“I have an
idea for a political intrigue movie,” I said.
Maybe it will just be a series, or a book. Maybe it is too long for just one movie.”
“Let me
hear your pitch.”
“Okay,” I
said. “But this might seem a little
unbelievable.”
“I’ll keep
an open mind.”
“Okay,
sounds like a good premise. So, is he a
Gordon Gekko type? Real sleazy?”
“Is this a
comedy?”
“Thriller,”
I said.
“Okay. How is a rich insecure doofus running for
President a thriller?”
“That is
the twist,” I said. “He has the name recognition
as a businessman, and he does have the money, but he’s an idiot, so what happens
is he is made the patsy of a conspiracy that has been under the surface for a
long time.”
“That is
clever. Illuminati?
Lizardmen?
Drug Cartels? I threw the lizard
men in there because sci-fi is big right now.”
“Ha! And he backs the big business narcissist who
is running for President. I thought you
said this wasn’t a comedy? I can see it now;
we can make the businessman transparently evil.
Racist,
sexist,
generally creepy, we could even give him a
mail order bride from Russia that is actually a spy contact.”
“You know
it is starting to sound like a black comedy the more I talk about it,” I
said. “Let me start to unroll more of
the plot.”
“Yeah,
sure, I am liking it.”
“So, the
Russian spy master starts cranking out fake news story after fake news story to
make the sitting President look bad and to make the other candidate look bad,”
I said. “Meanwhile, the Businessman is
transparently evil and he is so clumsy setting up contacts with the Russian spymaster he just starts loading his whole Presidential campaign with spies and
traitors, and they are the last sort of people you might expect. One is an
ex-general who always looks like he just ate a bug, another is the
dopey looking southern attorney who has been
working in the Federal government for years.
Honestly, now we have to make this a comedy.”
“Oh, yeah,
this has comedy written all over it.”
“So we just
surround the ego maniac businessman with a growing collection of goofy spy
characters who are running on a platform of racism and
sexism and it looks like
they are going to lose,” I said. “The
Russian spymaster is flipping his lid, turns out the President knows that
something is up with the campaign, but Congress and the Senate are so mad at
the President that they will call him a liar if he tries to expose the
conspiracy.”
“Because
they are thinking that the racist Russian puppet is going to lose anyway, why
lose senate and house seats by pointing out him being a spy?”
“Exactly,”
I said. “They are short sighted and then
the unthinkable happens. Whoops!”
“Turns out
the voters are more racist than everyone thought?”
“Yeah,” I
said. “But I wanted it to be an
Electoral College thing. He should win
because of a
bad system set up by slave holders and tax dodgers. I think it is symbolically important.”
“So now the
President is a Russian Spy?”
“I think it
is a cool idea,” I said. “I think the
next part will be what I call ‘
The Scramble’.
The
Congress and
Senate know President Business is a security risk and
they will have to handle the situation before Russia takes over the world, but…”
“But, they
still want to push thru a lot of their legislature before they have to kick him
out. Whichever party you pick for those
guys is going to hate you. They would
not like to be known as the party that put
their bullshit ahead of national security.”
“Yeah, but
I can take the heat,” I said. “What I am
more interested in is how fast and furious I want things to tick down. Maybe show the media going out of its
head. One minute just hoping President
Business will
stop being a loon, the next thinking maybe
he’s turning a new leaf, and then slowly realizing that
he really is as terrible as they seem to think he is because he just won’t shut up about every stupid thing he does and
he can’t figure out why everyone is mad at him.”
“That might
take it too far,” I said.
“Maybe. This is just spitballing ideas. It is hard to create a convincingly stupid
and egotistical person.”
“Then
what? He gets impeached?”
“I think I
want to have it be kind of more bleak,” I said.
“The ending
is what made you think this couldn’t be a comedy?”
“Yeah,” I
said. “I think what will happen is he
will feel the noose closing and he will start up a
diplomatic travel tour around Europe. And then on one of the
stops he walks out to play golf, a helicopter lands and he flies away, inside
his gold bag is a dozen hard drives full of state secrets and computerized
hacking tools he will give to the Russians.”
“Yeah, that
is bleak.”
“I wonder
if I want the ending that gives him his just deserts though,” I said. “Have the twist be that the hard drives are
full of junk, that civil servants knew he was a spy and have been snowballing
him for weeks, and when President Business meets with the Russian spymaster he
gets throw in a gulag.”
“It is a
strange show when the happy ending has a gulag.”
“Leaves it
open for a sequel though,” I said. “There
is still all of the Congress and Senate people who let this happen. There are still the idiot voters who have too
much power because of the Electoral College.
And there is of course the Vice President, soon to be President who,
TWIST, is a super
competent Russian Spy.”
“And now
that President Business Moron is gone he can really hunker down and start
ruining things?”
“Sequels,”
I said. “What do you think?”
“Losing the
Cold Peace,” I said.
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