Young Il Kim is a screenwriter in Los Angeles.

I’ve never met her—and now I might be too nervous to—but Hillary Clinton saved me. To be more accurate, Hillary Rodham saved me. Not the globetrotting secretary of state or the health care-pushing first lady, but the Wellesley grad of the early ’70s, the rising star with the Coke-bottle glasses who could have married any young political hotshot in the capital and fatefully chose a Viking-esque Georgetown grad from Arkansas.

She didn’t change my life through politics. She changed it through show business.


In many ways our stories couldn’t be further apart. She grew up all-American, a Girl Scout in middle-class suburban Chicago, her dad a World War II veteran who voted solidly Republican. I grew up in New Jersey, a Korean immigrant, with parents who had moved from Seoul in the early 1980s to give their children a chance at a better life. My mom and dad rose at 5 a.m. each day to open their bodega in the New York suburbs and sling deli sandwiches and soda for harried customers. I knew just what they were giving up for me and tried to repay them by studying intensely in high school. It even seemed to work: I made it to Harvard, graduated with a degree in economics and began a career in venture capital.

But life sputtered. A string of failed dot-coms led me to head West. Forget the overachiever stereotypes: I was going to go Hollywood. I’d read the screenplay of Good Will Hunting, by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and was sure that I could be an overnight sensation just like them. I spent my first year in Los Angeles in 2002 writing a script about a family of Korean immigrants, called Hyung’s Overture. It didn’t sell. I wrote a romantic comedy, an action thriller, a drama, a historical drama. My dream of overnight success turned into years of varyingly polite rejections, then a decade, and I eventually found myself, at age 37, back working in my parents’ store. My dad was in the hospital. My mom and I were making the coffee, frying eggs and slinging sub sandwiches side by side. This was not the future any of us had counted on.

I told my parents that I would write one more screenplay. To begin, I would have to wake even earlier: I’d be up at 3:30 a.m. to write two scenes before we left for the store, and then I could write two more in the back room after the lunch rush. This one had to break through.

***

Young Il Kim, the author.

Aspiring writers in Hollywood soon learn that the best way to break into the business is to land your script on the “Black List”—the annual rundown, started in 2005 by studio executive Franklin Leonard, of Hollywood’s favorite unproduced screenplays. Quickly, the list had become a launching pad for diverse voices in Hollywood, an establishment that is still largely white and male. In 2011, as I was hitting rock bottom, Graham Moore topped the list with The Imitation Game, which later won him an Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

So my desperate plan was to end up on the Black List, which meant writing a script that producers would love—or at least would say they loved. I studied the list itself: On previous Black Lists, Danny Strong had vaulted to success writing about the 2000 presidential election recount (later, HBO’s Recount), Beau Willimon had succeeded with a political thriller (later, The Ides of March), and Noah Oppenheim had captivated Hollywood with a screenplay about Jacqueline Kennedy after JFK’s assassination.

Politics seemed like a smart bet, but what about a subject? I didn’t know much about politicians. Then I realized this was Hollywood: I didn’t have to know about them. I just had to pick the right character—someone who would make studio executives flip past the first page.

I soon found my inspiration waiting in the headlines. As I was trying to figure out a character, a team of Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. I was immediately struck by the photo of President Barack Obama’s advisers in the Situation Room, watching the raid on Abbottabad unfold. Hillary Clinton was one of the only women in the room, and she was also the only person who was visibly shaken—the only person with any emotions to speak of. Everyone else seemed stern and somber and uninteresting. But there was Clinton: She’d spent her career trying to be as asexual as possible, but in that moment, she seemed to me to be letting her guard down, showing her vulnerability, her gender. The picture jogged a hazy memory of a historical photo from when she had been a rising star attorney, dressed in a 1970s-era outfit with those big round glasses, working on the Watergate impeachment committee with her boss, John Doar.

Who, I wondered, was that woman?

A good screenplay starts with research, so I bought her memoir. And Bill’s book. And Carl Bernstein’s book. And Dick Morris’ book. All told, I surrounded myself with a dozen biographies of her—some adulatory, some attacks. I needed the help: Like most Americans outside of Arkansas, I hadn’t known who Mrs. Clinton was until her husband became the Democratic nominee in 1992, and all those years later I hardly remembered much more from that campaign than Bill’s famous line about his brainy wife and how the American people would be getting “two for the price of one.”

What soon became clear was that Hillary Clinton is something of a Rorschach test. Everyone sees in her what they want. In a way, I was no different. As I got deeper into my major in Hillary Studies, I came to see myself in her. I saw someone filled with hope and belief, trying to succeed in a nontraditional field.

I focused on the two-year period when she was working on the Watergate committee and then decided to leave the capital to move to Arkansas to be with her Yale Law School classmate Bill Clinton, who was running his first campaign for Congress—unsuccessfully, as it would turn out. In a life lived under the microscope, it seemed to me, this was a key moment for Hillary Rodham—an ironic but powerful collision, when her idealistic early years intersected grimly with a future she never would have imagined. The very machinery of impeachment she and her fellow Democrats would test out in that moment would eventually be turned against her husband, used to investigate her own marriage a quarter-century later.

