Diplomacy and Diamonds

by Joanne King Herring

  New York Boston Nashville

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  Photo Insert

  Copyright Page

  My Heart Part

  To Beau King and Robin King, my beloved sons; and precious Stanisse, Beau, and Beckett, my family

  My Soul Mate

  Desiree Lyon Howe, beautiful and talented. She taught me the true meaning of love and friendship by her unceasing loyalty and support at all times in all things. She is my blessing and a blessing to every life she touches.

  My Super Agent and Friend

  Lacy Lynch—her rare abilities, endless efforts, and unceasing loyalty made this book.

  My Champions

  Larry Brookshire, Susan Krohn, and Posey Parker, who never stop fighting for me

  My Muses

  Katrin Debakey and Rosemary Howck

  My Front Line

  Kelly Mask and Alexis Lockwood (my assistants), Paul Erickson (my warrior), Christina and Michael Bednorz (my guardians)—they took the bullets and never complained about the blood.

  I am also grateful to Ali Velshi of CNN, whose belief in our project fueled our success.

  Without all of them, forget it!

  Acknowledgments

  Now I understand why acknowledgments are so long—it takes an army! To publisher Hachette, Rolf Zettersten, Harry Helm, the tireless, dedicated, handsome, and charismatic Adlai Yeomans, and my editors, the far-seeing Christina Boys and super talented Adrienne Ingrum—for their patience, charm, efficiency, and ability. You have touched the manuscript with magic.

  To my fantastic agency, Dupree/Miller, and specifically, my agent, Lacy Lynch—few agents, if any, have the knowledge and ability to comprehend world affairs and the leaders that make them like you do. You have been a gift from God, and the book would absolutely not be possible without your inventive thinking and skillful engagement from the idea to the page to the publicity and beyond. More than an agent, you are a trusted friend. Huge thanks also to CEO Jan Miller, Vice President Shannon Marven, and the precious Nena Madonia.

  To darling Nancy Dorman-Hickson, my coauthor, for your talent and sweetness—you went above and beyond with your dedication, resilience, and prowess.

  Thanks also to Ellen Vaughn for her keen editorial insights, which helped shape the direction of the book in the early stages, and to Paul Erickson, who helped every part of the process. Also to Kyle Ryan Kiker, Fred Courtwright at the Permissions Company, Michelle Watson, and Heather Klausmeyer for helping the book across the finish line.

  To Jann Lynch, a true southern lady with a keen aesthetic eye. Thank you for your prayers, support, hospitality, intelligence, and charm.

  I can’t go without thanking my assistant, Kelly Mask, for her absolute and total dedication and for keeping me organized and sane in times of stress, and super achiever Alexis Lockwood for working into the night and endlessly stepping up in a time of need and carrying the book to the end. My gratitude also goes to Posey Parker, the ultimate friend and champion on my behalf.

  Thank you, Marina Escobar, for allowing me to lean on you, and to Leonora Gaudin—more than anyone, you are responsible for the success in the later part of my life, infusing it with sunshine.

  Last, above all, I want to thank Desiree Lyon Howe, author and foundation head, who, no matter how busy, how burdened, or how sick, dropped everything to change my life and in doing so made this book possible.

  CHAPTER 1

  Julia Roberts Played Me… the Bipolar Tart

  How does it feel to have a film made about you? Awful! CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (played in the movie by Philip Seymour Hoffman) said in George Crile’s book, Charlie Wilson’s War, “It began with a Texas woman… She’s the one who got him interested.” That was true, but I almost choked when I read the original script for the movie Charlie Wilson’s War. What if a movie showed Charlie arriving at your party with his administrative assistant and you imperiously ordered her to retrieve a martini with two olives before you even said hello? My mother would have died of embarrassment!

  My southern style would be, “Come on in, honey. What would you like to drink? This is my son Beau. He’ll introduce you to the other guests. Charlie and I need to talk.”

  This script had Charlie’s aide sitting on the stairs, drunk, between two trained greyhounds. Trained for what? To guard the stairs! They were to prevent interruptions during “hot-tub parties.” No, sir, that is not me. My role in the script was horrible. I was a Christian who was sleeping with every unidentified man in sight and using “Jesus” as an exclamation point. This caricature of me was terrible. I was portrayed as the worst pseudo-Christian in history, spouting the F-word like the guy who prays loudest at church on Sunday and cheats you at the office on Monday. If it was bad—it was me! In my spare time I caused 9/11. The last scene was the Pentagon shooting up in flames. The script actually said, “Joanne and her conservative Christians caused 9/11.”

  I knew that whatever they said about me in this film was going to follow me for life. The script would be a record of what people remembered—even my sons, my grandchildren, and their children’s grandchildren. Imagine having your grandmother immortalized on film, wildly swilling martinis (with two olives), wallowing in bed with strangers, and spouting “F*%k!” while dancing on the flames of the Twin Towers!

  I was very happy with the book that George Crile wrote, and I was thrilled about the movie—until I read a purloined copy of the script. I was also distressed about the script because it was about the manipulation of Congress and the worst side of American politics.

