Trump Films (the Best Films)

Thread inspired by J. Hoberman’s excellent The Dream Life. (So-so thread title, I know.)

If you haven’t read it, Hoberman’s book details how Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all left behind films that appeared during their presidencies and seemed to capture something fundamental about them. Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes more elliptical. Examples: The Manchurian Candidate (obvious, at least in retrospect) and the first two Bonds for Kennedy, The Alamo and The Chase (most intriguing pick, as I recall) for Johnson, too many to name for Nixon.

I’ve seen so many films the last couple years, both narrative and documentaries, where Trump is front and center. At least one of them, you’d expect that: The Final Year, covering the end of Obama’s term. Also The Fourth Estate, or at least the part I saw, about the New York Times but more about Trump.

On top of that, though, the less obvious. Jarecki’s The King is about Trump. BlacKkKlansman and Beatriz at Dinner are about Trump. Frederick Wiseman’s Jackson Heights, somewhat (even if it was never conceived as such). Won’t You Be My Neighbor? clearly has Trump on its mind towards the end. The Post mostly sticks to its story, but I remember there was at least one speech in there clearly directed at Trump.

I’m sure there’ll be lots more for the next couple of years. And that’ll be enough.

I honestly feel like Trump has ruined my life.

Idk if he’s ruining my life, but he’s definitely turning my hair gray

The first three films I mention above--The Final Year, The Fourth Estate, and The King--all treat election day 2016 as more or less the end of the world.

The documentaries are easy. I think Hoberman wrote exclusively about Hollywood films, many of them big-budget.

I assumed this thread was going to be more about these: https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-place/?category=Trumpterpiece+Theater

Of course Get Out - “I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could”

Bar Rescue

I think Get Out is more about Obama years than it is Trump...

Black Panther maybe. People loved seeing the true and wise king return to overthrow the maniac. Killmonger wasn’t really a Trump figure but he was an agent of chaos, upending everything about wakanda that had previously seemed dependable. People like Seth Abramsom—and me in my more wearied moods—like to fantasize about Mueller sweeping in with a bevy of charges even the GOP can’t ignore and restoring some kind of normalcy to the kingdom.

the prospective father-in-law in Get Out says he wd've voted a third time for Obama

i started a thread a while back along similar lines which never really went anywhere: Fascism at 24 frames per second: onscreen representations of the Presidency in Trump's America

the purge: election year is the first one which springs to mind, although it failed to predict the actual outcome of the election

Lol that movie

doesn't have to be a good movie to be a trump movie!

in fact it's probably more appropriately trumpian if it's terrible

It predicted that one could attempt to murder his political opponent on a sacrificial altar and maintain his core supporters. It’s not like the new founding fathers had to find a new candidate.

i wonder if the grandmaster in thor: ragnarok was more trumpish on the page (image-obsessed tyrant/buffoon who wants everyone to love him) but then they cast jeff goldblum and he became, well, jeff goldblum

BG: ah, sorry about that--if I'd know your thread was out there, I wouldn't have started this one. (I searched Trump films and Trump movies, but your title must have been a few screens from the top.)

I'd count Get Out as Obama too--technically released after Trump took office (just barely), but about events that took place under Obama (and about white Obama voters). Horror films are a good place to look for this kind of thing, though: Night of the Living Dead is a great LBJ/Vietnam film, The Exorcist for Nixon, etc.

enh no worries clemenza, this one already seems more active than mine! i think i struggled to actually articulate what i wanted it to be about anyway, yours is a lot clearer

still to come is darren aronofsky's noah sequel with trump as sampson and hillary delilah

We've got Villeneuve's Baron Harkonnen coming up.

Ladybird had a subtext of nostalgia for the Bush era, if not Bush, which I think worked better now that that time seems in some sense a “simpler time,” which it might not have in 2013

It probably is helpful to make note as these things are being released, as the references will likely become more oblique and the connection less obvious as we blessedly (hopefully) move past this era down the line.

(Reminded of the recent moment when I heard Jonathan Edwards's 'Sunshine' while in the midst of reading Nixonland and, once the time period of the song's release occurred to me, wondering for the first time if the unnamed antagonist of the song might not be Nixon, which apparently is the case.)

it's just so weird to me that there's so little direct reflection of trump's presidency in tv / movies / comic books / whatever

previous presidents have been namechecked in fiction constantly (ime) but there's this lacuna where president trump should be - maybe i'm not watching or reading the right stuff, i dunno, but it feels like he's kinda absent from popular media

It takes most commercial films a year to 18 months and a half to go from shooting to general release, so we may start seeing it more.

Also given the speed at which the outrages pile up, I'm not sure most filmmakers know what to focus on, unless it's eg Spike Lee on Charlottesville.

yeah, some of the stuff that got tagged as Trump-inspired, like season 1 of the Handmaid's Tale, was produced well before anyone knew he would win

It feels like Trump is the unacknowledged center of a lot of recent entertainment. Like his effect is there and clearly felt but no one wants to acknowledge his actual existence.

(Not a movie, but MODAAK happened in a comic book.)
https://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/trump-modok-2.jpg

bizarro gazzara is right that he is more absent than usual from popular media. Even Last Man Standing said recently that they wouldn't talk about Trump on the revive, which is ridiculous. He is too polarizing and everyone saw what happened to Roseanne.

Even though he's not always named specifically, my own sense is that there's been lots of Trump at the movies, what prompted me to start this in the first place. More so than with Obama, where I felt that absence. (I remember one writer--maybe Hoberman himself--calling Rachel Getting Married the first Obama film. I'd have to rewatch it to know what was meant by that. There was Ides of March, then Get Out near the end, and after that I draw a blank.)

That 12-18 month gap from conception to release makes something like Wiseman's In Jackson Heights tricky. I think Trump was barely president when I saw it, and with all the time Wiseman has to spend embedding himself into a situation, it was possibly even started before Trump announced. But it was impossible, for me, not to see it through the filter of Trump's anti-immigration crusade when I finally saw it.

