What Could Hollywood and Washington, D.C., Possibly Have in Common? : You Might Be Surprised How Power and Ego Can Cut So Many Ways

“Hollywood and Washington both suffer from an exaggerated sense of self-importance,” a chronicler of the two cultures once remarked. “The difference is, in Washington the players really are important.”

Maybe so. But these days conversations about Hollywood’s output are as likely to erupt at the Old Ebbitt Grill (where Washingtonians fret that too many people are buying Hollywood’s dreck) as at Morton’s, (where studio executives fret that not enough are buying it). Hollywood’s inclination to produce sexually explicit, violent and otherwise less-than-wholesome family entertainment infuses the political dialogue this election season.

And on the eve of the Academy Awards ceremony, the message coming from Washington continues to be less congratulatory than accusatory. Presidential candidate Bob Dole accuses the industry of destroying American character in its quest for profits. Virtuemeister William Bennett urges Hollywood to restore a “sense of shame” to its low-rent fare. Suddenly, there are critical political points to be scored in supporting mandatory V-chips and a TV rating system.

In fact, though, these two one-industry towns have more in common than either wants to admit--starting with the self-satisfaction that ensues from being able to tell millions of people how to live their lives. In Washington, by force of law. In Hollywood, by power of suggestion.

Think of it: An executive at your average American enterprise makes a living by producing and packaging a product, then trying to persuade people to buy it. If they don’t, he has to throw out the new flavor, watch his bottom line sink, plead with his bosses to keep his job and go back to the drawing board.

A humbling experience, and one that the entertainment industry admittedly shares. But Hollywood people enjoy the added conceit of interpreting and shaping culture, promoting preferred behaviors, language and looks. And doing all this while collecting salaries that would make the highest-level executive in any other business drool.

Losing an election is an equally bracing experience. Meanwhile, though, Washingtonians get to decide how 260-million people should behave, what their take-home pay should look like and how safe the air they breathe and food they eat should be. Beats sitting in some office in Cincinnati dreaming up new ways to use bathroom cleaner.

I’ve experienced the tribalism of both these towns firsthand, with a four-year assignment covering the motion picture industry during the late 1980s wedged neatly between two forays in Washington. Like other journalists with these assignments, I’ve hacked out my share of how-this-town-really-works stories. (“The Power Behind the Glitter” . . . no, no . . . “The Glitter Behind the Power” . . . no, no . . . “The 10 Top Powers Behind the Glitter.”) On occasion, I’ve been part of the media frenzy that inevitably accompanies each town’s rituals--the Academy Awards and the November elections, the biennial purges of studio ranks and White House staff, the almost overnight making and breaking of each town’s stars.

It’s been said that show business and politics are bound by mutual fascination for each other. Jack Kennedy and Frank Sinatra. Warren Beatty and Gary Hart. Ronald Reagan and himself.

Each world covets what the other has. Apart, the two cultures give lie to the pretext that anyone can have it all. They dichotomize success, forcing their leading players to choose--wealth or power, glamour or statesmanship, creativity or control. They are islands eyeing each other across an oceanic expanse, aloof to the waters that flow between them.

Despite that distance and disconnection, I can think of many similar traits. At least four shared sins come to mind:

THE REAL WORLD IS SO, UM, REAL

We could argue until next year’s Oscars over what provides the thickest cushion against reality--money or power--and still never resolve the matter. People partial to Washington (and, let’s admit it, a little defensive over the allegation that they’re out of touch) note that while members of Congress fly home to get beaten up by Rotary Clubs and Junior Leagues every weekend, Armani-clad producers zip off to their gated beach homes in Malibu.

Wealth buys distance, and in Hollywood, the deluge of money, frequently aimed at youthful talent, creates an entirely separate economic and social caste. Washington’s typical high-level government salary of $90,000 to $120,000 amounts to what Hollywood people at equivalent ranking spend on household help. And while plenty of Washingtonians--lobbyists, lawyers and various breeds of campaign hack--can double or triple those figures, suffice it to say that flying in your own sushi chef from Kyoto and hiring actress-valets to park the guests’ cars are not standard features at the average Washington dinner party.

