From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

When you think of the films of director Lucy Walker,

there tend to be films about improbable subjects from Blindside, which is about a group of Tibetan teenagers climbing Mount Everest to the two films she had Sundance this year, Wasteland, and her newest film, Gone Down to Zero. They're all films about the improbable. Lucy, first of all, thanks a much for being here. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. And she's joined by Valerie Plain Wilson, former CIA officers. Is it the best way to put

it? It is indeed. It was also a part of Countdown to Zero as well. Thanks so much to you guys

for being here. Let me ask what the Countdown to Zero is about. It's about nuclear weapons, proliferation and terrorism and how counterintuitively with the way things are going, these

weapons even though they're so powerful, sort of how come we're less safe because of them

rather than more safe?

And the film is also oddly enough about the kind of access, the easy access to nuclear

weapons too, is it not?

Well, I didn't have any easy access when I was filming them, unfortunately. No one said, I'm going to sneak you around the back and let you get a good shot

of one close up. And nor did any of the world leaders, and I think we've got more world leaders

in the movie than any other movie ever, and I think they're about like 11 heads of state.

Well, Valerie, there's basically something that's quite obvious in the film that these people who want to get to them can get to them with relative ease, is it not?

Indeed. I mean, that is, the film is so compelling and so powerful. It talks about the possibility of nuclear terrorism, miscalculation, accidents.

This is an issue that really has been swept under the carpet at the close of the Cold War,

where you all sort of felt a sense of relief, and we stopped talking about her to thinking

about it. Lucy has done such a magnificent job of making a film that you come out and you want

to do something. And they've built an entire social action campaign around it.

But I just found myself, as you mentioned this, I was thinking Lucy about Gorbachev talking about the end of the nuclear summits with Reagan and just how

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