UN allows Hollywood to shoot inside complex

Pollack will film only on weekends so as not to interrupt UN business. Shooting on the Universal Studios film begins on March 1. ‘‘It could be, in effect, a free commercial for the UN — a thriller made by a top-notch filmmaker with a stellar cast,’’ said Shashi Tharoor, the UN’s communications chief. ‘‘It will reach far more millions of people than any public relations initiative I could have come up with. And we are satisfied that the values in the story reflect our principles.’’ The movie The Interpreter is to star Kidman and Sean Penn. Kidman will play an African-born UN interpreter who overhears an assassination plot against her country’s leader. That makes her a target too, and with Penn, the leader’s bodyguard, she races to stop the murder. Both her country and the language she speaks are invented. But the leader, named Motobo, is modelled on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the language is based on Swahili.

‘‘It’s partly a movie about choices between violence and diplomacy,’’ said Pollack. For decades, UN officials have rebuffed proposals to film inside the building, including the 2000 movie The Art of War, starring Wesley Snipes as a security agent framed for killing the Chinese ambassador.

Most famously, the UN rejected Alfred Hitchcock’s overtures to shoot part of the 1959 film North by Northwest, which depicted an assassination of a diplomat in a UN lounge. Hitchcock’s crew used a camera hidden in a car parked across from the headquarters to film Cary Grant walking up the steps into the building. But the distinctive interior was re-created on a soundstage. —LAT-WP