I have conservative friends who argue that Washington’s professed disinterest in making money actually puts it at odds, and out of touch, with most of America. I don’t buy that. But I will note that the $133,600 that members of Congress make doesn’t include lobbyist-financed boondoggles to Europe (“fact-finding” missions left untouched in the latest lobby reform law), massive self-promotion machinery (congressional “franking” or mailings), and personal drivers and assistants (usually drafted from an obsequious taxpayer-financed staff).

It’s also fair to point out that while Hollywood sees its audience only in the dollars behind the box-office numbers, Washington increasingly sees its constituents in the computer printouts of tracking polls and focus groups. Americans aren’t stupid: They’ve figured out that most politicians collect their opinions in order to figure out how best to manipulate their constituents.

Like Hollywood, the main source of Washington’s insularity is its preference for its own company. Players in both towns live and breathe their own worlds. In Hollywood, the shorthand talk is money and movies. In Washington, it’s politics.

IT’S WHAT THEY DO, NOT WHAT THEY SAY

What’s worse? Take your pick: Stars and star-makers pulling up to Norman Lear’s house and piling out of their stretch limos and 7-series BMWs to confer on ways to encourage an unenlightened public to conserve energy? The insistence of Hollywood’s creative community that their movies don’t promote violence but can promote recycling?

Or, choose from these: The Georgetown liberals who defend the state of public education, even though they’re spending 10 grand a year to send their kids to Sidwell Friends and Georgetown Day? Washington’s suburban conservatives pushing private-school vouchers and railing against the inadequacies of public education even as their own kids thrive in neighborhood schools where their wives run the PTAs and soccer leagues?

Or how about divorcees such as Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich lecturing the rest of us about family values? Or Bill Clinton talking about personal responsibility? Stop me before I run out of space . . . .

ETHICS IS JUST ANOTHER . . . WORD

Paramount Pictures calls to arrange a press briefing on its new deal with two hot producers. Reporter interviews producers, assumes everyone has their facts straight, writes story based on information provided. Reporter assumed wrong. Producers had exaggerated (OK, lied) about the size of the deal. Paramount enraged. Reporter furious. Lesson learned.

When it comes to being ethically challenged, Hollywood wins over Washington, hands down. Lies, distortions, myth-making are all part of the fabric of doing business here. A deal’s a deal, unless, of course, there’s a better deal waiting in the wings.

Politicians lie, routinely. But they pay a price at the ballot box: I’ll bet the words “read my lips--no new taxes” still ring in George Bush’s ears as he chases that little white ball across the golf green. And while Washington has its own share of back-room shenanigans, it also has to cope with troops of self-appointed public-interest cops on the lookout for indiscretion past or present: lobbyist-paid treats, the illegal nanny, the strange-smelling real estate deal.

Hollywood operates under its own designer brand of ethics. Bounced studio chiefs are guaranteed cushy production deals. Drug abusers and prostitution clients get big movie contracts. Even embezzlers get a second chance. I have to admit, though, there’s something honorable in a town takes care of its own.

In contrast, Washington is excessively cruel to its outcasts. Maybe the town’s transience, flushing out the power structure at least every four years, undermines loyalty. But the ritual purging of top ranks, destroying reputations through congressional nomination hearings and independent counsel investigations, takes a lot of the fun out of having power. Just ask the people of Arkansas--if there’s anyone left in the state who hasn’t been subpoenaed--about the perks of having a president elected from their fine state.

LIKE MAKING SAUSAGE: YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE HOW IT’S DONE

Every human enterprise needs the fuel of compromise to function. But Washington and Hollywood put a premium on shortcuts and sellouts to reach the finish line.

Dig deep into the history of every movie script and every piece of legislation and you’ll find the nugget of a principled idea. It may have been the wrong one, but at least it was a pure one.

