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TO: ARI GOLD
FROM: MARK HALPERIN
DATE: 10/22/20
RE: MOVIE DEAL
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Hey.
Please don’t call me today and ask me what’s going to happen in the debate.
Welker will ask solid, cautious questions.
Biden will repeatedly pivot back with optimism to the words from his convention speech: “If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness.”
What will Trump do? I have no idea. But, trust me – Jared has no idea what Trump will do, Christie has no idea what Trump will do, and Trump has no idea what Trump will do.
And he won’t decide in the green room. He will decide a microsecond before the words come out of his mouth.
As I predicted to you on the phone the other day (when you called in a panic asking me why Nate Silver had moved Trump’s odds of winning from 8% to 9%), the papers are already starting to write post mortems about the election.
Of course, as I also predicted, they are 90% about how Trump lost and 10% about how Biden won.
Obviously, this is in part because Trump is box office and Biden is boring.
But it is also because Team Trump leaks like a gunshot-riddled juice box. As I’ve also told you, the lack of leaking (not even blind quotes!) from Team Biden is one of the most extraordinary stories of this campaign.
Even in the dark days around Iowa and New Hampshire, Joe’s folks hung together and didn’t finger point at their dirty laundry in a circular firing squad. (I know how you like it when I cram three metaphoric idioms into one sentence….).
I have a theory about how and why the Biden high command squelched leaking. I will explain it to you the next time we talk.
What I want to do now is share with you a decision that, since you are my TV and movie agent but not my book agent, will make you happy.
Rather than sell the story of the campaign to a publisher, let’s go straight to one of the streamers with a mini series. I have already started on the screenplay. Then, after the script is done, I will reverse engine from that and basically sell the rights to a novelization of the mini.
And, no, you can’t get your percentage off of that book deal. Javelin will get that. It’s the least I can do for them, since they are annoyed I am doing the screenplay first.
I don’t want to write this on spec, so I’d like you to set up some Zooms with the usual suspects (Netflix, Amazon, Apple, etc). I think I can pitch and sell this just off of a few scenes, themes, and characters.
As we discussed, we should sell this now, betting on the notion (again, as I keep telling you, not a sure thing) that Biden wins.
Hollywood is only going to want to buy something that has the happy ending it is looking for.
Let’s get someone to buy this idea now. Then, if Trump somehow wins, we have our deal, and after they get over their shock and anguish, we convince them that, in fact, from a purely theatrical view, reelection is a better ending to the story. (Yes, I know they will care more about the IRL implications of the country voting for four more years of this…)
I’m still working on the screenplay, but I think we are best off getting a deal asap and announcing it before any competing project gets signed. We want to own this space by going first.
I can finish the script by the inauguration. The thing kind of writes itself.
Again, my pitch will be premised on a Biden win; see below for the outline.
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WORKING TITLE: “Best of Us” (alternate option: “Sorcerer's Apprentice”)
The main theme is that a bunch of forces that actively or passively helped Trump four years ago united to make sure he was stopped this time.
So a lot of the action will take place showing these forces over the last four years and how they did their things.
Some of these characters will be our heroes (John Bolton, the Lincoln Project folks, Nancy Pelosi, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff. Tony Fauci, Democratic governors, the Obamas, etc).
Then there will be a category of semi- or anti-hero heroes: Chris Christie, Matt Drudge, Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, etc. (Check out Christie’s Wall Street Journal op ed today in which he once again calls out those who have failed to emphasize mask wearing without using the word “Trump.”)
Then there are the characters who tried, yet again, to help this guy win: Jared, Parscale, Putin, Stephen Miller, Rudy, etc.
Our two main characters will be Olivia Troye and Mitt Romney. Both going through the crucible of being allied with Trump (wait until you read the Jeans-Georges scene!) and then breaking away, with Mitt casting his ballot and not voting for Trump.
We will also have three big composite characters representing the key groups that turned on this guy, predicated on Dan Henninger’s smart view of the race:
[P]osit that Mr. Biden’s theory of the election has just two elements: first, the apparent fact that most Americans, notably seniors, disapprove of Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic; and second, the belief that most undecided voters are reluctant to absorb four more years of the unique Trump persona.
* A hunter type from rural Wisconsin who voted Obama twice, then Trump in 2016, but decides he is fed up with the president on both policy and personality.
* A suburban mom from outside Philly who has spent every day for four years regretting she didn’t support Hillary.
* And a guy in The Villages who loses his wife to COVID and flips from Trump to Biden.
