Why you can’t meet the author of The Revenant
As a U.S. trade representative, Michael Punke — whose novel formed basis of new movie — isn’t allowed to bask in the glory
It was a D.C. lawyer’s dream come true, a Hollywood premiere for a movie based on the novel he wrote in his spare time. But when The Revenant, the new film adapted from Michael Punke’s book, had its big opening in L.A. — an evening featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Oscar-winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu — the author was nowhere to be seen.
He was 16,000 kilometres away in Nairobi, Kenya, putting the finishing touches on an international trade agreement enacting a $1.3-trillion (U.S.) deal for GPS systems, semiconductors and touch screens.
Punke, 51, may be having the literary moment of a lifetime, more than a decade after his novel was released to high praise but modest sales. But as the deputy U.S. trade representative and ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Swit- zerland, he’s missing out on a lot of the fun.
In fact, he wasn’t even allowed to talk about The Revenant for this story. Federal ethics rules prohibit him from doing any side work that might enrich him and potentially abuse his high-ranking office in the process.
“Oh, he wishes he could talk about it,” says Tim Punke, a senior executive for a Seattle lumber company and his brother’s de facto spokesman. “Can you imagine having your book turned into a movie, having Leonardo DiCaprio in it?”
“He’s so grateful that it just happened, that it came to the big screen. But he’s obviously disappointed.”
The film, which opened Friday in Toronto, is said to be a shoo-in for Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for DiCaprio.
“It’s kind of bittersweet,” says Traci Punke, Michael’s wife, who flew to the premiere with their two kids from their home in Geneva. “He’s so grateful that it just happened, that it came to the big screen, that he can’t complain. But he’s obviously disappointed.”
Granted, Punke has nothing to complain about. It’s not like he’s been mauled by a bear, left for dead by his compatriots and sent traipsing through hostile Indian country like Hugh Glass, the early 19th-century protagonist of The Revenant. It’s a gripping story: historical fiction blending the lonely terror of Cast Away, the driving vengeance of The Count of Monte Cristo and the landscape of a classic western. The kind of tale you can imagine being scrawled under flickering candlelight in a remote cabin with the help of a bottle of bourbon.
Except that Punke typed it up inside a LEED-certified glass box on K Street, the downtown Washington office of the global law firm Mayer Brown.
If it’s not the typical D.C. side gig, well, Punke isn’t exactly your typical creature of Washington. He grew up in small-town Torrington, Wyo., where he fished, mountain-biked and learned to build his own rifles. A debating champ, he graduated from high school early to head to the University of Massachusetts, then transferred to George Washington University to study international affairs. Acouple years out of Cornell Law, he went into government as a staffer for Max Baucus, former Democratic senator from Montana.
“If you asked anybody who has worked with him, they will all like him,” says Mickey Kantor, the former U. S. trade representative who hired Punke away from a later White House policy job in 1995.
Though Punke thrived in Washington, he was always looking for a way home. “He told me about a year into our relationship that whomever he ended up with in life had to live in the west,” Traci says. “If he remained living in D.C., his soul would wither up and die.”
Reading on an airplane one day, he came across a squib of an idea — just a couple of sentences in a history book — about the frontier fur trapper Hugh Glass and his incredible story of survival. He started waking before dawn, heading to the law office early to write in the hours before his coworkers arrived. At home in Bethesda, Md., he did research by building lean-tos and setting up hunting traps with his kids. The book was published in 2002 and Punke managed to sell the movie rights, though it was never certain a film would get made.
But Punke decided writing was more than just a hobby. He left his law firm and moved the family to Missoula, Mont., where he became an adjunct professor at the University of Montana. He planned to spend his days teaching and writing — until Ron Kirk called to offer what Traci refers to as a “once-in-a-lifetime, can’t-pass-up opportunity.”
When Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, was appointed as President Barack Obama’s first U.S. trade representative, one name kept coming up for the WTO job: Michael Punke.
“I looked at the resumé, and it was great, but I was confused by the fact that he had been in Montana for the past few years,” Kirk recalls. “I called him up and said ‘You’re either the perfect person for the job, or you’re the Unabomber.’ ”
From Switzerland, Punke has travelled the world to talk tariffs, stipulate subsidies and think through trade disputes. In Nairobi, while his wife and kids partied with movie stars in Hollywood, Punke stayed up late into the night negotiating agricultural subsidies and completing a deal on the biggest tariff cut that the WTO has negotiated in 18 years.
“Maybe Leo DiCaprio will do a PSA about the agreement,” says Christopher Wenk, the executive director for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It would only be fair since Michael can’t talk about the movie.”
For his colleagues, there were always a few clues that this natty dresser with an uncanny gift for impersonations had another life. There was his habit of packing beef jerky in the backpack he carried to meetings. And there was the beaver pelt draped over a chair in his Geneva office.
And, of course, there was his suspiciously flattering identification photograph.
“We were in Japan at a trade event, sitting around a table eating lunch, when someone looked at the ID badge Michael was wearing and demanded to know where the photo was from,” says Carol Guthrie, a former colleague. “Where everyone else had a passport photo, his ID had a very serious black and white photo of him in a turtleneck — a classic book jacket photo. He was completely mortified. We were thrilled.”
“He’s got a little bit of John Wayne in him,” says John Neuffer, who, as president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, has worked with Punke for years. “He’s quiet, confident and formidable.”
In fact, Neuffer adds, maybe there’s even a little bit of Michael Punke in the fictionalized Hugh Glass. Both are adventure seekers, enchanted by the American West, but neither is able to talk much about it (Punke because of his government muzzle, Glass because a bear slashes his throat).
During the Nairobi trade talks, there were “seriously dark hours trying to negotiate this last agreement,” Neuffer says. “And Michael has always had a way forward, a way to inspire the group even when there seemed to be no way to move ahead.”
So, in other words, when they felt like they were lost in the woods, alone and afraid, he was the one fighting to keep going?
“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“He’s got a little bit of John Wayne in him.” JOHN NEUFFER COLLEAGUE OF AUTHOR MICHAEL PUNKE