Trump Films (the Best Films)

Thread inspired by J. Hoberman’s excellent The Dream Life. (So-so thread title, I know.)

If you haven’t read it, Hoberman’s book details how Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all left behind films that appeared during their presidencies and seemed to capture something fundamental about them. Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes more elliptical. Examples: The Manchurian Candidate (obvious, at least in retrospect) and the first two Bonds for Kennedy, The Alamo and The Chase (most intriguing pick, as I recall) for Johnson, too many to name for Nixon.

I’ve seen so many films the last couple years, both narrative and documentaries, where Trump is front and center. At least one of them, you’d expect that: The Final Year, covering the end of Obama’s term. Also The Fourth Estate, or at least the part I saw, about the New York Times but more about Trump.

On top of that, though, the less obvious. Jarecki’s The King is about Trump. BlacKkKlansman and Beatriz at Dinner are about Trump. Frederick Wiseman’s Jackson Heights, somewhat (even if it was never conceived as such). Won’t You Be My Neighbor? clearly has Trump on its mind towards the end. The Post mostly sticks to its story, but I remember there was at least one speech in there clearly directed at Trump.

I’m sure there’ll be lots more for the next couple of years. And that’ll be enough.

I honestly feel like Trump has ruined my life.

Idk if he’s ruining my life, but he’s definitely turning my hair gray

The first three films I mention above--The Final Year, The Fourth Estate, and The King--all treat election day 2016 as more or less the end of the world.

The documentaries are easy. I think Hoberman wrote exclusively about Hollywood films, many of them big-budget.

I assumed this thread was going to be more about these: https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-place/?category=Trumpterpiece+Theater

Of course Get Out - “I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could”

Bar Rescue

I think Get Out is more about Obama years than it is Trump...

Black Panther maybe. People loved seeing the true and wise king return to overthrow the maniac. Killmonger wasn’t really a Trump figure but he was an agent of chaos, upending everything about wakanda that had previously seemed dependable. People like Seth Abramsom—and me in my more wearied moods—like to fantasize about Mueller sweeping in with a bevy of charges even the GOP can’t ignore and restoring some kind of normalcy to the kingdom.

the prospective father-in-law in Get Out says he wd've voted a third time for Obama

i started a thread a while back along similar lines which never really went anywhere: Fascism at 24 frames per second: onscreen representations of the Presidency in Trump's America

the purge: election year is the first one which springs to mind, although it failed to predict the actual outcome of the election

Lol that movie

doesn't have to be a good movie to be a trump movie!

in fact it's probably more appropriately trumpian if it's terrible

It predicted that one could attempt to murder his political opponent on a sacrificial altar and maintain his core supporters. It’s not like the new founding fathers had to find a new candidate.

i wonder if the grandmaster in thor: ragnarok was more trumpish on the page (image-obsessed tyrant/buffoon who wants everyone to love him) but then they cast jeff goldblum and he became, well, jeff goldblum

BG: ah, sorry about that--if I'd know your thread was out there, I wouldn't have started this one. (I searched Trump films and Trump movies, but your title must have been a few screens from the top.)

I'd count Get Out as Obama too--technically released after Trump took office (just barely), but about events that took place under Obama (and about white Obama voters). Horror films are a good place to look for this kind of thing, though: Night of the Living Dead is a great LBJ/Vietnam film, The Exorcist for Nixon, etc.

enh no worries clemenza, this one already seems more active than mine! i think i struggled to actually articulate what i wanted it to be about anyway, yours is a lot clearer

still to come is darren aronofsky's noah sequel with trump as sampson and hillary delilah

We've got Villeneuve's Baron Harkonnen coming up.

Ladybird had a subtext of nostalgia for the Bush era, if not Bush, which I think worked better now that that time seems in some sense a “simpler time,” which it might not have in 2013

It probably is helpful to make note as these things are being released, as the references will likely become more oblique and the connection less obvious as we blessedly (hopefully) move past this era down the line.

(Reminded of the recent moment when I heard Jonathan Edwards's 'Sunshine' while in the midst of reading Nixonland and, once the time period of the song's release occurred to me, wondering for the first time if the unnamed antagonist of the song might not be Nixon, which apparently is the case.)

it's just so weird to me that there's so little direct reflection of trump's presidency in tv / movies / comic books / whatever

previous presidents have been namechecked in fiction constantly (ime) but there's this lacuna where president trump should be - maybe i'm not watching or reading the right stuff, i dunno, but it feels like he's kinda absent from popular media

It takes most commercial films a year to 18 months and a half to go from shooting to general release, so we may start seeing it more.

