DECATUR - Pardon the nasty bout of yellow tabloid fever that resulted in the above headline. We were bitten by the bug over the long holiday weekend and couldn't take the cure soon enough to stop the presses and get it changed. Still, we're proud to note, there's a kernel of truth trying to sprout some tassels there. | Read more Dan Craft

It begins with the part of the headline screaming "says B-N man!"

We didn't make him up.

He exists. Therefore, he IS.

What's more, he DOES administer lie detector tests for a living.

And furthermore than that: He DID give Matt Damon a lie detector test in a Holiday Inn hotel room in Decatur, of all places.

And Matt, nice boy that he is, DID flunk the test. With "Quantum Leap's" Scott Bakula and "The Soup's" Joel McHale gazing on.

So what are we ashamed of, now that we think of it? Maybe the exclamation point?

Maybe.

Let us explain.

Steve Woody of Bloomington is one of around two registered lie detector administrators in this neck of the woods (the other lives in Pekin, but that's another story for another day).

For the sake of propriety, let's use the term "polygraph administrator," never mind how punchier "lie detector" looks and sounds.

Around four or five years ago, Woody received his certificate from one of the country's relatively few (11 or so) polygraph schools.

This was no whim on Woody's part.

His college background is in criminal justice; his past employment includes stints heading up security at several nuclear power plants, including the one here in our own backyard.

So who better to apply the sensors and blood pressure pads to someone needing some detecting than Steve Woody?

That's what the makers of the Damon-starring movie "The Informant" - the one filmed over the past month in the Decatur area - obviously thought when they contacted Woody back in March.

Why Woody?

"I guess because I'm listed in the phone book and a couple nationwide polygraph registries," he supposes.

Originally, says Woody, he was asked to sign on as a technical adviser and nothing more.

The occasion: a scene in which Damon's character of Mark Whitacre - the titular informant in the early-'90s Archer Daniels Midland price-fixing scandal - is given a polygraph test.

For those unfamiliar with the case, Whitacre's main claim to infamy is as the highest-level whistleblower in U.S. history.

Woody was needed to make sure the scene, in which Damon is grilled by two FBI agents, played by Bakula and McHale, rang true.

Among his duties was to supply the production with the old-school brand of analog lie detector that would have been in use in the early '90s - as opposed to the digital computer models in use today.

Though he uses a computer model himself, Woody was able to locate what the filmmakers needed from an instrument company.

He also brought along his personal "polygraph chair," which is tailored for those being detected.

But before it was over, however, Woody found himself promoted from adviser to actor, playing the detector of lies himself, replete with several dialogue exchanges with Damon & Co.

Woody's response to his thespian upgrade: "I said, 'yeah, that would be fine probably.'"

We should all be so low-keyed and collected that we'd respond to an invitation to act in one of the film's pivotal scenes with words like "yeah," "fine" and "probably."

But Woody calls himself a low-keyed kinda guy, a temperament the filmmakers probably detected with their own set of honesty sensors.

"No, I didn't get too excited about it," he adds for low-key emphasis.

Since the production has been filmed at all the exact Decatur-area locations where the original events took place, Woody's big scene was shot in the city's former Holiday Inn (now the Decatur Conference Center) and fully reverted to early-'90s Inn décor. Damon and the other actors even stayed in the hotel to further up the reality ante.

For his big scene, Woody wasn't given a script, just verbal directives from director Steven ("Traffic") Soderbergh.

The action required that he wire Damon up with the blood pressure pads and sensors, and then conduct an authentic polygraph test on camera, as the FBI agents played by Bakula and McHale pitched in with questions, and Damon supplied the answers.

Woody says Damon and the other actors came off "as just regular guys, very cordial, very nice, just sitting around talking."

As noted, Damon/Whiteacre ends up flunking the polygraph test, which is all part of the historical record.

So see.

The headline above today's column isn't entirely the consequence of a yellower shade of journalism:

B-N man does say that Damon flunked test!

That's the truth, and nothing but the truth.

More or less.