Wag the Dog Read online

  It got loud fast and promised to become violent almost as fast. But a slim young Vietnamese male stepped through the door. He had a large, dramatic scar on his face and a pair of nun-chucks in his hand. Gangster, pimp, enforcer, husband, or brother, Taylor had no way of knowing. But that was not the point. The point was pay and leave quietly.

  Normally, Taylor paid on his Visa card, which showed up on his monthly statement as a reasonably respectable restaurant bill. In his house the man paid the bills so there was no reason for his wife to ask him why he spent two hundred dollars every week at the same Vietnamese restaurant. But if she ever did, Mel had rehearsed an answer. He would say that he and a bunch of old Army buddies met once a week to reminisce, everybody chipped in cash, and Mel put it on his card. Then he would explain that by doing that he got a free thirty-day ride on the money, pull out his calculator, and befuddle Silvia with dazzling fiscal footwork.

  Taylor was not about to stand there with his own ejaculate turning cold and drying around his pubic hair while some scarred-up Vietnamese thug ran his Wells Fargo Visa through a credit-card machine and the automatic telephone dialer to register electronic approval and record the transaction. Nor was he going to pay the full amount, if he could help it. So he stomped into his clothes and grabbed for his cash. He crumpled up a bunch of twenties, flung them on the ground, and made for the door. The younger woman picked them up quicker than a snake, flattened and counted them. The kid gangster barred the door. There was only eighty bucks. They all made noises at him. He dragged out some more money. The mama-san snatched it from his hand before he could crumple it and throw it down. It was another four twenties, all he had except for five singles and some silver. Apparently, it was enough, because they stepped aside and let him go.

  Chapter

  SIXTEEN

  IT JUST SEEMED simpler for the president to give him the memo. If Hartman had taken notes, then there would have been two documents to worry about. He probably could have committed it to memory, but memory is a trickster and a traitor. Besides, Air Force One was ready to depart.

  Frankly, George Bush was glad to be rid of it. It was like an imp in his pocket, a fairy-tale creature of great potential mischief who always seemed to be tugging at the presidential awareness, asking to be let loose. OK, now it was loose and somebody else’s problem. Hartman could either tame it and make it useful or Bush could simply forget it ever existed. There was just the one piece of paper. Nobody could even prove that Bush had ever seen it. Or for that matter, that Lee Atwater had actually written it.

  Hartman knew it was the biggest opportunity of his life.

  He cleared an entire day. No meetings. No calls. No conferences. No letters. No contracts. No interruptions. No lawyers. No reading. No nothing.

  Perhaps the only way to convey what a profound gesture that was is to say that he had no intention of clearing an entire day to die. That if he were a woman, he would not have cleared an entire day to give birth.

  He began the day by going to the dojo at dawn. There he practiced kendo, first in early-morning class and then alone with the sensei, Sakuro Juzo, to quiet his body and empty his mind. That much physical concentration and effort created pain. Hartman loved the pain. Only when he had forgotten everything except the pain, gone through the pain, and transcended it, did he return to his office, remove the memo from the safe for the first time since the night he had received it, read it, and contemplate what he had to do.

  He knew that this was not a done deal. Far from it. He now had to go back to the president and say, “This is how it can be executed.” The last thing in the world that Hartman was afraid of was pitch meetings. And really, that’s all that it was. Except that most of the time, if Columbia didn’t buy it, he’d take it to MCA, and if they didn’t like it, he’d go to Paramount or MGM or Disney. This time, there was only one place to go.

  Or maybe there were other places to go. He put that thought into a box, closed the lid tight, locked it and stored it back in the cabinet that he visualized as being in the upper-left rear quadrant of his brain.

  He ruminated, he sketched out ideas on paper—which he would shred before he left the office—he meditated on the nature of war. Like Atwater and Sakuro Juzo, he was a follower of Sun Tzu. The phrase that came into his mind was “War is nothing but lies,”36and this made him chuckle to himself

  It seemed to him that there were four areas in which he had to act. They were all overlapping and interlocked: pick a director, maintain secrecy, handle the media, deal with the money.

  Picking a director was the most straightforward of the four. Preferably a director-writer. That would eliminate one person with a need to know. The director would have to develop a vision, a scenario, in treatment37form initially, with which Hartman would pitch the president.

  He would have to come up with a plan to maintain secrecy. Under normal circumstances whenever Hartman was dealing with something major, he assembled a team. They batted things around. Criticized each other’s ideas. Brainstormed. Explored potential consequences. But Hartman felt that secrecy was so essential to this affair, the first rule of the whole enterprise was that no one should know anything more than they absolutely needed to know.