There hasn't been much anti-Trump music reach me. I know it's out there--Christgau has something every other month. My favourite Trump song has nothing to do with Trump and came out in 2013: the Julie Ruin's "Lookout."

there's a purge tv show too

(it premieres next month)

if we're including tv in this, i'd definitely throw in the new season of UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT, particularly the documentary episode

also i feel like your perception, clemenza, that there's been lots of trump at the movies might be rooted in the way culture in general has become more militaristic and dour? (you could write a dissertation on the d/evolution of imagine dragons from mumford hangers-on to official soundtrack for the no doubt imminent gladiator games)

what was the Seagal (or Van Damme?) movie that Trump had cut down to just the carnage for maximum enjoyment?

so, maybe that soporific John Wick garbage?

bloodsport iirc

and it wasn’t that he cut it down, it was that he made don jr fast-forward to the good parts, which makes it funnier/sadder

Two precursors: Pain and Gain and Observe and Report

yeah, i left Pain & Gain unfinished, as i would like to leave this era

beatriz at dinner

Logan seemed to incorporate several references to the effects of the trump regime or at least what they were talking about. Clamping down on certain aspects of society etc.
I noticed at the time it was out but it's pretty early in the incumbency

the florida project wasn't bad in this regard but there aren't many. (shouldn't be a controversial statement with a degenerate product of nepotism who can't even spell simple words correctly on a regular basis in the oval office but it takes a while for people born into privilege and advantage sufficient enough post-reagan that they get to become professional gatekeepers on multi-million $$ "art" projects to catch wind of what's 'really going on' in 90% of american lives for the production of zeigeist-y films to ensue. i'll be surprised if there are many pre-midterms)

i feel like your perception that there's been lots of trump at the movies might be rooted in the way culture in general has become more militaristic and dour?

I also see a lot of documentaries, and that probably causes me to feel like there are more Trump films out there than there actually are--a lot of what I list above are documentaries.

Also given the speed at which the outrages pile up, I'm not sure most filmmakers know what to focus on

True--unless you're Spike Lee, focused on one specific thing, where the fuck do you start? Wherever you start, it'll be old news within a week. If Trump is reelected--sorry to ruin everyone's day--I suspect there'll be such numbing despair that filmmakers will either turn away entirely, or Trump will only be a metaphorical presence, embedded in nihilistic horror films and such.

I forget that J. Hoberman maintains a site. Here's his review of Get Out ("Conceived in the waning days of Barack Obama’s presidency and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, four days after Donald Trump assumed power"), also a more recent piece on "Trump the Entertainer."

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/13/a-real-american-horror-story-get-out/
http://j-hoberman.com/2016/11/the-entertainer-trump-loeil/

Logan seemed to incorporate several references to the effects of the trump regime or at least what they were talking about. Clamping down on certain aspects of society etc.

this was written years before and filmed before the election

but there was no predatory capitalism or "Clamping down on certain aspects of society" in the USA til the Grifter came along

also, Hugh Jackman didn't have a beard

Seemed to be all too fitting at the time I saw it anyway.

Hollywood's first explicitly Trump film will probably star Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain.

Shock and Awe isn't terrible, but boy it feels 10 years out of date (if it had been made in 2008, I think there would have been a dozen related films even then, counting documentaries). Obviously, it's a W. film first and foremost. But--I'm sure why Rob Reiner felt it would be timely now, much as with The Post--it begins with a Bill Moyers quote about a free press. To that end, it becomes partly a Trump film.

Worst line (one of the two main reporters contrasting Woodward and Bernstein with the reporting they're doing on Bush):

"They took down a president whose biggest crime was trying to cover up some dirty political tricks."

Not quite.

not film but barry (will hader) "is" "trump" (hader a wannabe actor not eastern eurotrash thrall assassin reading alec baldwin (trump)'s lines from glengarry glen ross) a la arrested development bluths = bushes sorta

Went to see How to Steal a Million tonight, part of a local rep series called "Designing the Movies." (Too tired, shouldn't have gone.) They've got Whit Stillman's Metropolitan coming up, which the series host described as a snapshot of "Trump's New York." Intriguing, but I've seen Metropolitan two or three times, and I would have said that's as far away from Trump as you can get.

Also: Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is a Trump film. A not particularly good one.

Metropolitan is a weird case: It kind of fits in that it was shot in Trump's New York, but it's set much earlier (early '70s).

You could make an argument that Rick Von Sloneker is now president, or at least on the Supreme Court.

cross-medium:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/crudo-she-tweeted-olivia-laings-crudo/

this book is as excruciating as living through the trump presidency

not in a good way either

Metropolitan is set in the early '70s? Honestly, that went right past me--I just thought it was set when it was made.

Looking around trying to confirm that, and all I can come up with is "It's set, according to a title card, in 'Manhattan, Christmas Vacation, not so long ago.'" How did you place it in the early '70s?...I just don't remember anything specific.

To me it was set in the 80s.

It's based on being in NY after/during Stillman's freshman year so I guess 70s is right, but it really did seem like the 8Os.

"I was specifically portraying the 1969 deb season, as during that season there was very much the feeling that the debutante era was over. "

https://www.theawl.com/2012/08/a-conversation-with-whit-stillman-about-the-script-of-metropolitan/

I'm going to have to watch it again because I would not have guessed that year.

But:

"People can come to their own conclusions about what period it is. And the reaction was great: there were some people who thought it was the 50s, others, the 60s, others who thought it was the 80s, when it was filmed. What helped the ambiguity on film is that most cars parked on Park Avenue, or on any street, are old cars."

The Stillman universe has it's own unique sense of time and logic, but another tell re: Metropolitan's time frame is Audrey (Carolyn Farina's character) briefly reappearing as a grown-up in The Last Days of Disco, which was somewhat clearly set in '79-'81.

That's a good point--hadn't though about the two films in relation to each other. (Doesn't Audrey turn up in the one he made a couple of years ago, too?)

"thought"

Carolyn Farina had a small role as a waitress in Damsels In Distress.

The Incredibles 2 flirts with being a Trump movie with some "Make Superheroes Legal Again" sloganeering, but then makes the billionaire into a loveable boy scout and the real villain a--well, I don't wanna spoil, but its curious, to say the least.

I still liked the film (Brad Bird is probably the best director of action, live or otherwise, currently working) but either Bird seems ideologically confused or the film bears some of the marks of probably having gone into development before November 2016 and then finding ways to gesture towards Trump without really knowing what to do with this context.

how has no one said DEADPOOL yet? sure, first one came out in early 2016, but that's the Trump movie.

search: the doc Bisbee '17

as the filmmaker noted, they started shooting a month before "Dipshit was elected."

