POLITICS
From Washington to Hollywood: Pols and Wonks Who Went West—PICTURES
September 7, 2011 | 3:16 p.m.
Jon Lovett, an Obama administration speechwriter, this week became the latest Washingtonian to announce that he is packing his pen and heading west.
(RELATED: Stars Who Come to Washington)
“It’s always been a dream of mine to write comedy and be creative,” Lovett told The Washington Post. “I would like to be able to write in my own voice.”
Lovett isn't alone among wonks who trek to Tinsel Town. Here's a look at some others who have made the transition.
Kal Penn, the actor who starred in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, went from Hollywood to politics and back again. Penn wasn't a full-time Washingtonian; he backed the Obama campaign in the 2008 election and in the same year was named to the Obama National Arts Policy Committee. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant and regular TV panelist in Washington, went west and worked for a time on Dennis Miller's show. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images for Meet the Press)
Christopher Dodd, the former Democratic senator from Connecticut and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is the Motion Picture Association of America's new chairman. He spent 36 years in Congress before retiring to head one of the country's most glamorous, if atrophied, trade groups. (Liz Lynch)
Jack Valenti preceded Dodd in the MPAA director's chair. Valenti, who died in 2007, was a press aide to President Johnson after John F. Kennedy's assassination. In 1964, Johnson deputized Valenti to handle relations with the GOP leadership. "It was my job to keep the Oval Office open for Gerald Ford and Charles Halleck, then the House Republican leaders, and Everett Dirksen, leader of the Senate Republicans," Valenti wrote in a 2005 op-ed in The New York Times. (PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
Chris Lehane, a Democratic political consultant who worked for the Clinton-Gore campaign, contributed writing for Knife Fight, a film about the dark side of politics starring Rob Lowe and set to debut during the height of the 2012 presidential campaign. (LUKE FRAZZA/AFP/Getty Images)
Former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers worked as a consultant for the The West Wing. She is currently an editor at Vanity Fair.
Lawrence O'Donnell, who now hosts his own show on MSNBC, was an aide to New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan as well as a chief of staff for two Senate committees in the late 1980s and 1990s. He left Washington for Hollywood and was an executive producer and writer for The West Wing. (David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons)
Christopher Buckley, son of political commentator and author William F. Buckley, and an author and magazine editor, himself wrote Thank You for Smoking, a political satire that was made into a movie in 2005. (UPI Photo/Vince Mannino/Files)
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