  As soon as one other person knew, security arrangements would have to go into effect. That person would have to be watched and monitored. His or her associates, friends, lovers, family too. The more people who knew, the more watchers would be needed. Hartman had spied on people in the past, including of course his own staff All the major agencies, and even the minor ones, were created by agents going independent and taking clients with them. That is, by stealing. Hartman, who had founded RepCo precisely that way, was determined that it would never happen to him. Whenever an agent got hot enough that he was likely to get ideas, his calls were monitored and his movements checked. If surveillance indicated that the agent harbored traitorous thoughts, action was taken. Sometimes the action was benign—a raise, a new car, a bonus, some demonstration of the rewards of loyalty. Sometimes it was malignant—abrupt dismissal, with the suggestion to any possible clients that the would-be traitor had been dismissed for dipping his beak, in one sense or the other, plus notification that if they went with him, they would never, ever, participate in a project over which RepCo had influence. The point being that Hartman had a very clear understanding of what surveillance and security cost—a lot.

  Hartman had a rule: Never put money into a movie. It was an explicit part of the corporate culture at RepCo: if an agent hears himself say the words “I believe in this so much that I’m going to develop it myself,” he’d better be lying. Once it’s his own money—coming or going—fear and greed, doubt and delusion, all enter the mind, and objectivity and balance are lost.

  Yet perhaps it was time for a change. This might be a necessary part of the Next Step. The warrior strove to be calm at the center, but how profound was clarity from the bleachers above the battle? How difficult to achieve if you collected your 10 percent, win, lose, or draw? How did you even know if you were a warrior—that ultimate male creature—unless you were tested in the arena?

  Upon more reflection, however, he decided that the true test of himself as a creative person—the proof that he was better than other people—would be to do it all with Other People’s Money.38

  He was going to need—a lot. A million here, a couple of million there—Jesus Christ, he could visualize situations in which he would need billions. This was to be the biggest motion picture ever made. If it were made. There would be hundreds of billions spent. Could the federal government handle that? Probably not, he thought, they were so bad at handling money. The next level would be figuring out for them how to do their part. Never trust the client to be competent.

  Deep Throat said, “Follow the money.”39

  Hartman was determined that this would not be another Watergate. That no one would be able to track the cash flow. The politicians had learned. They’d proved that in the Iran-contra affair, which demonstrate
d that a little obfuscation and lots of denial went a long way. People were still asking “What did the president know and when did he know it?” Although the answer was obvious and incontrovertible: he knew as much as he wanted to, whenever he wanted to. Which was probably all of it and as soon as he got up from his nap. Then Vice President Bush didn’t nap, so he probably knew it sooner.

  They’d gotten away with it, but they hadn’t gotten away clean. Bottom line: it reinforced Hartman’s basic thinking—that he himself could find better ways to clandestinely move billions out of the federal government and keep the media from ever figuring it out than the government itself could.

  Hartman also had a gut feeling that handling the media might not be a major problem.

  But he also knew that this would be what the president and his people would be most afraid of. Obviously, they were drawing on different reservoirs of experience. In the Industry the media was totally pussy-whipped. Nobody was afraid of television or the press. If a reporter didn’t mind his manners, he was cut out of the loop. If he truly offended, he was fired.40Yet politicians saw the press as carnivores: jackals and wolverines who, if they hunted in a pack, were capable of bringing down moose and elk and even elephants.

  If he could understand why the Industry experienced the media so differently from politicians, then he could develop a plan to handle the media. What if you took a Hollywood press agent and put him in Washington? A kind of Northern Exposure thing. Like Doc Hollywood, The Hard Way,41 a fish-in-different-water thing.

  And why not? Develop it as a motion picture. The most creative minds in the world were in Hollywood, because that’s where the most money was. Hartman had a lunch scheduled the next day with Mike Medavoy, chairman of Tri-Star. If he mentioned that it might be a good picture for—Val Kilmer? No. Michael J. Fox? Yes. Of course, Medavoy would want a Michael Fox picture. They’d kick around the names of a couple of writers, and by the time the salad drizzled with walnut oil and splashed with Oregon blackberry vinegar was cleared from the table, the story would be in development.42On Tri-Star’s money.

  That was the ticket.

  Do the same thing with “a Hollywood press agent goes to Vietnam,” a period thing. For Oliver Stone? No. Stone wasn’t going to do another Nam picture; it wouldn’t even sound right. For Alec Baldwin—as a drama, not a comedy, place it over at Columbia, promise them someone young, beautiful, and hot as the female lead. Someone that would tempt Peters. The thing was to get intellectual writers on both. The tedious types who always got involved with issues and serious ideas and real meat in the sugar coating.

  Hartman was on a roll.

  The roll kept turning and up came the solution to solving the money problem—its name was Ed Pandar. Pandar was an obsessed and brilliant researcher who wrote terrible screenplays. When Hartman had time, which was rare, he loved to read Pandar screenplays. They were always about things that nobody had ever thought of and they were always thoroughly, absolutely, and explicitly true. Which was what made them so terrible. They were trapped in morasses of reality. No story could rise up and conquer the thick, rank swamp of facts; no dialogue could overcome the necessity of endless exposition.

  Hartman decided to come up with a client who would hire Pandar to develop a script based on bilking the Feds out of—name a figure—$10 billion. Under the guise of developing the ultimate caper film, Pandar would research a method, several methods, by which billions of dollars could move from the U.S. Treasury into private hands. Because it was Pandar—who was clinically insane but compulsively factual—the scam would be doable in the real world.

