The President’s Palm Reader—the movie

A confidence man takes charge of a failing president and overthrows a conspiracy to impeach him.  Based on the novel:

"Hilarious, sarcastic, witty, incredibly smart"—Amazon review

Word Wallace can talk anyone into anything.  He leaves America a step ahead of the feds and in India picks up the palmistry con, and he’s doing very well; but let’s face it, he’s small-time—

—until he’s picked up by ambitious Washington socialite Alberta Haines, on the lam from her husband Belton, whose political-hot-seat TV show she had promoted Belton into.  Here’s her new ticket to the top.

Belton, something of a bully, humiliates Word on the show, but Word distracts him for just that instant with dark news in his fate line and, boom, Word is reading the Vice President’s wife’s palm, the First Lady’s palm, and he and Alberta are on the social circuit reading everybody’s palm, charging five C’s per and feeding it into the bill-counter. 

Proposed cast: Brent Mendenhall (the President)

Then, the big one: the call comes in from the Oval Office and Word is giving Number One a reading—when the President comes apart in his hands.  Bullied by Vice President Reb Rawlins and Secretary of State Wayne T. “White Trash” Tupper, bullied by his wife, the President is an impotent wretch at mid-nervous-breakdown, and so over-the-line that he likes to scramble the bombers on the transceiver and send them in to nuke the bad guys.  Of course he calls them back every time.  Fun!

Proposed cast: Louise Gallagher (the First Lady)

This sends Word into breakdown, but Alberta puts him back together and he gets in there and reassembles the President.  By day they have a high old time running the world.  By night they tour the back-street bars and the birds of paradise. 

HOOKER
(peers past Word)
Hey, you know who that looks like? 

WORD
Yup. Talks like him, too. Go ahead, ask him something.

Hands on her hips, she tuff-stuff struts to the cringing President.

HOOKER
(leans in close)
You wanna fuck a nigger?

PRESIDENT
(frightened)
Gee!
(checks with Word, who nods with his eyebrows)
Sure! 

Suddenly Word and Alberta are arrested by the FBI for blackmailing the president with a tape of his breakdown (the palm-reading involves making a tape), and the President, back under the thumbs of Reb and W.T., regresses to obedience. 

When they can't persuade the FBI they don't have the tape—Word's record doesn't inspire trust—he and Alberta set out to find it themselves.  He searches Reb's Residence, witnesses his impotence with his wife and is taken by her to an embassy party where Alberta is on the arm of the Russian ambassador… 

Proposed cast: John Goodman (Reb)

And as if they didn’t have enough trouble, they uncover a conspiracy to impeach the President and take over America—but the FBI won't touch that, that's "politics."  It's up to Word and Alberta.

Pretentious Pictures presents a Washington comedy.