  The filmmakers had never met me. Christian conservative Republicans have no place in the Hollywood realm. We are valued only as targets for fun, for spoofs, and for playing corrupt businessmen or villains. I don’t mind the politics because I welcome other opinions, but I knew none of those customarily assigned roles were accurate in this case. I knew it because I lived it.

  I kept asking the studio people, “Don’t you want to talk to me?”

  No!

  “You’re paying Julia Roberts a lot to play me. She doesn’t want to talk to me?”

  No!

  “Julia likes to play her roles the way she sees them,” I was told.

  I got the script by a miracle achieved by my childhood friend Anne Baker Horton, the cousin of James Baker, former secretary of state. She asked her daughter-in-law, June Horton, who was vice president of the William Morris Agency, to try to get it. Though it could have cost her her job, June, who was very powerful and very clever, went out on a seriously frail limb to obtain it for me.

  When I first read the script, I wept, wailed, gnashed my teeth, and said, “I am going to sue.”

  “No, you are not,” said June. “You are a public figure. You have no rights.”

  “No rights?” I said. “This is America! What do you mean I have no rights?”

  “Do you know a big-time famous lawyer who has a reputation for winning cases against the odds?” she asked.

  “Do I know a big-time lawyer? You bet your bippy! He just won a case for a guy who killed his neighbor and cut him into pieces; he got a ‘not guilty’ verdict. That’s my man!” Dick DeGuerin charged sixteen million dollars a case. A bit beyond my pocketbook.

  “I’ll write the letter,” June said. “All we need is his letterhead, his signature, and his reputation.”

  I dressed in my “go see the best lawyer in the world” outfit and waltzed into Dick’s office, hoping he would help me. After hearing my story, he said, “Joanne, you are a southern lady. I shall not only handle this letter for you with pleasure, but I would never dream of charging you. Southern women must be protected
.”

  Shades of Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes combined. I was overwhelmed! Southern customs had never seemed so beautiful as they did now, when I needed a Sir Galahad on a white horse. Well, I got ’im. But that’s not all I got!

  June wrote a very diplomatic letter, as planned. It was faxed to Dick with the admonition that he did not have to do a thing but okay it for his secretary to type, then sign and send it. Saturday morning I got a call from his secretary asking if I wanted to read the letter before Mr. DeGuerin sent it. “No,” I cooed. “I know what is in the letter. Just send it with my deepest gratitude.”

  Monday morning I received a copy. This was not the same letter. To my horror, Sir Galahad had crafted a letter that threatened Tom Hanks and Universal Studios with hanging, burning, and disembowelment! “Farewell, cruel world,” I thought, envisioning the jail in which I would spend my life after Tom Hanks and Universal Studios got through suing me. I waited for my summons to court.

  In the interim, June had lunch with the head of Universal Studios, who said, “I don’t know what we are going to do with that crazy woman in Texas who is threatening us with hanging, burning, and disembowelment.” (He, of course, didn’t actually use those words. He used the F-word.) But then he said, “I guess we’ll have to do something about it.”

  Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks’s production partner, called me and asked, “Why are you unhappy?”

  “Because,” I answered, “you have turned me into a hypocritical, bipolar tart.”

  He laughed, as I had hoped he would, and then I proceeded to tell him the true reasons I was so unhappy.

  “One minute, I am spouting Christian values in Jesus’s name,” I explained. “The next, I’m rolling in bed with some man, drinking martinis with two olives. I say I am a Christian, then shout ‘f^#k’ when I’m mad and say ‘Jesus’ when I’m surprised. The tart part needs no explanation—who are all those men I’m in bed with anyway?”

  Gary listened and backed me. The F-word came out. It didn’t fix everything in the script, but it was a step.

  Later I got another call from Gary inviting my son Robin King and me to the set of the movie in Morocco so that we could all “get to know each other.” Then he invited us to Hollywood, where he had planned all kinds of exciting things, such as a dinner in our honor with Tom, Julia, Philip Seymour Hoffman, director Mike Nichols, and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. So my next Sir Galahad/Rhett Butler in this adventure was named Gary. He was a darling, very charming, and made the difference for me.

  It was the documentary my son Robin and Charles Fawcett, the director, made in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion that was the reason Charlie Wilson and the world originally got interested in the war. When George Crile was writing Charlie Wilson’s War in the 1990s, he had called Robin endlessly to get his views for the book. It was a difficult time, as Charlie had been indicted by a grand jury for alleged corruption. In truth, he was a patriot who gained nothing but pain for trying to stop communists in various parts of the world. But in the strange political world of Washington, bad things sometimes happen to good people. Robin refused to talk to Crile because he feared I might be drawn into the controversy surrounding Charlie. (Indeed, I was questioned by the grand jury.) Charlie was ultimately never charged, and returned to full service in Congress.

  In 2007, the movie people begged for scenes from Robin’s film, which Robin refused to release. The first script had been so damning of me, he was afraid of how they might use the footage. It always saddened me that he did not get the credit he deserved for the important part he played in documenting the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.

