What Tony Gilroy, and Jason Bourne, Taught Me About Motherhood
Bourne’s journey is powerful not because it is thrilling, but because it is human.
By Lea Carpenter
I write novels about spies. Often, people expect me to mention a trinity of authors who have defined the genre as inspiration: John Le Carré, Ian Fleming, and Graham Greene. Yet I have been less inspired by any novelist than I have been by a screenwriter, Tony Gilroy, whose work includes the Jason Bourne franchise. No one writes like Gilroy. His brutal economy with dialogue. His novelistic stage direction. And his mastery of the thriller, the hardest of genres to crack.
At its finest, a thriller is math and poetry. Math, because so many story elements must lock into place in a sophisticated, satisfying way to free the story from feeling formulaic and hackneyed. And poetry because a thriller should stay lean. It is difficult to write an action scene like an aria, which is to say, to make it move you, but this is what Gilroy does so well. He reveals with restraint, and then he does it again. Gilroy is Steph Curry at the three-point line.
Gilroy wrote four Bournes: Identity, Supremacy, Ultimatum, and Legacy. The last he also directed, and the first contains the scene which won my heart. It is the scene where you learn who Bourne is and why you should care about him. It is the scene which establishes this hero as unlike any other, a high bar in an old genre. With a monologue that runs only five lines, Gilroy shows us Bourne is a killer, a spy, and an absolute mess. What he is above all is lost, and that felt new. Fleming’s Bond was defined by light glamor; Le Carré’s Smiley by psychological warfare. What Bond and Smiley share is a total control over who they are; hell is the thing that breaks loose outside. And then here comes Bourne: The first thing he tells you is, I’m lost. This is the diner monologue he delivers to the girl he’s falling in love with:
I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred and fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am?
This is an assassin’s to be or not to be. The scene stays with you because of its confessional nature and the attendant stakes: I am a killer, and I have no idea how I learned to kill. What truly troubles Bourne is information; facts and instincts other people don’t have which, for him, are essential to protecting himself and others. That is what spies do: protect themselves and others. Bourne spends an entire lavish franchise protecting while also trying to crack the riddle of his identity. His journey is powerful not because it is thrilling but because it is human.
However, when I first saw that scene, it did not make me think of spies and assassins (two professions I would later write about). It made me think about motherhood.
It is difficult to write an action scene like an aria, but this is what Gilroy does so well.
I remember the first time I felt like Bourne in the diner, out of my mind with fear about who I was or had become. I had woken up in the hospital hours after the birth of my first child, having entered the hospital for a routine test, only to be rushed into the operating room. Later, a nurse handed me paperwork for processing my son’s birth certificate. I remember looking at a line that said MOTHER’S NAME and asking the nurse, “Why do you need my mother’s name?” She said, “Honey, you’re the mother.” And just like that, I entered a new world—one of complex instincts to which I had inexplicable access.
Over time, those instincts evolved into a skillset as natural and urgent as Bourne knowing about the gun in the truck’s cab. Suddenly, I knew, How many milligrams of Tylenol he needs at nine vs. fourteen months; I knew, at what fever level you cycle in Advil every four hours; later, I knew, if the coach pulls him from the goal early, he will not talk for twenty-four hours. I knew, that dog is not trained, and is lethal.
Motherhood is emotional and kinetic, back to poetry and math. There may not be an assassin at the door, but there are other things, and they feel just as terrifying. Bourne’s early monologue is a perfect metaphor because it does not feel like a metaphor at all. It is a scene about the need for knowledge considered useless until it is essential. It is a scene about how being vulnerable makes being exceptional far more interesting. And in the same way Bourne glanced at the man at the bar and knew he could “handle himself,” I can now glance at most boys and tell you if he is six or if he is seven, if he has questioned Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, and if his build betrays an inclination toward playing point guard.
Similarly, I can look at most new mothers and tell if she has slept or eaten. I can tell if she has help at home and how much. I can often tell if her marriage is at risk, and if she knows it. Some of this knowledge is useless until it is urgent. Useless, until it is distilled into wisdom, and then you have something that lasts. Bourne needed knowledge to move the plot forward. Yet, in the end, he needed wisdom to know himself.
I think about that diner scene a lot. I think about the radical choices in those lean five lines. I think about how you do not have to be a spy to understand a spy. And I try, in my way, to channel Gilroy’s simple, kinetic grace.
Lea Carpenter is a novelist, screenwriter, and lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. Ilium, her third book, is available now.