Life Inside the Witness Protection Program

It’s the third take of a crucial scene in “Witness Protection,” a new HBO film to be shownSaturday, and actor Tom Sizemore is breathing hard, hopping from foot to foot, shiny drops of sweat collecting on his face. “We can make this more intense,” he says. “We can jack up the intensity here.”

In the scene, Sizemore plays a Boston loan shark who has ratted out his Mafia bosses and enrolled his family in the federal witness protection program. On the fourth day of their confinement in a concrete bunker where participants are processed, the hard reality of the program suddenly hits the teenage son, played by Shawn Hatosy. Parting with friends, family, pets and all the possessions that don’t fit in seven suitcases, the family looks forward to a low-profile life in Nowhere, U.S.A.

“I wish they’d killed you,” screams Hatosy, prompting his father to take a shallow breath, pivot around and attack his son. The scene calls for furious shouting and shoving, but it’s apparently playing a little too timid; as a stagehand stands close by with a battery-powered fan, Sizemore, Hatosy and director Richard Pearce huddle up to block out an improvement on the scripted fight.

When the cameras roll again, Sizemore lunges for Hatosy’s waist, heaves him over his shoulder and slams him to the floor. A hand-held camera captures the impact, then jerks up to focus on the 6-year-old girl playing Sizemore’s daughter, who bursts into tears.

It’s just another day of spontaneous sobbing and explosive family drama on the set of “Witness Protection,” an ambitious film that offers a glimpse inside the Witness Security Safe Site and Protection Center, the top-secret facility where federal marshals evaluate and educate families whose identities are systematically erased, courtesy of the U.S. government.

The project, as has become HBO’s habit, has attracted talent known more for work on the big screen--Sizemore is coming off his role in “Saving Private Ryan,” while Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who plays Sizemore’s wife, has appeared in “The Abyss” and “Class Action,” and Forest Whitaker returns to acting after directing “Hope Floats” and “Waiting to Exhale.” Producer Howard Meltzer says it’s the kind of tough, topical drama that has made HBO a showcase for feature-quality television.

“There have been films before about people going into the program, and there have been films about people coming out,” Meltzer says. “But the public has never been told what it’s like inside. They think it’s cake. But most of these guys are being plucked out of an urban area and spit out somewhere in Montana to work at a Jiffy Lube for minimum wage. It ain’t easy.”

Magazine Article Catches Hollywood’s Attention

The idea was sparked by a 1995 New York Times Magazine story by Robert Sabbag, the only reporter ever to gain access to the high-security facility. Detailing his visit to the secret government compound in the back of an armored van with blacked-out windows, the story immediately caught the attention of Hollywood.

“I realized that this was going to be a movie when 11 producers called me the day after it was published,” Sabbag says.

The rights ultimately sold to Meltzer and HBO-NYC Productions, which set about adapting Sabbag’s overview into a fictionalized drama. Scripted with the taut dynamics of a classic “Playhouse 90,” the film follows the family of mob operative Bobby Batton from their home in suburban Boston into the program, concluding with the family on their way out to a new life.

The actual orientation provided a wealth of dramatic possibilities, says screenwriter Dan Therriault. “The agents teach people how to lie, how to divert attention away from themselves, how to sound convincing about something they know very little about,” he says. “What’s going to give these guys away is not how they look--it’s how they behave.”

The family also undergoes a battery of exams during the standard five-day program--medical, dental, psychological and vocational, all designed to ease their resettlement. In a procedure aimed at removing any casual feelings about the secrecy they must keep, the family inspects gory crime scene photographs taken of the 30 people who have been killed after leaving the program. The last step, and frequently the hardest for participants, is a renaming, officially severing all connection to their previous lives.

“I was really interested in the deeper questions that naturally came up,” Therriault says. “What happens when a person is forced to change? Once you change your name, does your identity change with it? Once all these things are stripped away--your home, friends, mother and father--what’s left?”

The story gave actor Sizemore an opportunity to take a character apart, layer by layer. “This place is an emotional carwash,” Sizemore says. “Everything this guy knows about himself gets reexamined. The attitude is gone, the Armani suits are gone. He doesn’t know who he is anymore.”

The film also draws on the tension experienced by U.S. marshals, career cops who find themselves lending emotional support to characters they have been trained to chase down and lock up. Whitaker, who plays the agent assigned to Batton’s family, says the part has made for a natural return to the front of the camera.

“Acting doesn’t seem so complicated right now,” Whitaker explains. “Most of the time I get real nervous and ask myself tons of questions and build challenges from my own angst. But right now it’s such a natural process that I find myself falling right into it.”

The Facility’s Like a Space Station

Central to the story is the facility itself, a claustrophobic complex of corridors, exam rooms and living quarters somewhere in the Washington, D.C., area. The compound was carefully re-created on a soundstage at Raleigh Studios just across from the Paramount Pictures backlot, with effects ranging from a network of closed-circuit cameras and surveillance equipment to cement slab walls painted a disconcerting shade of orange.

“It’s not like a military base, it’s not like a hospital, it’s not like a jail,” Sabbag says. “It’s almost like a space station in a science-fiction movie--there’s absolutely no frame of reference. They don’t want you to have any sense of where you are or how to get from one place to another.”

While the high-intensity dramatics played out on the set may seem overblown, those close to the federal program say the tone is mild compared with the emotional pyrotechnics that routinely break out inside. Donald Bud McPherson, a retired U.S. marshal who was hired as a consultant, says the facility acts as a kind of pressure cooker, forcing families to make a clean break from former lives and come to grips with modest new ones.

“Consider any problem a dysfunctional family might have, then magnify it by the pressures of being cooped up together in the program,” says McPherson, a former Brooklyn cop whose career with the U.S. marshals brought him into contact with such key witnesses as Watergate lawyer John Dean and mob boss Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno.

More than 8,000 families have sought protection from the government, McPherson says, with more than 25,000 people currently living under assigned identities. Relocated families receive a stipend ranging between $1,000 and $2,000 a month and the full-time assistance of federal agents. There are few innocent bystanders--a full 98% of protected witnesses have criminal backgrounds.

While there are valid reasons to question the value of a $50-million program that provides money, housing and security to disloyal criminals, the program has proven more successful than prisons or parole officers in one key area: rehabilitation. Less than one in five has ever been convicted of another crime, McPherson says.

Still, the transition can be tough. “A lot of these are guys whose world travels are limited to Jersey--most have no concept of what goes on anywhere else in the country,” McPherson says. “Maybe they’ve sold drugs all their life, maybe they’ve killed a few guys. Now you tell them they’ve got to go to work, but with their skills they’re probably looking at a job pumping gas or flipping burgers. It’s amazing how many expect to start work at Burger King and make $100 [grand], maybe $200 grand a year.”

In the process, the culturally mythic figure of the mobster is transformed into an ordinary citizen. “I call it the sudden realization that selling cocaine pays more than working at IHOP,” Sabbag says.

By staying close to available facts, the producers hope the film accurately captures the experience of both mobsters and marshals. “In the past, the only time you ever heard about the program was when there was a screw-up or some mobster was complaining about their stipend,” Sabbag says. “I think everyone involved is looking at this film as an opportunity to get some more even-handed coverage. This is going to pretty much show people what it’s like--there’s no reason to exaggerate at all.”