JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone, and me: an idealist's journey from Capitol Hill to Hollywood hell PDF
Preview JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone, and me: an idealist's journey from Capitol Hill to Hollywood hell
01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page i JFK,Nixon,OliverStone and Me 01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page ii 01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page iii JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone and Me An Idealist’s Journey from Capitol Hill to Hollywood Hell Eric Hamburg PublicAffairs New York 01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page iv Copyright © 2002by Eric Hamburg. Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address PublicAffairs, 250West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York NY 10107. PublicAffairs books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 11Cambridge Center, Cambridge MA 02142, or call (617) 252–5298. Book design and composition by Mark McGarry, Texas Type & Book Works. Set in Sabon. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Hamburg, Eric. JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone and me: an idealist’s journey from Capitol Hill to Hollywood hell / Eric Hamburg p. cm. Includes index. isbn 1–58648–029–4 1. Stone, Oliver. 2. Motion picture industry—California—Los Angeles. I. Title. pn1998.3.s76 h36 2002 791.43'0233'092—dc21 2002068390 first edition 10987654321 01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page v To my parents And to Jacqueline and our son David 01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page vi 01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page vii Contents Introduction ix In the Beginning 1 In the Senate 5 JFK 101 15 Why It Matters 19 Back to Congress 25 A Film Called JFK 32 The JFK Bill 39 Going to Hollywood 44 Journey to Ixtlan 48 Development Hell 55 Becoming a Hollywood Producer 64 Steve, Chris and the Beast 70 Larry Flynt, Maureen Dowd and Other Projects 74 The Bay of Pigs Thing 79 Research in Cuba 82 The First Draft 87 A Big Deal 89 Lawyers and Natural Born Killers 92 The Nixon Team, Starring Danny the Weasel 99 The Return of Sammy Glick 106 01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page viii Finding Nixon 117 Lost in the O Zone 120 The Martin Luther King Project and JFK, Part 2 133 Researching Nixon 139 Goodbye Azita, Hello Annie 159 Shooting the Movie 162 Problems with MLK 168 Oliver Becomes Nixon 171 Visiting the Set 173 Strange Episodes 180 MLK, NFL, Nixon, Annie and Danny 186 MLK and NFL Revisited 193 Notes on Nixon 196 On the Cover of Newsweek 203 The Press Junket 206 Nixon Bombs 208 The Beginning of the End 211 Life After Nixon 213 Another Fiasco—Oliver’s U-Turn 218 The End of Ixtlan 222 Good News and Bad News 225 Life After Oliver 229 Fast Forward—June 1999 234 The Oliver Zone 240 John Dean and the Pentagon Papers 248 Strange Encounters with Oliver 252 Final Cut—The Premiere 259 Postscript—The Bay of Pigs Thing Revisited 265 Coda 278 Appendix 282 Acknowledgments 291 Index 293 01--JFK, Nixon, Stone Pages 8/1/02 12:38 PM Page ix Introduction First, let me say what this book is not. It is not a Hollywood gos- sip column run amok. It is not a dirt-dishing, tell-all tome like Julia Phillips’s classic You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. (I’m not big on Hollywood lunches anyway, but I hope that if the dire fate indicated in her title does befall me, I can at least still go to the Coffee Bean for an iced mocha every once in a while.) Neither is this a “revenge” book. In early summer 2002, the New York Timesran a front-page story about a new genre of liter- ature, which it called “Revenge of the Underlings,” about books such as The Nanny Diaries written by young people who had worked for famous people or institutions. Though I did work for a senator, a congressman, and a famous movie director, it is not my intent to seek revenge on any of them, and I would like to think that I was slightly more than an underling. I learned a lot from John Kerry, Lee Hamilton, and Oliver Stone, even (or espe- cially) when the going was rough. I drafted speeches for Senator Kerry, worked on legislation and hearings for Rep. Hamilton, and coproduced two major movies and a documentary with Stone. I am grateful for all those experiences. This book also is not a biography of Oliver Stone (nor of Presi- dents Kennedy or Nixon). It does attempt to explore crucial
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