They've got Whit Stillman's Metropolitan coming up, which the series host described as a snapshot of "Trump's New York." Intriguing, but I've seen Metropolitan two or three times, and I would have said that's as far away from Trump as you can get.

Yeah, Metropolitan could be set in Christmas 2017 and it still wouldn't be in Trump's anything -- it is interested in entirely different stuff. I find that description of the movie almost inconceivable.

Bird seems ideologically confused

his response to "Brad Bird's films seems v v Randian" was "nuh-uh, I have learnt over time that a little bit of compromise, but not much, can be practical"

he made the iron giant so he gets a pass from me even if he decides to make nothing but documentaries about puppies being kicked into woodchippers from now on

Nocturnal Animals feels like a parable about the gap between urban coastal America and red-state Texas in a Trump-era way.

ehhh

Fury Road definitely feels like it belongs in this category, despite having come out in 2015.

Nah, Fury Road is well Brexit

god fine. FINE. do not test me on this. pic.twitter.com/pIbC45xUN2

— Georgina Voss (@gsvoss) February 20, 2018

(thread well worth a look (Brexit not so much))

is immortan joe the eu, and max and furiosa the plucky brexiters? or is joe the crusty brexiter, trying to keep his grip on the imaginary 'good old days', as represented by the brides? truly the mark of great art is that one can read volumes into it

Because we're free to say anything's about anything, I'm counting Stranger Things--set in 1984--as a Trump film.

http://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/3f/7e/423f7eaac00d27d2572f602a25d1c783.jpg

Hmm - more explanation needed.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-baron-trump-adventures#/

I can't even pretend to have anything that goes deeper than the picture above.

Since I recently signed up for Netflix, I guess I can finally watch this show, huh?

Didn't prioritize it, as interest in it seemed to have peaked a few years ago--I don't know when the second season landed, but I don't remember it generating nearly as much discussion as the first--but currency is rarely ever a worry of mine.

Don't inflate your expectations too much, and it's worth your time. To use a cliche, its heart is in the right place.

I watched Putney Swope the other day - it's all about a guy who is unexpectedly voted in to the top job and then goes around telling people they're fired.

Back To The Future Part II surely still the definitive Trump movie

I'll go with the obvious--A Face in the Crowd--with Heath Ledger's Joker close behind. (Putney Swope, definitely.)

Which, again, was not Hoberman's method--he was interested only in films released during someone's term of office.

Sorry, clemenza, forgot the opening paragraph of the thread by the time I got to the bottom.

Not directed at you at all--that was Hoberman's way of looking at it, and it's what made the book so fascinating (that every president creates a body of films that mirrors him)--but as you can see from my own post, I'm really interested in films that might anticipate somebody too.

From the Us thread:

The ending is illogical.

Agree--in the context of the film's universe, it makes no sense. Worse, the last 15-20 minutes seem eight times as long.

this movie will disappoint those who want A Message About Our Times from Peele

Maybe. But if you believe Robin Wood's contention that most every good horror film is about the return of the repressed, shadow-mom's "We're Americans" points to a very obvious reading. I'm not saying it's the correct reading, but it is there, plain as day.

I can't really bring myself to recommend it--if you know anything about the subject, that doesn't need any explanation--but The El Duce Tapes, reassembled footage chronicling the Mentors' sad saga, did inspire (?) 45 minutes of stand-up conversation after the film, and twice it very explicitly casts itself as a Trump film. I've known about the Mentors for 30+ years, but the film was the first time I ever actually heard them. So don't shoot the messenger. (Just about the smallest audience I've ever experienced for a Hot Docs screening--less than half full.)

it came out before the election, but i'd like to submit rob zombie's 31 as a trump film

most trump films came out before the election imo

The El Duce Tapes is technically new, but it's all assembled from interviews done 25-30 years ago. So you get El Duce ranting about Mexican immigration and building a wall in 1991. (Pretty sure this was one of the incentives for the filmmakers to get the film made and out there.)

I'll say more on the Nixon-films thread, but it doesn't take much to earmark Charles Ferguson's Watergate documentary for this one: it ends with the Santayana quote about history, and the subtitle is Or, How We Learned to Stop an Out-of-Control President.

For those who are thinking of skipping The Dead Don't Die (I won't judge you): The name Trump is never uttered, but his Secretary of Energy is effectively responsible for this movie's zombie apocalypse.

Ladybird had a subtext of nostalgia for the Bush era, if not Bush, which I think worked better now that that time seems in some sense a “simpler time,” which it might not have in 2013

― Trϵϵship, Tuesday, August 14, 2018 10:11 AM (ten months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what?

I'll take this over the Bush years any day

the idea that Trump has even approached Bush yet is insane

As you can pretty much guess going in, Mike Wallace Is Here--for obvious reasons, and there's also a Trump interview clip. Okay, not great--a few clips stand out, but kind of meandering.

Where's My Roy Cohn?, six ways to Sunday.

Is Joker one of these? Did the Incels exist as a thing as such pre-Trump?

This stuff about Metropolitan being set in the 60s has blown my mind.

Elliott Rogers killings were in 2014, so yeah

Joker is not an incel movie

does Tiger King count?

I mentioned Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America on the political thread. Almost finished--really, it's great.

I've never seen Caddyshack--depending upon why you watch movies, that's probably like saying you've never seen Citizen Kane for some people--but James Poniewozik spends a couple of pages on the Rodney Dangerfield character as being a definitive Trump antecedent.

A related interview:

http://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/16/20868497/caddyshack-rodney-dangerfield-trump-james-poniewozki-recode-media-peter-kafka

We drunkenly group-watched Body Rock, the first and worst Breakin' knock off, last week, and we were wondering if the 'Donald' character might be the first Trump figure in cinema?

He owns the club that the Paul Reiser figure runs, which Lorenzo Lamas convinces them to let his gang of poppers/lockers/rappers/DJs provide the entertainment for. He turns up with beautiful women, and turns out to be the money behind everything including LL's recording career. And then he takes LL to a gay bar as an after party and tries to kiss him.

CNN's National Enquirer documentary, who'd have thunk? There's a bit of interesting history at the beginning, not much after that, and the implication towards the end--that Trump's hands-on involvement with the publication tainted its stellar history--is laughable on the face of it. I'd even say that CNN--which produced a few pretty good documentaries early on, when they started producing them--wouldn't have wasted time with this one if the anti-Trump angle weren't there.

