The Apprentice is a better movie than I expected, with memorable performances by Sebastian Stan as a much younger Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as notoriously corrupt lawyer Roy Cohn, the mentor who did so much make Trump the shameless, smirking, bloviating, bizarrely successful presidential candidate we know today.
But I had to wonder who the audience was supposed to be for this film. Trump supporters will never see it, having been long since tipped off to stay away: “Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blasted The Apprentice as ‘pure fiction’ and ‘election interference by Hollywood elites right before November.’”
The various campaign statements that the film constitutes “pure malicious defamation” were accompanied by a cease-and-desist letter to its producers before it ever premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. That meant most top Hollywood distribution companies passed on it, and its release was uncertain until Tom Ortenberg of Briarcliff Entertainment acquired it for theatrical release with a grandiose flourish:
The fact that nobody else was willing to distribute The Apprentice created a moral imperative for me to step up and do it. . . . If not me, then who? Unfortunately, the major studios collectively ran away from The Apprentice like their hair was on fire for fear of reprisal.
And even the most likely audience for the film, the anti-Trump segment of the population, perhaps drawn to this highly unflattering portrayal, might not be able to bear a solid block of time spent watching the bane of their existences rise to personal wealth, power, and influence in 1980s New York City. Trump is almost too effectively evoked by Stan in every petulant pout and smarmy lying boast and round-shouldered shamble.
On top of that, most of this biographical material about Trump’s rise to fame, or infamy, which was comprehensively fact-checked by journalist screenwriter Gabriel Sherman and director Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider), is…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Eileen Jones
