If the Watergate scandal was a previous generation's National Nightmare,
then maybe the Clinton scandal was our National Wet Dream, and who
better to narrate it than the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas? In American
Rhapsody, Eszterhas, whose credits include Basic Instinct and
Showgirls, and Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, for which he was
nominated for a National Book Award, takes us through the events that
threatened to topple a president and left most of the nation's citizens
with, at the very least, a bad taste in their mouths.
Taking full advantage of his considerable journalistic and storytelling
talents, Eszterhas gives us every fact, rumor, or innuendo surrounding
the president's foibles in the context of late century American politics
and entertainment. Here Washington and Hollywood do more than just flirt
with each other; they share the same bed. From scandalmongers Matt
Drudge (who began as a Hollywood gossip) and Ken Starr, to would-be
president paramours Sharon Stone and Barbra Streisand, to his final,
unimpeachable witness, Willard--none other than President Clinton's
talking penis--Eszterhas gives us the goods on the story that nobody
could stop talking about and, thanks to American Rhapsody, will be
impossible to think about the same way again.
