American Rhapsody

by Joe Eszterhas

  I know, too, that I’ve been exceedingly fortunate with what Billy has chosen to do for a living. He’s a people person who seduces other people for their votes. If I get something out of it, too, well, he still gets the vote, doesn’t he? He decided he wanted to be president, thankfully, instead of, say, a football star. He doesn’t go out there every weekend and let me get beaten up. Cup or no cup, it still hurts. He prefers to watch others get theirs beaten up on TV. I don’t mind seeing that. Billy and I agree. A bed is much better than a football field. I score. He groans. She yips. We win. And go off together into our Disney World.

  I’ve been exposed to a lot of precious people. I like the word precious very much. It’s what Gennifer called her internalized me, her buried little honey pot, her hidden feelings. Truth to tell, Pookie was the most precious I’ve met. Pookie wanted to eat me alive. Billy would buy lingerie with her and I’d start to feel instinctively grandiose.

  We’ve always been suckers for clothes. Thongs. String bikinis. Monokinis. Hot pants. Leotards. Body stockings. Wet T-shirts. Armholes. Chunky zippers. Dog collars. He’d have Pookie move around in bed wearing her white nightie with the garter belt. All the time she did that, he was holding on to me like I were a snake on meth. Then he turned me intrusively loose inside her precious and I felt obsessively, compulsively grandiose.

  The things that happened between her precious and me constituted a monumental impropriety. Don’t just take my word for it; look at what happened to Pookie after me and Billy. Pookie went on to have a total body experience with a world-champion rodeo rider, Larry Mahan, who sure knew a great ride when he saw one. That was after she left riding partner Evel Knievel, who was used to jet-engine Harley hogs under his loins. Then she married a man named Finis Shellnut—I’m not kidding, really—whose willard she calls “Big Tex.”

  But Pookie hurt my feelings when she went public. She talked about Billy’s “overheated eye contact” and how she liked Billy’s lips, especially “the way that bottom lip kind of turned to the side as he spoke.” Spoke? With Pookie, Billy, and me, it wasn’t about “speaking.” It wasn’t about lips. It wasn’t about Pookie and Billy. It was about me.

  It was about the overheated one-eye contact I was having with her precious. To hear her tell it, it was about the lace teddy she was wearing and the scented candles in the room. It wasn’t about that. It was about me, me, me and Pookie’s precious. I loved Pookie’s precious! I couldn’t get enough of Pookie’s precious! Pookie’s precious was paradise! Now, alas, paradise lost.

  Billy frightened me with Hilla for a while, but I quickly learned he meant to have the Hun for himself, not me. Even when he was engaged to her, we were cheating with someone else’s precious and we were cheating on that someone else’s precious with a third precious, living a precious life . . . . I didn’t mind that he kept Hilla mostly away from me. I knew in my capillaries that Hilla didn’t like me. She was full of hostility toward me. I had zero interest in doing inner therapy with her. I thought she viewed me as some kind of necessary and traumatic self-punishment.

  I just didn’t feel I belonged in there. It was a dry and cold place. I sensed she always had another hidden agenda, and I wasn’t interested in probing her underlying issues. I kept worrying she’d hurt me somehow. But Billy seemed to sense this, too, and didn’t call on me more than two or three times a year. Maybe, to be frank, the problem is that Hilla’s precious has a self-worth as big as mine. Maybe Hilla’s precious wants exactly the same attention that Billy has gotten me so used to during the years. Maybe Hilla’s precious wants to be me with people kneeling at her feet.

  Then there was Monica. I think, had it all turned out differently, I could’ve had a lot of fun with her. Beverly Hills girl, you know. Orange ice wigs. Silk scarves. Handcuffs. Mirrors. Poppers. Altoids. Dirty jokes. All of that. Pookie in training maybe. Get rid of the baby fat, the helmet, and I had visions of sugarplums, ice, and hot candle wax dancing in my head. She was a young woman with great interpersonal, inappropriate potential. I liked Monica, standing there stark naked in boots. I liked her fleshpot lips. And Billy, no surprise, liked her hooters.

  Billy and his thing for balloon-bread ba-ba-zoom hooters! When we were kids, peaches, tomatoes, cantaloupes, and eggplant turned us on. Going to the grocery store meant a change of underwear. A melon patch was an orgy. In those days, of course, he’d notice something, anything, and I’d try to jump out of his pants. A big juicy tomato. A rare steak. The smell of fresh catfish. The curves on a Cadillac car. The carburetor in a Cadillac car. Courtesans on their way to church in Hot Springs. The minister’s daughter in Hot Springs. The minister’s wife in Hot Springs. The smell of rain in Hot Springs. Anything. Anything at all, and Billy and I would be off to play. Good days. Fun times. Lots of laughs. Lots of showers. Lots of underwear.

  Not like now, when they’re trashing me everywhere and for the first time in my life I’m worried about sags in my self-esteem. They say I’m too small and point out that Marla Maples calls the Donald’s “Trump Tower.” Well, I’m not too small. I’m not a seven-footer carried around by Shinto priests or one of those Jamaican purple creepers or Long Dong Silver. But from what Truman Capote said, I’m probably bigger than Jack’s or Bobby’s . . . not as big as LBJ’s, who called his “Jumbo.” They whisper slanderously about pimples and warts and God knows what pus-filled whatnots. They make me sound like some sort of Frankenpenis hunched to the side or humpbacked.

  I have to hear about my supposed afflictions on talk radio. Can you imagine being me and hearing about myself on talk radio? (I’ve never wanted fame—to be displayed at the Smithsonian like John Dillinger’s; to be kept in a bottle and sold like Napoléon’s.) They accuse me of wearing a Winnie the Pooh tattoo like Michael Jackson or being imbedded with a pump like that big action-movie star. Dirty-minded lies. The politics of personal destruction taken to a new high or low (depending on my mood).

  Please! I’m healthy and all-American! I’ve always been user-friendly, equal-opportunity, global, and all-inclusive. I’m from Arkansas, for Jiminy’s sake! I know Billy sometimes acts like I’m from Missouri, the Show Me State. But I’m not. I don’t have any pimples or warts. I don’t wear any Disney tattoos. I don’t have any pumps. Billy doesn’t have to moan “Squeeze me! Squeeze me!” to get me to stand up on my own two . . . I’ve been traumatized by all this. Maybe Billy needs to find me a warm and friendly (and moist) support group to help me.

  He’s hurt me, too. No, not that way—I’m used to his touch; I’ve grown accustomed to his pace. But with his words and with that one single, unforgettable intrusive action. Why did he have to talk about me as a worn-out old organ, able only to pee twenty times a day? (Even that wouldn’t be my fault; it’s not fun being hostage to your prostate.) Why did he have to humiliate me by putting that cigar where I so badly wanted to go? Why did he allow his cigar and not me to be total with Monica’s totality?

  I was unzipped, externalized, watching when he did that. Why didn’t he keep me zipped, instead of making me so undignifiedly drool at the sight of the cigar inside the object of my turgid emotions? Why did he force me to watch him put the cigar there, as he later forced Monica to watch as he projected me over that rudely inappropriate sperm bank of a sink? What an awful, hurtful thing to do to your dearest and oldest friend, who’s never let you down, who’s risen to every occasion, even in those challenging Oxford years, when I was sleep-deprived but grandly functioning all the time.

  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 mus
terbation, 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

  Dear 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).