Japan
George Herbert Walker III, a Missouri businessman who headed a financial-services company for 14 years, wanted to serve his country overseas. So in early 2002, he turned for advice to his first cousin, George H.W. Bush, the current president’s father.
“He thought it would be a good idea,” Mr. Walker recalled recently. “He didn’t want to tell his son what to do, but told me to write the president a letter. I didn’t name a country, but there are many countries we have a fragile relationship with.”
Today, Mr. Walker, who is in his early 70s, is the ambassador to Hungary — a NATO ally and supporter of Bush administration policies with several hundred troops in Iraq. Like many political appointees, he was immediately struck upon taking up his posting in October with the stark contrast between modern diplomacy and the lingering image of the Foreign Service as a collection of stuffy white males in striped pants…
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John Woo is concerned that he will go down in cinema history only as an action film director, albeit one of the masters. So the man who made his name in Hong Kong with the distinctive balletic style of his blood-soaked movies, and then conquered Hollywood with “Face/Off” and “Mission: Impossible 2″, has decided to move away from what he does best and try his hand at drama and — maybe even a musical.
“I want to do a film without violence,” he says in his office at the MGM complex in Santa Monica, California, “and a musical is one of my biggest dreams. There is so much confusion in the world today, so much hatred and lack of understanding, and I’d love to make noble and spiritual films”…
