Since the publication of UNLIKELY ALLIES, many readers have encouraged me to write a screenplay about how a merchant, a playwright and a spy saved the American Revolution. So last week I found myself in Napa at the Northern California Screenwriters Expo pitching UNLIKELY ALLIES to Hollywood producers. 

Surrounded by other aspiring screenwriters I felt more than a little intimidated. There were so many people from all walks of life full of inspiration and hope. As we waited to pitch our ideas to the jaded Hollywood crowd, I sat with a grey-haired single mom nervously paging through a script on her lap about a middle-aged divorcee struggling to raise a family. I talked to a cheerful homeless man who had scrapped together just enough money to pay his registration fee so that he could pitch an idea for a sci-fi movie. I met a young man with a brilliant smile who had travelled up from Mexico with a terrific idea for a romantic comedy.

We discovered that the film business has never been tougher. In the Great Recession Hollywood isn’t taking any chances. Dramas, science fiction, and romantic comedies are too risky to try to sell to audiences overseas or to the “target U.S. demographic”: 16-24-year-old boys. All Hollywood wants to see is another Avatar – something with lots of action that doesn’t require much of its audience and can be easily translated into Spanish or Chinese. That’s why you can’t find anything worth watching at the Cineplex on a Saturday night.

Yet, despite the chilly reception we received from the Hollywood crowd, what struck me was how hopeful these aspiring writers felt even in the face of slim odds. Was there ever a country so populated by dreamers? What is it about our national character that we grow up believing that anyone can win the lottery?

The founders of our nation declared the inalienable right to “the pursuit of happiness.” What other country was founded on such a promise? What the founders meant was the right to pursue one’s aspirations to better oneself and to provide greater economic opportunities for one’s family. Is the pursuit of happiness still possible in America?

Even before the Great Recession began the economic opportunities for most Americans have been closing. Over the last thirty years the average income of Americans has come up only 12% in real terms. At the same time, the average income of the wealthiest .01% of Americans has risen 400%. During the Bush years 8 million Americans lost their jobs, and now unemployment remains stuck at 9.7%. Today, one in four American homes is worth less than the outstanding mortgage.

The American Dream had been on life support for at least a decade. That may explain the fascination with shows like American Idol that hold out the hope that anyone can realize their dreams in America. Against all odds we still grasp onto the founders’ promise.

President Obama’s health insurance reform bill is a small step in the direction of trying to help the average family survive the vicissitudes of life so that they can pursue their dreams. More must be done quickly to generate jobs and open up educational opportunities if we are to preserve our American tradition.

As for UNLIKELY ALLIES the movie, well, we’ll see. But if you have a friend in the business let me know. I still haven’t given up on the pursuit of happiness.

The election of the forty-first Republican and the first nudie model to the U.S. Senate has the pundits chattering. Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts senate race is being read as a dark omen of what the Democrats will face in the mid-term election. Does Scott Brown’s election really signal the emergence of the Tea Party as a powerful new reactionary force on the American political scene? Does his election foretell the end of the Democratic majority? Is it a turning point in American politics?  

We can’t know for sure, but history is never so predetermined. It’s more than likely that the pundits are wrong. After all these are the same pundits who predicted last year that the Democratic majority would rule for a generation – before they predicted that Obama was unelectable and Hillary Clinton had the Democratic nomination sewn up.

Here’s another interpretation: Scott Brown defeated an indifferent Democratic politician who didn’t even bother to campaign. The handful of voters who showed up at a special election in the middle of winter were motivated by frustration and anger – not necessarily directed at President Obama – but at the local Democratic machine politicians who took them for granted and run Massachusetts like a one-party state.

The media’s penchant for reading too much into Scott Brown’s election is a common phenomenon. Looking backward we often attribute significance to events that might be merely random localized occurrences. On the other hand, sometimes random occurrences can alter the course of history. We learn in school that history is determined by great leaders, big ideas, or broad social movements. But sometimes, history is determined by accident.

The success of the American Revolution, for example, has been attributed to a wide-range of causes: the brilliant leadership of our founding fathers, the ideology of civic republicanism, and the social mobility of American colonists. But a more likely explanation is the particular timing of France’s intervention on the side of the colonies.

Why did Louis XVI agree to aid the American revolutionaries when they appeared to be losing? The conventional explanation is that Benjamin Franklin charmed the French monarchy into providing all of the arms, ammunition and supplies for the Continental Army. But, in reality, Franklin had nothing to do with it.

In January 1776, long before Franklin arrived in France, he sent an unknown Connecticut shopkeeper, Silas Deane, on a secret mission to persuade Louis XVI to arm the Americans. Deane had never left Connecticut in his life, could not speak a word of French, and knew nothing about diplomacy. But Franklin thought that Deane was such an improbable emissary that the British spies would never suspect him.

Deane succeeded with the help of two Frenchmen: the comic playwright Caron de Beaumarchais and the French ambassador to London Chevalier d’Eon. This improbable trio are the subject of my new book, UNLIKELY ALLIES: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution.

