By Lennox Samuels
Even as the WikiLeaks revelations have roiled and embarrassed governments and the global diplomatic corps, they have seized and held the attention of a legion of readers gripped by the mixture of drama, menace, bathos, and low humor. We all profess to be "over" the whole affair, yet eagerly await the next dump in this Grand Guignol saga—not to mention the latest news about Julian Assange, the antihero forced to go on the lam because of sexual-assault allegations that have a faint whiff of convenience about them. The literary and cinematic possibilities of this real-life potboiler have hardly escaped the notice of the people who actually spend their time trying to imagineer events such as those divulged by WikiLeaks and fashion them into mysteries or espionage thrillers. Bestselling novelist Martin Cruz Smith offers NEWSWEEK his casting picks for the blockbuster movie that the cables could yield (read Smith's essay here).