American Rhapsody (56 page)

Even so, I felt sorry for Billy when our old and dear friendship was so heartlessly exposed. They called him a “masturbator,” as though it was something bad, instead of the basis of our love for each other. “Masturbator” didn't bother me. I felt it was a tribute to the hold I had on him and the hold he had on me. But then they started calling him a “musterbator,” too—a chronic masturbator and a chronic
musterbator:
the psychological term for a man who has to succeed at everything or loses all sense of self-esteem. Then they tried to make it sound like this musterbation, not me, was the cause of all the fun we've had together. Like Billy had a mental deficiency of some kind. Like it was a damaged part of his brain and not me telling him to find us another precious he could tease me on into.

I felt slighted again, but I thought, Be fair. Consider Billy. How would you like to be viewed by the whole world as a masturbating musterbator or a musterbating masturbator? The shrinks kept piling it on, talking about Billy's need for abstinence (no way!), rehab (we'd still have each other), and a multiplicity of twelve-step programs. Editorialists even wrote about twelve-step programs he'd be perfect for, programs from “the top down and the bottom up.” (I like tops down and bottoms up.) Even the liberals were talking about twelve-step programs, even people as inappropriate as Gary Hart and Bob Packwood.

I've tried to cheer Billy up any way that I can. I've given him advice: Get a grip, Billy! . . . You can't keep a good man down, Billy! . . . The dog will have his day, Billy! . . . Win one for the Zipper! . . . Masturbation now! Masturbation tomorrow! Masturbation forever! . . . Give me liberty or give me death! . . . Speak softly and carry
me!
 . . . I am not crooked! . . .
Ich bin ein
Derringer! . . . None dare call it pleasin'! . . . Squeeze the Charmin! . . . In your heart, you know I'm right! . . . Just say yes!

I've even rapped to him to cheer him up and remind him that we're made for each other:

You make a speech, I pluck a peach

You tell a lie, I poke your fly

You campaign, I leave the stain

You sleep with Hilla, I need a pilla

Gennifer Flowers, I'm hard for hours

You want fame, I want a dame

You want glory, I want whorey

You like to think, I like kink

You like politics, I like licks

You like power, I like to deflower

You're a coward, I'm empowered

You're a Lefty, I'm hefty

You're a boomer, I boom her

You're alone, I'm a bone

You're a hick, I'm a prick

Your hunger makes me plunder

Your smile makes me grow a mile

Your hand is the Promised Land

You take a flight to a foreign land

For twelve long hours I'm in your hand

And when our trip is finally done

I've left my mark on
Air Force One

For better or worse, it's me and you

So stop feeling so low-down blue

We're gonna be together on our dying day

Forever and ever in your hand I'll stay

You think you've got me in your hand

But I'm the one who's in command.

“I am in control here!” said Gen. Al Haig, known as Alexander the Small, when
his
Billy, Ronald Reagan, was wounded by the politics of personal destruction.
And I am!

I am his search engine, his Minuteman long-range guided missile, his Sears Tower, his ruby slippers, his Hope diamond, his eternal flame, his Rosebud . . . his Lord.

I am his banana peel, his smoking gun, his Mannlicher Carcano rifle, his Kathy Smith speedball, his John Dean, his Bruno Magli shoes, his Dodi Fayed, his Mark Chapman . . . his doom.

[15]

The Comeback Kid's Last Comeback

TO: Harry Thomason

FR: Pat Kingsley, PMK Associates

RE: The President's Request

PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

D
ear Harry,

I'm truly flattered that Bill Clinton wants me to represent him, but I'm also truly sorry to have to tell you that I am unfortunately too busy at the moment with Tom Cruise and George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Gere and Sharon Stone and Jodie Foster and Courtney Love and the dear departed Dodi Fayed to be able to say yes.

I know he is the President of the United States but that doesn't make him a star. I represent stars.

Having said that, I confess that I think he has been a good and industry-friendly president and I would like to help him
unofficially
in his remaining few months and after he has left the Oval Office. I'm certainly used to damage control—I have for the past several years been keeping the press from trashing poor Dodi's memory by threatening to deny them their bread and butter access to Tom and George and Arnold and my other stars.

I'm thinking about much more than damage control, though, in Bill Clinton's case. I think I can
make
Bill Clinton a star—not a movie star, but an international star on the galactic stage like Elvis, John Paul II, Bill Gates, Mother Theresa, Princess Di, Solzhenitsyn, Elie Wiesel, Tinky Winky, the Dalai Lama, and Martha Stewart. (Incidentally, Diana loved Bill Clinton. She said she thought him “dishy and tall too.”)

At the same time, I have to admit to you that I've been angry at Bill Clinton. Not for the reasons that everyone else is angry at him, either. Diana's death was the best thing that ever happened . . . in the fight to turn the tabs into PR organs for my stars. Thanks to those greedy paparazzi in that hellhole tunnel, the tabs and their ilk had to turn to the manufacture of over the rainbow puff pieces. It was as if Di had died for Tom and George and Arnold and my other stars. Di in The Box had a lethal, chilling effect on any tell-all tabloid investigations of any of them.

