Methods
In the TV series, thanks largely to the involvements of William Read Woodfield (1928 - 2001) and Allan Balter as the producers, story editors, and scriptwriters, the IMF operated primarily by using confidence tricks, infiltration, and high technology devices on its targets. The agents of the IMF were able to deceive their targets into cooperating with them without detecting any kind of deception until the "impossible mission" was carried out. By that time, the IMF team had vanished from the scene and out of the target country.
Woodfield was a devotee of the book The Big Con, written by the linguist David W. Maurer, and Woodfield and Balter consulted it as one of the "testaments" in their "Bible" for the TV series. Its other "testament" in their "Bible" was a short four-page outline that they based partially on the principles of the writing instructor Lajos Egri, the author of the book The Art Of Dramatic Writing that Egri had published in 1946.
Read more about this topic: Impossible Missions Force
Famous quotes containing the word methods:
“We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—”Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.””
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
“The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)