HBO is already working on a movie about wacky now-former congressman George Santos
Days after being expelled from Congress, George Santos is getting an HBO movie
Aux News Santos
In the grand tradition of Dumb Money and Cat Person, another story that the internet was more invested in than any regular people is getting a movie adaptation. This time it’s the wacky saga of now-former congressman George Santos, who was expelled from his position in the federal government… days ago. This comes from Deadline, which says HBO Films is developing an adaptation of Mark Chiusano’s The Fabuloist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, And Very American Legend Of George Santos, a book that came out… days ago.
So this is all happening pretty fast, but this is a story worth striking while the iron’s hot. 2024 is an election year, and there will probably be way more wacky things happening than a congressman allegedly using campaign funds on OnlyFans and Botox, stealing credit card information from donors, lying about producing cursed musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, explaining that he meant “Jew-ish” when he said he came from a Jewish background (he claimed that his grandparents escaped the Nazis in World War II), and so many other things that the “False biographical statements” section on his Wikipedia page is longer than the time he actually spent in Congress (badum tsssh).
This HBO movie, which comes from Veep and Succession executive producer Frank Rich, will be a “forensic and darkly comic look at the crazy, unprecedented congressional race on Long Island that led to Santos being elected to Congress.” Deadline also describes it as a “Gatsby-esque journey of a man from nowhere who exploited the system, waged war on truth, and swindled one of the wealthiest districts in the country to achieve his American Dream”—which seems like a statement that gives Santos an enormous amount of credit.
Also, while everyone got a kick out of Santos allegedly scamming congress and Republican voters, let’s not forget that he is also facing real criminal charges over some of this. That means the story is still going on, and some relevant stuff might still end up happening.
51 Comments
Oh, God no. The problem with these sorts of stories, from “Shattered Glass” onwards, is that they focus on the identity thief instead of what made it so easy for them to pretend to lie and get away with it. It’s a more human story, I suppose, and certainly one that easier to tell. But in the end, who cares? George Santos is probably not a terribly interesting person, once you get behind the “he lied constantly, about everything bit.” Though I do suppose that lying about being the direct descendent of Holocaust victims is about as dishonest and reprehensible thing as you can possibly do these days, so maybe there’s a chance to get some sort of portrait of evil there. But probably not. The issue is that telling the George Santos story in a more structural, systematic way would have to show that we’re living in a country that’s heavily divided, which is a nice way of saying “half of the country gone loony for an obvious conman who doesn’t seem to care about what’s true and what’s not, and most of them are ready to believe anything.” This project would probably be too political for HBO to touch and Americans do not usually show up at the theater in droves to see films/series that make Americans, as whole, look like unhinged rubes. Still, it’s worth remembering that most of the lies that Stephen Glass put out were basically ironic political contrarianism — anything a liberal tries actually has the opposite effect! It’s also worth remembering that Roy Cohn was a more-or-less out gay man who contributed to an enormous nationwide conservative backlash before working for the New York Mob for years. Someday, we might hear a story about a gay immigrant who liked to cross-dress once in a while hitched his star to a bigoted reactionary who loathed illegal immigrants and took advantage of people’s animus against trans and gay people whenever possible. But that probably won’t happen soon.
Supreme contraion people who basically roll the ladder up from behind them are the literal fucking worst. See also Thatcher wrecking womens rights.
I mean, agreed. But I also think that there’s a difference between people like Thatcher or, say, Clarence Thomas, who could offer plausible intellectual defenses of their points of view and people like the secon-gen American woman who I met on Reddit whose parents were quite literally Mexican border jumpers who had since been naturalized but who was considering voting for Trump in 2020 anyway. I don’t know if they consider themselves invincible or if there’s some weird self-hatred going on in the “Gays Against Groomers” and “Trannies for Trump” crowd, the first of which I know exists, the second of which probably does, somewhere.
Americans don’t usually “show up at the theater in droves” for an HBO documentary regardless of its storytelling style. Because it’s on HBO. On television/streaming. At home.
I know, I know. It’s the new paradigm, but that doesn’t mean that “stream something on [name a steaming service]” rolls off the tongue like “go to the movies” does. Quite frankly, we still dial and hang up phones, even if we don’t literally do either of those things. Even if we don’t leave our couches, I’d still argue that we shouldn’t look askance at somebody “going to the movies” if the whole movie gets seen uninterupted, in a way that might parallel a theater experience.
It’s not term from a previous time that is a vestiage of a physical act now performed virtually/digitally like your phone examples. They are not analgous. I don’t think you understand the writing mistake you made. Try “sit down with a bag of chips” instead of “show up at the theater in droves.”
Okay, so I admit that I was kind of playing the devil’s advocate, though I’m still not sure if I really like the argument I made. A lot of modern media language lacks charm. I wouldn’t mind keeping some older expressions around (“box office,” maybe) just because. Still, point taken, but “I’m not really sure if you understand the writing mistake that you made?” Seriously, are you really trawling the AV Club forums for bad English usage? Don’t you have anything better to do? Are you really this unbearable? In any case, the articles themselves provide plenty of opportunities to correct bad usage and grammar, and their authors are — presumably — getting paid to write decidedly sub-average prose. Why not go bother them for a while, huh?
To answer your questions,1. Not trawling, your comment was among the top comments. It took literally seconds to correct you.2. Certainly, but again, this takes literally seconds.3. For people with thin skin who make a lot of mistakes? Probably.4. My not replying to you will not stop the shame from reappearing as you replay this interaction in your head over and over through the next few days/weeks until you finally let it go.
