I’d like to think, in my own small way, that I helped Breach get made.

Until about a week ago, I hadn’t heard or seen anything about Breach, the upcoming thriller based on the true story of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who sold secrets to the Soviet Union for a couple of decades before finally being thrown in jail in 2001. Now it seems as though the publicity for the movie has really ramped up; RopeofSilicon.com has seven new clips from the film and the movie’s official Web site, in addition to having the usual trailer, wallpaper, etc., has a bunch of other goodies including an FBI exam and a “Find the Mole” quiz.

In the movie, Hanssen’s being played by Academy Award winner Chris Cooper, and the plot involves a low-level agent Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe) who at first is assigned to be Hanssen’s aide, but then becomes an operative of the FBI who have begun to suspect Hanssen’s dual life as a spy. As far as movie plots go, this one seems as though the real Hanssen must have subconsciously been writing the script all along; his story has all the makings of a classic Hollywood thriller - from the Departed-like betrayal-of-the-mentor plot, to the spy vs. spy thriller angle, to the fact that the behind-the-scenes story of an embattled government agency struggling to control a very dangerous situation has some all-too-real present day correlatives. Laura Linney also stars in the movie as O’Neill’s handler.

Cooper looks great in this role; the man seems to have cornered the market on steely, creepy guys who you absolutely don’t want to believe are running our government, but who in fact probably are. Phillippe comes across pretty well; to be honest I haven’t seen enough of him in the movies to be impressed. He always looks to me like he’s pouting a bit too much rather than experiencing normal adult-type emotions, but this looks like a bit more of a grown-up role for him so he might end up doing something interesting with it.

What’s really exciting to me is that Breach is cowritten by Adam Mazer, a good friend of mine from college who went to LA a few months before I did, both of us with wild and crazy dreams of becoming screenwriters. Adam led my team in our final year as undergrads when we produced our 30-minute senior thesis film about a group of college friends experiencing the suicide of a friend. Kind of like a college Big Chill, but without the characters having all that much insight about life or each other or much of anything. We got an excellent grade on the project, but I’m guessing it’s not in Adam’s portfolio when he’s taking meetings anymore.

Anyway, Adam’s a great guy and someone who helped me out a lot when I moved to Hollywood, setting me up with my first two or three jobs. I haven’t spoken to him for a long time, but even when he was starting to get noticed as a writer - taking meetings, securing representation and such - he was always a generous, not-Hollywood kind of a guy, which causes even a curmudgeonly cynic like me to entertain thoughts of nostalgia in my cold, bitter heart.

If you’re anywhere out there, Maze, great job getting the movie made. Hope all is well and that we’ll see your name more often in these back alleys of film blogournalism.

Breach is being distributed by Universal Pictures. Go see it in the theater on February 16th.