The art of the Political compliment

I have used a conversational device with great success, that I have chosen to call "the political compliment." I do not know if it is new on the face of the earth, but it is original with me and is part of my communications stock in trade. I have not yet defined it, but I can denote a recent example. Consider approaching a Hollywood Mogul who is asking if I am willing to work. I might suggest that, "If my life depended on it, I could become a screenwriter." By application, this suggests a dues paying situation in which I am subjected to a disciplinary process by being compelled to produce some kind of script in a command performance at an unspecified future date. I must acknowledge that it will be a first effort, if I do not actually produce one between now and that time. First efforts are as reliably unremarkable as the loss of one's virginity. But how do I "pull the teeth," of the anticipated deficit of credibility? The solution that came to mind was to suggest a compliment as follows. "They are the kind of people who would take my bad effort, and make a good script out of it and make a movie, and STILL rib me about it." It breaks the tension with humor, and implies a collaborative atmosphere of gentle badinage, rather than a hard-ball environment of sink or swim. An opponent in that situation has a choice. If he accepts the compliment, I can theoretically hold him accountable to it later if he reneges, by social discipline. If he does not accept the compliment, I can hold him accountable by social discipline in the present. I suppose that the political compliment begs the concept of a political insult such as I have attributed to Hillary Clinton: I do not suppose that he can have any lower an opinion of me than I in fact have of him. I have on occasion repeated the occurrence of the political compliment. I find the political insult no less intriguing.