Three Trump references in Mrs. America's final episode ("Reagan"). Two are obvious; I'm also counting a press release from Schlafly's side where they just make up numbers about a big rally they had.

I honestly feel like Trump has ruined my life.
― Trϵϵship, Monday, August 13, 2018 5:06 PM (one year ago)

Nothing more, really, to add to this.

Retrospectively, I would count Death Race 2000 (the original of course), in which "Mr President" is snug with China (as DJT is at least half the time) and declares

"our great enemy... the French..."

there is also a Resistance led by one Thomasina Paine, who seems as potentially corrupt when she gets her hands on power.

I honestly feel like America has ruined my life.

The Grifter is the biggest symptom, not the disease.

You should watch Death Race 2050 this week and see if you can pick up any subtle allusions.

The Day After
Threads

Donald Trump I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man feels somewhat Trumpian for reasons that are hard to get into without spoilers. I'm thinking of the titular bogey, of course, but also the way that the subplot with the brother plays out. I'm sure anyone who wanted to could draw even broader parallels as well.

Anyway, very good film. Between this and Upgrade, Whannell has a solid claim on being the best genre filmmaker currently working.

Interesting. I saw The Invisible Man days before the first COVID lockdown--don't think anything occurred to me.

Trump didn't want anymore Trump films to be made, so he killed the film industry.

films are fake

I posted about White Riot on the separating-the-art-from-the-artist thread. I've encountered this a few times: you know it's a Trump film as you're watching, but that's never made explicit--until the very end, in this case the final end-note.

If there's one great filmmaker whose work I'd be fairly certain Trump has seen--at least the gangster films--it would be Scorsese. My guess would be that Goodfellas is somewhat for him what Patton was for Nixon. No surprise yesterday to get confirmation that he's basically Johnny Boy with regards to debt:

You know somethin', Mikey? You make me laugh, you know that? I borrow money all over this neighborhood, left and right, from everybody, and I never pay 'em back. So I can't borrow no money from nobody no more, right? Who does that leave me to borrow money from but you? I borrow money from you because you're the only jerk off around that I could borrow money from without payin' back, right? 'Cause that's what you are, that's what I think of you--a jerk-off.

The Social Dilemma (in part) and, more so, The New Corporation, a follow-up to 2003's The Corporation.

More Trump films will undoubtedly appear in the next few years, and probably at least one or two great ones, but feel free to lock this thread. Maybe lock all Trump threads as of January 20 except whatever one predated 2015.

A great era for art sadly comes to an end

the more I think about it the more Observe and Report really is the ultimate MAGA chud movie, several years in advance. Jody Hill has the pulse

If I had to choose one film during his term as being definitive--which is not to say I loved it--it'd be Jordan Peele's Us.

Thought Us was really good. I liked Peele's explanation that one of the central themes in Us is that we do a good job of ignoring the ramifications of privilege, that what we feel like we deserve comes at the expense of others' freedom or joy.

wasn't thinking I would post here because I really hate this thread title and the very idea of 'Trump films', I'm just responding to your post about Us

If you read the original post, I explained that "Trump films" came out of J. Hoberman's excellent book The Dream Life, which more or less argued that every president leaves behind a body of films that responds in some way to his presidency--overtly, symbolically, accidentally, and every way in between. The idea isn't that Trump is anything special.

but why title it 'the best films'

seems like a gentlemen's clink of a glass to Trump

It's a joke on Trump's way of referring to everything he's involved in as "the best"--not great, by any means, but I thought the reference was fairly obvious.

I can see that

Peerhaps BlackkKlansman might have been made w/o Trump as president, but it would not have been quite the same film it was. I'm thinking of the Charlottesville coda specifically, but also many other moments in the film.

I said something similar above, but BlackkKlansman was representative of so many of the films I mentioned in this thread: not really in the moment, the way Nixon films were, but then right at the very end Trump would be front and center, whether named or not, and the filmmakers seemed to say "And this is where that leads, this is the logical end point." (Us was one of the few that felt 100% in the moment.)

I thought the reference was fairly obvious.

https://i.imgur.com/OB4YK6E.jpg

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gremlins/images/d/d6/DanielClamp.png/revision/latest?cb=20120308094656

Weird. That should be Daniel Clamp from Gremlins 2:

https://www.dailyhindnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/1604020640_Gremlins-2-on-TF1-Series-Films-Donald-Trump-inspired-the-1200x900.jpg

With the exception that he's revealed to be a basically OK dude in the end.

I have no inclination to watch and see if the plot is relevant, but The Boss Baby

Vic Berger, in long-form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZKkUyrklpc

Jason Schwartzman in Fargo, explaining to some incarcerated men from Chris Rock's rival crime syndicate how they're on opposite sides of a divide:

See, this country loves a man who takes what he wants. Unless...unless that man looks like you. Capisce? See, Johnny Society looks at me, they see a fella that's using crime to get ahead. But you? All they see is crime. And that's why you're gonna lose. 'Cause I can take all the money and pussy I want and still run for president. But you? It's always gonna be the rope.

Some, maybe most, will find the Trump backdrop of Red Rocket clumsy or worse. I don't think it's any less valid than what Hal Ashby did in Shampoo. I thought at first, even though his life was clearly tawdry enough for Trump, that Mikey might be some kind of Horatio Alger/(young) Tom Cruise corrective to Trump, a grifter and on the make, but basically with good intentions and a sweet temperament. Nope--he's tawdry and he ruins lives. I found his comeuppance a little noisily out of step with the rest of the film, but it sets up the ending well, which is nicely open-ended and ambiguous. I probably would have placed this as the highest non-documentary on my ILX ballot if I'd seen it two weeks ago.

sorry clemenza but I hate this thread and especially its title, and think a lot of these posts are gross, and am wondering why you keep bringing it forward

👍🏻 🚀

lol xp

I knew someone would post that Dan S., maybe even you--you did the same thing on the a different thread the other day.

I'm really intrigued by anyone who's a) sickened by Trump to the point of needing to scold people about it, but b) opening up a Trump thread to see what someone's posted.

I've no interest in rugby. I never open up rugby threads.

