American Rhapsody
Joe Eszterhas
Language: English
Pages: 464
ISBN: 0375725547
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
If the Watergate scandal was a previous generation's National Nightmare, then maybe the Clinton scandal was our National Wet Dream, and who better to narrate it than the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas? In American Rhapsody, Eszterhas, whose credits include Basic Instinct and Showgirls, and Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, for which he was nominated for a National Book Award, takes us through the events that threatened to topple a president and left most of the nation's citizens with, at the very least, a bad taste in their mouths.
Taking full advantage of his considerable journalistic and storytelling talents, Eszterhas gives us every fact, rumor, or innuendo surrounding the president's foibles in the context of late century American politics and entertainment. Here Washington and Hollywood do more than just flirt with each other; they share the same bed. From scandalmongers Matt Drudge (who began as a Hollywood gossip) and Ken Starr, to would-be president paramours Sharon Stone and Barbra Streisand, to his final, unimpeachable witness, Willard—none other than President Clinton's talking penis—Eszterhas gives us the goods on the story that nobody could stop talking about and, thanks to American Rhapsody, will be impossible to think about the same way again.
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Of the scrums asked, like he’d just found a revelation in the Torah. “Absolutely,” I said. Something wild was going on out there. I could feel it in the crowds, which were bigger and more gaga at each stop. I saw something in the way they wanted to touch me that put chills down my back. I saw something in their eyes when they looked at me that humbled me. “No more Clinton-Gore! No more Clinton-Gore!” they yelled when they saw me, yelling it like we’d yelled “Beat Army!” at the Naval.
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.
(probably relevant), but LBJ was such a barnyard hick that drawing parallels between LBJ and Bill Clinton could boomerang . . . . JFK was a sex fiend (directly relevant, but, unfortunately, old news, gorged and gobbled by the Beast way too often to distract it from what was on the table now). Besides researchers turned into private eyes, veterans of more recent scandals were out there, too, tipping the White House to juicy morsels that might distract the Beast. They remembered the stripper Fanne.
Sitting high on my judge’s bench: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. You know I have done my best to serve You and America my entire life. I say that not to excuse myself in any way for my sins, but to provide a moral context, to build a case for a pattern of my behavior that, until my exposure to POTUS, was as near-exemplary as humanly possible. I say that in all humility, my Lord, but You know it in Your all-encompassing wisdom to be legally accurate. Mother.
Jack London, and Shakespeare, even quoting from one of the Bard’s sonnets: “Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye / And all my soul and all my every part / And for this sin there is no remedy / It is so grounded in word in my heart.” Some thought in the White House was given (allegedly, it was a James Carville idea) to presenting the president’s onanism in a political context: The world was overpopulated; hunger was everywhere. What the president was doing was good for the whole world.