{"id":6712,"date":"2015-05-22T06:48:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T12:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=6712"},"modified":"2015-05-22T15:19:55","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T21:19:55","slug":"billings-natives-taliban-book-to-be-basis-of-tina-fey-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/05\/billings-natives-taliban-book-to-be-basis-of-tina-fey-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"Billings native’s ‘Taliban’ book to be basis of Tina Fey movie"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nahida\"<\/a>

Kuninori Takahashi<\/p>

Kim Barker with 9-year-old Nahida, a 9-year-old beggar she met on the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2005.<\/p><\/div>\n

Billings native Kim Barker learned to fish and backpack in Montana, but she learned to sing karaoke, interview warlords, shoot Kalashnikovs and jump-start a car using a metal ladder in Afghanistan and Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Barker describes her antics, trials and triumphs working as a foreign correspondent in her 2011 memoir, \u201cThe Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n

In what may be the first-ever comedy based on a real-life Montanan, superstar\u00a0comedian Tina Fey will portray Barker in the upcoming film adaptation of the memoir, currently titled \u201cFun House,\u201d slated for release in 2016.<\/p>\n

Barker speculates that Fey took an interest in the book after the New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani described Barker \u201cas a sort of Tina Fey character.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking at Fey\u2019s body of work and style of comedy, Kakutani spoke truth. Or, at least\u00a0half-truth. The book is part confessional dark comedy, part current affairs primer, a combination that is solidly in Fey\u2019s wheelhouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cPakistanis and Afghanis have a dark sense of humor,\u201d Barker said. \u201cSame thing with ER doctors\u2014that\u2019s how you survive through tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barker started covering the Near East for the Chicago Tribune following the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003, when fighting the Taliban and rebuilding Afghanistan took a back seat to finding and killing Saddam Hussein. She writes that \u201ceveryone complained about how Afghanistan was a \u2018forgotten war.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Barker remembers how truly inexperienced she was when she agreed to her first assignment to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m grateful that the Chicago Tribune took a chance on someone so green,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Before that, Barker had little international travel experience under her belt. She spoke only English and didn\u2019t know much about Islam.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Yet, Afghanistan gave her the improbable feeling of home. She writes: \u201cAfghanistan seemed familiar. It had jagged blue-and-purple mountains, big skies, and bearded men in pickup trucks stocked with guns and hate for the government. It was like\u00a0Montana\u2014just on different drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

These were strange days, indeed. \u201cThe Taliban Shuffle\u201d recounts Barker\u2019s firsthand curiosity and the sense of paradox, hyperbole, violence and humor that characterized this region at the time.<\/p>\n

Hilarity is juxtaposed with tragedy. Drinking and debauchery abut conservative Muslim culture. Key international players enter the story offhandedly like party entrants.<\/p>\n

Barker\u2019s personal life intertwines with her professional life, to mixed results. Never shying away from disclosing uncharitable details about herself, Barker comes off as an honest, if unorthodox, tour guide.<\/p>\n

Much of this tour deals with subterranean expat culture. Barker went to a place much different from what is portrayed in recent literature and film about Afghanistan. She describes her first foray into a newfound social scene like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the morning, I awoke with a hangover fueled by cheap wine and guilt, mixed with a feeling of possibility. My social life had not hit a mud wall in Afghanistan. There were parties, a scene, places to wear little black dresses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was potential here, even if that potential resembled a cross between a John Hughes high-school movie and Sinclair Lewis\u2019s Main Street, given the small foreign community and the inevitable cliques, with do-gooders, guns for hire, and journos approximating brains, jocks, and goths.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Midwives\"<\/a>

Kuninori Takahashi<\/p>

Barker, in red, visits with young women taking a class at Community Midwives Training center in Ghanikhail in Afghanistan in 2008.<\/p><\/div>\n

Barker steeps in this culture, hopping across the Afghan-Pakistani border to varying degrees of personal and professional success. Herein lies the eponymous \u201cshuffle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barker is not too concerned about how accurately the filmmakers adapt her memoir, or even about the quality of the film, though she acknowledges that seeing someone else interpret her work has the potential to be a \u201cjarring, unsettling experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not my life, it\u2019s fiction,\u201d Barker said. \u201cIt might be more disconcerting if it was actually me up on the big screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film project is not merely fiction: this is a big-budget comedy, replete with A-list stars. Billy Bob Thornton, Alfred Molina, Margot Robbie (the leading lady in \u201cWolf of Wall Street\u201d) and Martin Freeman (the leading Hobbit in \u201cThe Hobbit\u201d) join Tina Fey on the silver screen. Lorne Michaels, of Saturday Night Live fame, is producing. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who found success with \u201cI Love You Phillip Morris\u201d and \u201cCrazy, Stupid, Love,\u201d are directing.<\/p>\n

Robert Carlock, of \u201c30 Rock,\u201d is adapting the book and writing the script for \u201cFun House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barker hasn\u2019t read it, but said she trusts Carlock. She hopes the movie will both \u201cdrive interest and cause people to pick up my book or any book on Afghanistan or Pakistan or the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

She now works at the New York Times\u2019 Metro desk, reporting on stories \u201cin neighborhoods your parents wouldn\u2019t want you anywhere near.\u201d The multifarious neighborhoods of New York City still allow her to experience the wanderlust that made her leave the United States in the first place.<\/p>\n

In her early life, before she got itchy feet, Barker lived at 723 N. 31st St., kitty-corner from McKinley Elementary School, where her grandmother, Mrs. Mars, taught. She had a springer spaniel terrier with a reputation for lurking behind trees during schoolyard kickball games, waiting for a ball to roll his way. When a ball came near, the dog would pounce on it and pop it with his teeth. This happened many times. Mrs. Mars had to intervene so the games could go on.<\/p>\n

Until she moved away at 13, Barker attended McKinley, and then the now-defunct Lincoln Junior High.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Mars has since moved to Missoula, where Barker visits when she returns to Montana.<\/p>\n

She said she still misses this place. The second chapter of \u201cThe Taliban Shuffle\u201d is titled \u201cMontana.\u201d Here, Barker touches on her modest, unorthodox Treasure State upbringing. Her \u201chippie\u201d parents tasked her with taking care of their marijuana plants but never taught her to shoot a rifle.<\/p>\n

At one point in the book, a friend of Barker\u2019s named Tom is aware of her Montana upbringing and assumes she could handle a gun. Barker then \u201caims\u201d at the target (a\u00a0melon) but instead shoots Tom in the shin.<\/p>\n

Like many of the near-catastrophic mishaps in Barker\u2019s memoir, everything turns out all right. She assures her readers that Tom was fine.<\/p>\n

Although Barker didn\u2019t glean firearm expertise from her days under the Big\u00a0Sky, she considers herself a Montanan at heart. She writes that she prefers \u201cfew people, lots of open range, and boundary lines meant to be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n

“It would be great to find a great journalist job in the middle of the mountains somewhere,\u201d she said. \u201cI’m still looking for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billings native Kim Barker learned to fish and backpack in Montana, but she learned to sing karaoke, interview warlords, shoot Kalashnikovs and jump-start a car using a metal ladder in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Barker describes her antics, trials and triumphs working as a foreign correspondent in her 2011 memoir, \u201cThe Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2528,2526,2530,2525,1405,246,2527,2529],"class_list":["post-6712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","tag-the-taliban-shuffle","tag-afghanistant","tag-chicago-tribune","tag-kim-barker","tag-mckinley-elementary-school","tag-new-york-times","tag-pakistan","tag-tina-fey","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}