Art interacts with real life, and the aspects of society that facilitated Trump’s rise have not vanished or changed. It’s possible to watch Red Rocket without even noticing it’s set during the campaign, let alone thinking about any likeness between Mikey and the campaigner. Clem specifically notes here how it’s effective in the same way as Shampoo, if the viewer happens to be attuned to it (Ashby does make more of the campaign than Baker, but his lead is oblivious - that’s especially for the viewer.)

If it upsets you to read clemenza’s posts itt, then either don’t click, or try articulating your objection to the content? Wishing that nobody else thinks about politics isn’t going to be effective - it’s just Tinkerbell thinking again.

You could definitely enjoy or hate or feel anything between about Red Rocket without giving a second's thought to Trump--you could probably even love All the President's Men as just a great detective story, and not think about Nixon as anything more than a plot device in the film. But from the very first billboard to the convention and news snippets, I don't think you can say that Sean Baker doesn't have him somewhere in mind. I mean, it's not accidental.

I hate this thread and especially its title

dan when you read "trump films (the best films)" do you think the thread starter believes films about trump / trumpism / trump-like beliefs and figures are objectively the best films or perhaps is just evoking a phrasing commonly used by trump himself as a form of mocking him (it is the latter btw)

yes it is mocking him but also adoring him

I will like Red Rocket I'm pretty sure, and once I see it will be happy to discuss it in another thread

my objection to the content here is that this thread memorializes and valorizes Trump through films even while it disparages him

but also adoring him

Please tell me you're not serious there, or that you're projecting, or something. Having a strong interest in how films were going to address his disruptive, calamitous presidency is not exactly adoring him. You may as well make the same accusation of someone who writes about Night and Fog or Shoah.

You really ought to go back and read the original post for some context.

maybe not being a US citizen you can step back and see things as they really are and will be, but I can't

I guess I'm projecting, I do that often, but the even the title of this thread shoots an arrow through my heart

I just saw Night and Fog for the first time tonight! an amazing film. tried to watch Pig afterwards, but stopped and will save it for another day

maybe not being a US citizen

Oh, good, this again.

not meant to disparage, I think you have a perspective that I don't

I just don't see that that figures into it at all, and I'm not sure that you do either. The people you got after the other day on the Trump thread for "memorializing" him, pretty sure they were all American. If you want people to just stop posting about Trump--least of all on Trump threads--you're fighting a losing battle. You simply shouldn't open such threads. And seriously--the title you object to so much was clearly explained upthread a year ago, when you seemed to concede it was okay.

It's a joke on Trump's way of referring to everything he's involved in as "the best"--not great, by any means, but I thought the reference was fairly obvious.
― clemenza, Sunday, November 15, 2020 9:31 PM (one year ago)

I can see that
― Dan S, Sunday, November 15, 2020 9:47 PM (one year ago)

not sure what thread that was. I just hate reading anything about him that seems to have distance

there’s a pretty simple way around that

good to know it's not a problem for you

I like your film posts, Dan, and am often in sync with your opinions. I find you're being weirdly selective here.

not sure what thread that was.

It was this thread. Like I said in the previous post.

I just hate reading anything about him that seems to have distance

Meaning...? That my post about Red Rocket isn't about how Trump ruined my own life? In the post that started all this, I said "I thought at first, even though his life was clearly tawdry enough for Trump, that Mikey might be some kind of Horatio Alger/(young) Tom Cruise corrective to Trump, a grifter and on the make, but basically with good intentions and a sweet temperament. Nope--he's tawdry and he ruins lives." I.e., like Trump. That's clear, isn't it?

I apologize, I am looking forward to seeing it fwiw

I was just railing against any supposition that he might be a cozy historical figure. He is a monster, and even talking about him possibly having his own era triggers me

We're good. And honestly, I'd be shocked if there's a single ILX poster--from someone like me, who sometimes gets chastised for making light of politics, to the most ardent posters on the left--who views Trump as anything less than venal.

Looked up a couple of reviews, and--for different reasons--neither liked the Trump angle. Richard Brody didn't think the film did anything with it: "Baker makes sure to signal that the movie is set during the 2016 Presidential campaign. There’s a Trump campaign sign in the street and Trump’s foghorn hectoring on television broadcasts. Yet the characters say not a word about what they’re hearing or thinking about the politics of their moment." True--but I think it's more interesting to leave such connections to the viewer. Armond White seems to see it like me, that Mikey is meant as a Trump stand-in, but (of course!) he thinks the film fails on that count: "This follows a brief TV clip of Donald Trump saying, 'I think the election will be rigged,” obviously from 2016. Making unsubtle, faulty linkage between Orange Man arrogance and Red Rocket egotism is Baker’s real judgment.'

Both liked Simon Rex.

I watched the movie (which features sound clips from both Trump *and* Clinton) partly as a portrait of sweat-flop America that is so desperate - for success, for affirmation, for connection, for a future - that it is totally oblivious to politics, no matter how omnipresent. Like, it's just more noise drowned out by the bigger din of the daily hustle.

Driving home, I thought about Hillary being in there too: "I'm going to post about this in the Trump-movie thread, but I'll limit it to Trump." I wanted to think about what that might mean, but I didn't want to have to think too much. (You hear Cruz, too.)

I've been reading up on Simon Rex. Never got MTV up here, may have seen the first Scary Movie (can't remember), so I didn't know him at all. What a story.

Saw Caddyshack for the first time last night. The Mount Everest Rule: I saw it because it was playing.

I was hoping for Stripes, but found it not just not unremittingly unfunny (a couple of scenes were okay), but also strangely disjointed. One thing I remembered, though, was James Poniewozik giving it two pages in Audience of One, still the best Trump book I've read. He saw, obviously, Rodney Dangerfield's character as Trump, with Ted Knight as Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and all the other chamber-of-commerce-type Republicans Trump rendered obsolete.

Rereading, he has the Dangerfield character (Czervik) exactly right: "Czervik is among the rich country clubbers, but he isn't of them. His wealth doesn't give him membership in high society, just the independence not to care about its rules...He sized up as his first punching bag the Smailsian (Knight's character) Jeb Bush--well-spoken, well-mannered, from a good family--and proceeded to spray him with yacht-wake at every opportunity."

I don't know about the Knight character, though--he's as loud and bombastic as Czervik most of the time. Didn't see Jeb Bush or Mitt Romeny there.

