"It all grew out of what I read and experienced," Gaghan says. "When I met Bob, he would tell me these stories about the interconnections, how business gets done, and I figured about half of them were true and the other half were embellished. After all, this guy has serious skills in disinformation. One day, he says, 'Look, I'm going to this party in France, you might find it interesting, you want to tag along?' "

Clooney confirms that there was another plot line that was filmed and cut from "Syriana"; in fact, he says, there were two.

"But the movie was confusing enough as it was, and we didn't want people to just throw up their hands," he says.

"What we always wanted to make was a movie that made people think all the way through: How is this connected to that? What interest does he have in this? Where does all this fit in? We're so used to having all the dots connected for us that movies don't stimulate us. I like having my brain tickled. I like movies where the lines between the good guys and the bad guys are hard to discern. And I like movies that tell me things I didn't know — or maybe I didn't even want to know."