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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Condor’s Coda:
Higgins’ BANANA Peels
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 6/24/08

Robert Redford’s startled expression of realization and discomfort was so precious, appreciated more in later years’ viewing as my politics moved from short-pants liberalism-lite to more and more conservative long-pants appreciation of the enduring verities of life.  As ‘Condor’ in “Three Days of the Condor” the young hero, Joe Turner, confronts Higgins, the CIA executive, in Times Square, where they square off for the film’s coda scene.
 
Redford is disbelieving as this scene plays out, following the tortuous storyline of evil CIA rogues’ war-gaming scheme to plan for potential military confiscation of Middle Eastern oil fields in the event of some potential world crisis:

Higgins: It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?

Joe Turner: Ask them?

Next comes Condor’s stupefied stare, as Higgins firmly hurls a verity that applies to this day’s struggle with futures speculators driving oil to new highs, in these thirty-plus years since the 1975 film’s release:

Higgins: Not now - then!  Ask 'em when they're running out.  Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold.  Ask 'em when their engines stop.  Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry.  You wanna know something?  They won't want us to ask 'em.  They'll just want us to get it for 'em!

And so an accidental cinematic truth survives, as “Condor” director Sydney Pollack expired this month, and crude oil zoomed to new highs.  As the salvation Christ known as ethanol showed considerable clay feet, its demand for ever-greater agricultural land use forcing up prices for corn, leading to food riots over corn-based tortilla flour in Latin American cities and vested interests keep ships full of Brazilian ethanol from offloading into our markets.
 
Higgins’ minions are writing op-eds with that very verity in mind: DRILL NOW. And DRILL EVERWHERE. The chorus is rising, and the lefties’ three decades of B.A.N.A.N.A. supertrumping the earlier N.I.M.B.Y. has suddenly come under scathing attack. Them chickens is roostin’ folks.
 
That such a line of dialogue survived in the shooting draft of a film made possible by lefty Redford’s production involvement, and directed by a left-leaning key player in Hollywood, is a miracle that escapes explanation. But, there it is – Wisdom From Hollywood.  In Times Square, of all places. Near the door of its most famous resident, The New York Times, about to publish Condor’s revelatory personal adventure.
 
As ‘alternate energy’ proposals run afoul of lefties, such as the wind-turbine project near Martha’s Vineyard being stopped by protestors including the Kennedy clan and Walter Cronkite [would mar their view while sailing in Cape Cod!], and solar panels cause their own compromises, Higgins is prevailing. Where once the left was satisfied to get neighbors aroused with the mentality of “Not In My Back Yard” [thus, NIMBY] but put it somewhere else, per the Cape Cod hypocrisy, now the left has metastasized its holy mantra into “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody” – ergo, NIMBY.
 
Thus, no refineries. No drilling in ANWR. Or off the Atlantic coast, or the Pacific coast, or the eastern section of the Gulf of Mexico’s continental shelf. And windfarms only where there are farmers with acres aplenty with cows scattered thinly enough to make it cost-effective for the landowner and the venture capitalists.  Each wind turbine prices at over a million dollars construction and installation, and is dependent on a highly variable factor: WIND! Plus, there’s the wee complication of transmission lines, so very ugly towers they require, to bring that ‘clean’ and pristine power to the cities’ populations. As solar panels don’t provide megawatts, much less gigawatts, after the sun sets, or cloudy weather inconveniently requires turning on those BANANA-peeled generators.
 
Gasoline at four dollars and up, plus MCF of natural gas going ever-higher [that’s a thousand cubic feet of gas at normal pressure, the ‘M’ being Roman numeral for a thousand] and crude oil costing more to find, then refine in ever-older refineries which are nearing their elderly era when breakdowns are likely and more frequent shutdown for preventive maintenance is unavoidable and all the products from natural gas [as fertilizer, critical for raising corn to make ethanol that forces up prices in Mexico for basic food commodities bought by poor folk], and more states requiring ever more special ‘boutique’ blends of gasoline and diesel, which complicate already difficult refinery operations – it’s all adding up to:
 
 HIGGINS WAS RIGHT.
 
In economics is a new concept, only recently making the rounds, yet to find popularity among the commentariat, known as REVEALED PREFERENCES. It asserts, as Arnold Kling of TechCentralStation quietly defined for me in an e-mail:
 
Watch what they do, not what they say they will do.
 
Thus one reason for many surprises among pollsters, asking theoretical and hypothetical questions of survey subjects: Would you buy a flex-fuel vehicle, etc., blah-blah-blah. Or, would you vote for the black candidate for governor, or the woman for president, blah-blah-blah. One survey by a new business asked new customers at their grand opening, to learn where they’d first heard of the new location: almost a quarter of the incoming clientele claimed it was from a TV ad, yet the business never placed any TV ads. Then, upon re-examination, the customers insisted they’d seen a TV ad for the location’s grand opening extravaganza.
 
