Wag the Dog (20 page)

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.
⁴²
On 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.

T
HE
L
OS
A
NGELES
offices of 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.

A BZX-7000 is located inside the room. It creates a constantly shifting randomized pattern of electronic and audio signals that interfere with any attempt at recording. As an additional failsafe, any recording would be degaussed by a powerful magnetic field that surrounds the one and only door. This is the single device that can be turned on and off by request since one of the things that people often use the Cube for is to listen to recordings. For that reason there is a variety of play-only equipment installed inside.

Some of the technology is restricted and cannot be exported without a special license. But the existence of the room and how it functions is no secret. It is, rather, advertised by Universal Security as the ultimate in aural privacy. It rents for $2,000 an hour. That may seem high for a room that is small, hot, and inherently claustrophobic. But all the clients who use it inevitably express a sense of value received and they frequently return to use it again. Rolls-Royces and Lear jets, even high-priced sex, can only make people feel wealthy. The Cube can make people feel something more special and rare—important.

The door to the Cube itself is thirty-six inches above the floor. Cube users are escorted into the gap by a guard who carries a stepladder. After the client has entered the gap and closed the door, the guard removes the ladder, takes it with him, and returns to his post in the outer room.

It was a Saturday. The two men who sat in the Cube were dressed casually but very expensively. David Hartman had been outfitted by a shop in L.A. called DownEast that sold clothes that made the wearers look like they were New Englanders, the sort that had so much money they needn't mention it, and, more importantly, that the last person in their family that had actually earned money had died long before the invention of motion pictures. John Lincoln Beagle was a film director. His style was far more bohemian: jeans, southwestern-style shirt, Navaho belt with a turquoise buckle, and desert boots, about $2,500 for the ensemble. But that included $800 for boots that were hand-sewn from a custom last, which was in no way an indulgence, since
Beagle had sensitive feet and off-the-rack shoes, no matter how costly or carefully fit, always hurt. And the belt buckle was $960.

Lee Atwater's memo was in the inside pocket of David Hartman's $1,800 Whittier & Winthrop jacket. He was trying to think of a way to avoid revealing it.

The door of the Cube closed. “Wow, heavy-duty,” John Lincoln Beagle said. “I love it. I'd love to use it as a set. But what the fuck could you possibly have to tell me that needs this much secrecy. What are you, taking over Columbia? Taking over Sony?”

David Hartman reached into his pocket. He took out Lee Atwater's memo. He unfolded it. Smoothed it flat on the table.

From the moment they left this room, Beagle would be watched and listened to by operatives of Universal Security. His home and his office would be wired. His friends and family would be monitored.

Hartman slid the memo over to Beagle.

It said: