Fresh off a kidnapping spree in his hometown of Riyadh, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the fresh, young face of reform-minded authoritarianism in Saudi Arabia, arrived in the United States last month on a mission to sell his vision for a post-oil utopia on the Arabian Peninsula. Fortunately, the power brokers in Washington, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, were more easily subdued than the crown prince’s political enemies back home. Whereas Salman’s rivals had to be imprisoned in a five-star Ritz-Carlton until they relinquished their assets, America’s elites were won over with the more traditional combination of wining, dining, and financing from the sovereign wealth fund that M.B.S., as the prince is known, now controls.

The final leg of the epic, three-week roadshow saw M.B.S. hobnobbing in Los Angeles, where industry moguls jostled to capitalize on the conservative kingdom’s newfound openness to Western entertainment. On Wednesday night, M.B.S. was welcomed to a Hollywood dinner hosted by producer Brian Grazer and his wife Veronica, alongside William Morris Endeavor boss Ari Emanuel, who is finalizing a deal with M.B.S. for a $400 million stake in Emanuel’s talent agency. The guest list was saturated with executives, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Disney’s Bob Iger, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel, as well as tech entrepreneur Kobe Bryant, whom the prince reportedly made a special request to meet. Having traded his traditional ceremonial garb for a suit, M.B.S. kibitzed with former Trump aide Dina Powell and Vice co-founder Shane Smith; discussed the exploding use of Snapchat in Saudi Arabia; and asked Kobe how he got his Oscar. Topics that were deemed off-limits included the 32-year-old’s bombing campaign in Yemen, which has killed thousands of civilians; his abduction of Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri, in November; and the decidedly un-Hollywood-like repression of independent media and journalists, one of whom was recently imprisoned for five years for “insulting” the royal court.

Prince Mohammed must have been tired when he returned to the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, which he had booked in its entirety. The Grazer dinner came just two days after another soiree at Rupert Murdoch’s Bel-Air estate where, according to The Hollywood Reporter, fellow guests included Iger and his wife; Universal film chairman Jeff Shell; Fox TV exec Peter Rice and film-studio chief Stacey Snider; as well as actors Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Before guests sat down, M.B.S. reportedly delivered a brief speech that touched on his hope to return Saudi Arabia to a more open, moderate form of Islam (the crown prince has blamed Iran for Saudi Arabia’s long history of fostering extremism). After dinner, the tone was less somber, and members of the royal entourage could be found taking selfies with various actors.

Of course, selfies and state weapons go hand-in-hand, and so, while in California, M.B.S. was also set to tour defense-giant Lockheed’s Silicon Valley complex before concluding his trip. One of Lockheed’s top clients, the Saudis expressed their intent last year to procure more than $28 billion worth of Lockheed-made combat ships, aircraft, and missile-defense systems over the next decade. “Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation, and they’re going to give the United States some of that wealth, hopefully, in the form of jobs, in the form of the purchase of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world,” Donald Trump said last month, when M.B.S. visited the White House. The two had already forged a relationship in May of last year, when Trump, quite literally, danced to Saudi Arabia’s tune, in a traditional ardah sword dance. (His undulations were smoothly followed by a raft of business deals, including for $110 billion in weapons over the next 10 years.) The political glad-handing portion of the trip was rounded out with meetings in New York with Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and former mayor Michael Bloomberg.

But it was in California, home of sun, fun, and re-invention, that Prince Mohammed shone brightest. Even The Rock, who has confirmed there is “a real possibility” that he will one day run for president, found his adroit faculties befuddled upon leaving the Murdoch estate. “An historic night it was. A pleasure to have a private dinner with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, his royal family and distinguished cadre,” he enthused on Instagram, before apparently thinking better of it and deleting his heart-fluttering coda: “On a personal note, I was extremely flattered and truthfully, blown away to be told about the level of love the Saudi people have for me and my popularity throughout the country. Very humbling and cool and I look forward to my first visit soon to Saudi Arabia.”