Absolute Power

David Baldacci’s Inside Story: “This book represented a huge crossroads for me. I spent three years of my life writing Absolute Power. Before, I had been writing screenplays for four or five years when I was an attorney in Washington, DC. There was one I wrote in about 1991 called Reverse Order that was basically Die Hard in the White House. My agent called and said, ‘Everybody’s so excited about this script and it’s really hot. This is going to send you on your way as a screenwriter, you’re going to be able to write full time.’

“I was in New York with a client when my agent rang me at about midnight to tell me that Warner Bros had passed on it. Studios often have a herd mentality, so if they hear one has passed then there must be something wrong with it. So everyone passed. I remember staring out of the window in my hotel New York thinking, ‘Maybe this just isn’t going to happen for me.’ You start to think that perhaps it’s not all about working hard and being creative and talented, but also about simply being in the right place at the right time. But I went home and decided that I just couldn’t stop writing. It had become too important a part of my life. I really then delved deep to try and figure out what I was interested in writing.

“My attorney’s office was close to the White House back then and I would occasionally see the President’s motorcade come through. One time, I had parked on the street and didn’t realise the motorcade was coming through so my car got towed. The tow truck driver agreed to give me a ride to the office to pay my fine. As we were driving, the truck was caught up by the motorcade and the President’s limousine momentarily stopped alongside us. The light came on in the limo and we could see George Bush in the back with Barbara, reading papers. The tow truck driver and I exchanged a look and said at the same time, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool.’

“All of a sudden, a light bulb popped off for me. I remembered all the stories about JFK and his mistresses and all the tunnels connecting the treasury department next to the White House and the old executive office building. I thought, ‘What if I wrote about a President of the United States who was not a nice person, who was an egomaniac that has an affair with a woman and during one of those trysts something really bad happens—and the Secret Service has to do their job and kill the woman. And then I have a burglar present who saw everything.’
“So I flipped the stereotypes. I made the men people normally look up to the bad guys. And I made the burglar the good guy. That’s where Absolute Power. came from, and it really was the book that changed my life.”