Also given the speed at which the outrages pile up, I'm not sure most filmmakers know what to focus on, unless it's eg Spike Lee on Charlottesville.

yeah, some of the stuff that got tagged as Trump-inspired, like season 1 of the Handmaid's Tale, was produced well before anyone knew he would win

It feels like Trump is the unacknowledged center of a lot of recent entertainment. Like his effect is there and clearly felt but no one wants to acknowledge his actual existence.

(Not a movie, but MODAAK happened in a comic book.)
https://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/trump-modok-2.jpg

bizarro gazzara is right that he is more absent than usual from popular media. Even Last Man Standing said recently that they wouldn't talk about Trump on the revive, which is ridiculous. He is too polarizing and everyone saw what happened to Roseanne.

Even though he's not always named specifically, my own sense is that there's been lots of Trump at the movies, what prompted me to start this in the first place. More so than with Obama, where I felt that absence. (I remember one writer--maybe Hoberman himself--calling Rachel Getting Married the first Obama film. I'd have to rewatch it to know what was meant by that. There was Ides of March, then Get Out near the end, and after that I draw a blank.)

That 12-18 month gap from conception to release makes something like Wiseman's In Jackson Heights tricky. I think Trump was barely president when I saw it, and with all the time Wiseman has to spend embedding himself into a situation, it was possibly even started before Trump announced. But it was impossible, for me, not to see it through the filter of Trump's anti-immigration crusade when I finally saw it.

There hasn't been much anti-Trump music reach me. I know it's out there--Christgau has something every other month. My favourite Trump song has nothing to do with Trump and came out in 2013: the Julie Ruin's "Lookout."

there's a purge tv show too

(it premieres next month)

if we're including tv in this, i'd definitely throw in the new season of UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT, particularly the documentary episode

also i feel like your perception, clemenza, that there's been lots of trump at the movies might be rooted in the way culture in general has become more militaristic and dour? (you could write a dissertation on the d/evolution of imagine dragons from mumford hangers-on to official soundtrack for the no doubt imminent gladiator games)

what was the Seagal (or Van Damme?) movie that Trump had cut down to just the carnage for maximum enjoyment?

so, maybe that soporific John Wick garbage?

bloodsport iirc

and it wasn’t that he cut it down, it was that he made don jr fast-forward to the good parts, which makes it funnier/sadder

Two precursors: Pain and Gain and Observe and Report

yeah, i left Pain & Gain unfinished, as i would like to leave this era

beatriz at dinner

Logan seemed to incorporate several references to the effects of the trump regime or at least what they were talking about. Clamping down on certain aspects of society etc.
I noticed at the time it was out but it's pretty early in the incumbency

the florida project wasn't bad in this regard but there aren't many. (shouldn't be a controversial statement with a degenerate product of nepotism who can't even spell simple words correctly on a regular basis in the oval office but it takes a while for people born into privilege and advantage sufficient enough post-reagan that they get to become professional gatekeepers on multi-million $$ "art" projects to catch wind of what's 'really going on' in 90% of american lives for the production of zeigeist-y films to ensue. i'll be surprised if there are many pre-midterms)

i feel like your perception that there's been lots of trump at the movies might be rooted in the way culture in general has become more militaristic and dour?

I also see a lot of documentaries, and that probably causes me to feel like there are more Trump films out there than there actually are--a lot of what I list above are documentaries.

Also given the speed at which the outrages pile up, I'm not sure most filmmakers know what to focus on

True--unless you're Spike Lee, focused on one specific thing, where the fuck do you start? Wherever you start, it'll be old news within a week. If Trump is reelected--sorry to ruin everyone's day--I suspect there'll be such numbing despair that filmmakers will either turn away entirely, or Trump will only be a metaphorical presence, embedded in nihilistic horror films and such.

I forget that J. Hoberman maintains a site. Here's his review of Get Out ("Conceived in the waning days of Barack Obama’s presidency and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, four days after Donald Trump assumed power"), also a more recent piece on "Trump the Entertainer."

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/13/a-real-american-horror-story-get-out/
http://j-hoberman.com/2016/11/the-entertainer-trump-loeil/

Logan seemed to incorporate several references to the effects of the trump regime or at least what they were talking about. Clamping down on certain aspects of society etc.

this was written years before and filmed before the election

but there was no predatory capitalism or "Clamping down on certain aspects of society" in the USA til the Grifter came along

also, Hugh Jackman didn't have a beard

Seemed to be all too fitting at the time I saw it anyway.

