{"id":23386,"date":"2016-03-24T16:20:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T23:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/?p=23386"},"modified":"2016-04-27T15:09:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T22:09:24","slug":"interview-with-kim-barker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/2016\/03\/interview-with-kim-barker\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Kim Barker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview <\/p>\n

with Kim Barker
\nauthor of The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan<\/em> (2011)
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Kim
Kim Barker
Photo: Charles Munitz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The war-reporter whose funny and moving memoir about Afghanistan and Pakistan inspired the recent film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot<\/em> starring Tina Fey.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

With a wink, Kim Barker, author of the memoir \u201cThe Taliban Shuffle\u201d \u2014 inspiration for the new Tina Fey film \u201cWhiskey Tango Foxtrot\u201d \u2014 says of the film: \u201cI had nothing to do with it.\u201d This signals Barker\u2019s capacity for delivering a one-liner which states a fact while also raising a smile. As her memoir consistently exhibits, she can be dryly funny while also as seriously probing and truthful as her subject, the war in Afghanistan, warrants.<\/p>\n

Based on her five years as a war reporter in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2004-2009), her memoir is written, as she recounted in an interview in Boston on a recent visit, in a way that would draw in readers with its light touch but teach them something significant along the way.<\/p>\n

Michiko Kakutani wrote that Barker depicted herself \u201cas a kind of Tina Fey character\u201d in her 2011 review of the book in The New York Times. Fey got wind of the review and a couple of weeks after it appeared, according to Barker, Fey had plans well underway with Paramount Pictures and producer Lorne Michaels to do a film based upon it.<\/p>\n

After seeing funny trailers, but before actually seeing the film, Barker wondered whether screenwriter Robert Carlock and directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, all well known for their accomplishments with film and television humor, were going to carry that tone through the entire film. In the end she thinks \u201cthey managed a balance between the humor, the sadness and the dark parts really well,\u201d and Barker was very happy with the result.<\/p>\n

Both the memoir itself and Fey\u2019s adaptation are at once potently comedic and deadly serious, the story of a bold journalist making her way in a war zone.<\/p>\n

Barker says very few women were assigned to cover the war at its outset by The Chicago Tribune, where she was working at the time. Assigned to stories about \u201cgas prices in Chicago\u201d in the wake of 9\/11, she was determined to go where the action was, and she wound up doing what she describes as the \u201cTaliban shuffle\u201d between Pakistan and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Barker covered the war with help from a devoted Afghan translator named Farouq. Early on, serious stories were in high demand. Later, she covered less personally satisfying stories like the delivery of pizza to the Illinois National Guard in Afghanistan on Super Bowl Sunday.<\/p>\n

In the film, Fey plays a character named Kim Baker, largely based on Barker. While Barker is a print journalist, Fey\u2019s character is a photojournalist. Additionally, the film focuses dramatically on what comes between Fey\u2019s character and a photographer named Iain, played by Martin Freeman. Though drawn somewhat from Barker\u2019s account of her \u201cgood friend\u201d Sean, what happens in the film diverges quite significantly from what happens in the memoir.<\/p>\n

Carlock changed the central character\u2019s name from Barker to Baker to acknowledge some departure from the reporter\u2019s original account. That small gesture, Barker observes, in her dry and delightfully offhand manner, \u201cis so confusing, and made the biggest typo of my name enshrined forever.\u201d But, as she says, she\u2019s not complaining, thankful that the filmmakers have generally been kind to her.<\/p>\n

Another departure concerns the relationship between Ali Massoud Sadiq (the Afghani attorney general, played by Alfred Molina) and Fey\u2019s character. In her memoir, Barker identifies a flirtatious approach from a former prime minister of Pakistan, but that involvement did not have the dramatic implications of the one in the film. Still, Fey\u2019s onscreen response is \u201cpretty badass,\u201d Barker says. \u201cI\u2019ll take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barker\u2019s centrally important professional relationship with translator Farouq is represented by one between Fey\u2019s character and her translator, Fahim, portrayed by Christopher Abbott. Abbott \u201cdid such a good job,\u201d Barker says, that she finds herself tearing up at certain points when watching it.<\/p>\n

In the film, Fahim is portrayed as quite serious, with a just hint of dry humor. In fact, \u201cAfghans are cut-ups,\u201d she says, describing how Farouq and his buddies would sit up until three or four in the morning telling jokes.<\/p>\n

Tracing Barker\u2019s (and Baker\u2019s) long tour of journalistic duty in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both memoir and film note the difference between a new reporter\u2019s aggressiveness in finding the best story and the more sober reflections by the seasoned reporter on the cost of getting that edge.<\/p>\n

At the end of her time there in 2009, Barker says she was \u201cwatching all of these young reporters and photographers \u2014 a lot like me five years earlier \u2014 asking, \u2018Did you get the flames? Did you get the car on fire? Did you get the body? Did you get the blood?\u2019 and I was like, did I sound like that? I mean, I get it! When you\u2019re a photographer and shooting, you have to get that stuff. But I thought, we can be such a callous profession. While, at the same time, putting myself fully in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to its slightly veiled reference in militarese to \u201cWhat The F\u2014-,\u201d \u201cWhiskey Tango Foxtrot\u201d reflects the wildness of the driven younger journalist and the charged setting in which she operates. It combines wry irreverence and stark honesty in one fell swoop, as Kim Barker does so convincingly in the memoir that inspired it.<\/p>\n

– Originally appeared as War Correspondent Tells The True Story Behind \u2018Whiskey Tango Foxtrot\u2019<\/a> by Charles Munitz (aka BADMan) on the ARTery at wbur.org, March 17, 2016.<\/p>\n

(Review of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot<\/em> here<\/a>.)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interview
\nwith Kim Barker
\nauthor of The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan<\/em> (2011)
\n<\/strong>
\nThe war-reporter whose funny and moving memoir about Afghanistan and Pakistan inspired the recent film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot<\/em> starring Tina Fey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23386","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-interviews","7":"category-movies","8":"entry","9":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23386"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23398,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23386\/revisions\/23398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}