If you're looking at this, Dan S., a reminder not to be looking at this.

The Trump stuff on Fargo, Tillman's wife going on about how the whole impeachment trial is a sham, was very literal, not especially imaginative, but it is, I think, the most explicit Trump-era thing I've yet seen in a movie or TV show.

This was linked on another thread, so I'll amend my post above: I'm rewatching Mr. Robot, and I forgot how Trump-specific that gets during S3 (which ran late in 2017). Someone will make reference to Evil Corp/White Rose needing some puppet to front their insidious, grandiose plans to run the whole world, and on the screen they'll insert Trump rally footage. They do this at least two or three times.

There's alotta Trump stuff in the last two seasons (4+5) of Broad City. They even postponed the shooting of the fourth season (which IIRC was supposed to be shot in late '16 immediately after the election) so they could rewrite episodes and add plotlines.

Haven't seen it. On the whole, when you throw in The Morning Show (an important Jan. 6-related subplot) and (arguable, I know) Succession, my sense is that TV has been more attentive to Trump than the movies. TV's more suitable to the here and now--it may take movies a few years to process everything and catch up. (But I've no doubt missed some relevant films, too.)

One of the nice things about the Broad City Trump material was that it wasn't exactly Big Picture stuff: a lot of it was humorous lamenting of circumstances. There was a larger arc in S4 where one of the leads (who, incidentally, volunteered for and met Hillary Clinton in an earlier episode) has a unique, pleasure-blocking depression she finally traces back to Election Day '16, and it worked as a great metaphor for Trump PTSD.

Seems like a good place to hide a Megalopolis post, which I'll try to keep brief--it's just not worth the energy. If I had to pinpoint two reasons why the distance between his run of the two Godfathers + The Conversation and Megalopolis is so vast: 1) Coppola didn't, in 1974, feel the need to append "An Allegory" to the title of the second Godfather film. Nixon was all over it, but he was a subtle filmmaker who trusted his audience; it's hard to miss the Trump component of the "fable" here, but I guess he wasn't sure we'd pick up on that; 2) much bigger problem: Adam Driver. The one thing about all those Coppola, Scorsese, Altman, and De Palma films from the '70s--their best ones--was how many incredible performances there were top to bottom. I've come to believe over the years that that's the real genius of those films, the performances (credit for which does belong, to some degree, to the directors). Adam Driver here is affected and wooden and utterly uninteresting--and Driver at his best is none of those things. There's lots else that's bad about the film, but that, in and of itself, is impossible to overcome.

This is the first time I've ever seen Nathalie Emmanuel (did not watch Game of Thrones); she is stunningly beautiful...I think I noticed at one point that Aubrey Plaza would be in this, but I'd forgotten all about that when the film started. So I spent the whole time trying to figure out who Wow Platinum was: Portia Doubleday? Lady Gaga? I even thought maybe Naomi Watts.

Seems like a good place to hide a Megalopolis post

…or you could have put it on the Megalopolis thread, so people who don’t want to read about the cast or characters or plot events or themes or tone of Megalopolis before they see Megalopolis would not see it?

jeez, sic, who cares?

sic: there's a lot of "Hey, it's not so bad" on the Megalopolis thread, and being one of the "It's really that bad" people isn't much fun.

But what does it have to do with Trump?

I thought Sleepy La Beef was transparently a Trump stand-in--that, and the whole endgame of an empire in decline.

Not really on topic, but I remember the summer of 2016, how the impend1ing election of HC to the presidency seemed like such a foregone conclusion, that "Independence Day: Resurgence" could present a female POTUS (played by Sela Ward) and make it seem prophetic (until it wasn't)

Haven't seen that, MVB, but I think that happened with House of Cards, too--they were counting on a Hillary presidency, so the show started angling towards that about midway through its run (Spacey's problems led to Claire Underwood as president anyway).

I thought Sleepy La Beef was transparently a Trump stand-in--that, and the whole endgame of an empire in decline.

― clemenza, Tuesday, October 1, 2024 8:46 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

In my opinion (worth even less than what you paid), Jon Voight as Crassus (if that hadn't been an actual Roman name, FFC would have made it up) is Trump, in a perfect bit of casting. Laboeuf is a mashup of Milo Yiannapolis, the Trump offspring, Steve Bannon, and James O'Keefe.

In the future, every movie villian will be Donald Trump for 15 minutes...I'm probably going to see it a second time in advance of a Zoom with a friend, so I'll keep that in mind. There were a couple of lines from Clodio that seemed made to order, and I think he more or less instigates Jan. 6 at one point. But maybe Clodio's more Jared Kushner or Trump Jr., the slime in waiting.

Slowly working my way through Black Mirror for the first time. Watching "The Waldo Moment" (2013!) was a little chilling.

Sam Levinson's "Heathers Meets The Purge" film Assassination Nation bombed on release in the autumn of '18, although it seems like its subsequently (and deservedly) gained a modest cult following. Noting this, I picked a cheap DVD copy a couple months ago and--for obvious reasons--decided to screen this evening.

It's weird looking at this film for the first time through 2024 eyes. While it definitely belongs here (Trump's never named, but at one point there a "Lock [Them] Up!" chant and there's a punchline in one of the final scenes that hits even harder today), but--perhaps owing to the time it was shot (timestamp data in the deleted scenes reveals a March-April '17 shoot) it mainly goes all-in on the stuff that made him president: 4chan; toxic masculinity; internalized misogyny; Cancel Culture; internet poisoning in general etc.

The center anti-heroines (one of whom is trans and played by Hari Nef, a genuine trans actress) go to High School in a sleepy town with a very obvious "Do You See?!?" name that is torn asunder by a hacker who--after destroying the life of a local conservative politician by leaking his fetish photos to 4chan--aims higher by dumping half the city's private information online, uncovering affairs both existing and imaginary amongst other things, eventually leading to a jacked-up mob coming for the girls (who are tied to much of the scandal) in bloody climatic set-piece that in ways feels like how the worst of us wanted Charlottesville or J6 to play out.

It's far from perfect, but at the same time it feels like maybe the most savage & abrasive political satire/critique that escaped the doors of a Major Studio (Universal, via NEON) during the 45 administration.