  No one believed the Russians were invading and that the atrocities were taking place. Robin’s film, made in 1981, long before the 2003 book release and the 2007 movie release of Charlie Wilson’s War, proved these attacks and showed world leaders and all those who saw it the truth. Nothing could have been done in the 1980s without his film. He stayed in the war zone for a year helping these beleaguered people. Even though he got some media recognition in the early days and was interviewed by the networks recently, I was still happy when he was finally recognized for his work by the Motion Picture Association of America in a ceremony in 2008.

  When we arrived on location in Morocco, Tom was there to greet us. “I’ve been in love with you for six months,” he said. “I have your picture pasted all over my office. Let me give you a kiss.” I was happy to comply. Tom, who was as charming, beguiling, and endearing as he appears on screen, went out of his way to make us feel special. For instance, it was very muddy there on location, so he said, “The queen can’t get her feet wet”… as he scooped me up and carried me to the car!

  The trip to Morocco changed everything because the filmmakers got to know me.

  One day I noticed a man in the distance on top of a hill. “Oh, there’s Charlie,” I said.

  “No, that’s Tom,” someone replied.

  I was amazed. Charlie had back problems and an unusual way of holding himself. Tom had so fine-tuned the impersonation that he had even learned to stand like him. He had obviously studied Charlie very closely. But no one seemed interested in studying me. They were all so nice, which made it hard to understand why portraying my real personality did not seem to matter.

  When I met Julia, she was absolutely charming, and even more beautiful than she is on-screen. She introduced me to her husband and showed me pictures of her children, who were enchanting replicas of their mother. Her husband was young, good-looking, and terrific. Julia had turned the tables on Hollywood men by marrying a younger, attractive, intelligent “trophy husband,” who obviously adores her.

  In the end, I did matter to the movie’s star. I found out when I watched the movie’s DVD extras that Julia was interested more than I thought. Joanne’s “just so enigmatic and energetic…. She walks into a room; she’s a very bright light, so it’s intriguing to be that person and to try to pull that off as a complete, true human being. I think she likes keeping people on their toes and having people go, ‘She does what? She accomplished what?’ ”

  But despite all this kindness shown to me by the filmmakers, the script remained unchanged except for the deletion of the F-word.

  So I went to the most caring person I know who loves God—Ed Young, the minister of the Second Baptist Church of Houston, with forty-three thousand members. If prayer would help, there was plenty of it here. We bowed our heads and prayed.

  During my Hollywood visit, I had said to Tom, “You are the most loved actor in America. Why would you make a movie that makes America feel bad? The script depicts Washington as a corrupt, manipulative place and the folks that run it as pretty awful. [I wasn’t the only one who got socked in the script.] Our country needs to feel good about itself. You need to buy Benjamin Franklin, by Walter Isaacson, and John Adams and 1776, by David McCullough—books about our founding fathers—and make movies that make Americans proud, just as they are proud of you.”

  Six months later he called me from Hungary and said, “Joanne, we’ve changed the whole script. It cost us a million dollars. We like it and you’re going to like it.”

  I gasped.

  “We have done a really intelligent adult movie,” he said.

  “Who am I sleeping with now?” I asked dryly.

  “Your husband.”

  “Is that obvious?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How is that obvious?”

  “He has on a wedding ring.” He paused. “But there is still a little hanky-panky with Charlie. Joanne, remember, this is Hollywood.”

  (Little did I know that his idea of “little” involved hot-tub scenes and greyhounds.)

  “And, by the way,” he continued, “Gary and I did buy John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and 1776, and we’re going to produce them.”

  “Thank you, Tom,” I said, breathing again, oh so happy, and deeply grateful to both Tom and Gary and to God.

  Prayer had made the difference.

&n
bsp; John Adams was made as a fascinating, historically correct miniseries. If you haven’t seen it, buy it, keep it, show it to your children, and give it to their schools. It is an enthralling way to learn history. The story of our founding fathers’ struggle to establish our republic will be just as relevant tomorrow as it is today.

  When the movie was released in December of 2007, it was a thrill to attend the premiere in Hollywood. Tom proved to be the great American that we all love, and I’ll never forget Gary Goetzman either. Those who serve silently, serve best! He, too, is a great American.

  Let’s not forget writer Aaron Sorkin, either, who wrote The Social Network and many others. He is a brilliant writer but a screaming liberal. I love him to pieces anyway. He is a sugarplum.

  I was touched by these talented and caring men. My views were not their views. Their politics were not my politics. But we came together to tell a story important to our country, and it made a difference. It’s what I did with Charlie, and it’s what I am doing today. We’ve got to work together. We all win when we do!

  And the new script? I had no idea what was in it. I thought positively and held my breath…

  CHAPTER 2

  Uncle George, Me, and Revolutions

  My family was full of raconteurs whose personal stories came tumbling out of the past as if from a cornucopia rich with history. Bedtime stories were always about the family. Here are a few.

  My great-great-grandmother (the great-niece of George Washington) possessed courage. She bravely faced General Ulysses S. Grant, who burned, robbed, and destroyed everything in his path. When Grant arrived at her door, and announced he was going to make her home his official headquarters, she greeted him by saying, “You’re welcome in this house—as long as you conduct yourself like a gentleman. I expect you to return the house to me as you found it. Under no circumstances are you to come into my bedroom.”