At first, I thought my screenplay—I titled it Rodham—was going to be about impeachment. But as I wrote, something surprising happened. I came to care deeply about Hillary Rodham—the person she was in Washington in 1973, and the one she could have been even if she had never become Hillary Clinton. She was the most ambitious and most brilliant young person in every room she walked into, until one day she walked into the Yale law library and met the one person perhaps as ambitious and as brilliant as she was. And that person became her lover, her best friend and her career rival. They couldn’t, after all, both be president, at least not to start.

Whether true or not, both Bill and Hillary claim that in their first encounter former Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton was afraid to approach the more famous Hillary Rodham. Their romanticized library scene was the perfect Hollywood meet-cute moment that I wanted to incorporate into the opening of my screenplay:



INT. YALE LAW SCHOOL LIBRARY – DAY A VIKING of a man with a full beard and stature watches… …a blonde girl whose face is hidden behind an awful haircut and a hideous pair of COKE-BOTTLE glasses. The Viking smiles, seeing a beauty in her that others will never see. Perhaps sensing a glance, Coke-Bottle looks up, just as the Viking quickly looks away. LATER, Coke-Bottle senses this Viking looking at her again. She SLAMS her book shut, rises, and STORMS UP to the Viking. She’s half-angry, half-irritated, and fully urgent. COKE-BOTTLE: If you’re going to keep looking at me and I’m going to keep looking back, we might as well be introduced. We now get a full look at the woman who extends her hand. COKE-BOTTLE: I’m Hillary Rodham. Her piercing gaze leaves the Viking (BILL CLINTON) speechless.





Illustration by Ryan Inzana for Politico Magazine

Something about that encounter and the courtship that followed made her give up everything to go back to Arkansas. I realized that my script wasn’t about Watergate either. It was about a human being in conflict, a person utterly driven by her career, but who also finds herself wanting to—needing to—follow her heart.

It’s easy to overlook today, when the world knows how her story unfolds and remains awed by Master Politician Bill Clinton, but in 1973, Hillary Rodham was quite arguably the more impressive of the two. She was student body president and the first student commencement speaker at Wellesley. She was profiled in Life magazine when that meant something. Like Bill, she probably would’ve been a Rhodes scholar if the competition had been open to women at the time.

The story of Rodham would be the story of that moment, when she was the brighter star. It was a time of immense change in her own life. She’d grown up a Goldwater girl—a Republican—but by 1972 had been campaigning for the liberal George McGovern. And it was a time of immense change in the country, this dramatic unraveling of Richard Nixon’s presidency. She was the hope of a new generation, prepared to pave the way for young, ambitious women.

She could’ve stayed in Washington, gotten a plum law job and chosen almost any suitor; whoever that was, he would have become maybe not president, but someone politically important. In my script, Hillary carries on a flirtation with Bill Weld, who worked with her on the Watergate committee. What if she’d chosen her career over her wayward Arkansas boyfriend, stayed in Washington and instead married someone like Weld? That would have been the smart, safe choice. Maybe he’d be an ex-president now, rather than an ex-governor running against her on the Libertarian ticket this fall.

WELD: Let’s have a drink. Kissinger just ended the October War. HILLARY: You go ahead, Will. I still have some work left. Weld pulls a flat, wrapped present from his desk drawer. WELD: First, you stood me up for Love Story. Now you’re standing me up for a drink. What must a Harvard boy do to take a Wellesley girl out for a drink? (offering the gift) Happy birthday, Hillary. HILLARY: How’d you know it was my birthday? WELD: Deep Throat.

But she didn’t choose the smart, safe choice. She abandoned Washington to follow her heart, to be with Bill, which at the time must have seemed like closing the door on all the ambitions that her friends and mentors had for her. Many people today think of her as this calculating, always-on politician, but at arguably the most critical moment of her life, she chose love over her ambition.

Going into this project, I didn’t think the Clintons’ love was real. I always saw their union as a political marriage. But as I inhabited their lives each day, thinking about why they charted the course together they did, my mind changed. They really did love each other, I came to believe.

Besides, I saw in her so much of my own angst. I figured moviegoers (or at least script readers) would too. Here I was, desperate myself for success, trying to break into an industry where there aren’t many Asians. I channeled that drive into her character: a woman trying to break barriers at a time when women weren’t expected to do certain things. I just wrote her as me. That was the best way to get inside her head.

Bill was easy to write, too: I wrote him as the most desirable person I could imagine—someone for whom Hillary had to be prepared to give up everything to follow.

As I wrote, another surprising thing happened: I came to believe that maybe Hillary Rodham made the wrong choice. Piecing together the ending—the true ending—I found myself wishing she had instead stayed in Washington. I wrote the scene of her getting into her car to leave for Arkansas, to leave for Bill, and I actually felt mad at her for her decision.

