Linda and Monica was a blacklist script written by Flint Wainess — about the beautiful burgeoning intergenerational friendship between a certain young woman exploring a career in government and a woman a quarter century her senior. The two bond while working for the Pentagon and become unexpected gal pals, exchanging all sorts of secrets about boys, and government, and government boys… until one begins recording the other’s confessions, convinces her not to dry-clean her dress covered in Bill Clinton’s semen, and then leaks the recordings of their conversations to a special prosecutor. She claims to have been doing it all for the best interest of her younger friend, who is shamed into disappearing from the public sphere for decades, and who thereafter has trouble finding work due to the wildly sexist stigma surrounding her sexual engagement with a man who — given his age and, y’know, presidency — seems to have clearly been the one in control in the situation. Aren’t friends inspiring?
Variety now reports that Amazon Studios has acquired the rights to the script about the “friendship” between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp that’d figure largely into the scandal that’d get Bill Clinton impeached (but ultimately not kicked out of office), and it’s already being produced by the team behind Fences — Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal and Steve Tisch at Escape Artists. Apparently parts of Linda and Monica use verbatim dialogue from the conversations between Tripp and Lewinsky.
Before you ask, no, this project has nothing to do with Ryan Murphy’s Feud — but, funnily enough, the Clinton sex scandal will also likely become part of yet another Murphy series. The producers of American Crime Story have optioned the rights to the book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President, by Jeff Toobin.
For some inexplicable reason, culture seems really fascinated by something a Clinton did that became overinflated by Republicans in a rabid fight to change the course of American politics for the worse. Who could possibly say why?