Coming soon to a theater near you . . .
Octopussies!
Starring . . .
Piers Morgan as 007
Chris Rock as The President
Queen Latifah as The President’s Wife
Kathy Bates as Janet Napolitano
Grace Jones as Valerie Jarrett
Kathleen Turner as Secretary of State
Tom Selleck as Colonel Hawkeye Jones, U.S. Special Forces
Daniel Day-Lewis as Mitt Romney
Written and directed by Michael Moore
With additional dialogue by Rich Miniter and Kevin Williamson
Solyndra Productions would like to thank the U.S. Taxpayer for invaluable help in the making of this film.
Scene One: The Oval Office, Washington, D.C.
Bond watched the marital quarrel with the self-satisfaction of a confirmed bachelor. He always wondered how married couples found so many things to disagree about. But they never seemed to lack ammunition. The President was on the losing side of this particular squabble.
“Darling, I don’t like the idea of launching a rocket attack on the Department of Homeland Security any more than you do,” he was saying in that plaintive tone that Bond had come to recognize and dislike. “But what alternative do we have? You heard Colonel Jones. If we don’t strike first, Mitt Romney and Octopussy may well launch a rocket attack on us.”
A woman, glowing with intense energy, stepped forward from behind the President’s chair.
“I agree with the First Lady, Mr. President,” she declared firmly. “How can we be certain that the Homeland Security Secretary is, er, shacked up with Romney? Janet never seemed to be, well, that kind of girl. Nor indeed were her associates in the agency.”
She blushed deeply, but continued: “It’s out of character. I don’t see any of them going for that Alpha Male routine of Romney’s. I say: Don’t strike until we have more definite information.”
“Oh dear, maybe you’re right, Valerie,” said the President. “It’s so hard to know.”
Just then there came a loud crashing sound that continued for two or three minutes. Someone was trying to kick in the door of the Oval Office. Bond wondered where the Secret Service men were. He began moving towards the door to block and kill the intruder (simple maiming was too risky in these days of burglary malpractice suits). But the President waved him back.
“It’s the Secretary of State,” he said, and sighed heavily.
“What the #%@ is going on?” said the stocky blond woman who stepped through the remnants of the door. “Who the &*#+ called a meeting on Romney without including me? This is my $?<!ing patch.”
She gestured towards the President’s wife and the woman the President had called Valerie. “And I suppose these two pussies are counseling no action until we have more definite information.”
“Like always,” she added.
The President put his head in his hands. Bond felt a wave of comradely sympathy, tinged with contempt, for the embattled male. He exchanged an understanding smile with the Special Forces Colonel who had just briefed them on the plans for the rocket attack. He guessed that both men would rather take on a Vietcong division than the grim regiment of women in the Oval Office. Even so, he would have intervened on the President’s behalf if it had not been for what had happened only 20 minutes beforehand . . .
FLASHBACK
“ . . . and you must tell my wife and Ms. Jarrett about this,” the President was saying as the two women entered the room. “Darling, Commander Bond was just telling us how he escaped from the Maldives H.Q. of SPECTRE by swimming under water for two miles armed only with high-heeled shoes and a pair of fishnet stockings.” He spoke eagerly, like a schoolboy: “Do start again, Commander, it’s thrilling.”
Bond shrugged a modest smile. “All in a day’s work, Mr. President,” he said. “You see, Romney made a mistake in mentioning that his piranha pool exited to the sea. I dived into it, used the stiletto heels to impale some of the piranha, and caught the rest in a fish net made from the stockings so that when I reached an uninhabited island, I had enough fresh fish to survive on until Q’s Boson-Higgs Tweeter detected my whereabouts and the Navy rescued me.”
“It’s an old trick I picked up from the SAS,” he concluded. “Comes in damn useful on occasion.”
“Yes, very interesting, Commander Bond,” said the President’s wife briskly. “You must tell us more of your adventures some time. Just for the moment, however, we have a crisis to solve. Where is Romney now? For I believe that he escaped too. Is that not so?”
Bond flushed. The President came to his rescue.
“That’s not fair, darling,” he said. “Commander Bond has been in Washington for one week. A short time, but he has now solved the crisis that worries you. Maybe you would like to continue, Commander.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Bond. “I’ll keep it short. We’ve known for some time that under cover of her political career, the Homeland Security Secretary, codename Octopussy, was the leader of an all-girl team of whitewater-rafters smuggling drugs and illegal aliens into the U.S. — and a close associate and, er, inamorata of Romney. That’s why he angled so hard to get her appointed to the Cabinet. He wants a monopoly of the drugs and alien trade.”
“So how did you penetrate the gang?” asked Ms. Jarrett.
“It wasn’t easy,” replied Bond. “But I had heard from a group of curious foreigners, intellectuals probably, in a dive called the Cosmos Club that the Octopussy gang was driving honest patriots out of the Department by devilish techniques of sexual harassment of males, including the vile tactic of offering intercourse in a sarcastic and demeaning tone. I resolved then and there that if I was ever offered sex in such a contemptuous way, I would overlook the implied insult and take up the offer at once. That is what I did, and, well, suffice to say that I infiltrated the whole gang, including Octopussy herself.”