I feel like HBO has slayed it on political stuff before. Julianne Moore as Palin, etc. But I agree with you that having the camera veer toward and away from him, informing the machinations that made this ridiculous man a contender, would be a more fulfilling narrative choice. His rise is no doubt a riff on Being There mixed with Shattered Glass mixed with Inventing Anna.
The only way to tell this would be as a Walter Mitty-esque story, regularly fading into Santos dreaming that he really is all of the things he claimed to be.
Maybe that would work. We’ll have to see. Of course, by the time something that elaborate gets made, we may care care about this guy even less than we do now.
I don’t expect this will be anything like Shattered Glass – they’ll likely go for full satire/comedy, which this story is ripe for.
I hate musicals, but if they do this, a few musical numbers might be welcome.
Yeah, but…they already made Gandhi.
You mean…’Gandhi!’
Get Tina Fey to write it.
She already did Whisky Tango Foxtrot.
For fuck’s sake, can’t we just let this asshole just disappear into obscurity and maybe prison like he deserves?Or at least give it a year or two first, maybe he’ll do something even stupider.
Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s Trump’s running mate.
Never before has a real-life person / series of events been a better fit for a big gaudy go-for-broke musical.
Make it a Hamilton parody. Other options:How to Succeed in Congress By Constantly Lying
The Phantom of the C-SPANA Chorus Lie
another story that the internet was more invested in than any regular peopleWhat? This was a huge story reported by all outlets from the very beginning.
Thank you, that was my reaction too. He was actually my congressman though so I thought maybe it was just around here.
Yeah, but it’s not exactly “Taylor Swift Seen Scratching Arse” levels of importance, is it?
Who’s arse? Readers want to know!
Well…if it was reported on from the -very- beginning he probably wouldn’t have been elected.
It was reported on from the very beginning, voters are just really, really stupid: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/small-local-paper-uncovered-and-reported-george-santos-scandal-before-november-election
And there’s only one possible casting option:
It’s actually really surprising that Santos never claimed to be Blackish, and then later clarify that ‘no, he meant acted in the TV show Black-ish’
His appearance as Santos on Kimmel was pretty funny, but I think it was one of those situations where the casting is so perfect that it is funnier than anything specific you could do with it.
Do you really think he’s qualified to play the first quadriplegic dentist to perform a heart-lung transplant on top of a moving train?
I say let Bowen Yang star, he’s already played him perfectly.
An Asian guy pretending to be Jew-ish Brazilian would definitely elevate an already absurd situation.
Ooh, another option is to just have him played by a different actor in every scene. Who is George Santos, really? He could be any of us!
Also acceptable.
I vote Harvey Guillen, because I want him to have lots of success.
I hope that they get to the part where he was awarded eight Purple Hearts for his service in the army, navy, coast guard, marines, Air Force, merchant marines and space force.
This is the last thing this clown needs. Santos is a compulsive serial liar and grifter, but otherwise a completely unremarkable person. The only reason he was able to fail upwards so far was a combination of sheer dumb luck, and none of his political opponents doing any oppo research whatsoever because they thought he was a complete joke with zero chance of winning. He’s done absolutely nothing to warrant anything more than a farting sound when his name is brought up. Everyone probably knew a kid like this in their high school, who swore his dad was a decorated sniper and that his $20 Rolex was totally legit.
Right? Why give him more attention? He’s already intolerable, this is just going to encourage his delusions.
This chud’s second act is going to infuriate all of us. Welcome to America in 2023, where even if you’re garbage, it only matters that you are a brand.
“You’re nobody til everybody in this town knows you’re poison, got your number, knows you must be avoided…you’re nobody til everybody in this town thinks you’re a bastard.” —Elvis Costello
It really does tell you how invested the Democrats were in this race (I assume it’s a safe R district) since it took about three weeks for all of his bullshit to be called out once people were actually paying a modicum of attention.
A safe D district, actually. Or so everyone thought. I saw this in a recent Guardian article:Given what we now know about Santos, it’s barely
believable that he got this far. Political campaigns normally conduct
extensive opposition research on candidates, but Jay Jacobs, chair of
the Nassau County Democrats, said that Santos “wasn’t considered a
serious candidate by Republicans or Democrats”, and so slipped through
the cracks.“He had run before, he was looked upon as kind of a joke, so nobody took it seriously,” Jacobs said.“Had
they taken him seriously, had they felt that he had the slightest
chance, I think the [Democratic] congressional campaign committee
[DCCC], which does the research on this, would have dug a lot deeper.The
DCCC, Jacobs said, has “435 contests across the country” that it needs
to monitor. It has to choose where best to invest money and time in
opposition research and background checking.“With
George Santos being – and I’m sorry, but this is how I’d refer to him –
a bit of a clown, they just didn’t give it that kind of attention,”
Jacobs said.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/26/a-bit-of-a-clown-a-look-at-congressman-george-santoss-endless-fabrications
I mean that tracks. He IS a clown and I’m not surprised no one thought he was a credible threat to win. Lesson of the day – don’t get lazy.
First off, good choice for director. Second, it needs to be called Based on a False Story or something similar. Third, it needs lots of Wolf of Wall Street narration with shit constantly changing like a demented Rushamon.
Including having dashing leading men interchanged in the role of Santos. What size collared shirt-inside a sweater-inside a down jacket-inside a suit jacket does Colin Farrell wear?
The reveal of the Lamborghini after DiCaprio’s virtuoso physical comedy segment was perfection.
I’ve already seen Elliott in Search Party – thanks.
“I’ve been a congressman to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and, by gum, it put them on the map!”- George Santos, presumably
I hope it takes so long to make the movie that no one remembers who this lying ass is and nobody watches it.
As long as this ends with Santos is roughly the same state that we see the Colonel in at the end of Boogie Nights, I’m all for it.
Cast Harvey Guillen or we riot.