Not something I'd normally watch, so thanks for the heads-up. It's on Prime, so I'll get to it soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-d8VP3cuDM

^^2017

reading an article about the dialect coach that Sebastian Stan used in The Apprentice.

she said that this 1980 interview was the key for figuring out how to do young Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apvHr6PALIc

fuck this thread, it is such a hagiography of Trump

Really? Still? Jesus...

yes. there is an implied respect for him here. I don't even have words for how I feel about it

The Apprentice can go fuck itself

Implied respect? Honestly, you're being ridiculous--not least of which that you continue to open up the thread, and then complain about how much it upsets you.

well it does upset me I'm sorry

THEN DON'T...never mind.

I'm sorry clemenza, I'm not against you at all, I like you and I like your posts. I just for some reason can't stand the idea of a thread that even acknowledges him like this

I like you fine, Dan, but there are like 50 threads on ILX with Trump's name, and you seem to fixate on this one.

And then--we go through this every time--you always go on about how the thread celebrates him, like anybody who ever wrote a book about art to come out of Nazi Germany must be a Nazi himself (or some comparable example).

I don't think that! I guess I was just responding to the title 'the best films'. That set me off. I know in my heart it was sardonic, but it made me so angry

To take the heat off this thread, I'll start the Trump is really, unironically great (do not read if you hate Trump) thread

The title has been explained to you. Twice. Scroll back.

I know! It just continues to offend me

I'm sorry clemenza, I just can't stand the idea of a thread that acknowledges him like this, that proposes he is worthy of some kind of place in the history of film, vaunted or not

so I will try to ignore this thread from now on

There are films about him, and therefore he is part of film history--like Katherine Hepburn, like Pauly Shore, like anybody who's ever been in a film or been the subject of a film.

Precedent? And Then You Destroy Yourself: Nixon at the Movies

It’s spelt president but yeah

quiet lol

Lol

Hitler Bad, Films Good

It's worth saying that there was definitely parts of ILX that were fascinated (we do love to be fascinated) by Trump and his WWFisms and a lot of that has aged like milk, and then again, and again. I don't think this thread is doing that, but I can see why Dan S might react to it. Also it's been a rough decade for irony.

He is a monster, and even talking about him possibly having his own era triggers me

I mean I kind of get this, but the "well, that happened" reaction is one of the reasons that it happened again.

I'd forgotten the original framing of this thread, so my previous addition isn't really in line with that - it is kind of fascinating the cultural weight that he's had for so long though - both of the Pulitzer-winning cartoonists (Gary Trudeau and Berke Breathed) were fascinated by him in the 80s.

This came up in the Twin Peaks S3 thread, the question of whether Dr. Jacoby had turned into a MAGA guy...He does strike me as somebody who would vote for Trump, so nihilistic at this point that he doesn't even care that he's voting for somebody who embodies a lot of what he's railing about. I have to believe that survivalists are far and and away predominantly Trump voters, if they do vote.

Rewatched The Best Man, which I PVR'd a few weeks ago. Obviously, not a real Trump film, in that it was made in 1964. Henry Fonda's William Russell is Adlai Stevenson, Cliff Robertson's Joe Cantwell is an amalgam of McCarthy and Nixon, and Lee Tracy's Art Hockstader--the president, and kind of annoying--is, I don't know, part Truman and part Eisenhower.

But the reason I put it here--besides, of course, the overwhelming desire to ruin Dan S.'s day (hi, Dan! just kidding)--is the final showdown between Russell and Cantwell, after Russell withdraws and throws his delegates to the third-wheel nobody.

Cantwell: I don't understand you.
Russell: I know you don't. Because you have no sense of responsibility towards anyone or anything. That is a tragedy in a man, and a disaster in a president.

That's the part that shows up on the IMDB quote page--the very noble, high-minded sentiment that would have been embraced by people in 1964. But it's Cantwell's response that, in the Trump era, I found chilling (especially Robertson's dead-eyed delivery of it--he's very good in the film).

Cantwell: You don't understand me. You don't understand politics. You don't understand this country. The way it is and the way we are.

(The same idea shows up in Stone's Nixon, when Hopkins looks up at Kennedy's portrait and says "When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.")

Not explicitly a Trump reference, but this bit about Betsy DeVos from the final season of the Adult Swim series Joe Pera Talks With You deserves a mention & due praise as an all too rare example of a character on a show (in this case, Joe's eccentric girlfriend/partner Sarah, a middle school music teacher in Marquette MI*) reacting realistically about trying to merely exist during the first Trump administration.**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGy7ur-lfMo

*Where the DeVos family holds considerable influence, including (as mentioned in the clip) an art museum at the NMU School of Art & Design.

**Added context: The third & final season of JPTWY was filmed in 2021, but it's very explicitly set in 2019.

This came up in the Twin Peaks S3 thread, the question of whether Dr. Jacoby had turned into a MAGA guy...He does strike me as somebody who would vote for Trump, so nihilistic at this point that he doesn't even care that he's voting for somebody who embodies a lot of what he's railing about. I have to believe that survivalists are far and and away predominantly Trump voters, if they do vote.

― clemenza, Friday, February 7, 2025 1:49 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

there's a definite branch of 60/70s science/fact people that have been smoking their own supply for so long that there's no waaaay they could be wrong! i work with one currently and they're genuinely intelligent on work-related matter until anything social/political gets involved. but yeah, Jacoby would've swung Trump.

Also, Jerry Garcia but that's a different thread.

Coupla weeks ago I watched "Maximum Overdrive", Stephen King's 1986 directorial effort, and was surprised to see the name of future Trumpwife Marla Maples at the bottom of the credits.

Geez, she was in Todd Solondz's Happiness.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005185/

Ha, wow

Re: Jerry, I don’t think so. He stuck pretty hard to the “don’t be a dick” ideology (setting aside his addictive behavior) and Trump’s prime directive appears to be “be a dick whenever possible.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/30/visions-of-america-25-films-to-help-understand-the-us-today

good list. i have more to add to my watchlist.

I've mentioned Us, Joker, The Florida Project, and In Jackson Heights in connection to Trump--either on this thread or on others--and A Face in the Crowd was automatic in 2016 when people wrote pieces trying to figure out "how is this happening?"

Is Korda in Wes Anderson's The Phonecian Scheme supposed to evoke Trump? Who knows. But the possibility will give me an excuse to dodge the dedicated thread for such an irredeemably wretched film.