Hollywood's first explicitly Trump film will probably star Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain.

Shock and Awe isn't terrible, but boy it feels 10 years out of date (if it had been made in 2008, I think there would have been a dozen related films even then, counting documentaries). Obviously, it's a W. film first and foremost. But--I'm sure why Rob Reiner felt it would be timely now, much as with The Post--it begins with a Bill Moyers quote about a free press. To that end, it becomes partly a Trump film.

Worst line (one of the two main reporters contrasting Woodward and Bernstein with the reporting they're doing on Bush):

"They took down a president whose biggest crime was trying to cover up some dirty political tricks."

Not quite.

not film but barry (will hader) "is" "trump" (hader a wannabe actor not eastern eurotrash thrall assassin reading alec baldwin (trump)'s lines from glengarry glen ross) a la arrested development bluths = bushes sorta

Went to see How to Steal a Million tonight, part of a local rep series called "Designing the Movies." (Too tired, shouldn't have gone.) They've got Whit Stillman's Metropolitan coming up, which the series host described as a snapshot of "Trump's New York." Intriguing, but I've seen Metropolitan two or three times, and I would have said that's as far away from Trump as you can get.

Also: Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is a Trump film. A not particularly good one.

Metropolitan is a weird case: It kind of fits in that it was shot in Trump's New York, but it's set much earlier (early '70s).

Interesting. I saw The Invisible Man days before the first COVID lockdown--don't think anything occurred to me.

Trump didn't want anymore Trump films to be made, so he killed the film industry.

films are fake

I posted about White Riot on the separating-the-art-from-the-artist thread. I've encountered this a few times: you know it's a Trump film as you're watching, but that's never made explicit--until the very end, in this case the final end-note.

If there's one great filmmaker whose work I'd be fairly certain Trump has seen--at least the gangster films--it would be Scorsese. My guess would be that Goodfellas is somewhat for him what Patton was for Nixon. No surprise yesterday to get confirmation that he's basically Johnny Boy with regards to debt:

You know somethin', Mikey? You make me laugh, you know that? I borrow money all over this neighborhood, left and right, from everybody, and I never pay 'em back. So I can't borrow no money from nobody no more, right? Who does that leave me to borrow money from but you? I borrow money from you because you're the only jerk off around that I could borrow money from without payin' back, right? 'Cause that's what you are, that's what I think of you--a jerk-off.

The Social Dilemma (in part) and, more so, The New Corporation, a follow-up to 2003's The Corporation.

More Trump films will undoubtedly appear in the next few years, and probably at least one or two great ones, but feel free to lock this thread. Maybe lock all Trump threads as of January 20 except whatever one predated 2015.

A great era for art sadly comes to an end

the more I think about it the more Observe and Report really is the ultimate MAGA chud movie, several years in advance. Jody Hill has the pulse

If I had to choose one film during his term as being definitive--which is not to say I loved it--it'd be Jordan Peele's Us.

Thought Us was really good. I liked Peele's explanation that one of the central themes in Us is that we do a good job of ignoring the ramifications of privilege, that what we feel like we deserve comes at the expense of others' freedom or joy.

wasn't thinking I would post here because I really hate this thread title and the very idea of 'Trump films', I'm just responding to your post about Us

If you read the original post, I explained that "Trump films" came out of J. Hoberman's excellent book The Dream Life, which more or less argued that every president leaves behind a body of films that responds in some way to his presidency--overtly, symbolically, accidentally, and every way in between. The idea isn't that Trump is anything special.

but why title it 'the best films'

seems like a gentlemen's clink of a glass to Trump

It's a joke on Trump's way of referring to everything he's involved in as "the best"--not great, by any means, but I thought the reference was fairly obvious.

I can see that

Peerhaps BlackkKlansman might have been made w/o Trump as president, but it would not have been quite the same film it was. I'm thinking of the Charlottesville coda specifically, but also many other moments in the film.

I said something similar above, but BlackkKlansman was representative of so many of the films I mentioned in this thread: not really in the moment, the way Nixon films were, but then right at the very end Trump would be front and center, whether named or not, and the filmmakers seemed to say "And this is where that leads, this is the logical end point." (Us was one of the few that felt 100% in the moment.)

