Biography
George Crile took a long time to finish the book. He attempted the original interviews of myself and everyone else back in the late ’80s early ’90s but didn’t finish the book until the early 2000s where it became a New York Times number one bestseller, and because of that, Tom Hanks’ production company, Playtone, purchased the movie rights to the film.
I am not in the film because I am not in the book. The reason I'm not in the book is because George Crile called me four times to interview me, and I hung up on him because he told me he had been a producer with 60 minutes. I had friends at 60 minutes, I called them to verify, but none had ever heard of George Crile. Well, it turned out he had been an outside line producer.
But during this time that he was interviewing everyone. The FBI was going around, asking a lot of questions and harassing people, pretending to be reporters and survey takers and a lot of things that they weren't. It was Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh and Republican payback against the Democrats whom Charlie Wilson was and their Congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra affair from one of the lead prosecutors was Jerry Springer of all things.
I was actually out for dinner with the national security advisor Robert McFarland's daughter the night he tried to commit suicide over Iran-Contra.
One Day,
Charles Fawcett and I were in the editing room and we read an article in the paper about Orson Welles condemning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he seemed to be looking for a project about the war to be involved in. So Charles Fawcett and I, after some jokes, decided to contact him about narrating our film. To our astonishment, he contacted us back and said to just send it to him and he would narrate it. Charles Fawcett and I could not believe it! Orson Welles narrated the film for free, unbelievable.
The film ‘Courage is Our Weapon’ won a number of awards and premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Reagan administration, including the head of the CIA, Casper Weinberger. Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the owner and producer of the James Bond series, stated that it was his inspiration for the James Bond movie 'The Living Daylights,’ dealing with Afghanistan. It was the first time for a lot of people including Charlie Wilson to see and get an understanding of what was going on with Pakistan and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
It was Charlie Fawcett’s cut down and unfinished version of the original film (Courage is Our Weapon) that Tom Hanks mentioned in the film, Charlie Wilson’s War, not Courage is Our Weapon.