Beaumarchais was one of the most interesting men of the nineteenth century. Though he is best remembered as the author of the original plays, “The Barber of Seville” and “The Marriage of Figaro,” he also invented the wristwatch, designed the modern harp, performed and taught music, built the Paris water system with the Perrier brothers, spied for the French King, and traded arms on the side. Deane and Beaumarchais together smuggled all of the arms, ammunition, uniforms, tents, blankets, and boots for an army of 30,000 men passed a swarm of British spies and through a British blockade to the Continental Army. The arms were sent before Franklin even set foot in France, and they arrived just in time to sway the outcome of the Battle of Saratoga, the turning point of the American Revolution.

None of this would have been possible without the leavening influence of the flamboyant Chevalier d’Eon. D’Eon was a decorated French war hero, an accomplished diplomat, and a brilliant spy, who was also blackmailing the French king. Louis XVI sent Beaumarchais on a secret mission to London to persuade d’Eon to surrender the incriminating documents. The dashing playwright ended up seducing d’Eon, who  admitted to Beaumarchais that he was in fact – a woman.

D’Eon’s decision to come out as a woman after forty years disguised as a male soldier, diplomat and spy set in motion a series of events that provided the catalyst that convinced Louis XVI to arm the Americans against the British. How and why that happened is the story of UNLIKELY ALLIES.

The point of my book is that history isn’t just hammered out by great leaders or great ideas or great social movements; the arc of history is just as often bent by random events, peripheral characters, and strange coincidents. History, like weather, is subject to the famous “butterfly effect.”

Scott Brown’s election is another chance occurrence. Perhaps he will change the trajectory of political history. But I doubt it. Right now, the forty-first Republican has nothing coherent to offer except his rigid opposition to health reform. Between now and the next election there will be many more butterflies that none of us can anticipate. We should be cautious about reading too much into a special election.

I’m not saying that Brown’s election is completely irrelevant. Maybe someday Brown will look no less significant in American history than that cross-dressing French spy who revealed herself. But for now all we can say for sure about Brown is that the senator has no clothes.

Cross-posted at http://www.acslaw.org/node/15336

The normally circumspect David Brooks of The New York Times could hardly contain himself on the News Hour. The buttoned-down conservative sputtered that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama was “a joke,” and he dismissed the Nobel Prize Committee as nothing more than “five Norwegian lefties.” Other commentators were quick to pass judgment that the Nobel Committee was behaving like the Democratic Campaign Committee by awarding the prize first to Vice-President Gore and now President Obama. After all, what exactly had Obama accomplished?

Obviously, nine months into his first year in office and only five years out of the Illinois State Senate, Barak Obama is no Nelson Mandela. He hasn’t accomplished what Lech Walesa, Martin Luther King, or German Chancellor Willy Brandt did to win the peace prize. Arguably, he hasn’t even done as much as Vice-President Gore did to wake the world to the apocalypse of global warming. But that misses the point entirely.

The Nobel Peace Prize goes to the person who has done the most in 2009 to advance the cause of world peace. The committee judges individuals based on their contemporary significance, not on their world historical status. You don’t have to be another Dag Hammarskjöld to win a prize. It isn’t a Mother Teresa look-alike contest either.

In 2009 is there any event more significant in reducing international tensions than the change from George W. Bush to Barak Obama? Even if you do not agree with Obama’s politics, public opinion polls show overwhelming approval for Obama and his foreign policies among most of the world’s nations compared to the overwhelming disapproval of the policies of the Bush Administration. The public acclaim he received in Cairo and Berlin was truly astounding. And that matters. One could argue that all that President Obama has done is make speeches. “I have a dream” and “tear down this wall,” were only words, yet they changed the world.

Surely, transforming America’s image, committing the United States to reducing global warming, prohibiting torture, and opening dialogues with old adversaries like Iran and North Korea are momentous achievements.

OK, I admit that Obama may not belong in the same company as Martin Luther King or Linus Pauling, but that’s not the relevant question. We all get the idea that not all prize winners are created equal.

Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, and Ted Williams, were all chosen as Most Valuable Players. But so were Bob O’Farrell, Spud Chandler and Gabby Hartnett, in their respective years. No one thinks that they all played ball at the same level.

The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, On the Waterfront, and All About Eve were all chosen as Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Pictures. Incredibly, the same prize went to Titanic and Braveheart. But they were different years with different pictures in contention.

No one thinks that the tired 60’s musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was as important as Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Angels in America just because all four of them won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in their respective years.

By awarding the peace prize to President Obama the Nobel Committee was acknowledging a change in the tenor and direction of U.S. foreign policy. The United States has returned to international institutions and to our traditional alliances.

The media has reacted as if Obama is somehow tainted by his association with the Nobel Committee. Americans have often been suspicious when our statesmen are honored from abroad. When Silas Deane, the hero of my book, UNLIKELY ALLIES, was honored in 1778 by our ally Louis XVI many in Congress questioned Deane’s loyalty. Now some Americans even question President Obama’s nationality

The peace prize often is awarded to controversial figures. Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, and Menachem Begin were Nobel winners. Kissinger and Begin? Apparently, the Nobel Committee isn’t just a bunch of “Norwegian lefties.”

We should all take pride that the world has embraced our President as a symbol of American generosity and pluralistic democracy. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is America’s peace prize, too. And we deserve it.

 If you like reading this blog, check out my new book, UNLIKELY ALLIES.  

Booklist called UNLIKELY ALLIES, ”A rip-roaring account of the American Revolution, told from a fresh, and undeniably offbeat, perspective.”