I thought the reference was fairly obvious.

https://i.imgur.com/OB4YK6E.jpg

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gremlins/images/d/d6/DanielClamp.png/revision/latest?cb=20120308094656

Weird. That should be Daniel Clamp from Gremlins 2:

https://www.dailyhindnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/1604020640_Gremlins-2-on-TF1-Series-Films-Donald-Trump-inspired-the-1200x900.jpg

With the exception that he's revealed to be a basically OK dude in the end.

I have no inclination to watch and see if the plot is relevant, but The Boss Baby

Vic Berger, in long-form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZKkUyrklpc

Jason Schwartzman in Fargo, explaining to some incarcerated men from Chris Rock's rival crime syndicate how they're on opposite sides of a divide:

See, this country loves a man who takes what he wants. Unless...unless that man looks like you. Capisce? See, Johnny Society looks at me, they see a fella that's using crime to get ahead. But you? All they see is crime. And that's why you're gonna lose. 'Cause I can take all the money and pussy I want and still run for president. But you? It's always gonna be the rope.

Some, maybe most, will find the Trump backdrop of Red Rocket clumsy or worse. I don't think it's any less valid than what Hal Ashby did in Shampoo. I thought at first, even though his life was clearly tawdry enough for Trump, that Mikey might be some kind of Horatio Alger/(young) Tom Cruise corrective to Trump, a grifter and on the make, but basically with good intentions and a sweet temperament. Nope--he's tawdry and he ruins lives. I found his comeuppance a little noisily out of step with the rest of the film, but it sets up the ending well, which is nicely open-ended and ambiguous. I probably would have placed this as the highest non-documentary on my ILX ballot if I'd seen it two weeks ago.

sorry clemenza but I hate this thread and especially its title, and think a lot of these posts are gross, and am wondering why you keep bringing it forward

👍🏻 🚀

lol xp

I knew someone would post that Dan S., maybe even you--you did the same thing on the a different thread the other day.

I'm really intrigued by anyone who's a) sickened by Trump to the point of needing to scold people about it, but b) opening up a Trump thread to see what someone's posted.

I've no interest in rugby. I never open up rugby threads.

Art interacts with real life, and the aspects of society that facilitated Trump’s rise have not vanished or changed. It’s possible to watch Red Rocket without even noticing it’s set during the campaign, let alone thinking about any likeness between Mikey and the campaigner. Clem specifically notes here how it’s effective in the same way as Shampoo, if the viewer happens to be attuned to it (Ashby does make more of the campaign than Baker, but his lead is oblivious - that’s especially for the viewer.)

If it upsets you to read clemenza’s posts itt, then either don’t click, or try articulating your objection to the content? Wishing that nobody else thinks about politics isn’t going to be effective - it’s just Tinkerbell thinking again.

You could definitely enjoy or hate or feel anything between about Red Rocket without giving a second's thought to Trump--you could probably even love All the President's Men as just a great detective story, and not think about Nixon as anything more than a plot device in the film. But from the very first billboard to the convention and news snippets, I don't think you can say that Sean Baker doesn't have him somewhere in mind. I mean, it's not accidental.

I hate this thread and especially its title

dan when you read "trump films (the best films)" do you think the thread starter believes films about trump / trumpism / trump-like beliefs and figures are objectively the best films or perhaps is just evoking a phrasing commonly used by trump himself as a form of mocking him (it is the latter btw)

yes it is mocking him but also adoring him

I will like Red Rocket I'm pretty sure, and once I see it will be happy to discuss it in another thread

my objection to the content here is that this thread memorializes and valorizes Trump through films even while it disparages him

but also adoring him

Please tell me you're not serious there, or that you're projecting, or something. Having a strong interest in how films were going to address his disruptive, calamitous presidency is not exactly adoring him. You may as well make the same accusation of someone who writes about Night and Fog or Shoah.

You really ought to go back and read the original post for some context.

maybe not being a US citizen you can step back and see things as they really are and will be, but I can't

I guess I'm projecting, I do that often, but the even the title of this thread shoots an arrow through my heart

I just saw Night and Fog for the first time tonight! an amazing film. tried to watch Pig afterwards, but stopped and will save it for another day

maybe not being a US citizen

Oh, good, this again.

not meant to disparage, I think you have a perspective that I don't

I just don't see that that figures into it at all, and I'm not sure that you do either. The people you got after the other day on the Trump thread for "memorializing" him, pretty sure they were all American. If you want people to just stop posting about Trump--least of all on Trump threads--you're fighting a losing battle. You simply shouldn't open such threads. And seriously--the title you object to so much was clearly explained upthread a year ago, when you seemed to concede it was okay.

