Film critics bring their biases into the theater. Every time.
Political. Cultural. Social.
Heck, this critic adores horror movies and avoids period dramas when possible. (That said, “The Favourite” was wonderful.) It’s the critic’s job to acknowledge and set aside those biases. Films deserve nothing less.
The same holds for film analysis. And it’s here where Variety’s Owen Gleiberman loses the plot. Why?
All together now: “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
The veteran critic is sad to see that the anti-Trump hit piece “The Apprentice” bombed in its theatrical debut. The movie follows a young Trump (Sebastian Stan) learning the crooked ropes from master fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).
The film has enjoyed all the free publicity – AKA press attention – a film can muster. Journalists interviewed actors Stan and Strong, director Ali Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman across media platforms.
None of that helped “The Apprentice” draw a crowd. The film snuck into the weekend’s top 10 film releases (barely) with a $1.6 million haul on 1,740 screens.
Sad.
Even sadder? Gleiberman’s column on the subject.
First, he shares how he predicted the film would “make a splash” at theaters. Not even close. To be fair, it can be challenging to predict the box office in 2024.
The first flicker of TDS comes early:
“…the distributors were scared of recrimination [for sharing the movie]. What if Trump did become president? What would he do to them?”
Nothing, of course.
We’ve seen film after film, TV show after TV show, excoriating Trump over the past eight or so years. Some have compared him to Adolf Hitler, a charge so ludicrous it has no place in polite society.
Have any been banned, censored or taken down by Trump?
No.
We have seen artists take down their own work, though.
Think Tina Fey throwing several “30 Rock” episodes down the memory hole. Other “problematic” TV episodes suffered a similar fate following the 2020 rise of Black Lives Matter.
Max briefly pulled “Gone with the Wind” from its streaming platform for sharing the wrong views on race and history. Whoever owned Louis C.K.’s film, “I Love You, Daddy” tossed the film in a deep, dark cellar and refuses to let it out after he confessed to pleasuring himself in front of unsuspecting women.
Trump didn’t do anything of the kind when it comes to art.
The author says the fact that the film struggled to find a distributor suggests we’re already living in a new, authoritarian state. Maybe some feared the legal implications of a film with a hotly debated rape scene? Or studios realized the movie would land with a thud at the box office … like it did?
Perhaps executives understood that audiences are exhausted by the Culture Wars and seek entertainment first and foremost?
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Gleiberman saves the best for last. And by “best,” we mean full TDS requiring therapy and/or medication.
But while the Trump the movie shows us is unscrupulous and disloyal, nothing he does can hold a candle to the danger he now poses with every election denial, every promise to continue his reign as an agent of chaos.
Hillary Clinton has been denying she lost the 2016 election for nearly a decade. Stacey Abrams never conceded she lost the Georgia gubernatorial race, either.
Any thoughts, Mr. Gleiberman? He then goes for the rhetorical kill shot.
And that threat is incarnated in the fact that “The Apprentice” almost wasn’t released. You might say that I’m quibbling, since the movie played wide this weekend. You might say that the system, in the end, worked. However, the fact that everyone in mainstream Hollywood was scared to touch “The Apprentice” should tell you something. This wasn’t simply an anomaly. Right now, it feels like it could be an ominous preview of coming attractions.
Imagine a world where artists are afraid to tell their stories or jokes for fear of professional repercussions. Wait, we call that Cancel Culture and Variety has looked the other way about it for a decade.
Or leaders so willing to stifle dissent they dream of arresting those who share so-called misinformation. That’s what Hillary Clinton craves.
You don’t have to be deranged to find that scary.
