And the Nominees Aren't...

Sometimes I get around to reading the entertainment sections of my Sunday LA Times a little late. Last night I finally read this story about Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's pretensions of being the next Aaron Sorkin. As many of you know, Rohrabacher has been caught up in the Joseph Medawar scandal, in which Medawar optioned a 30 year-old Rohrabacher screenplay in return for access and introductions to high-level members of Congress who might be able to help with Medawar's proposed reality series about the Department of Homeland Security. Medawar used the access to convince investors that he could get the project going. Turned out it was all bogus, there was no DHS reality project, and Medawar was defrauding everybody for about $5.5 million dollars.

Well, until now, the actual optioned screenplay has never made print. But now the Times puts the script into the light of day. And big surprise, it's a huge steaming pile of crap. It's a buddy flick called "Baja," about - how's this for originality - two mismatched guys forced to partner together to rescue a treasure! The movie has been in mothballs for so long that he had to change its references:

The two heroes come from different worlds: Bernie Shulman, who calls himself "Paz," is a bearded grad student in his mid-20s, a liberal who opposes war, questions the existence of God and isn't above having a good time getting drunk on tequila and chasing women. Roger Wallace is a twentysomething Marine Corps veteran and staunch conservative who believes the U.S. war in Iraq is a just war, but is haunted by frequent flashbacks about his time in combat there. (The original screenplay portrayed Roger as a Vietnam War vet, but had since been updated to be an Iraq veteran.)

He did change the Vietnam Vet to a Gulf War vet, but unfortunately he never got around to changing the plot, characters and dialogue. Look at these abominable snippets:

Biker to Roger: "One smash with this chain, and your brains are gonna be all over the ground."

Paz to Roger: "Roger, there are four of them!"

Roger to Paz: "Listen, kid, you just take care of one of 'em. If you can just grab hold of one, I can take care of the rest."

One read of these lines, and my brains shot out of the back of my head trying to escape.

"Paz, what kind of name is that?"

"It means something. It means 'peace' in Spanish. What's your name?"

"Roger. Roger Wallace. It means, 'I am Roger Wallace.' "

Hah! People whose names have meanings other than English are stupid! And Roger Wallace (who might as well be called "Whitey Whitestein") being the hero over "Paz," that should tell you exactly the kind of xenophobia at play in this guy's fertile mind.

And what would an action movie be without a little romance? It won't rival Rick and Ilsa in "Casablanca," but one knows sparks are going to fly eventually between Roger and Rosa, the daughter of a Mexican rancher the buddies meet along the way.

"You are a bit more distant than your amigo," she tells him.

"He's looking for something," he replies.

"What about you? What are you looking for? Or are you just trying to get away?" she asks.

"You get up-close personal real quick don't you?"

"Do you have a sweetheart?" she continues.

"I have no one. That's the way I want it."

Don't quit (or lose an election from) your day job, dude.

Rohrabacher clearly sees himself as this Roger Wallace character, the tough-talking conservative outlaw who kicks ass and beds the ladies but walks away without any strings. It's such a parody; a therapist would have a field day. He even kind of admits to it:

"I said [to my friend], 'What do I write about?' " Rohrabacher recalled. "He said, 'Dana, write about what you like to do. What do you like to do?' I said, 'Well, I like to go down to Mexico, drink tequila and chase women.' So he goes, 'Well, write a story that includes going down to Mexico, drinking tequila and chasing women.' And I said, 'Why don't we make it a treasure story?' "

Somewhere in the country they elected this guy.

Another proposed script of his raises some really interesting questions:

He penned several shorter treatments, including "Tranquilidad," about a mercenary hired by an oil company to go to a South Pacific island that, unbeknownst to its native inhabitants, is sitting on one of the world's largest oil reserves. His job: to make sure the island stays safely in pro-American hands.

"I actually was down in the South Pacific [after Reagan lost the 1976 race for the Republican presidential nomination] and was hired to do a job down there," Rohrabacher said. "I was involved in helping a native insurrection movement down there to prevent some leftist group from winning…. I was riding a motorcycle around the jungle and living in a jungle village. I felt like I was Steve McQueen." He declined to give further details, except to say he wasn't sent there by the CIA and he wasn't working for an oil company.

Well then who the hell WAS he working for? Why was he, as an American citizen, involved in the governmental affairs of a sovereign nation? Who stood to benefit from his efforts? What the fuck is going on with this?

It's clear that Joseph Medawar was buying access (and on the cheap; $23,000?) to help along his scheme to bilk investors. Dana Rohrabacher was probably just so flattered that anyone in Hollywood would READ his trash that he made himself believe this was legitimate. Now we know why it sat on a shelf so long.