TAG LINES, QUICK PITCHES, AND MORE

Tag line: Let me tell you a lie.

Logline: At the height of the Red Scare, a blacklisted publisher must risk everything and team up with his political enemy -- a repugnant con man -- to expose a national scandal, bring McCarthyism to an end, and save a friend from prison before time runs out.  But this gamble comes at a cost; they unwittingly enable the resurrection of an American public monster: Roy Cohn.

Elevator pitch - overview: FOOL THEM ONCE is a true-crime political drama about the scandal which gripped the country during the McCarthy era and still reverberates to this day.  It is at once the literal origin story for today’s brand of con man politics and the rally cry to fight against it at all costs. Remarkably, this story finally reveals the missing link between Roy Cohn’s humiliating downfall due to the Army-McCarthy hearings and his vengeful resurrection in New York City (where he famously one day will become the mentor to Donald Trump).

What’s it like? FOOL THEM ONCE is like SPOTLIGHT meets a darker version of CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, with shades of HOUSE OF CARDS.

What’s it about? FOOL THEM ONCE is about how shockingly easy it can be to push a nation to the brink through manipulation, brazen lies and blatantly playing to the politics of fear.  Inversely, FOOL THEM ONCE is also about how a small group of people who courageously raise their voices in resistance and in pursuit of the truth can topple regimes built on demagoguery.  It takes the themes of flawed righteousness, fear of the “other”, and history repeating and embeds them in the thrilling stories of a crusading underdog, a real-life supervillain, an eccentric oddball, a family under siege, and a nation in turmoil.  And it comes with a healthy dose of family drama, sordid sex, outrageous humor, clandestine espionage, and political warfare.  

What’s the way in? Our entrée into this epic is the harrowing story of protagonist Albert E. Kahn and his family risking everything to stand up against overpowering forces and overwhelming odds in the name of truth and the public good. The pressures of real life serve to humanize this tale: heated debates with Albert’s publishing partner over trusting Matusow; alliances and arguments with his wife over the safety of their family; the wrenching burden of trying to protect them all from government attacks. There is no shortage of emotional anchors which turn history into drama and make that drama relatable to everyday audiences.

What’s it based on? The gripping personal accounts of these trials, recorded in Albert E. Kahn’s memoir The Matusow Affair provide the foundational text for this project. The FOOL THEM ONCE research team has expanded upon the world of The Matusow Affair by mining archives across the U.S. and in the U.K., obtaining FBI records, and conducting interviews with period experts and the last remaining characters from this story.

What makes it different? How is FOOL THEM ONCE an important departure from other McCarthy-era projects like Trumbo, Good Night and Good Luck, and Guilty by Suspicion?

• The McCarthy Era world of FOOL THEM ONCE is rooted in the lives of both the politically powerful and everyday American citizens. It’s an expansive, highly accessible departure from the narrow purview of stories solely about those in the film industry and media.

• No other project covers such a wide swath of characters, connections, and events. It has a manhunt. An FBI cover-up. An underdog fighting for justice. A family struggling to survive. A con man searching for redemption. A devil ascending to power. And so much more.

• The project’s multi-perspective structure reinforces its meditations on truth and human nature which move beyond McCarthyism and connect us to today. It’s not a preachy history lesson. It’s a poignant parable. This is about now as much is it’s about then.

• This story is uniquely about individuals who are specifically responsible for giving us the people in power today.

• It’s one of the few stories of the era which ends in victory — victory at a devastating cost, but victory nonetheless.

• It’s being told by the flesh and blood of those figures at the heart of the story.