“Really?” said Ms. Jarrett skeptically. The President’s wife raised an eyebrow.
“My reputation got around,” Bond explained, looking.
“Commander Bond is telling the exact truth,” said a man in military uniform who had entered quietly during the discussion. “Colonel Hawkeye Jones, Mr. President, U.S. Special Forces. I have here a video of the Commander and Octopussy actually in flagrante delicto. I’m afraid it’s a little blurry.”
They screwed up their eyes to decipher the writhing figures on the small screen, the President placing his face sideways parallel to the desk but even so looking puzzled, until his wife rapped sharply on it, and the meeting was called to order.
“Hell’s belles, you people are good,” said Bond with reluctant admiration. “How on earth did you get cameras in the Situation Room? And so close too? I’m tempted to ask for a copy.”
“Don’t ask us,” replied the Colonel impassively. “We got it off the Internet. It’s gone viral. We think it’s an operation by SPECTRE. The rumor is that Romney has plans to entrap another British big-wig in Las Vegas. We’d warn the target if we knew who he is. He’s got a very odd codename: Red-Top for the Red-Tops. But I’m afraid that all this is old news. And I have something new and disturbing to report.”
Everyone in the room froze and looked at the Colonel.
“Octopussy has returned to Romney. He arrived at the Department last night, and they are now barricaded against any attack. I’m sorry to say, Commander, that there is no doubt they spent the night together. She went from Romney to you and back to Romney.”
For a moment there was silence and then Valerie Jarrett said: “Well, I’ve heard of the zeal of the convert, but this is ridiculous.” There seemed little else to say. So Colonel Jones produced a set of military maps of the capital. And the President said sadly: “I’m afraid there may be no alternative to . . . ”
DISSOLVE AND RETURN
Bond shook himself fully awake from his reverie to hear the Secretary of State pounding the presidential desk and shouting furiously at its occupant: “So you’re telling me that the Homeland Security Secretary, a Cabinet member, a former Democratic governor, is shacked up with a . . . ”
“Yes,” interjected the President miserably, “with a criminal mastermind, with a Bulgarian Nazi, with the head of SPECTRE, with a felon . . . ”
“Enough of this irrelevant blather,” said the Secretary of State. “She’s shacked up with a REPUBLICAN. That’s more than enough. She’s a two-timing, double-crossing, little bitch, and we shouldn’t waste another moment on her sorry little ass. Give me the button. I’ll push it myself.”
The President looked across at Bond and the Colonel. They both nodded. He himself nodded to the Secretary of State. He glanced sideways at his wife and Valerie Jarrett. They shrugged. With an agonized expression, he reached out and pressed the button. With a whoosh four rockets rose from the underground silo and soared across the White House Lawn towards Capitol Hill.
As they stood gazing at the rocket trails, an intern ran into the Oval Office.
“I don’t know if this is important, Mr. President, but we just received news that Todd Akin entered the Homeland Security Department and asked for asylum 15 minutes ago.”
“ABORT, ABORT, ABORT,” shouted the three women simultaneously.
“These are the new Terminator Five rockets,” replied Colonel Jones. “They operate on the principle that any instructions received after firing are probably deception tactics. They can’t be recalled.” And as if to confirm his words, sounds of explosions and police sirens could be heard across the city.
They left the President in the Oval Office, his head once more in his hands. Bond and Colonel Jones strolled towards the elevator. Bond was already picturing M’s reaction when he presented his report. It would leave the explosions they had just heard at the starting gate. Colonel Jones seemed to understand and handed him a Havana cigar.
“A bad show all round,” said Bond.
“I wouldn’t entirely say that, Mr. Bond,” replied the Colonel philosophically as he stepped into the elevator. “One two-timing bitch eliminated, one political embarrassment rubbed out — and rubbed out by the side he was benefiting — and one costly scandal of a rocket attack on Washington by Washington. I think I should be able to make something of all that on the campaign trail.” And he ripped off his moustache and wig to reveal the straight-arrow WASP features of Governor Mitt Romney.
Bond was not quick enough to prevent the elevator closing. But he pressed the alarm, and as it sounded, he shouted through the metallic doors: “Do you expect to escape?”
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect to be elected,” replied Romney. The elevator shuddered slightly, and then instead of descending to the ground floor, it shot up through the White House roof and, its booster rockets falling away, soared southwards towards the Caribbean.
Bond stood there for a moment looking at the tangled remains of the elevator shaft. He drew despairingly on his cigar, quite a decent Imperiale Corona Semper Fidel. Romney was not without taste. Too late he realized that the criminal mastermind had somehow purloined one of Q’s celebrated Disorientation Cigars, always a hit at MI6’s Christmas parties. They exploded without warning and covered the smoker in indelible purple dye.
Then everything went purple.
(To be continued.)
— John O’Sullivan is editor-at-large of National Review.