It's hard out there for a film director. Productions can go millions over budget in days and everyone wants to get paid off for everything, action director John McTiernan lamented in a long-distance phone call from Canada, where he was shooting "Rollerball."
His caller, private detective Anthony Pellicano, listened sympathetically.
"Now we're paying off the local fire department," McTiernan grumbled. "There's so much corruption, it's amazing."
Of course, prosecutors allege that the real reason for this phone call was the corruption the two men were engaged in. According to federal prosecutors, McTiernan hired Pellicano to run wiretaps for him, and this phone conversation -- captured on tape and aired in a federal courthouse Tuesday -- was a chance for the two to confer.
Pellicano complained to McTiernan during the call that he had hours of wiretaps to review. Oh -- and don't forget to send a check for $25,000, the private investigator reminded him.
Pellicano, on trial for racketeering, wiretapping and other criminal skulduggery, sat calmly in court as prosecutors played the audiotape of his 2000 conversation with McTiernan, which falls into the odd category of being a secretly recorded conversation about information obtained from a wiretapped conversation that the government alleges was illegal.
During the phone call, Pellicano and McTiernan scoffed that movie producer Charles Roven was a "wealthy ne'er-do-well."
Prosecutors allege that Pellicano, while working for McTiernan, wiretapped Roven.
The taped conversation between Pellicano and McTiernan was played as Roven sat in the witness chair, rocking back and forth, listening expressionlessly.
Later, as Roven left the courthouse, he seemed unfazed by the courtroom drama caused by the tape.
"It's not the first time I heard it," he said.
In the conversation, Pellicano moves from conspiratorial -- "There's nobody in the room listening to this, is there?" he asks McTiernan -- to banal. "So how's your health?" he asks the director at one point.
McTiernan pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about hiring Pellicano for wiretapping but is now seeking to rescind his plea.
If the overburdened private detective working hard for his employer is the side of Pellicano that comes out on that tape, another recording played in court Tuesday cast him as a more menacing figure.
