The Apprentice
A nice descent into the making of the grifter to end all grifters. There are all the accoutrements that come with pathologic narcissism: massive Trump naming everywhere, gaudy gold plated shit for him and baubles for others, pure unbridled greed.
The first half, the rise to the top, with the very young Donald almost makes him look like an human being. Just a weird kid, ambitious sure, but nothing some proper education cannot fix. Too bad he joins in with the wrong crowd: a distant and ultra strict father he can never please, a evil Cold Warrior called Roy Cohn, and a loving Ivana equally ambitious but not strict enough to sway him.
It’s not one switch that gets turned, it’s a range of things: actually prevailing against all odds at the start produces euphoria, a sense of invincibility, and everyone around him provides positive feedback, he goes completely off the rails. The constant amphetamine doesn’t help.
Eventually he just loses track of reality and starts buying his own propaganda. He becomes the mask. His “friend” Roy is dying and what he really cares about is if AIDS can be transmitted easily. His dick goes completely limp so Ivana is a worthless trophy now. Everyone else either falls in line or is a sworn enemy.
Not sure why Ivana stuck around for so long, it’s not like her kids amounted to anything. She threw away her life for nothing, to end up buried on a golf course for the tax dodge.
The story finishes with the transition of the DJT New Yorkers knew and hated for decades. The rest of the world only met him later, on Home Alone 2, and then in the White House. Never again.
Sebastian Stan goes full 180 from I, Tonya to this. Incredible acting chops. He went for the whole hand gestures, the HUGE and BEST things in the world, the pouting duckface. HUGE potential.
This shit practically writes itself. It’s like watching one one those historical films with a lot of in-jokes, but for modern-ish people. Trump’s generation, the Reagan years, have some contact with the ageing Cold Warriors, but quickly soar into new heights by tapping into foreign cash, while screaming how much they love America. We know what is coming, the casino bankruptcies, Trump Steaks, Trump University. Trump even has a pin with Reagan’s Make America Great Again slogan, and he does descend an escalator to give a big speech.
One of the best parts of this is film is how some Trumpist billionaire financed part of this, thinking they were doing some hagiography like Reagan (playing in the same theatre at the same time!). Life imitates art.
Trump is crying foul over releasing this before the election, calling the writer “HUMAN SCUM” (that’s a direct quote), but the reverse of this was actually a well know case that reached the Supreme Court. Some chickenshit pre-YouTubers wanted to create and release a “documentary” excoriating Hillary Clinton before the election, and started working on it before the primaries were over. Hillary lost the primaries anyway, but the organisation kept the lawsuit going all the way to the top. The name of that organisation: Citizens United.
Apparently, Clint Eastwood, of empty Obama chair fame, really wanted to direct this, but chickened out over potential legal ramifications. That would be an incredible capstone to a vast career.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.