All About Salt
In Columbia Pictures’ “Salt,” Angelina Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer who swore an oath to duty, honor, and country. When she is accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy, Salt goes on the run to clear her name and ultimately prove she is a patriot. Using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative, she must elude capture and protect her husband or the world’s most powerful forces will erase any trace of her existence.
The contemporary spy thriller Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, began life with an offhand comment Jolie made a few years ago. “I was meeting with (Sony Pictures Co-Chairman) Amy Pascal a few years ago when it came up in conversation that she was getting ready to make one of the new James Bond films,” Jolie remembers. “I playfully said, ‘I want to be Bond!’ That was our little joke, and then she found this project.”
Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer had originally conceived the role of Salt to be played by a male actor. His original spec script was developed with producer Sunil Perkash, who then brought it to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Amy Pascal at Sony, who in turn brought on director Phillip Noyce. Like all motion picture projects, the screenplay then went through several drafts, but the major change to the script occurred when the filmmakers envisioned Jolie, an Academy Award-winning actress and one of the few women in the world who can carry an action picture, in the title role. Very quickly, “Edwin Salt” became “Evelyn Salt.”
“We had a really smart script we all collectively loved with an intriguing and complex character, so the idea of Angelina doing this suddenly felt like a no brainer,” says Perkash. “She’s an incredible actress who would bring such depth and realism to a very enigmatic character. Having that realism in an otherwise fantastical story was very important, and we were beyond thrilled when she responded to the role.”
“When we changed the gender of the main character, we began to question the dynamic of every scene,” explains producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. “We didn’t simply question whether a woman would make all the same choices, but also how the other characters would act or react differently, given that it’s a woman. It was a huge change that rippled through the entire script.”
In the film, Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative, is accused of being a sleeper spy for Russia. With her entire world crashing down, Salt must stop at nothing to prove her innocence – but her efforts to evade capture only throw her motives in doubt.
di Bonaventura says that the notion of sleeper spies is not fantasy. “There’s no question that they exist,” he says. “The CIA believes that they exist. There’s something really mysterious and sexy about the notion that somebody could lie in wait – for decades, if necessary.”
“The real fun of this movie is that it’s an action thriller and a mystery centering around the identity of this character – ‘who is Salt?,’” says Perkash.
In the movie, Evelyn Salt must go on the run to prove her innocence when a defector alleges that she’s a mole, triggering Day X – the day when Russian sleeper spies awaken and begin the war against the United States. “Day X is still a controversial topic inside the CIA,” says Jolie. “Some think it’s absolute nonsense and others believe that not only is it real, but sleeper agents have already been activated for certain cases. When we first approached the idea, we thought it was a bit of a fantasy, but as we found out more information, we discovered it was more real than we could have guessed. Truth really is stranger than fiction.”
For example, it has been contended that Soviet Union, and then Russia, deployed covert agents masquerading as citizens in Western countries in the 1980s and 1990s as part of a network of intelligence operatives who would live under assumed names for fifteen to twenty years, or longer. When activated, these sleeper spies would then orchestrate “Day X,” a chain of sabotage and terrorist attacks within the United States, the beginning of a large-scale war with Russia.
About the Production
Principal photography began with early scenes of Salt’s escape from the Washington, DC CIA building where she works, after a Russian defector accuses her of being a sleeper spy. L’Enfant Plaza, Constitution Avenue, the Navy Memorial, and New York Avenue one block from the White House provided the locations for Salt’s initial escape. Director Noyce chose these exteriors, not the typical post-card views of Washington DC, because they reflected the more day-to-day environment of massive federal buildings inhabited by the typical bureaucrat.
Production Designer Scott Chambliss had extensive experience designing spy stories prior to signing on to Salt. “I’ve done a lot of material that involves spies in my career, and government buildings,” says Chambliss, who designed the hit TV series “Alias” for several years. “Because I have such a backlog of information on this type of material already, finding new stuff takes me further afield or deeper into different directions, and that can be exciting.”
After a week in Washington, the film company moved to New York, where much of the story is also set: after eluding the CIA, Evelyn Salt travels to Manhattan, where the Russian defector has claimed an assassination attempt would be made at a state funeral for the U.S. Vice President.
A designated New York City landmark, the Byzantine edifice of St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue provided the interiors and exteriors for the funeral scenes, a key sequence in the story of Salt. On several days, costume designer Sarah Edwards and her team dressed over seven hundred extras for the massive funeral procession made up of mourners, military honor guards, New York City Police officers, bagpipers, as well as secret security agents surrounding the U.S. President, and Russian security, there to protect the Russian President, who delivers a eulogy for the late Vice President.
The city of New York in particular offered the filmmakers a great variety of practical locations to film. “I take tremendous pleasure in finding locations that are suitable for the storytelling,” Chambliss says. “And that was one of the great things about this project: the variety was wonderful. New York is so rich in terms of what it offers filmmakers.”
Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays CIA counter-intelligence officer Peabody, also enjoyed his time in New York. “Who doesn’t love shooting movies in New York?” he exclaims. “I’m always excited when the script says, ‘Exterior New York, Day.’ That’s always a great opening for a movie for me,” he laughs.
The production would film in some iconic New York locations, including the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, the main branch of New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, and the 59th Street Bridge, but also locations ranging from the out-of-the-way (like Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and the Coler Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island) to the industrial (the DonJon Iron and Scrap yard on Staten Island and the Newtown Creek Water Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn) to the underground (inside the New York City subway system). “We’ve gotten to know the underbelly of the city a bit,” Jolie says.
Outside the city, the production also filmed in various locations in New York State, including the Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains, Republic Airport in Farmingdale, and Cantiague County Park in Hicksville.
One set was the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (called the PEOC or “the bunker”) where the U.S. President takes refuge when under attack. The real PEOC, originally built for Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II, lies underneath the East Wing of the White House, and exists to handle nuclear contingencies.
Salt (2010)
Directed by: Phillip Noyce
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, Daniel Pearce, Cassidy Hinkle, Olya Zueva, Olya Zueva, Cassidy Hinkle, Kevin O’Donnell, Gaius Charles
Screenplay by: Kurt Wimmer
Production Design by: Scott Chambliss
Cinematography by: Robert Elswit
Film Editing by: Stuart Baird, John Gilroy
Costume Design by: Sarah Edwards
Set Decoration by: Leslie E. Rollins
Art Direction by: Teresa Carriker-Thayer
Music by: James Newton Howard
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: July 23, 2010