It's a joke on Trump's way of referring to everything he's involved in as "the best"--not great, by any means, but I thought the reference was fairly obvious.
― clemenza, Sunday, November 15, 2020 9:31 PM (one year ago)

I can see that
― Dan S, Sunday, November 15, 2020 9:47 PM (one year ago)

not sure what thread that was. I just hate reading anything about him that seems to have distance

there’s a pretty simple way around that

good to know it's not a problem for you

I like your film posts, Dan, and am often in sync with your opinions. I find you're being weirdly selective here.

not sure what thread that was.

It was this thread. Like I said in the previous post.

I just hate reading anything about him that seems to have distance

Meaning...? That my post about Red Rocket isn't about how Trump ruined my own life? In the post that started all this, I said "I thought at first, even though his life was clearly tawdry enough for Trump, that Mikey might be some kind of Horatio Alger/(young) Tom Cruise corrective to Trump, a grifter and on the make, but basically with good intentions and a sweet temperament. Nope--he's tawdry and he ruins lives." I.e., like Trump. That's clear, isn't it?

I apologize, I am looking forward to seeing it fwiw

I was just railing against any supposition that he might be a cozy historical figure. He is a monster, and even talking about him possibly having his own era triggers me

We're good. And honestly, I'd be shocked if there's a single ILX poster--from someone like me, who sometimes gets chastised for making light of politics, to the most ardent posters on the left--who views Trump as anything less than venal.

Looked up a couple of reviews, and--for different reasons--neither liked the Trump angle. Richard Brody didn't think the film did anything with it: "Baker makes sure to signal that the movie is set during the 2016 Presidential campaign. There’s a Trump campaign sign in the street and Trump’s foghorn hectoring on television broadcasts. Yet the characters say not a word about what they’re hearing or thinking about the politics of their moment." True--but I think it's more interesting to leave such connections to the viewer. Armond White seems to see it like me, that Mikey is meant as a Trump stand-in, but (of course!) he thinks the film fails on that count: "This follows a brief TV clip of Donald Trump saying, 'I think the election will be rigged,” obviously from 2016. Making unsubtle, faulty linkage between Orange Man arrogance and Red Rocket egotism is Baker’s real judgment.'

Both liked Simon Rex.

I watched the movie (which features sound clips from both Trump *and* Clinton) partly as a portrait of sweat-flop America that is so desperate - for success, for affirmation, for connection, for a future - that it is totally oblivious to politics, no matter how omnipresent. Like, it's just more noise drowned out by the bigger din of the daily hustle.

Driving home, I thought about Hillary being in there too: "I'm going to post about this in the Trump-movie thread, but I'll limit it to Trump." I wanted to think about what that might mean, but I didn't want to have to think too much. (You hear Cruz, too.)

I've been reading up on Simon Rex. Never got MTV up here, may have seen the first Scary Movie (can't remember), so I didn't know him at all. What a story.

Saw Caddyshack for the first time last night. The Mount Everest Rule: I saw it because it was playing.

I was hoping for Stripes, but found it not just not unremittingly unfunny (a couple of scenes were okay), but also strangely disjointed. One thing I remembered, though, was James Poniewozik giving it two pages in Audience of One, still the best Trump book I've read. He saw, obviously, Rodney Dangerfield's character as Trump, with Ted Knight as Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and all the other chamber-of-commerce-type Republicans Trump rendered obsolete.

Rereading, he has the Dangerfield character (Czervik) exactly right: "Czervik is among the rich country clubbers, but he isn't of them. His wealth doesn't give him membership in high society, just the independence not to care about its rules...He sized up as his first punching bag the Smailsian (Knight's character) Jeb Bush--well-spoken, well-mannered, from a good family--and proceeded to spray him with yacht-wake at every opportunity."

I don't know about the Knight character, though--he's as loud and bombastic as Czervik most of the time. Didn't see Jeb Bush or Mitt Romeny there.

If you're looking at this, Dan S., a reminder not to be looking at this.

The Trump stuff on Fargo, Tillman's wife going on about how the whole impeachment trial is a sham, was very literal, not especially imaginative, but it is, I think, the most explicit Trump-era thing I've yet seen in a movie or TV show.