JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone, and me: an idealist's journey from Capitol Hill to Hollywood hell

321 Pages·2002·1.349 MB·English

by  Stone, Oliver;Hamburg, Eric

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JFK,Nixon,OliverStone and Me
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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
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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
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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
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To my parents
And to Jacqueline and our son David
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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
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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
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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