It’s hard for a satirist to compete with news headlines, but Christopher Buckley tries.
Buckley, a political satirist, ran through a list of odd headlines and titles that led him into humorous stories from his life during his presentation at the conference.
He recalled how his daughter was confused about President Bill Clinton.
“My 8-year-old daughter came into my study and said, ‘Dad, what is oval sex?’ She said people were upset with the president for having oval sex in the Oral Office. So, thank you, Mr. President,” he said sarcastically.
Some American book and movie titles, he joked, are translated literally into Chinese. Like “Leaving Las Vegas,” he said, which was translated into “I’m Drunk and You’re a Prostitute.”
“The movie ‘Field of Dreams’ became ‘Imaginary Dead Baseball Players Visit My Cornfield,'” he said. “The movie ‘The Crying Game,’ well, that was translated to ‘Oh No, My Girlfriend Has a Penis.’ But my favorite was the Cantonese translation for the movie ‘Interview With a Vampire’: ‘So, You Are a Lawyer.’ Management has asked me to point out that is obviously not a reference to Borton, Petrini & Conron.”
As the crowd laughed, Buckley explained how his publisher struck down various titles he wanted for a compiled book of his magazine stories, like “Ruined Weekends,” which referred to the fact that many magazine stories are due on Mondays, and “Homage to Tom Clancy,” which he hoped would accidentally attract Clancy readers.
Besides discussing titles, Buckley also ducked behind the podium to demonstrate how one can avoid an assassination attempt.
He said that as a young presidential speechwriter, he had to watch films about political assassinations after the attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan’s life.
He used examples from the films to explain what he felt was a change in the ethics of assassination from John Wilkes Booth, who shot Abraham Lincoln to avenge the South, to John Hinckley, who shot Reagan to impress Jodie Foster.
“And there, in a way, you have the trajectory of idealism of the American political assassin,” he said.
On the same program as Cal Ripken Jr., Neil Armstrong and the hero of “Black Hawk Down,” Buckley explained why he wasn’t nervous.
“Obviously, someone has made a terrible mistake. I would be quaking in my boots if I wasn’t so heavily sedated,” he said, joking.