Were they liars, or bigots, as many lefties claim for those who supposedly told pollsters they would vote for a black governor candidate, yet the final tally on election day fell short of the projections?
 
NO! Folks just don’t always know for sure what they will do at some time in the theoretical future – voting or purchasing or otherwise in many realms. Thus, the lefty could apply its NIMBY and BANANA insanities to their compassionate, earth-saving hearts’ content, when higher priced gasoline and natural gas and other costs were a mere theory. Once they came to be hard and regular, rising truth, then we see that HIGGINS WAS RIGHT.
 
When you have to actually consider the reality of payments on the price for a car, or close the curtain on the voting booth and start to swing that chad for someone who will lead in the governor’s mansion or Oval Office, all the hypothesizing evaporates as you stare reality in the face.
 
NIMBY and BANANA can slide along nicely when gas is cheap and the earth looks gloomily needy, according to the propaganda of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” [IT for short], but playing this game has turned in a different direction. Now the left is tagged as “IT” in this game that is no child’s game of “It” and are slipping on that BANANA peel, learning what Redford’s startled look meant.
 
That Higgins was right, as well as Right. People is revealing their true preferences: DRILL MORE AND DRILL EVERYWEHRE. Get me that gas, and methane, and whatever else will keep my economy roaring. We’ve gotten beyond NIMBY/BANANA to another nagging acronym which has plagued politics and energy: NOPE, that being Not On Planet Earth, with dopes with NOPEs now in the lesser position, along with regulators and pols adhering to NIMTO: Not In My Term of Office.
 
Now we can get to business, and hope there’s some educatin’ goin’ on here. This week’s testimony before the Senate by oil genius and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens was the first public enlightenment in a capitol full of heat and hot air. Imagine, someone who knows something and a roomful of pols, even Socialist Bernie Sanders, actually LISTENING. Absorbing not so much, even exploiting the tiniest shard to shore up their flimsy viewpoints, but at least not screaming at oil executives like errant Peck’s Bad Boy.
 
Among the facts, some proffered by Pickens, is that 100% of available oil rigs are in service, and every new one is snapped up faster than a Wednesday night Thanksgiving turkey. Mandatory ten and twelve-hour shifts and alternative mandatory weekends comprises the current ‘normal’ work requirement in the oil patch – including the braziers reconditioning drill bits at my little bit o’ the patch. Bits are rolling in for rehab faster than Barack can blather at the oil executives. As the Makers make progress, Barack’s Takers are licking their chops and rubbing their tax-eager palms together.
 
It will be quite a ride, as many Barack Attackers claim oh-so-profoundly: We can’t drill ourselves out of this, it will be years before the oil flows. Well, folks, the same can be said about switch-grass and wood chips [can’t chip ourselves out of it right away either], wind turbines [nor blow ourselves out of this either], or solar [know the cost per kilowatt-hour of solar? If not, SHUT UP!], and as for corn ethanol – enuf said there, tortilla flour more articulate than I can continue.
 
When Britain’s big oil-find in the North Sea erupted in the news, none knew that it was found via exploration, which one oil exec pointed out this year is a term that means ‘we don’t know where we’ll find it’ and that the discovery was after 76 DRY HOLES. The 77th was the lucky discovery – and a lot of stats in oil exploration fits that model.
 
Burn that number in your head, lefties: 77 is the lucky event, after 76 failures, dry holes in the North Sea before one of the largest finds in history popped up in Hole Number 77.  Are you ‘getting’ this one yet?
 
Higgins was right, and Right, and will always be right during our lifetime. The public now, once Higgins’ Future has arrived, will just WANT US TO GET IT FOR THEM. Redford and Co. have slipped on that BANANA peel, thirty-three years after Higgins’ Truth was so finely uttered by Cliff Robertson.
 
Emblematically, Robertson got the screwing of ten lifetimes from the Redford crowd, his career tanked for pointing out that an IRS action for not paying taxes on money he’d never received might need some inquiry. Columbia’s CEO was the cheat: he was phonying paychecks in others’ names and cashing them for pocket money. And who was defended, and who was cashiered?  Yep, the Redford crowd who hate a career being ‘blacklisted’ were eager to blame Robertson for hurting their beloved CEO buddy.
 
Now Robertson’s Higgins outranks Redford’s Condor – them chickens is comin’ home to roost, on the Outer Continental Shelf, maybe ANWR, and in a neighborhood near you. After all, there are working oil wells drawing oil from beneath Beverly Hills – to the ignorance of most residents. And as ignorance is their stock in trade, it’s appropriate that Higgins’ Truth has come home to roost so proudly.
 
The score after 33 years: Condor, zero; Higgins, infinite.
 
Fill ‘er up, Redford. ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

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