EXT. DUPONT CIRCLE, WASHINGTON, D.C. – DAY Hillary rearranges the trunk space of Sara Ehrman’s Volkswagen to put all her belongings inside. Hillary grabs the last box from Sara who refuses to let go. SARA: Bill is just a country lawyer. Do you love him that much? HILLARY: I don’t even know if I love him. But I have to take the chance and find out. From a block away, Betsey Wright runs toward them, not giving a shit about traffic as she jaywalks across the street. BETSEY: Where the hell are you going?! HILLARY: Arkansas. BETSEY: You can’t both be president! Hillary pauses, stares at her belongings. Betsey is right. A beat. HILLARY: I don’t care. EXT. ROUTE 29 – DAY The Volkswagen drives through a rural highway. BETSEY: Does he know you’re coming? HILLARY: No. BETSEY: So what are you going to do when you show up at the doorstep? HILLARY: Maybe I’ll get on my knee and ask him to marry me. BETSEY: Oh really now. Can he keep his last name or will he take yours? HILLARY: I don’t care what he does. But I’m keeping mine. BETSEY: Miss Hillary Rodham? HILLARY: Ms. Hillary Rodham. The sign indicates at least 1,000 more miles to Arkansas. And as Betsey and Hillary bicker all the way down Route 29… THE END.





Illustration by Ryan Inzana for Politico Magazine

That ending was based in truth, but it didn’t feel like the ending she deserved. It wasn’t the one Hollywood would have written for her story. This was 2011, and it seemed like Hillary had missed her one great shot at the White House. She’d lost to Obama, he was on a glide path to reelection, and it seemed to me that Clinton would be out of politics after her term at the State Department.

Hollywood could have done much better by her: I wanted my Hillary to stay in D.C. to see how far she could go career-wise. I wanted her not to be Mrs. Clinton, but Ms. Rodham.

***

When I finished Rodham, it first met with the silence I’d become used to. For six months, no one in Hollywood would respond to my hundreds of queries. Finally, a well-connected producer and manager, Richard Arlook, took a look at it—and he loved it. With him opening the doors, it turned out everyone else did, too. Richard became my manager and introduced me to my current agency, United Talent Agency, and producer Marty Bowen, who became obsessed with my depiction of Hillary Clinton. Marty, like most people, never knew that Hillary had a more promising career than Bill in 1973. Soon, I was taking meetings across Hollywood, connecting with lots of producers and studio executives who liked my script.

When I set out to write Rodham, my goal was five votes on the Black List—the minimum to make it onto the ranking—but by the end of 2012, Rodham had finished with 39 votes, enough to rank it fourth that year. The national press got interested. Hillary’s star politically was on the rise again; Obama by then had been reelected, and it was starting to seem clear she would run for president to follow him. Lionsgate acquired the project, Temple Hill partners Bowen and Wyck Godfrey became producers, along with Richard Arlook, and James Ponsoldt wanted to be the director after his hit The Spectacular Now. My parents started clipping Rodham stories from the newspapers they sold in their store. Just about every young notable actress has been rumored to play Hillary at some point these past three years.

I moved back to Hollywood and out of my parents’ spare room after Rodham got traction, and truth be told, I’ve been busy enough with screenwriting that I’ve paid almost no attention to this election at all. My quest to land on the Black List did everything I’d hoped it would. I’ve worked steadily ever since, writing studio assignments, adapting award-winning books for producers and selling pitches to international financiers. Last year, when I joined the writing staff of Showtime’s new Wall Street drama, Billions, I remember taking a break in the writers room so we could listen over the radio to Donald Trump announcing his presidential run. We all laughed about how ridiculous it was and made our own predictions about the GOP nominee. I said Rand Paul.

Of course, I’m still a bit sad the Hillary of my script doesn’t exist anymore. Hillary the politician today is definitely Mrs. Clinton, not Ms. Rodham—a character totally remade by the challenges and obstacles of her 40 years in politics. This isn’t that uncommon. The tragedy of politics is that everyone has ideals that they want to fight for when they run for the first time or work their first campaign, but you have to make compromises to build consensus. At some point, you realize you cannot be tethered to your ideals, because you must focus on building consensus. It’s the same in Hollywood—just like the director or the actor who realizes that artful indie stuff doesn’t pay the bills.

The producers intend to go into production of Rodham in 2017, and there’s a better chance it’ll happen if Clinton is elected—Hollywood doesn’t make movies about losers. But really the only time I’ve paid attention to her campaign was that final Tuesday of the primary, when she became the presumptive nominee. I watched her speak about being the first female nominee of a major political party. It was inspiring, just like Barack Obama speaking at Grant Park in 2008. It was a rare moment where, I think, we saw the Hillary Rodham I feel I know so well. The woman who wanted to have it all, who seemed destined to have it all, but who instead has spent her career fighting an uphill battle, accomplishing things that people told her she couldn’t do. I actually got goosebumps.

Maybe this is the Hollywood ending Hillary Rodham was supposed to have—a future I couldn’t imagine when I typed “THE END” on my script in 2011. Maybe, just maybe, the quickest path to the White House for an ambitious woman actually started with that slow road to Arkansas.