Censorship: New Trump Movie Likely Won't Be Shown in US Theaters
Distributors and theater owners are afraid to anger Trump and MAGA, so passing on the movie.
The movie is called The Apprentice. It is already making its way into movie theaters across Europe, but U.S. film distributors are not picking it up. Hollywood is buzzing with the fact that distributors, the people who buy the film and then place it in theaters, are afraid to anger Trump and MAGA.
Some insiders initially thought it was the fear that political drama pics don’t do well at the box office. Vice, the very good movie about Dick Cheney, was not a box-office winner. Nonetheless, The Apprentice was very well received at Cannes, receiving a boisterous ovation, and given the election year, it will likely do better. Nevertheless, the “self-censorship” for a political drama about a clearly corrupt and criminal presidential candidate who is currently the frontrunner has presented the country with one of its first taste of what could soon be a common practice in our country.
Let me put it in simple, more concise language so I can wrap my head around this. A movie was made that was well-received by a very discerning audience. The actors, it is said, kicked ass with career-making portrayals of their subjects (Roy Cohen and Donald Trump); the movie touches upon only the things we know from the public record and offers no editorial fantasy. It even portrays Trump as a bit of a visionary early in his career before being spoiled by his daddy’s former fixer, Cohen.
The movie is art. The men and women whose careers revolve around picking up these movies and distributing them to theaters have decided that an angry and unfriendly Trump will be bad for business. They are choosing not to show Americans this depiction, which could, in theory, sway them not to vote for Trump, thus preserving our democracy. Just as we are seeing with the billionaires who want their tax cuts and like we saw with Big Business in Weimar Germany, business decisions are leading greedy people to back fascism over democracy.
Let me say it for you: What the d**k (Yes, I purposely said, “duck”)?
Negotiations are ongoing, and domestic distribution could still come together. Yet the possibility that American audiences won’t be able to see “The Apprentice” isn’t just frustrating. It’s frightening, because it suggests that Trump and his supporters have already intimidated some media companies, which seem to be pre-emptively capitulating to him.
As Puck’s Matthew Belloni wrote after talking to potential buyers, “several that really liked the film are still out on ‘The Apprentice,’ in part because of the politics of the moment — which is to say fear of the politics of the moment.” Emanuel Nuñez, president of the production company Kinematics, one of the film’s investors, told me, “Trump attacked the film and, unfortunately, it appears that Hollywood right now doesn’t have the stomach to release this film and take him on (You May Never See the New Trump Movie).”
If I was Donald Trump, and I saw so many people, like the entirety of the Republican Congress, many who used to be critical of him post-January 6th, kissing my ass so voraciously, I would be pretty confident that I was going to be the next president. If I could speak out against a movie that accurately depicts the sins of my life and prevent those people from showing that movie, I would be pretty confident that the country over which I planned to rule despotically was giving me the green light to do so. It is terrifying that with each day, more and more of the bulwarks put in place to spare us the rise of an openly corrupt person bent on ending our nation’s democracy crumble and melt away in the torrent of the nonsensical.
They could go after anyone involved with “The Apprentice” in the same way. In a cease-and-desist letter to the filmmakers, a lawyer for Trump claimed, absurdly, that the movie is “direct foreign interference in America’s elections,” citing the fact that its director, Ali Abbasi, is Iranian Danish and that the movie received funding from Denmark, Ireland and Canada.
“If you do not immediately cease all publication and marketing of the movie, President Trump will pursue every appropriate legal means to hold you accountable for this gross violation of President Trump and the American people’s rights,” Trump’s lawyer wrote. Should he become president again, he’ll have greatly expanded options for pursuing this vendetta (You May Never See the New Trump Movie).
Not showing movies in China or Russia because they are not aligned with the political narrative of those two fascist countries is a form of censorship that is well-known throughout the world. Journalists rot in prisons, including Americans, and people like Aleksey Navalny eventually die because they had the courage to report on the realities of the system. The United States of America is approaching an election that very well will be won by a man whose greatest hope is to turn us into Russia and China.
When Nixon threatened to use the federal government’s powers against his perceived enemies, he was eventually removed from office. Donald Trump, for all of his threats for retribution that look to be promises, is being rewarded with fawning adoration.
What the f**k is going on (I purposely didn’t say “duck”)?