But then the process begins: A little nod to the 17-year-old male market here, a little concession to the meat industry there. Anything to get the film financed, the legislation passed.

Bad movies. Bad laws. Bad process. And no place to pin the blame.

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To be sure, there’s plenty to separate the cultures of Washington and Hollywood. Just try ordering a Thai burrito in a D.C. restaurant. Or watch a woman friend wear her favorite spandex dress to a Capitol Hill reception: The men will assume she’s one of the hired hookers, and the women--if they acknowledge her at all--will offer one of their signature dead-fish handshakes. In food and fashion and sex, Washington is as gray as those shocks of hair that the town’s middle-aged women wear as passes to this mostly men’s club.

In Washington, power is reflective: It is derived almost solely from the logo on your business card. Do you work for the Washington Post or the Detroit News? For a senator (there’s only 100 of those in town) or just a congressman (not such a big deal; there are 435 of them around)? For the party in--or the party out?

Washington’s strict pecking order also extends to its social etiquette. In Hollywood, party guests without status might have to tolerate glances over the shoulder by those on the lookout for more eminent company. In Washington, members of the in-crowd will literally turn on their heels and walk away if the person they are introduced to doesn’t have the right credentials. (In this game, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a doctor or a stay-at-home mom, you’re still not a Player.)

Sometimes, though, that snootiness can backfire. When the House Republicans suddenly busted into power in 1995, news reporters who had ignored these lawmakers and their staffs for years wailed that they couldn’t get their phone calls returned.

Power in Hollywood is more porous because it is defined by who can issue checks, a cast that is always in flux. Yes, the CAA or ICM tag line matters--a lot--when Jeff Katzenberg or Terry Semel is deciding whether to return a call. But small agencies have built impressive niches, and there are scores of mini-production companies with pots of money to dole out.

Hollywood offers more running room for smart entrepreneurial wits to establish an independent power base, especially when the establishment seems to be faltering. Tomorrow night’s awards will cap a season in which the industry’s champs have names like Miramax and Gramercy. Small, non-studio films such as “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Babe,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “The Postman” are the toast of the town.

Hollywood and Washington also differ in their relationship to the news reporters who cover them. Hollywood has never--and probably will never--accept the legitimacy of the press’ watchdog function. To the industry’s producers and agents, and especially its flacks, the press is a marketing tool to be used to sell a product. Whether a hot director or star will grant an interview depends on whether there’s anything on the plate to sell.

It’s no accident that coverage of the creative side of the business is timed to coincide with the release of movies and TV shows. That’s when access unfolds like a rose, and news reporters are ushered through the soft petals of protection surrounding the town’s luminaries from “those people.”

When the press does do its job, which often means criticizing the business, Hollywood’s leading lights demonstrate remarkably thin skins. One big-name studio executive screamed every brand of obscene invective at me--which translated into something like the ever-so-original “you’ll never work in this town again”--after I wrote a story questioning his spending habits. Another important industry figure called me into his office to complain that a critical story had ruined his family life: What would his kids think of him? Beneath all the glitz and bluster, even Hollywood’s biggest egos are fragile ones.

In Washington, reporters are courted, whispered to and even influential. Bruises are an accepted byproduct of the game. My friend, stage producer-turned-lobbyist David Carmen, explains the contrast with Hollywood this way: “In Washington, very rarely is the product tangible or of real application to the marketplace. That gives the press much more clout.” Press clout, though, isn’t always a good thing. In Washington, reporters are infected with an arrogance and insularity that comes from being part of the first-string lineup.

If Washington and Hollywood are hopelessly detached from the rest of America, at least they could try harder to understand each other. Politicians would find that there’s more to movie-making than building pots of gold that they can dip into for campaign contributions. And Hollywood would do well to acknowledge the creative talents of Washington: No one in Los Angeles could have scripted a political story with as much drama, plot twist and humor as this year’s battle for the Republican nomination.