Which Lie Did I Tell? (39 page)

As I said, ideas come from everywhere. This one comes not from the blue or a headline but rather, a book. I read it over a decade ago and thought immediately that not only could it be a movie, it could be just about the best caper film ever, alongside
David Ward’s Oscar winner,
The Sting.

I wrote a caper film early on,
The Hot Rock,
based on the first of
Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder series. They tend to follow a pattern: the hero wants something valuable, can’t get it legally, usually forms a gang to accomplish his end.

This story follows dead on that classic pattern.

Before specifics, I have to ask you this question: What, in your opinion, is the most valuable portable object in the world? The reason I throw in the word “portable” is because something gigantic tends to lose all connection to human scale. So I don’t want any of the smart-asses among you answering thus: The Pyramids.

I am talking something you can hoist. Diamonds, furs, paintings, that kind of thing. The stuff
caper films are made of. Just taking the above three, I am sure some fur somewhere that could be traced back to someone historically important or famous could be worth several million. And the Kohinoor diamond? A guess, but maybe tens of millions.

Chicken feed.

Some Asian billionaire bought a van Gogh, didn’t he, for close to a hundred biggies?

Closing in.

You’ll notice I haven’t yet disclosed what the valued object is—because I’m trying to raise your interest, and also because at this moment I am not sure how deep into the picture I go before revealing it. But here’s a scene that might come early on. The Mastermind of the title
is a man of forty, from a family of great wealth and power, but because he is not the oldest son, he is penniless, and reduced to living by his wits, as they say. The most stylish charming guy you ever met. Read Sean Connery at the peak of his Bond phase for the Mastermind.

And who is he talking to? Why, only the Bill Gates of his day (I’m setting this in 1911): Mr.
J. P. Morgan.

Not the greatest scene ever, but it might play, if, say, we got Duvall to take a shot at Morgan. These two brilliant guys, discussing something in a strange way, all the secrets involved.

You might even open a movie with it. Connery leaving the Plaza, getting into a horse-drawn carriage, clip-clopping through the streets to the Morgan manse.

But if you did, pretty soon you’d have to reveal what the item under discussion was. Which I shall do now.

It’s the
Mona Lisa,
da Vinci’s masterpiece and arguably the most famous image on earth. And in case you wondered why I set that scene in such a weird year as 1911, here’s why:
that’s when it happened.

The
Mona Lisa really was stolen,
from the Louvre Museum. And it was gone for two years. And maybe, just maybe, what was returned wasn’t the real
Mona Lisa.
(All this is in
Seymour Reit’s book
The Day They Stole the Mona Lisa.
Try it, you’ll like it.)

How much do you think that painting is worth? What if it came up for auction and the Sultan of Brunei wanted it a lot and Bill Gates wanted it a lot and so did half a dozen other computer-nerd billionaires? Well, if a good, but not that great, van Gogh went in the nineties, you
start
from there for this baby.

I think if these rich guys really got into a dick-swinging contest, the price could reach a
billion.

And it was already incredibly famous back when it was taken.

What follows is not precisely as it happened. But we’re not making a documentary.

Three main guys:
the Mastermind
himself. Anxious to retire and live well forever. In order to pull off his plan, he has to spend some money in advance. And he does.

Second main guy:
the thief.
No elegance here. He is an Italian carpenter working in France. He dislikes the French, lives alone in a crummy room. He is perfect for the Mastermind because (1) he has worked some in the Louvre, and (2) more importantly, when the
Mona Lisa
was recently enclosed in a glass-fronted box, the thief was one of the guys who built the box.

Last main guy:
the forger.
Cadaverous, brilliant, incredibly gifted as a painter, yet with shockingly little ego. He dies of old age, with the money from this job, happily. Never a whisper of trouble. Because of all the great forgers, he’s the one who never let his ego loose, never wanted to be known for his own art.

The Mastermind took the forger to the
Mona Lisa,
said, “Can you copy this?” The forger thought about it, realized the difficulties, finally, challenged, said, “Yes, I can make you a copy.”

To which the Mastermind replied: “No good. I need six.”

So the forger got to work. Great stuff in the book about just how he had to do it—the
Mona Lisa
is not painted on canvas but wood, so he had to find wood from the time of the painting, centuries before.

(Aside to screenwriters—George Roy Hill once told me this: “Audiences love ‘how-to.’ ” When I asked what he meant, he explained that if you were going to, say, crack a safe, audiences would be interested in the problems involved in really doing it. I believe Hill was right. End of aside.)

Now, while this is being done, the Mastermind comes to America and meets with six rich, greedy Americans. He makes his pitch, without ever telling what he’s selling. They’ll find out in the papers.

So when the theft happened, and became worldwide news, his six
believed.

The theft itself was almost comic. The Louvre was closed on Mondays, so if you could hide inside Sunday night, you could be alone in the place the next day with only other workers and guards. And workers in those days were constantly removing paintings from the walls, under orders to take them to be photographed, cleaned, etc.

The thief knew a place to hide. A tiny closet where art students were allowed to leave their paints over the quiet Monday so they wouldn’t have to lug their stuff around.

The thief spends the night, early Monday he takes a tunic that Louvre workers wear, goes out into the museum. As he gets to the gallery where the painting is, things empty out, so he takes it down, throws a cloth over it, and goes walking along, passing all kinds of other workers in similar tunics also carrying paintings with cloths over them.

He gets to a dark staircase, removes the painting itself from the box that enclosed it—which, remember, he helped make—tucks it under his tunic. So now it’s a quick to-the-door-and-out kind of deal.

Problem, the key he has made for the door won’t work. In desperation, he takes off the doorknob, sticks it in his pocket—

Which is when another guy who works there comes along.

The thief snarls to this guy. “Some idiot stole the doorknob. How am I expected to get out of here?” To which the other worker says in essence, hey no problem, I’ll let you out.

Almost free now.

Oops. The heavy outside door is open—but a uniformed guard is there.

Fug!

Another incredible event—the porter has not shown up for work that day so the guard is cleaning the entranceway—

And it is
at that exact moment
he decides he needs some clean water, goes off in search of some. That’s when the thief leaves the Louvre with the painting.

Now the thief hides the masterpiece in a crummy trunk in a crummy apartment and has nothing more to do than this: wait for the Mastermind to come and pay him.

Which doesn’t happen—because the Mastermind
doesn’t need
the Louvre
Mona Lisa.
He could care less about the Louvre’s
Mona Lisa
—
he’s got six of his own.

He sails to America, sells his paintings to six greedy Americans and is safe—because the minute they talk,
they become accomplices.

Rich and contented, having pulled off the greatest scam in history, the Mastermind retires and lives a glorious life.