Jack Abramoff: Screenwriter?
Listening to NPR yesterday, I was shocked to learn this fact about convicted felon and former Congressional lobbyist Jack Abramoff: He is a screenwriter!
Well, to be accurate, he has one writing credit: Red Scorpion (1989) (story) shared credit with his brother Robert Abramoff (screenplay written by Arne Olsen):
Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of the NPR piece (Guy Raz was the host):
If you’re not convinced that truth is often stranger, more devious and even more entertaining than fiction, well, that might change this Friday. That’s when a documentary about Jack Abramoff opens in New York, Los Angeles and here in Washington, D.C.
Abramoff was sent to prison for defrauding American Indian tribes and effectively bribing at least one member of Congress. Here’s a clip from the film.
(Soundbite of film, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money”)
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. NEIL VOLZ (Chief of Staff to Representative Bob Ney): (as Himself) Jack is one of a kind. I mean, Jack Abramoff could sweet talk a dog off a meat truck. He’s that persuasive.
RAZ: “Casino Jack and the United States of Money” is the latest project by award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who is with me in the studio. Welcome to the program.
Mr. ALEX GIBNEY (Documentary Filmmaker, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money”): Great to be here.
RAZ: Alex Gibney, what was it about Jack Abramoff that you felt, you know, wasn’t quite understood or absorbed by the public? What did you think needed to be said about him?
Mr. GIBNEY: Just pure and simple, his was a spectacular story. I mean, it goes from shooting machine guns in Africa to mob hits in Miami to Chinese sweatshops in the Marianas Islands, Indian casinos. It was just too colorful, you know, a lifeguard who runs this aghast think tank that’s shuttling money from the Malaysian government. You can’t make this stuff up.
But what about the screenwriting?
RAZ: Abramoff as a younger man went into the movie business, and he actually wrote a film, some people know about this, with his brother. It’s called “Red Scorpion,” starring Dolph Lundgren.
(Soundbite of film, “Red Scorpion”)
Mr. CARMEN ARGENZIANO (Actor): (As Colonel Zayas) Are you out of your mind?
Mr. DOLPH LUNDGREN (Actor): (As Lieutenant Nikolai Rachenko) No, just out of bullets.
RAZ: Was that his destiny? Was he going to be a Hollywood film producer?
Mr. GIBNEY: I think he hoped to be. It was a kind of an action-film remake of a sort of documentary production that he did of a kind of right-wing Woodstock where he brought all these right-wing freedom fighters like the Contras and the Mujahideen to Africa with hosted by Jonas Savimbi, this rather bloodthirsty dictator.
I think Jack was kind of conflicted. There is something about him that always remained a movie producer, and that’s what probably made him a great lobbyist.
Per Wikipedia, Hollywood definitely rubbed off on Abramoff:
In 1968, when Abramoff was nine, his family moved to Beverly Hills, California. Abramoff attended Beverly Hills High School.[13] During his high school years, he managed both the Beverly Hills and Westwood United Artists movie theater; his father had left Arnold Palmer Enterprises to become president of the Diner’s Club franchises. Abramoff has said that he became a Baal teshuva or a “born again” Orthodox Jew (Baal teshuva literally means, “master of return”: one who has repented or “returned” to God [14]) at the age of 12 after seeing the film version of Fiddler on the Roof.[15]
Casino Jack and the United States of Money, written and directed by Alex Gibney.
Washington super lobbyist Jack Abramoff — from his early years as a gung-ho member of the GOP political machine to his final reckoning as a disgraced, imprisoned pariah — confirms the adage that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. A tale of international intrigue with Indian casinos, Russian spies, Chinese sweatshops, and a mob-style killing in Miami, this is the story of the way money corrupts our political process. Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney once again wields the tools of his trade with the skill of a master. Following the ongoing indictments of federal officials and exposing favor trading in our nation’s capital, Gibney illuminates the way our politicians’ desperate need to get elected — and the millions of dollars it costs — may be undermining the basic principles of American democracy. Infuriating, yet undeniably fun to watch, CASINO JACK is a saga of greed and corruption with a cynical villain audiences will love to hate.
Here’s the movie trailer:
Here is the movie’s Participant Media website.
And if you’re sick and tired of money in politics, you can go here where you can join the Campaign for Transparency.
All of which leaves us with the gnawing question: Once Abramoff is out of prison, will he write a screenplay about his life?
UPDATE: Per Martin comments, I found this:
Whatever happened to FDR’s movie idea?
Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as a young man, pitched a story about John Paul Jones, the American naval hero, to Paramount. Later, when he was President of the United States, FDR asked a lieutenant in naval intelligence to the Oval Office. The lieutenant was a former Paramount executive. “ You know why I asked you up here, don’t you?” the President asked.
The lieutenant said: “Of course. It’s about John Paul Jones.”
“Whatever happened to my treatment [his idea]?” the President of the United States asked.
“It’s on the shelf,” the lieutenant replied. “Paramount hasn’t rejected it, but they haven’t decided anything on it yet.” Then the treatment went into storage.
It now lies in a sealed locker inside a mountain in Missouri, where the studios jointly own a vast storage area of old treatments and scripts.
Okay, I’d really like to believe this. But a “mountain in Missouri”? Please, GITS readers from the “Show Me” state, are there any mountains in Missouri?
UPDATE #2: This is one reason I like hanging around screenwriters — because they know a lot of stuff! In comments, Bill Martell notes:
FDR had better luck with this film… http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028135/
“This film” being The President’s Mystery (1936). You know what they say, write what you know. And check out this list of writers:
Written by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (story concept)
Samuel Hopkins Adams (story)
Lester Cole (screenplay)
John Erskine (story)
Rupert Hughes (story)
Fulton Oursler (story)
S.S. Van Dine (story)
Rita Weiman (story)
Nathanael West (screenplay)
FDR and Nathaniel (“The Day of the Locust”) West?
Then there’s Wesley Clark, Jr., son of former Democratic Presidential nominee Wesley Clark and Kristin Gore, daughter of former Vice President Al Gore — both writers in the movie and TV biz.