  Pandar would never know the scenario he was really working on. None of these people would need to know—would even suspect—what they were really working on. Hartman loved himself for his own brilliance. He was very happy.

  That brought him back to the selection of directors. Was it possible for the director not to know?

  He knew directors. All of them. Their strengths and weaknesses, their virtues and vices, their style and their range. He considered, among many others, Lumet, Demme, Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, Stone, Pollack, Pakula, Scott (Ridley), Scott (Tony), Lean (David, dead), Michael Mann, Stephen Frears, Robert Redford. He needed a director who was an intuitive genius but who governed his choices by strict adherence to his marketing sense. He had to be innovative, capable of handling gigantic numbers of extras and equipment, very organized but ready to improvise. But ultimately the choice would rest less on talent than on temperament and character.

  In essence, the director was going to create the largest film the world had ever seen—and never be able to take credit for it. Things would be destroyed, people would die for this production. What was required was an amoral, self-effacing megalomaniac.

  Once he put it that way, the choice was obvious. John Lincoln Beagle. The tall, gangling filmmaker who had once, when he was a film student, had a summer job at Disney World, where he’d appeared as Goofy.

  John Lincoln Beagle was the next person to see the memo.

  36 Sun Tzu, as translated in A. L. Sadler, Three Military Classics of China (University of Sydney, Australasian Medical Publishing Company, Ltd., 1944). Also translated as “All warfare is based on deception” (Samuel B. Griffith), or “Those who strategize, use the Tao of Paradox” (R. L. Wing), or, most prosaically, “A military operation involves deception” (Thomas Cleary).

  37 A treatment is a summary of a screenplay. It frequently functions as a pitch as well. It is also an actual stage in development of a screenplay, meaning that there is payment at that point and the producer will use the summary to decide to stop, go ahead, go back, or change writers. Treatments have become almost universal. There are several reasons. One is that there is less to read. Second is that it reduces the screenplay to subject and structure, which is what a great many people believe are the important parts. A third is that it requires less commitment of time and money—a short treatment, 3 to 10 pages, can be created in a matter of hours (including typing), while a full 120-page screenplay can take longer.

  38 A 1992 film starring Danny De Vito; from a stage play.

  39 All the President’s Men (1976), with Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, and Jason Robards, Jr. Also based on a true story.

  40 Joseph McBride reviewed Patriot Games for Daily Variety. He accurately described the film as a “right wing cartoon of the current British-Irish political situation” that takes “the side of the British occupying forces and their CIA allies.” He said the direction was “laughable” and the score was “full of discordant and insulting riffs on Irish folk music.” Paramount halted all advertising in the paper. The editor of Daily Variety, Peter Bart, sent a letter of apology to Paramount. Bart promised Paramount that McBride, a respectable and professional writer about films who had worked for Daily Variety since the seventies, would not review any more Paramount films. McBride was then assigned to review children’s movies and he eventually resigned. Both Paramount and Daily Variety have explanations as to why this is not censorship. Bernard Weinraub, New York Times, 6/9/92.

  41 A Jewish doctor from New York practices in Alaska; a Hollywood plastic surgeon practices in a rural area; a Hollywood movie star works with a real NYPD cop.

  42 “Development” is that period, also the process, between deciding to make a property into a motion picture or television production—a property can be an idea, a treatment, a news story, a book, a script, a previous movie—and the moment when the camera begins to roll. Lots of things go into “development,” not many come out. The major parts of this process are developing a shooting script, assembling a package of actors and a director that will appeal to the money people, and getting the money. The people who do development are producers. Large producers have “development people”; the largest producers have “development departments.” Producers pay themselves when they are developing. That is the bulk of the cost of development.

  Chapter

  SEVENTEEN

  THE LOS ANGELES offices o
f Universal Security are located in a forty-six-story glass tower in the central business district, that small section of L.A. that actually looks urban. Most of the space they lease is on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors. Joe Broz, for example, had his cubicle on the fifth floor near conference room 2 and the training center. Main Reception is on four, the lunchroom is on six.

  The executive offices, however, are on forty-four, with windows facing west. That’s high enough that it’s often above the smog and there’s a view of the ocean. After dark it’s a view of lights, that geometric pattern that is the hallmark of films set in Los Angeles, just as the tip-of-Manhattan skyline is the signature of New York films. The only curving lines are the freeways and the coast. Inward toward the center of the building there is a room with no view called the Cube.

  It is a room suspended within a room built to the same specifications that are used to construct surveillance-proof spaces in United States embassies. In spite of its nickname, it’s really a rectangle, longer than it is wide, wider than it is high. Its walls are fully soundproofed. The gap between the two rooms is large enough to permit visual inspection of all eight sides, most emphatically including top and bottom. These areas, collectively called “the gap,” are monitored by video. The walls of the Cube also contain internal wiring that broadcasts a variety of jamming signals and generates white noise into the gap. Alarms will sound if any attempt is made to introduce recording or broadcast equipment into the Cube.