Our Man in the Harem
A
patrolman’s daughter is held captive in the Middle East.
The Sheik of Aramy
A
more relaxed style, enabling Swackhamer to focus his attentions and energies on
set-ups where he finds the camera angles that give him comfortable resources in
which to couch his tale of Arab mischiefs and corporate corruption.
Notably,
his odalisques are filmed with a rather long lens, or thrown in the background
with a lack of focus.
The
idea is that an American aircraft company in fierce competition with the French
bribes an Arab buyer with girls for his harem (one a year from the also-rans at
a beauty pageant). McCloud and a State Department agent ferret all this out,
but the Arab has a ploy: claiming all these Americans are conspirators in a
plot to oust his Sheik.
It
will certainly be seen that this is admirably constructed as a reversible image
of what is at stake in certain commitments and dealings, with a remote flavor
of the Minotaur.
The
suggestion is that American interests do not lie in supporting feudal interests
along a corrupt line indicated by De Tocqueville as endemic to American
business structures.
From
another point of view, the exploitation of such a weakness is seen as futile
because essentially provincial.
|
Anne Archer Wilhelmina Kirk |
Story by Glen A. Larson, Lou Shaw Directed by E.W. Swackhamer |
43315, 1.11.76
WILHELMINA: (To Yates.) I learned a long time ago
that getting a story from a man like you is like getting pregnant. (Pause.) There’s
just never an ideal time.
RAMAL: You Americans have taught the world what a wonderful
thing free enterprise is.
McCLOUD: (At the computer.) You just
watch this baby work. Do everythin’ but feed you.
OFC. HOUSTACHEK: Cut the bull!
YATES: Bull?
That’s what America is all about. I’m asking you to invest in her.
WILHELMINA: Well, then you do think I’m lying.
McCLOUD: No, no, I
just know that you ain’t tellin’ the truth.
McCLOUD: Well, the more people you got beatin’
the bushes for a stray, the more chances you got o’ bringin’
it in.
JESSUP: Marshal!
McCLOUD: You mean
sucker, doncha?
McCLOUD: (Sizing up the American consul.) You just follow orders,
even if it means lying.
JESSUP: Yes...
no.
McCLOUD: We want
to keep this conversation nice ‘n friendly, don’t we? Then you just hang in
there with them yesses.
YATES: What are we going to do?
RAMAL: Throw in
a catalyst. Change the look, smell, feel of things. Perhaps by a distraction we
can save our skins.
SHEIK KIPAL: Conspiracy? I heard only of bribes
and corruption.
RAMAL: They are
tentacles of the same body.
WILHELMINA: I guess we’re in trouble, huh?
RAMAL:
Fortunately, you won’t have long to live with it.
WILHELMINA: Terrific.
ARAMIAN SOLDIER: Are you Chief Peter B. Clifford?
CHIEF
CLIFFORD: That’s right.
SOLDIER: You’re
under arrest.
CLIFFORD: For
what?
SOLDIER: High
treason against Sheik Kipal.
CLIFFORD:
(Snorting.) I don’t even know him! (He attempts to bully past and
is subdued.)
RAMAL: But we have what we need to prove to the world what has
gone on here today. The bodies are on the way here now.
SHEIK KIPAL: Are you... Sam McCloud?
McCLOUD: There ya
go.