Although he hadn’t directed a feature film for more than a decade, Phil Alden Robinson found himself Paramount’s choice for “The Sum of All Fears.” With a reported $80 million budget and a script calling for numerous stunts and special effects, the blockbuster seemed an unusual project for a writer-turned-director best known for more introspective work such as “Field of Dreams.”

There also was pressure to compete with expectations set by Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin, whose previous turns as the character of Jack Ryan made “Patriot Games,” “Clear and Present Danger” and “The Hunt for Red October” international hits.

Adding to this was the stress of adapting a novel by Tom Clancy, one of the world’s best-selling authors and an individual whose rabid fan base is unmercifully opinionated.

Talk about confronting one’s “Fears.”

“I really don’t want to have on my tombstone: ‘This is the guy who screwed up the Jack Ryan series,'” Robinson said. “But I like being scared when I begin a project, like, ‘Oh man, I’m way over my head on this one.’ And I sure felt that way when we started this.”

Interviewed while at Kansas City’s Old Film Row prior to the picture’s release, Robinson revealed that it was during conversations with star Ben Affleck that the filmmaker openly addressed his concerns.

“I realized at the beginning that I can’t be looking over my shoulder at (directors) John McTiernan and Phil Noyce. And I said to Ben, ‘You can’t be looking over your shoulder at Alec and Harrison. You can’t do what they did. That was their version. But we’ve got to make the best Our Version.'”

The 52-year-old New Yorker was a fan of the Ryan series before being courted for “The Sum of All Fears.” And while he had never tackled a pure action epic before, he admired that these works were still more cerebral than physical.

“I love the Clancy films because they’re smart action films,” he said. “I feel like when you get older you shouldn’t have to give up seeing action films because they’re dumb. There ought to be some smart ones for us.”

Ben Affleck, left, discusses a scene from The

Inside the CIA

Part of Robinson’s fascination with Clancy’s best-seller was in the author’s vaunted knowledge of governmental espionage. The pressure to “get things right” in the film the way Clancy does in his novels put Robinson in frequent collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA actually employs a former field operative, Chase Brandon, who serves as film liaison to the branch’s Office of Public Affairs. Robinson immediately sought Brandon’s help to craft a “non-movie version of the CIA.” Upon asking questions such as, “What type of person becomes an analyst?” and “What does his workplace look like?,” the agency invited the director to its headquarters in Langely, Va.

“The whole building is like a college campus,” said Robinson, who brought his actors and production team along. “It’s very casual. There are very few suits and ties until you get to the top floor, which is for the executives. We walk down a hall, and when you open a door in any of these hallways, you don’t see into the room. There’s like a little interior wall that blocks the room. That way, you never know what anybody else is working on.

“They took us in there, and I stopped and thought, ‘This is it?’ It looked like the Russian studies department at a mid-sized university. It was a bunch of cubicles that everybody had decorated with their little nesting items and souvenirs from Russia. There were empty Vodka bottles and bobblehead dolls and Dilbert screensavers. It was just a bunch of young guys out of college. They were Russian studies majors, and this is the best job you can get. They watch Russian TV all day and surf Russian Web sites. That’s where they get 90 percent of their information.”

The time spent with the CIA honing certain technical details resulted in some specific changes to portions of the movie.

“There’s a scene in the script where John Clark (played by Liev Schreiber) uses wire cutters to slice through a fence,” Robinson remembered. “I called the CIA guys and said, ‘I’m willing to bet you have something cooler than wire cutters if you want to go through a fence.’

“He said, ‘There’s this stuff we call ice piss. It’s in a canister that you spray on metal, and you can actually hear the metal becoming brittle like glass.'”

The CIA e-mailed Robinson a description of the can and its dimensions, but he hoped the agency could deliver even more authenticity.

“I called him back and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you just give us some of the stuff and we’ll use it in the film?’

“He replied, ‘No. I don’t want to go to prison.'”

Ironically, the one aspect that was a total Hollywood fabrication came in a field completely separate from military and governmental intrigue. It took place during the staging of a sequence set at the Super Bowl.

“The Pentagon let us have a Stealth Bomber, but we couldn’t use (the logos or uniforms) of any real NFL teams,” Robinson shrugged. “It was ridiculous.”

Put it in writing

Robinson’s experience with the military doesn’t just come from the editing room. After working as a disc jockey and newsman during his tenure at New York’s Union College, he went into the Air Force for a stint and made training films. (“I think Clancy respected that fact,” he added.)

Relocating to Los Angeles, he began writing for the CBS series “Trapper John, M.D.” Eventually, his original screenplays were turned into the hilarious Steve Martin comedy “All of Me,” and the disastrous Sylvester Stallone “comedy” “Rhinestone.”

For Robinson, who received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay adaptation of 1989’s “Field of Dreams,” “The Sum of All Fears” presented the first time he had ever directed a picture he had not also written.

“I found it liberating,” he said. “I felt freer because I hadn’t fully imagined every moment in the movie as I do when I’m writing. Therefore, I felt a little freer on the set to look around and see where the light and the dark was. It was wonderful to be able to pick up the phone and call the screenwriter and say, ‘I’m having trouble with the scene.'”

A co-chair on a committee at the Writers Guild of America, Robinson is not the type of director who ignores the screenwriter once filming begins.

“You have a lot of people on the set who aren’t helping, yet you don’t bring the writer on who can genuinely help,” he laughed. “It’s a weird mindset that just strikes me as nuts.”

Maybe the CIA ought to look into that.