Quick Take: A Comedy About Jeffrey Epstein's Island

Only comedy can explain why people put up with criminal deviancy to network with the rich and powerful

(The Jeffrey Epstein case seems to return to the headlines on a regular basis, and people involved in the case keep dying young on a more or less regular basis. A movie along the lines described in this post would do much to present and explain the case to puzzled audiences.)

PRODUCER: So they tell me you have a pitch for a comedy set in Jeffrey Epstein’s island?

WRITER: Yes, sir, I do indeed.

P: Jeffrey Epstein’s island? Right? You know, the island where the famous, shady pederast/financier/man of mystery Jeffrey went with his rich, powerful and famous friends to have orgies with underage girls, and everything was taped?

W: Probably for the Mossad’s benefit, sir, yes, that’s the island.

P: You see, that’s a poor start right there. My friends in Beverly Hills may be unhappy if I…

W: The whole point is to make this thing non-denominational and politically neutral, so no Mossad will be seen anywhere, sir. A bit like when they made the TV show Billions.

P: That puts me somewhat at ease. Continue.

W: So the idea is to depict the whole Epstein case not as the horrible tragedy that it was for so many people involved, including the minors involved, but as a comedy. We would be pulling the same trick that that old Spanish movie played on the audience, that movie that is the most famous and funniest in Spanish history, you know.

P: Please refresh my memory, writer. Some of us have lives.

W: The movie is called La Escopeta Nacional. The writer and the director wanted to criticize the venality and corruption of the upper classes, while showing their squalid lifestyles. So they came up with the concept that a businessman is invited to a hunting weekend in a country house owned by a wealthy aristocrat. The aristocrat is a sex maniac who loves nothing better than collecting female pubic hair and killing wild animals. The businessman, somewhat happily married, cares for neither of the two things, but he wants to spend the weekend with all the important people who will be there, people with connections who can help him with his business.

P: I see. So the guy is like a quirky startup founder trying to fit in for the weekend.

W: Not in La Escopeta Nacional. It’s a 1978 movie about Francoist Spain, so the guy is a bald Catalan businessman in his forties who sells intercom equipment for apartment buildings.

P: But the guy in your movie will be a quirky startup founder trying to fit in for the weekend, in Epstein’s island.

W: You’re the producer, so that sounds great to me. We‘d need a character actor, somebody ugly, young and awkward. One of the guys from the Silicon Valley TV show, for example.

P: And this guy will not be committing statutory rape, or doing drugs or partaking in any illegal activities in the island?

W: Correct. He will be a poor dude trying to network like crazy, while everybody else is doing coke and threesomes.

P: Why wouldn’t he do coke and threesomes?

W: Because he’s a good guy, and this is a comedy, not a documentary.

P: My life is not funny, I guess.

W: Moving on. Rather than a nagging wife, our main character will have a nagging girlfriend he has to check with every half an hour or so.

P: Why would you do that?

W: I mean, her boyfriend flew in the Lolita Express to the sex island of a convicted sex trafficker, so she may be a tad worried.

P: Makes sense when you put it like that.

W: The whole point of the movie is that the startup guy doesn’t like the sick Epstein stuff, and won’t do drugs. So he discreetly avoids all of it, pretends to snort, pretends to take the pills, and won’t even have alcohol because it upsets his stomach, so he just takes Red Bulls all day to try and simulate the druggie look. When other guys just force him to take girls to his room, he just plays computer games to pass the time, and won’t touch the poor girls. I mean, he just acts normally, he does what a normal, sane person would do, right? Right?

P: Uh, yes — Sure, yes. And what do the girls do while he plays videogames?

W: He lets them watch Gilmore Girls in his room’s TV.

P: OK, it’s a nice detail. Just remind me again why would people watch a movie about a guy running away from orgies and drugs?

W: Remember Life is Beautiful, the 1997 movie about the Italian Jewish guy in the Holocaust. He makes his son believe the whole concentration camp experience is just a big charade, a show, and spends much of the movie cracking jokes while people get killed all around. This is a bit like that. It’s a way to address a horrible subject in a way that is accessible and doesn’t cheapen the real suffering that the girls felt by trying some corny way of describing what is impossible to describe.

P: Yeah, much easier to avoid a PG-13 rating this way. I like how you’re approaching this thing. Not all writers consider that angle.

