even mature writing. Ironically it's that same word - 'mature' - that's used by the filmmakers to describe their screenplay. Degrees of 'maturity' indeed.

Spielberg wanted an entertainment movie, knew that no one would sue him for libel because it costs too much, and let loose a rather inexperienced (dare one say cheap) screenwriter on the project, someone who ostensibly hasn't even learned to read.

That's pretty good. Compared to this abortion, Alex Gibney comes off as an Aaron Sorkin. And everyone knows what a difference there is between those two.



This is what probably happened: DreamWorks bought DDB's book right when it came out. But in the weeks after the book's release, critics worldwide crushed it. So Spielberg and his mates reckoned they had to rewrite the story again. And bring in Josh Singer to invent Anke Domscheit Time Traveler.

See Also
OpenLeaks @ CCC 2011 (MP4)
Nothing is Permanent: Open Letter
Industry Watch: Schmitt Leaves WikiLeaks?
Industry Watch: The WikiLeaks Palace Revolt
Industry Watch: OpenLeaks: Schmitt on Toast
Industry Watch: OpenLeaks Off to a Flying Fail
Global Voices: Renata Avila Contributor Profile
Industry Watch: OpenLeaks: Schmitt on Toast II
Topsy: The Life and Times of the Leberkäse Kid
Industry Watch: Schmitt Suspended from WikiLeaks
Developers Workshop: The Jabberwocky of DeeDeeBee
Zeit Online: Chaos Computer Club misstraut OpenLeaks
Hanno's Blog: OpenLeaks doing strange things with SSL
The Technological: Daniel Domscheit-Berg: The Reviews
The Technological: The Life and Times of the Leberkäse Kid
Red Hat Diaries: Unrequited Love, Uncomfortable Coincidences
Spiegel Online: WikiLeaks-Aussteiger haben Datenschatz entführt
TwitLonger: Statement by Julian Assange on the Domscheit-Bergs
Spiegel Online: Chaos Computer Club wirft OpenLeaks-Gründer raus
Industry Watch: Statement by Julian Assange on the Domscheit-Bergs
TwitLonger: WikiLeaks Statement on Daniel Domscheit-Berg and OpenLeaks
Spiegel Online: Chaos Computer Club: Hacker distanzieren sich von OpenLeaks
Spiegel Online: 'I Doubt Domscheit-Berg's Integrity': Top Hacker Slams OL Founder

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