Then, only months later, Bill Clinton and his Oval Office excesses undid all the good Diana had done by dying. His smelly cigar overpowered her sparkling tiara. He corrupted her martyrdom and made her death meaningless and I am left now trying to protect poor, rich, dead, and deadbeat Dodi from post-mortem savaging, cannibalism, and necrophilia.

Anyway, enough pique.

I agree with Warren that “Even the promiscuous feel pain” and I admittedly have been privy to too much of that pain suffered by my stars. Oliver Stone has a theory that the reason we're in the pickle that we're in with the triumph of scummy negative gossip is because Nixon, in exchange for campaign contributions, made a deal with Gene Pope, then the owner of
The National Enquirer
, to get his rag into the supermarkets on shelves near Wheaties and bubble gum.

I don't know if I buy it, though. It's like Oliver's theory that the reason Bill Clinton allowed Lewinsky to you-know-what him was because her voice sounded not like Marilyn's but like Jackie Kennedy's. So it's all an Oedipal thing, Oliver feels, that goes back to Bill Clinton's handshake with JFK when he was a teenager. JFK has had so many tawdry things placed at his feet that I'm not sure I want to place Monica Lewinsky there, too.

What galls me especially about what happened to Bill Clinton is that you can't tell the show business news from the political news anymore. Political journalism is just as tabloidized. Walter Winchell would be an op-ed page columnist today for the
New York Post
. Only the mainstream press's traditional hypocrisy and sense of inherited faux prudery stops
some
publications, on occasion and only temporarily, from rolling around in the typographical gutter with the half-naked lingerie models. What galls me is that I think the press's attitude is fundamentally unfair.

If all news is now show business news, then let's play by show business's rules. They are the rules that I have laid down on behalf of my stars. You want access to interview Tom Cruise? Fine. Let's start by having you sign a consent agreement. You can't ask him any questions about his sexuality or his marriage.

I pick the writer. I have photo approval. I have quote approval. Sometimes I even see the article before it runs and I make changes. For television, I see the taped portions before they're aired. I reject film in which I think the lighting is unflattering. In other words,
I have absolute control
.

I can hear what you're saying, Harry. You're saying: “But you can't do that with the President of the United States.” And I say to you: Oh yes you can! With one big “if.”
If
the President of the United States isn't just the President, but he's a star, then you can.

If
he is such a popular and elusive figure that the media needs him—to sell shows, magazines, and papers—then you can. The key words are “elusive” and “access.”
If
you make him elusive, they'll want him.
If
you make him elusive enough, they'll need him.
If
you control the access, you've got them where you want them.
If
they need him, they'll do anything to have access to him.

Look at Tom's career. Does Tom overexpose himself? Never! He isn't like De Niro, who does three movies a year, or, God help us, Gene Hackman, who has been in something new every other week for decades. When Tom Cruise is in something, it's an event.

He does interviews rarely and only with those I control. His face on the cover means big bucks to a publication. I decide who will make that money. In a sense, I am allotting money to someone—paying someone—and all I demand is to get something for it. What do I get? Control. I am paying for it. I am paying the press off and it's only fair that I get what I pay for.

I think we can do the same thing with Bill Clinton—not on the big screen, but the intergalactic stage. How do I know I can pull this off? Why do I think I can take a discredited, terminally-exposed, broken-down president and turn him into an elusive, underexposed heroic figure? Listen, Harry, if I could make Matthew McConaughey a movie star . . . well, please, that proves I can do anything.

There is no reason Bill Clinton has to have a Sean Young, Ken Wahl, Steven Seagal, Margot Kidder, or David Caruso ending. There is life after
Ishtar
and
Waterworld
and Lew Wasserman's retirement and Mike Ovitz's resignation from CAA.

Thanks to Jim Toback, Mike Tyson has a chance to be a movie star
after
biting Holyfield's ear. Dennis Rodman can be an action hero and, who knows, Quentin Tarantino may yet become a romantic lead. Rock Hudson, who didn't like girls, turned into a female heartthrob. Eddie Murphy transcended his transvestite blowjob and Hugh Grant found media salvation after his blowjob (although I think his post-fellatial twirpiness has hurt his career a bit).

And look at my own star, Sally Field, who became a national laughing stock after “You like me, you really, really like me!” and she's on TV now doing an ad in which she says “You like me, you really, really like me!” Sally's making a fortune on the biggest gaffe of her life. I'm not saying that we can ever redeem “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky!” in a similar manner, but would you believe that my star Sharon Stone was offered a teleplay in which she would have played the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Here's the plan—short-, mid-, and long-term to make Bill Clinton an intergalactic star.