So, I pitch an idea based on real events.
“Imagine a not very bright guy becomes president. His dad was a failed president. Our smart guy runs on the notion that it is arrogant for Americans to tell other countries what to do. He runs against a guy so dull the election is a dead heat, and the Supreme Court—notably Republican—puts him in office. After nine months, the economy is in the toilet, but he hasn’t broken anything yet, and his old man’s friends are really running things. So, things seem to be going okay. Then terrorists attack America, thousands die, and our slow, accidental president seems to come into his own. His poll numbers soar. His Democratic opponents can’t get arrested in the media.”
“He tells us he is going after al Qaeda and sends our troops to Afghanistan, Africa and Yemen—everywhere but Saudi Arabia, where the actual terrorists came from. Then, while his war on terrorism is going on, his dad’s craziest advisors, who now advise him, convince the president that Iraq is connected to al Qaeda and is an immediate threat to the world and the U.S. They tell him to forget the fact that Iraq was made powerful because his father and the Secretary of Defense fed the Saddam-monster technology and weapons in the 1980s.”
“Because our hero doesn’t read, he takes his advisors’ word for WHAT THEY SAY is in the intelligence and takes the country to war. He doesn’t bother to ask what we are going to do once we win the war. Like a good cheerleader, our hero cheers the Pentagon and the troops and, at the ‘end’ of the war, provides our imaginary political advisors with great pictures by landing on an aircraft carrier to declare victory.”
“Then, Americans start dying. It turns out the president and the national security advisor never actually read the CIA intelligence estimates, and all the major reasons for going to war were, well, bogus.”
The studio executives look at me shaking their heads. The blond asks, “What do you mean ‘didn’t read the intelligence’? Why, that’s not believable. Nobody would believe a president or one of his top advisors wouldn’t read something that important before going off to war.”
The VP says, “Even if the president didn’t read it, even at the movie studios there is always some lawyer who would read it… isn’t there?” The VP is in shock. In the entertainment industry—where parsing words means the difference between being on the A-list and being out of work—he can’t believe that no one reads the small print for a president.
The VP says, “Even the dumbest starlet or actor has a team to protect their image.”
The way business works out here is that you have an agent who sells your project, and a lawyer to protect you from your agent. In the case of big name entertainers, there is also a manager and publicist. Behind the manager, agent, lawyer and publicist are layers of people who try to keep the talent out of trouble. When a crisis erupts, the team springs into action. There is always a plan. Kobe Bryant is charged with rape, and he holds a tearful press conference with his beautiful wife by his side to confess his infidelity and plead innocence. Sincere or not, it was what we call in the business a “moment.” Contrast the Bryant press conference with the mess at the White House. The Iraqi war faction, led by the increasingly Strangelovian Paul Wolfowitz, arrives in Iraq and tells the press that all the dead and dying Americans are merely part of the “transition” to freedom.
The striking blond shakes her head. “It is hard to feel sorry for the young president. Arrogance and inexperience that prompt decisions to cause young Americans to die needlessly is a hard sell at the network these days.”
I try to rescue my pitch.
I tell them there are heroes, CIA guys who warned that the intelligence was bogus and a British defense expert who tried to tell the truth and was hounded to death for it.
And, there is a great bad guy. How about a vice president who tells the CIA to sex up the intelligence they send to the president? How about the president’s buddy—the British prime minister—being fooled by the same bogus intelligence?
Then comes the fatal blow to the pitch. The VP for development asks, “What the hell happened to the terrorists who attack. You have lost that whole story line. You can’t lose a major story line and hope to keep your audience, you know.”
The blond put the knife through my pitch. “You expect us to put $70 mil in a movie about a president who fails to manage his own staff and then goes to war for the wrong reasons. You expect the public to believe he would justify a war by making baseless claims about Iraqi nuclear weapons and al Qaeda ties? Come on, no president could be that dumb. I mean, the U.S. had the world’s sympathy after those attacks. No president would blow that by lying to the U.N., not to mention his own people.”
The blond looks at me and says to her colleague, “I think he needs a water.”
The VP for development hands me the water and says with disappointment, “We wanted to meet with a journalist because we hoped you would bring us real material. This presidential character you created is just too detached, just too dumb.”
“Michael Douglas would never play your president,” says the blond, “but maybe you can turn it into a comedy? Would you be willing to drop the war and terrorism stuff?”