I’m also thinking of making this lady a character:
“I find this individual so disgusting,” said Jane Kelly-Forest, 61, who lives in a suburb of Des Moines. “You want to believe the polls, and you want to believe that people will see what’s right in front of their eyes. I’m disappointed with the electorate and the population as a whole because they can’t see him for what he is.”
As the Wall Street Journal does today, we will make a big deal of the period around the Barrett Rose Garden announcement, the first debate, and when Trump goes to the hospital – lots of great metaphors and scenes there. The cake was probably baked before this but a lot of the sources of Trump’s troubles are on offer during this interval.
Some administration officials said they felt the Covid-19 outbreak in the White House had been inevitable since the spring, when Mr. Trump began messaging that the pandemic was almost over. Mr. Trump and his aides have long played down the importance of mask-wearing and social distancing. The president went from being tested daily early in the year to saying in July he was being tested every two or three days.
We play the first debate for laughs, ending with the benediction of one of his stunned team, describing it as “one of the most incredible self-inflicted wounds of all time.”
The other dialogue and scenes in this period are as gold as you are: in the Oval Office, at what passed for debate prep, in the White House Residence, and at the hospital.
Tuesday brought the first debate, which historically often has been tricky for incumbents, who are typically more out of practice than their rivals who have spent months honing debate skills during the primary. Mr. Trump eschewed traditional practice debate sessions in favor of more informal discussions with his team, advisers said. At one point during practice, he asked the group, “Why are you guys in here? Why aren’t you out there defending me on TV?”
Then we go to Trump at Walter Reed, where we can illustrate his obsessions with media coverage and Fox:
In the hospital the next day, on Oct. 3, Mr. Trump noticed a long gap after 1 p.m. on Fox News, when none of his supporters were on the air. Eager to clarify conflicting reports on his health after an anonymous source—later identified as Mr. Meadows—had said his condition was precarious, he dictated a statement to Mr. Giuliani, declaring himself ready to leave the hospital.
Political aides then raced to get pro-Trump Republicans on the air. By 8 p.m., six Trump allies were booked for Fox.
There’s also a great subtheme of this notion that Democrats and Republicans alike love – that Trump lost on purpose.
Still, we will also show him in the final days, aware he is on the precipice of earning the one label he most fears (“loser), frantically casting about, trying to find some silver bullet.
Again, from the Journal:
Mr. Trump is publicly optimistic, but privately appears aware that he is trailing in the race, people familiar with the matter said. He has attempted to establish order in several unusual ways. …With the election weeks away, he has asked some advisers about shaking up his re-election team, seeking opinions on campaign manager Bill Stepien and Jason Miller, a senior campaign adviser who holds significant influence on the paid advertising and messaging.
And also Trump thrashing around, thinking about firing his FBI director, which will of course jazz swing voters.
Obviously, we will show the desperate, last-minute effort to make the race about Hunter, including a great scene where Rudy goes on cable and the Internet to peddle his wares followed just hours later by the disclosure of the incredible Borat scene. Fittingly, given its Rudy, the whole thing is operatic.
* We will have a few scenes showing Biden’s apparent decency.
But most of the Biden scenes will show him puttering around his house in Delaware, laughing about going back down to the basement and about Trump and how easy this turned out to be:
“Their strategy has been working. But the other part is that Joe Biden’s greatest asset is Donald Trump,” said Jerry Austin, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist. “For months now, he has let Donald Trump be Donald Trump and that has been to Biden’s advantage….”
“It sure looks to me that at this point in time, people are looking for the anti-Trump,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “They want calm and they want their normalcy back. They are sick and tired of this whole circus.” (The Hill)
* We will towards the very end show Jared telling someone he knew all along how bad things looked.
* There’s also a scene in which Putin and Rouhani each issue orders to undermine the election, the bizarre Wednesday announcement by Wray and Ratcliffe that those countries are up to no good, and the head of the Proud Boys saying, “Those letters weren’t ours, but I wish I had thought of that!”
There’s a great scene at Barack Obama’s big Philadelphia rally, where the media swoons over the gloves-not-even-in-sight perf, representative of the fired-up-and-ready-to-go Democrats (from Elizabeth Warren to Pete Buttigieg), while Politico notes the divisions in the Republican Party, including plaintive panic from electeds who moan about Trump’s lack of endgame message discipline. I will subtly make the point of rich irony – that these politicians stuck by Trump for four years and now they are watching the whole thing go down the tubes at his hands.
