Travolta puts down his mother-of-pearl caviar spoon and rests his hands on the table. He had known all about the president's power to convince others that he feels their pain, because he had studied up on such techniques of charm to play Stanton. In fact, Travolta says he became Bill Clinton to find the character. "I was waiting for the seduction that I had heard so much about," Travolta continues. "I thought, Well, how could he ever seduce me?" Travolta, the man who danced with Princess Diana at her request at a White House state dinner, points to himself, and a look of amazement flashes across his mama's-boy face. "And after we talked, I thought, Bingo! He did it. [Scientology] is the one issue that really matters to me."

"You could grow calluses on your ears from all the listening we do. We do our pathetic little favors. We fudge them when we can't. We tell them what they want to hear." - Jack Stanton

In February 1996, director Mike Nichols was staring at his computer screen when he got the most expensive e-mail of his life. He had recently written a check for $1.5 million to Anonymous' front company, Machiavelliana, Inc., for the film rights to Primary Colors. "They're yours," the Anonymous (with a capital A) note said. "I'm happy to lend the characters to you, but I want them back. I reserve the right to revisit the Stantons after they've left the White House and gone to a nursing home."

So Jack Stanton, the effusive southern governor battling bimbo eruptions and draft dodging on a fictional campaign trail, was now Nichols possession. Or rather, Stanton was and had been America's property since that day four years earlier that the citizenry voted his archetype into the White House. In the book, published in 1996, Stanton's advisers can't decide whether he's an insatiable political animal or America's salvation. The public was still puzzling over which kind of man Clinton might turn out to be.