Go and see The Apprentice

Monday is about movies, and sometimes TV. Today, Donald Trump Early Years biopic, The Apprentice. It’s a must-see, for more than one reason…

I’m at a loss when people tell me — on Instagram of course — that Kamala Harris is “just as bad”, or some such. She is not! America is broken. Its political system stinks, is a convoluted mess, and almost no one working in politics is pure. But no one — no one — is “just as bad” as Donald Trump. He’s a grotesque caricature of his former self, a syphilitic nightmare of twisted, fragile ego, and Cheezels dust. And he’s pathologically dangerous.

Far too many of us have spent far too long — over the course of nearly a decade now (if not before) — trying to understand Trump, or worse, convinced that we do. So many of us have read some of the books and watched a few of the documentaries that attempt to unpack his vicious brand of malignant narcissism. And that’s all without feeling particularly invested in any of this.

And there is no point in trying to understand it — even in the true Know Thy Enemy type of stance.

But I would still urge everyone to go and see the new film The Apprentice, a biopic of Donald Trump’s early years in business, being mentored by lawyer and political fixer, Roy Cohn.

You should see it because it’s a bloody good movie, well made, impressively acted and terrifying in its brutal truths.

But beyond all of that, you should go and see it because Donald Trump doesn’t want you to do that; Donald Trump tried to stop this movie from being released.

And, look, he’s claiming Election Interference about the film, and anything that makes him look bad, and ignoring all of his own unstatesmanlike behaviour (which is everything he ever does) but, petty though it might be, we should all take some pleasure in seeing the film he didn’t want us to be able to view.

As film fans, you can admire the way Ali Abassi frames up 70s and 80s New York, resplendent, a few disco and pop and punk needle-drops, and a touch of the way Scorsese has made the city a character. Abassi does this cool little thing where the 70s are caught on 16mm news cameras and in the 80s he transitions to video (cheers to cinematographer Kasper Tuxen). It’s clever, visually, and appealing. But also it allowed the pair to use stock footage and seamlessly move from what they had to shoot to the stock material — and back. This means their fictionalised Trump and Cohn move through a series of New Yorks and create their own cinema truths through this beautiful filmmaking.

Of course I loved the look and feel of the movie, of course I loved Jeremy Strong (Succession) as Roy Cohn. And Sebastian Stan is incredible as Trump. Here’s a guy who has nearly back-to-back played Tommy Lee and Donald Trump. He doesn’t look like either of them. But he embodied them both. From playing a guy with a big penis — to just playing a huge cock! Perfect.

Seriously though, Stan gives my favourite kind of Hollywood ‘impersonation’, the spiritual impersonation, the impressionistic and philosophical impersonation rather than merely looking like the person; this allows us to ignore all of the brilliant but absurd parody versions of Trump from across the last decade — the silliest one of all being the actual Donald J. Trump.

I was reminded of John Cusack’s performance in the Beach Boys biopic, Love & Mercy. I reference this often. Cusack — solid actor, especially when you need John Cusack — neither looks nor sounds like Brian Wilson. But he captures an essence. And that is the key. Sebastian Stan does the same thing with Trump in The Apprentice. It’s easier to watch it and take it seriously, for it is a frighteningly serious film, without the Trumpian voice. But there’s a look Stan develops, across the film, which is just incredible. Almost frightening. He transmogrifies on camera. This is actor slipping so deeply into the role, whilst aware of the real-life shoes he’s filling; for The Apprentice, if it’s anything, is a Villain Origin Story.

Roy Cohn’s a bad man, and that’s clear here too. But as his life slows, and setbacks happen, and he faces his own mortality, something happens. He doesn’t necessarily deserve our sympathy, nor anything close to empathy. But he changes. (Wonderful acting from Strong to capture this). He realises, perhaps, what he is responsible for unleashing. And as a result he comes close to developing a hint of a soul.

Similarly wonderful by Stan, his Trump cannot face the mortality of his family members, and sees no setbacks, living life at speed and gobbling into the ethos that Cohn presents him in much the same way that he hits up diet pills, Diet Coke and gold plated anything. What we see in the Trump that Stan gives us, is a man who saw no need, nor any way how to develop a soul.

Donald Trump was a fucking joke throughout the 80s and 90s, a sore loser, and an absurd wannabe comic book character. He just wanted his 15 minutes — as if Andy Warhol’s prediction was a promise. And he wanted to take that 15 minutes and through his art in doing deals, he was sure he could spin it into a lifetime of golden grift.

He’s done far more than that. And it will be forever baffling. When the Cheeto dust settles, we’ll be disgusted that we all had some weird part in whatever this is and was, and will be. We’ll all be somehow complicit. How could we not write the letters and campaign the platforms, and ignore him, and convince our anti-vax adjacent friends and family members to not vote for him, to not want to watch the world burn, to not see him as some pantomime player that was going to disprove the point of politics by arriving Trojan Horse-style.

How could we have watched the TV show (also) called The Apprentice. Even if we believe we were laughing at it.

The Apprentice won’t change the result of the election. And Kamala Harris is not as bad as him — and any sane-thinking person must hope for her to win, even if they would prefer anyone else but her. Even if they think, with about 20 days to go, that it’s worth even saying “the whole system needs to change”.

But The Apprentice is a masterclass in filmmaking. And it’s the film Donald Trump really does not want you to see.

Do the Math: Trump Is Toast