We will cast the Pelosi-Mnuchin talks as Keystone Cops meets the Perils of Pauline, using the failure to reach an agreement as a metaphor for Trump failing to lead against the pandemic and failing to be Mr. Art of the Deal.
There is a great recurring comic bit where, as Trump leaves the White House every day to go campaign, he stops on the South Lawn before getting on Marine One and says some version of the same thing, as the press rolls its eyes:
“Hello, everybody. So we’re going to North Carolina. Big crowd. Really big crowd. And we’re going to have a good time.”
Other scenes: immigrant children at the border, Melania Trump talking and talking in the Residence (and barely on the campaign trail), and some pretty interesting Team Biden and Team Pelosi communications that haven’t been reported yet (I’m helping we break news on that and more with the series).
I trust that gives you enough to set up the Zooms and sell this thing.
As I said, please act fast. We need a signed contract before Election Day. We will never get a fat Hollywood payday if Trump is somehow reelected.
To inspire you to get off your Pelotoned ass, I leave you with two things:
1. Check out Nagourney’s essential reading New York Times story about how a Trump win is unlikely but not impossible:
The clearest road for Mr. Trump is to hold one of the three states he snatched from Democrats in 2016 — Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin — as well as the rest of his winning electoral map, including Arizona and Florida, where Mr. Biden is now competitive. Polls indicate that is a daunting task, but not an impossible one, particularly if he succeeds again in driving up support among working-class voters, including in more rural areas he dominated in 2016, while holding down Mr. Biden’s support among nonwhite voters.
2. The closing words of Karl Rove’s column:
In less than two weeks, the voting will end. We all have our guesses as to what will happen. But with so many of the normal markers broken or unavailable, so much new and unknown, we’re in largely uncharted territory. That’s an argument for modesty rather than certainty from us all.
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THE STATES THAT WILL PICK THE PRESIDENT - by Brian P. Nadeau
Arizona
* Grand Canyon State judge rules no real-time access for AZ Dem. Party to early-voter signature issues lists. (Arizona Daily Star)
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Georgia
* Peach State voters have cast record 2.1M ballots, 133% more than this time in 2016. (WJBF ABC6)
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Florida
* U.S. DHS determines Iran sent threatening emails to FL, AK Dem. voters, taking advantage of subpar state, local election website security. (The Washington Post)
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Iowa
* New York Times/Siena College poll shows Biden leading Trump by 3 pts. in Hawkeye State. (The New York Times)
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Maine
* With highest median age in U.S., ME’s Downeast community has Election Day worker abundance. (The Ellsworth American)
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Michigan
* State Dept. of Civil Rights expresses support for state police polling place Election Day presence. (WILX NBC10)
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Nebraska
* NE SOS Bob Evnen says election officials’ erroneous voter registration letter to non-felons has been corrected. (Norfolk Daily News)
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New Hampshire
* VP Pence at Portsmouth rally says, 'The road to victory goes right through New Hampshire.' (WBZ CBS Boston)
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Nevada
* Vegas sportsbooks owners say legal presidential election betting a missed revenue opportunity as PredictIt shows Biden win probability at 69% to Trump’s 39%. (Gaming Today)
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North Carolina
* 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules NC ballots returned, postmarked Nov. 3rd should be accepted by state elections board through Nov. 12th. (The News&Observer)
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Ohio
* 'Ohio and America need four more years of President Donald Trump…,' says Pence during Cincinnati’s Lunken Airportrally. (The Enquirer)
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Pennsylvania
* Former President Obama stumping for Biden-Harris ticket in Philly tells drive-in event goers, 'I’m asking you to remember what this country can be…believe in Joe's [and] Kamala's ability to lead...' (CBS News)
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Texas
* Lone Star State presidential race in dead heat with Biden, Trump at 47% per Quinnipiac survey. (Politico)
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Wisconsin
* U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin receives ~15K letters from Badger State voters, postal workers expressing dire concern about mail system ability to deliver absentee ballots. (Wisconsin State Journal)
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TOP STORIES – by Brian P. Nadeau
Sports: Rays bounce back in WS Game 2 behind second baseman Brandon Lowe’s 2HR, 3RBI performance, besting Dodgers 6-4.
Business: Tesla reports record $8.8B Q3 revenue, far outpacing analysts’ est. $6.3B, fueled by 44% global deliveries increase, starkly contrasting overall U.S. auto sales contraction.
Entertainment: $1.75B-funded Quibi ceases operations after mere 6 months.
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Have Mark Halperin speak by videoconference to your organization about the closing days of the campaign or what happens after Election Day.
Please send all inquiries to markhalperintalk@gmail.com