From 'The Taliban Shuffle' to Tina Fey
Kim Barker is having a surreal experience this month: She's watching Tina Fey play her in a movie.
Fey is the star of "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot," an adaptation of Barker's memoir "The Taliban Shuffle," which covers her exploits as a reporter in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"I felt like dark comedy and absurd humor was the only way I could put any sort of frame on the things I had seen over there," Barker told MPR News reporter Euan Kerr.
Her time in the Middle East was filled with bizarre encounters like "having the future and former prime minister of Pakistan hit on you and buy you an iPhone. That doesn't happen everyday."
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There were also the day-to-day struggles and dangers of reporting from a war zone. "There were stories falling off of trees there, and it was about going and scooping them up in a safe way," Barker said.
Hollywood has put its own spin on Barker's time overseas. In reality, Barker was a print journalist who worked for the Chicago Tribune. In the film, Fey plays a TV reporter, who is accompanied by a bodyguard and a cameraman — Barker had neither.
The film also drums up a romance between Fey and a man "who was simply just a really good friend of mine," Barker said.
The changes don't bother Barker, who now works for the New York Times — she had already braced herself for them.
"In signing over the rights, I felt like, 'Look, I like Tina Fey. I think she's smart. I think she's funny,'" Barker said. "I feel like the movie is true to the narrative arc of the book, and there's a certain truthiness there."
The film captures what it was like to live in "the Ka-bubble," Barker said, the strange, isolated area of Kabul filled with expatriates. It also captures "what it's like to cover war continually, and the toll that takes on you."
If film-goers find themselves watching and wondering, "Did that actually happen?", Barker said: Yes, mostly. There's a kernel of truth to every scene.
"And I really did go shooting guns with the future attorney general of Afghanistan."
For the full interview with Kim Barker, use the audio player above.