When the Secret Service agent called him, Ellsworth ad-libbed: "Tony, if you keep telling people, it's not a secret."

March 13, 2002 5:16 AM

When the Secret Service agent called him, Ellsworth ad-libbed: "Tony, if you keep telling people, it's not a secret." You're in Hollywood, and you're writing scripts, and it's impossible to get anyone to read them. And the cops come in, and the script was right there, and they wouldn't read it!
posted by magullo (12 comments total)

From the article: "[When the secret service arrived] I was expecting black suits, like Mr. Anderson from The Matrix." Ummm. I think he meant Agent Smith, Brown or Jones. Mr. Anderson was Keanu...maybe he expected them to be in all black leather, though. Yeah. I'm a dork.

Also: Ellsworth plans to finish up his film -- The Truth Is in Here, it's called -- if he can scrape the money together.

Hmmm. Anyone else thinking "adult film?"
posted by ColdChef at 6:01 AM on March 13, 2002

Wired did a great story about "inkjet counterfeiting" last year. Crazy stuff.
posted by jtripp at 6:25 AM on March 13, 2002

The part I am curious about is the women who ratted him out. She could apparently see into his apartment clearly enough that she could make out what he was scanning and printing. From an adjacent building! Ellsworth had an audience and never realized it!
posted by srboisvert at 7:19 AM on March 13, 2002

After the interrogation, Ellsworth spent a night in jail -- the highlight for him, he jokes, was the lecture about not having sex with his roommate. Bail was set at $15,000 and he was let out around seven the next evening.

Ahahaha! Like you have to be TOLD that!
posted by BlueTrain at 7:30 AM on March 13, 2002

I found myself googling Ellsworth's name, hoping like hell that he had a journal or weblog or something, with blow by blow descriptions of what went on. He's got a great sense of humor. And now he has fresh material for a second screenplay, courtesy of the "not so secret" Secret Service.

The sign he ends up putting in his window is priceless - immediately I thought of the old television show Bewitched, and how great it would have been if Samantha Stevens had placed that sign where Mrs. Kravitz could see it.
posted by iconomy at 7:39 AM on March 13, 2002

it's like american movie II. someone tell chris smith.
posted by kliuless at 7:46 AM on March 13, 2002

On the plus side, this guy is going to have a career now for sure, mark my words.
posted by bingo at 8:18 AM on March 13, 2002

This guy's an idiot for thinking he could fake bills just because he was making a movie. (Just more "I'm making a movie, stop the world" movie-maker arrogance?)
If he's that stupid his screenplays must not be very good.
posted by HTuttle at 9:43 AM on March 13, 2002

I know this other guy who's an idiot for thinking he can accurately judge someone's intelligence or talent in a particular field based solely on a single short article written about one episode in their life.

iconomy's right: this whole debacle makes for some great short movie screenplay material.
posted by hincandenza at 10:39 AM on March 13, 2002

I can't blame the guy. I just went to the US Treasury web site and tried to find documentation about ways to legally reproduce US currency and it turns out that none of the links from the treasury site to the secrety service site work.

More digging and you can get the information though.
posted by plinth at 11:37 AM on March 13, 2002

"Stop looking through my widow"?
posted by kindall at 11:39 AM on March 13, 2002

Evidently the Secret Service didn't get the new memo about Cinematic Immunity.
posted by videodrome at 5:27 AM on March 14, 2002