If anyone can point me in the direction of an irresponibly nasty Kael/Simon-like review, I'd appreciate it.

irresponsibly...

Check out Odie Henderson's review in The Boston Globe

That's pretty good, thanks--was able to read it on a Press Reader link. Only point of disagreement is Cera, who I found as unbearable as everyone else. I realized I have a book by Henderson, Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras.

Thought the first hour or so of Eddington was pretty good. Started to lose its way after that, then there was 15 minutes I'll call the Lingering and Pernicious Influence of Peckinpah and Taxi Driver, and all I could think during that was "Please fucking end." The Ironic Epilogue was okay. Trump scrolls by glancingly--would have posted here anyway, for (a few dozen) obvious reasons.

Second film in a row, though, where I've really liked Pedro Pascal (Materialists the other).

there's some discussion in the Beau Is Afraid thread

I saw that, and also Justin Chang's review. I'll single out what I thought was the best scene, early in the film: the confrontation between the sheriff and the mayor in the grocery store. I expect there'll be a great COVID film someday--don't think Eddington is it--and could see that scene being in that film.

Eddington sure has taken a turn since he had those marmalade sandwiches with the queen.

Do we need a parallel Elon Musk Films thread? I saw Superman (2025) last night, and there are things I want to say.

Feels like every blockbuster has an Elon Musk stand-in villain in recent years, I believe he even whined about this himself at one point.

Interesting idea...Hoberman's book (inspiration for this thread) focussed solely on presidents, but I guess Musk partially was, for a while.

There's no overt Trump figure in the new movie, but Superman's antagonists are steeped in the attitudes and environment (especially in the media) that Trump cultivates. The biggest administrative figure we see is the Secretary of Defense, and I didn't get a reading on him from one viewing.

Rewatched Iron Man 2 recently and got blindsided by the Musk cameo, totally forgot about it (from a pretty forgettable sequel tho).

Bugonia seems like an obvious fit to me, and someone else wrote on the Yorgos Lanthimos thread yesterday that he thought it was much better than Eddington--not mentioning Trump, but I'll infer the same connection there.

I thought it was interesting most of the way, even compelling during some of the back-and-forth between Plemons and Stone as he detailed his crazed, QAnon-level theories. (Plemon's look makes him the obvious choice for The Clayton Kershaw Story.) Strong evocation of The King of Comedy and Reseroir Dogs (tacky suits and Green Day subbing for Stealer's Wheel--not as good, and the song was almost too literal in context).

It only unravelled a bit right at the end for me. First, the surprise (I've never seen the original South Korean film) isn't much of a surprise, if was even supposed to be. And then there's the final five-minute postscript. I found it so sappy and puerile, I honestly wonder if it isn't meant as a parody of the kind of film that would have tacked on the same postscript in earnest.

Did not recognize Plemons' mom at all till I looked at credits later...not that recognizing her's easy.

I guess it's a "Trump film" insofar as it reflects the psychosis of living in the U.S. during the "Trump era," though the fact that it's a remake of a Korean film from 2003 kind of cuts against the idea that there is something unique in what it is capturing. More generally, I am resistant to the idea that the sociopolitical culture of the past decade can be reduced to Trump (as suffocating as his presence can sometimes feel). I know this thread is inspired by a J. Hoberman book, but it just feels like a narrow way to approach movies that are picking up on a lot of different cultural strands.

Not sure if you've seen the film yet, or how closely the actual script is to the original film. To hear Jesse Plemons explain himself, and then Stone's dismissal of him--and then Plemons' ridicule of her dismissal--was, for me, a perfect encapsulation of the Trump-era feedback loop. Obviously, Hoberman's book (did Arthur Penn set out to make one of the definitive LBJ films when he made The Chase? my guess is he would have been surprised to hear that...), and this thread, involve a lot of speculation. But I think the core of Hoberman's idea is sound, even if the connections are more intuitive than concrete. I love art like that; but I know many people are resistant to that kind of thing (not saying that you are in general).

I am resistant to the idea that the sociopolitical culture of the past decade can be reduced to Trump (as suffocating as his presence can sometimes feel)

Don't disagree with that--he's the end point of a long story. I'm reading Gabriel Gatehouse's The Coming Storm: A Journey Into the Heart of the Conspiracy Machine right now, and while it's a Jan. 6/QAnon/Trump book, it starts with Vince Foster. (Actually, it starts with witches in the 16th century.) So in that sense, any "Trump film" is going to have a trail extending into the past.

The best counter-example I can think of to the idea that fortuitous timing is some kind of mitigating factor: Coppola's The Conversation. Not just in terms of the subject matter--a film about wiretappers landing just as Watergate reaches its culmination (release date of April 7, 1974)--but also in the way Hackman (secretive, socially inept) and Allen Garfield (a wheeler-dealer blowhard) perfectly encapsulate opposite sides of Nixon's personality, there isn't a more definitive Nixon film. It feels that way today, and I'm sure it would have felt even more like that in 1974.

The script was written between 1967 and 1969, inspired by Blow-Up; Harry Caul was supposedly based on the lead character in Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf. Do either of those facts make it any less of a Nixon film? Not to me; for someone else, maybe.

And some stuff just seems fortuitous in retrospect because it's an early sign of something that gets expressed better later - there's a Sean Connery film, The Anderson Tapes, that would feel like a parody of the surveillance paranoia of the 70s, if it was released in 1980 - but it was released a decade earlier, before the ones most people would think of.

would love to know about people that have seen the 90s little rascals remake and their voting habits

An actual 100% Trump film: The Apprentice. Definitely worthwhile for Jeremy Strong's Roy Cohn--that has to be a dream role for an actor. Thought Maria Bakalvoa was very good too as Ivanka Trump. Sebastian Stan was smart to settle for the occasional hand gesture in lieu of slavish imitation. The big leap you have to make in watching the film is that Trump was once, as Cohn latches on to him, a relative innocent who would say things like "Isn't that illegal?" It's a big leap. (Another reason to watch: Trump dancing to Suicide's "Ghost Rider." The soundtrack's actually pretty interesting throughout, although songs will be plunked in willy-nilly--i.e., the Pet Shop Boys' "Always on My Mind" seemingly as Reagan's presidency is beginning rather than ending.)

(Ivana, not Ivanka.)