Written and directed by Billy Ray and based on former FBI Agent Eric O'Neill's personal experiences, Breach provides a behind-the-scenes look at the last stage of the investigation into one of the worst spies in American history - FBI Agent Robert Hanssen.
Going Straight to the Source: Ryan Phillippe plays Eric O'Neill in the film and had the advantage of being able to speak with the real O’Neill about the actual events, something that’s definitely not afforded to every actor portraying a real person on screen. O’Neill’s involvement was an invaluable resource for Phillippe. “It was less about what I learned from him and more what happened to my idea of how to play the part, once I got to know Eric,” Phillippe explained. “His personality, man; he’s a great guy. He’s got this indomitable spirit, this confidence that let me know how he could get through a situation like this. I wanted some of that life in the guy.
To me, one of the funniest things, once I’d met Eric and I’d hear him tell stories about Hanssen, he’d talk about how much Hanssen annoyed him. That’s something so funny to me. The idea about he’s not only the Boss from Hell and one of the worst spies in U.S. history, but the guy would get on your nerves, and [Eric] would get on Hanssen’s nerves. I like the idea of like the married couple in the car on a long road trip, bickering. To find those sort of human, idiosyncratic aspects of what is an enormous story, was what was really appealing to me.”
Walking a Fine Line in Telling the True Story: Plenty of things were still classified when writer/director Billy Ray started fashioning the Breach script and O’Neill had to be careful about what he revealed. “The way I approached that was I worked very closely with Billy on the screenplay,” said O’Neill. “He would ask me stuff. Moreso with Billy, I think, than Ryan with his character. Ryan - like he said - he never approached it like a mimic. That would have rang very false to me, too, because I wouldn’t have wanted him to do that. He more approached it like, ‘Who’s Eric and what kind of person is he?’ And then he went with it.
But with the classified information, I couldn’t tell them a lot of stuff. What I’d do is once Billy started talking to the FBI I said, ‘Okay, go talk to the FBI and then call me,’ and I’d debrief him. ‘Okay, tell me everything they said and walked you through. You missed something. There’s something you’re missing. What was it?’ ‘Oh, there was a camera in the room.’ ‘Good. I can talk about it now,’ because Billy put it all in the public. Once it’s in the public, I’m allowed to talk about it. It’s no longer classified. The FBI de-classified things for the movie.”
Taking a Few Liberties with the Story: There are scenes in Breach that are almost word for word how things went down. Billy Ray even demanded they film the scene in which Hanssen’s arrested at the exact spot it occurred. But there are a couple of things that had to be embellished upon or invented in order to move the story forward without having Ryan Phillippe as O’Neill actually explain to the audience what was going through his mind at the time. O’Neill’s perfectly fine with how Billy Ray crafted the film.
“The way that I went into this, when you find out the Hollywood is going to make a movie about you - because I don’t think this happens to a lot of people - you have to really think hard and conceptualize how you’re going to deal with it,” said O’Neill. “For some reason I always get the question, ‘Did you ever fun on set and say ‘cut, cut, cut! You’re doing it wrong?’ Like I’m some kind of tyrant…”
Phillippe interjected, “That’s so weird. I don’t know how we would have reacted to that.” “Yeah, you would have thrown me off set. ‘We’ll have you back for the premiere. It was great seeing you, bye,’” joked O’Neill. “I had to come to sort of an intellectual decision about how I was going to approach the fact that they are making a movie about my life. And that was to step back and say, ‘This is going to be an incredible process and it will be a lot of fun. We’ll just see what happens and not worry about that.’
That scene in the woods never happened and it’s always tough when I get the question, ‘What about that scene? Did that happen?’ ‘No.’ But there were tensions like that, and so many of the tensions I went through while I was in that case and while I was in my personal life with that case, and the battles I was having with my wife… It’s hard to portray in a movie like that. It’s very personal and you don’t need to have Ryan being Eric narrating to the audience, ‘Oh, by the way, this is really hard to show.’ That gun scene is an explosive element that certainly could have happened but didn’t.”
Phillippe added, “Your aim with any movie is to tell a great story. You have a finite amount of time to do it. This case was years and years of manpower and work behind it, and then you have two hours to tell the story so you do have to take some kind of license. The core of it and the core moments throughout the movie are pretty accurate. But, it’s a movie.”
One scene that didn’t need any help in being as dramatic as possible or in keeping the audience in suspense was the pivotal scene involving Hanssen’s Palm Pilot. O’Neill says that scene is play-by-play the way it really happened. “I watch that scene and I see Ryan sitting at the desk at the end, dealing with it, and sitting at the desk with Hanssen going in and checking and it brings me right back there. I remember sitting at that desk and thinking to myself, ‘He’s run into his office. He’s slammed the door. I can hear his bag unzipping and I know he’s looking for that Palm Pilot.’ He made the pivotal mistake of not having it in his pocket for once in that whole case. We were trying to get that damn thing the whole time. And I know that, if it’s wrong, I had to make a decision: get up and leave and blow the case or sit there and take what’s coming to me, because I made a stupid mistake. I just had to figure maybe I had like a ten percent chance of getting it right, but it’s my fault. If I’m right and I’m still here, we win. But if I’m wrong and I’m still here, he’ll probably shoot me.”
