A Trip To The Island.
Why the Epstein files tell a story we already know by heart.
Discussing a biopic he’s working on, Chris casually remarked it would have been better had one of the subjects died. Screenwriting is a brutal trade. To be fair, his cold hearted blood lust was not a desire to see her dead in real life, just a craving for narrative simplicity.
The basic mechanic of the mentor/student arc requires that, having learnt all they can from their teacher, the pupil must out pace them unaided, proving that, to quote a phrase “…now I am the master”. This is cleanest done if the mentor has kicked the bucket, otherwise they have to stand about on the sidelines looking generally delighted whilst refraining to offer further assistance.
Talking it through, it struck me as lucky that Bruce Wayne’s parents did get shot, sparing us the embarrassing scene where Wayne Snr discovers his son’s penchant for dressing in rubber and beating up dudes from the poor side of town. I’m not here to kink shame but let’s not pretend that the bat-play stuff is a grief response. A life-long vow of vengeance against the criminal underclass, sure that stems from losing his parents, the S&M stuff would have been there orphan or not.
All of which is to say, I hate to break it to you like this, but Batman would have been in the Epstein files. Millionaire playboy with a secret identity and a rubber dungeon? Yeah, Bruce Wayne is in the Epstein Files.
Quick run down of my findings: Batman, yes, very. Superman, of course not. I can’t pretend that the other DC characters have enough depth or coherence to warrant being included so moving on, Ironman, 100%, Bruce Banner, sadly, yes, Captain America “is in the files but merely being so is not an indication of illegality or wrong doing”, Thor, nah, Dr. Xavier, yeah him, Chomsky and Hawking. Wolverine however is full throated MAGA, once calling for the files to be released and now stubbornly drowning in a sea of cognitive dissonance whilst Black Widow is in the files but only because her backstory is well, bleak. Her arc though does stress again the foundational heroic ideal of the pain of childhood trauma and abuse being ameliorated by kicking ass in the name of justice. In my own private cinematic universe I presume Natasha Romanoff is busy exposing the entire sordid pyjama party that the Avengers truly were.
It’s not funny but I’m not heading this way to make you laugh. Rather I want to point out that the first police investigation into Jeffrey Epstein started in 2005, a couple of months before the release of Batman Begins (which began production in 2003). Epstein was sentenced for offences against a minor in 2008, a couple of months after the release of Iron Man, the first true Marvel movie. I am not suggesting a causal link. Epstein bought his island in April of 1998 having been building his network since the mid 80s. It is though poetic that the mass public dumping of the Epstein files comes at the end of the Hero culture, where it is no longer quite enough to stick a cape on a body suit and count the dollars flowing in.
For two decades though, the decades that saw Epstein at the impossible height of his power and influence, the dominant narrative of the age was that of a world in awe of the superhero. Who will save us? The lone billionaire with his secret identity and hidden palace. What slows him down? Fools who demand this figure is held accountable, sometimes out of wrong-head but good-hearted misunderstanding, sometimes out of pure tragic envy. Time and again we have thrilled as everyone understands that if we are to be saved we have to leave the billionaires alone to get on with doing what they know is best.
This narrative has been actively co-opted by at least one oligarch, Elon Musk excitedly took a cameo in Iron Man 2, happy to confirm rumours he’d helped Robert Downy Jnr base elements of the character on him. Though in her excellent podcast X Man: The Elon Musk Story Jill Lapore suggests that the influence went both ways, that Musk, not always the bombastic braggart we now have, co-opted elements of Downy’s Tony Stark, building his Atlas Shrugged self-identity from what he saw in the movies.
In September 2012 Musk wrote to Epstein asking if Batman screenwriter “Jonah Nolan”, could join them at dinner.
It also seems that in 2016 Epstein attended the premiere and after party of Batman vs Superman and owned 9 batman batarang knives. It also seems he used Batman as a pseudonym for someone who Epstein controlled and manipulated monthly payments. Again I’m not alleging either a monster plot or a master plan, more a hall of mirrors in which we are surrounded by a distorted reflection of what has been constantly in our peripheral vision.
We should never fall into the comfortable delusion that art is not political or that it ever carries no message. Nor should we be shocked that the more we tell a story the more we enable ourselves to live it.
My 9 week screenwriting course returns next week. I’ve always found following formulas has made my work mechanical, like AI but with you doing the dull bits by hand. It’s much rarer to find a truly human space to figure out not just how to write well but how to tell the stories only you can.
If that sounds interesting you’ll find more information here.