W: Not what I meant, really, but that too. What I meant is that Life is Beautiful is the best Holocaust movie because it doesn’t try to depict the Holocaust as it really was. Because things that are too awful just can’t be described without a degree of betrayal.

P: My dog died. That was pretty terrible. I wouldn’t like to see a movie about a dying dog and his owner just having a bad time for two weeks straight.

W: Perhaps not the perfect comparison, but I think you get the gist.

P: OK, so we have this guy who just wants to hang out with rich and powerful people so they will invest in his startup or whatever. And he doesn’t like all the stuff they do in Epstein’s Island so he just pretends to be part of the whole thing but he isn’t, so we get a few laughs out of his clumsy attempts to avoid illegal sex and drugs, and also the very expensive booze. I get that. What I don’t get is why a person like that would go to Epstein’s Island.

W: If you look at the list of people who went to Epstein’s Island, a lot of them knew the whole thing was a sting. They knew they were being taped, and they would be blackmailed. They accepted that as a sort of rite of passage into the society of the well-connected and famous. They allowed Epstein to have them under control, because they wanted to be inside of the club. I don’t think that’s any different of how, for example, Freemasonry and other secret societies have worked for centuries. I don’t think most Freemasons care about their kooky idiotic beliefs; they just want ready access to the VIPs who are members. I suspect that’s the main reason why secret societies exist, at all: they are a great way for powerful people to advance their stupid ideals and plans by using energetic people who don’t give a fuck about their stupid ideals and plans but want to hang out with them, and see if they will invest in their startup.

P: … the fuck?

W: Look at this five-year-old-post by Mickey Kaus. It’s very short. He wonders “Where Are the Epstein Tapes?” Federal agents found a ton of lewd photographs and videos. None of them has seen the light anyway:

I was surprised to hear veteran Epstein-watcher Eric Weinstein argue (in his March 2020 “Portal” podcast) that Epstein wasn't engaged on behalf of some nation's intelligence service in a "pedophilic honey trap using kompromat ... in order to gain some sort of a geopolitical strategic advantage."** I was surprised because that's pretty much exactly what I've come to suspect was happening. Weinstein seems to think it was a non-pedophilic honey trap -- using overage bait -- and that Epstein's own predilections were not essential and in fact got in the way.

This makes a certain amount of sense -- how many pedophiles are there, after all? You'd think many more politicians, CEOs and scientists (Epstein's apparent target groups) would be interested in people of legal age. On the other hand, photos of politician X having sex with a 15-year-old make for more powerful blackmail material.

And there's another factor, confirmed by Weinstein himself, that suggests his ‘non-pedophilic’ take might be misguided. The argument requires a bit of speculative foundation. Here goes:

1) Mafia, not sting: The theory that Epstein routinely blackmailed the businessmen and celebs who visited his sin sites always seemed implausible: Did he really sit down with each of his marks and surprise them with the news that he could now blackmail them? Without one of these titans blowing the whistle on him (or figuring out some other way to, um, cancel him). All while continuing to attract more marks who somehow hadn't heard the news?

But what if (and I’m stealing this theory from a friend) the marks willingly volunteered to be compromised? Joining Epstein's sex club would be more like joining the mafia -- you give them some power over you, but you'd get something (including potential protection and support, as well as potential sex) in return. No need for Epstein to sit you down after an orgiastic encounter and burst your bliss. (That's a lot of work!) The implicit deal would be understood from the start.

2. Transparency: The idea of an implicit ‘deal’ is reinforced by two bits of high-grade gossip I recently heard. One is that it's silly to think the flights down to Epstein's island were centered on anything other than sex — and that most participants knew it. The other is that Epstein's various 'blackmail cameras’ -- "toilet, toilet, bed, bed, toilet, bed" -- were not especially well disguised. Even an untrained eye might spot them. Indeed, Eric Weinstein himself spots one (embedded in a piece of art) almost immediately in his one visit to Epstein's N.Y. townhouse — and he almost immediately starts to wonder if he was supposed to spot it.***

P: It’s a good thing that you read this aloud to me, because we producers we don’t like to read stuff.

W: I know.

P: So, what about the elevator pitch? Give me a good old elevator pitch.

W: So, it’s Life Is Beautiful meets Blink Twice meets Superbad.

P: Let me think about it.

(A big shout-out to the hilarious Pitch Meeting Youtube channel, since it inspired this post.)