In 1973, Donald Trump was a hungry, bumbling real estate heiress from Queens seeking respect in New York. Not particularly smart or attractive, and without a solid plan to defend his family’s federal lawsuit over discrimination against its black tenants, the young Trump pursues his dream of opening a luxury hotel near Grand Central. I was just trying to figure it out. That is, until Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s punitive prosecutor meets Roy Cohn, Richard Nixon’s confidant turned political fixer, at a swanky New York club.
This is the opening scene of the new film, The Apprentice, which will be released this month after an arduous journey to theaters. Directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi and written by Gabriel Sherman, a longtime Trump reporter for Vanity Fair, the film follows a young Trump in the 1970s and 1980s. The story depicts Cohn’s rise to prominence in New York society through his shameless tactics as his health weakens due to HIV. /AIDS. The question that hung over the movie, which stars a no longer handsome Sebastian Stan as Trump and Succession star Jeremy Strong as Cohn, was: “Does anyone want to see a Trump movie?” And who will get to see this movie after it languished in a long period of distribution uncertainty after receiving positive reviews at May’s Cannes Film Festival?
“I don’t care whether people bash us or praise us,” said Abbasi, who previously directed the serial killer thriller “Holy Spider.” “What I don’t like, what’s really hurtful, is the boycotts and censorship that we’ve had, in effect.”
Even with two big stars in the cast, this independent film had a difficult road to theatrical release. After the film’s festival premiere, the Trump campaign issued a cancellation letter, which is understandable given the former president’s legal troubles and the film’s content. The Apprentice depicts President Trump raping his first wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) (a fictionalized version of a 1989 attack) and undergoing liposuction. Pro-Trump billionaire Dan Snyder, whose company Kinematics set up stakes in the film against domestic rights, reportedly tried to block its release. are. Various studios and streamers walked away, probably scared of legal threats. At the 11th hour, Briarcliff Entertainment swooped in with domestic distribution plans and awards promotion, but the filmmakers were still asking for $100,000 in a Kickstarter campaign (“Free the Apprentice”).
According to Mr. Abbasi, who is based in Copenhagen, the distribution problem was less the juicy tales of right-wing billionaires and less simple corporate logic than unrepentant liars getting their way. “What makes money will make money, and what doesn’t make money won’t make money.” Interesting. “The math is that people will see the movie, but it could potentially drive away more Maga subscribers and customers.” I’m not saying, but I don’t think they’re going to engage in politics in a large, meaningful way,” Abbasi said.
The film did not sell well from the beginning. “Trumpland thinks we’re doing a job that’s focused on Trump, but our liberal friends in Hollywood say that when we were making this movie, we were giving him oxygen.” I thought we were giving too much,” Abbasi said. “Some people hung up on us while we were on board because we didn’t ‘hate’ Trump enough.”
To be clear, this film was first conceived and written by Sherman in 2017, and includes the themes of “Attack, Attack, Attack,” “Admit nothing, deny everything,” and “Never accept defeat.” This was long before Cohn’s “no” rule emerged as an attempt to usurp the U.S. presidency. The election will not be easy for Trump. This is an adaptation based on historical records, but it’s terrible no matter how you look at it. (For non-Magavers, this is pretty bad.) But this group is trying to do something that might not be possible in America today. Talk about Trump without any politics, and put aside your feelings about him in the name of facts. base art. “This book was not written to influence people’s minds,” Sherman said. “It is written as art and it is people’s own choice what they take from it.
“It’s a very universal story of the apprentice surpassing the master,” he added. “I hope people can experience it on their own terms without bringing all the political baggage with them.”
Maria Bakalova and Sebastian Stan in “The Apprentice.” Photo: Pief Wayman/Photo: Pief Wayman
For those who pay attention to Trump beyond his recent political career, “The Apprentice” is empty. The film depicts his cold and disappointing relationship with his father (Martin Donovan). a more loving relationship with his alcoholic brother Fred (Charlie Carrick), who died in 1981; A clumsy courtship with Ivana. and his blindness to Cohn’s homosexuality and clumsy attempts to maintain respectability. And perhaps most abhorrent of all are his frauds, evasions, and outright lies to the Housing Commission and the press that functioned to align with the self-interests of others and the New York elites. It was also a way to give legitimacy to hard-line figures. (The New York Times profile comparing Trump to Robert Redford, read by his mother Mary, is taken directly from the actual article, and is intended to enhance Trump’s reputation as a legitimate New York businessman.) )
“There is a system in American society that has a built-in social Darwinism, and it didn’t start with Trump, and it won’t end with Trump,” Abbasi said, adding that “The Apprentice” is “a Trump movie. No,” he claimed. It’s about becoming the person we know today, Donald Trump, through this very specific time and specific relationship. ”
As the film progresses, Trump, played with the utmost lack of exaggeration by Stan, comes to resemble more and more famous figures of today, larger and more dashing, acting with little awareness of the consequences. I come to do it. The most disturbing scene to watch, and the one that made headlines at Cannes, is when he rapes Ivana in the late 1980s.
“I felt like the movie had to address that aspect of his personality. If we didn’t acknowledge that in some way, it would be a spoof of the movie,” Sherman said, adding that at least President Trump was certain He pointed out that he has been accused of sexual assault. Twelve women participated, and a New York jury found them liable for the assault on former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll. The episode in question is based on Ivana’s own divorce filing, filed under oath behind closed doors in 1990. (Ivana, who died in 2022, later made contradictory statements, but Sherman said these were Trump’s “I wanted to feel like, ‘Okay, this guy is our president, he has a history of sexual assault.’ “Let’s take a look at it. Let people really see what it’s like.”
This has understandably angered Republicans, no matter how intellectually they understand President Trump’s well-documented wrongdoing, but this is one of several scenes that are unbearable. It is. Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee publicly called for a boycott of “anti-Trump” movies. (Abbasi said of Huckabee and his ilk, “They apply the First Amendment only when it suits them, and free speech only when it concerns fascism.”)
Sebastian Stan, Ali Abbasi and Maria Bakalova attend the premiere of The Apprentice in Cannes. Photo: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock
Trump’s cronies aside, “The Apprentice” still faces an uphill battle for viewers. ABC and CBS refused to air spots on the film during election debates, a decision Briarcliff attributed to “cowardice and cowardice.” Then there’s the hurdle of getting an audience to watch a two-hour movie about someone most Americans have a certain opinion of, and a solid half of them don’t really want to see. “People bring a lot of preconceptions into this movie,” Sherman admitted. “But I think if you just sit in the theater and be amazed, you’re going to have a really exciting time.”
Abbasi and Sherman touted much about The Apprentice as a New York movie about a bygone, sordid, formative era. A story of a corrupt system. The classic student becomes a teacher story. The origin story. But it is, first and foremost, a dramatization of the person of Donald Trump. Trump “is not an alien, he’s not from another planet. He’s a human being,” Sherman said. “We have to look at these people, even if you don’t agree with them, so that maybe the next time another Trump comes along, we can make them look like that.” You will recognize it.”
Like all films, this one is ultimately up to interpretation. “I think the audience is really smart,” Abbasi said. “If you come in and give them a chance, they can make their own decisions.”
