Spoilers below.

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Jerry: Tyler, I cannot thank you enough for inviting me back on to discuss this completely fictionalized account of this story about this guy named Don who sought to do great things, great things, even though people treated him very unfairly, so unfairly. You might even say that they made up fake news about him, this amazing guy named Don, the best guy, he’s the best ever. He only wanted to do great things, all the great things. He’s the best ever, truly. But this is all fiction, right?

Tyler: Jerry!  Your patter!  Dare I ask whether you, like Don, are on powerful amphetamines?

Don’s reliance on such medication, actually, is one of many plot developments within this film that beggar belief, both in concept and execution.

I mean, sure, there have been those whispers about real-life Don being pilled to the gills, but depicting it on the big screen, boy howdy.

Jerry: I am not on amphetamines, is that even a thing, anyway? I think that the fake news media came up with that. They treat me very unfairly, by the way, very unfairly. I would like to blame that on the last person in this seat with you, it’s all their fault. They’re the ones who were really on amphetamines. Very sad, very sad. Not like me. I am fueled by making this blog great again.

Oh, and Greenland, I’m looking at you.

Seriously, though, we’re discussing a film released in 2024, a completely uneventful year, about a main character named Don, his rise to prominence, and some of the key figures in that process.

Tyler: Indeed. The film is called The Apprentice, a whimsical title, random and in no way referencing a grimly-iconic reality-game show that prominently laid the groundwork for that very uneventful year, ’24, and the boring snooze-a-rama 2025.

Jerry: So, I do have to admit that there’s a bit of intended irony/juxtaposition that the movie began with Nixon and the “I am not a crook” clip.

It sets the stage quite well for what the filmmakers intended.

Tyler: The stakes are established.

Jerry: Don is of course the main character in this (as he would want to be), and he’s played by Sebastian Stan. When we first discussed reviewing this movie, I did tell you that my chief concern was that this may ruin Sebastian Stan for me, but I have to say, the performance that he did in this, thankfully, it allows me to divorce his portrayal of Don from my overall feelings for Sebastian Stan.

Tyler: A blessing.  I haven’t seen much of Stan in, well, much of anything, but I appreciate your affections for his talents, which are on abundant display here.

Jerry: As a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think of him as Bucky, but he proved himself to be much more than that.

Tyler: Oh, Jerry, I just don’t know where to begin.  There is structural and procedural and technical achievement on grand display in The Apprentice.  It’s an exceptionally-crafted motion picture.  This all, I concede.  None of it, though, undercuts my general, almost visceral belief that this film should not exist.

I’m not talking censorship, mind you.  I refer instead to the humanization of Don.  Some time ago, circa Alec Baldwin’s absymal imitation of Don on Saturday Night Live, I read and welcomed a critical assessment maintaining that, even a parodic portrayal of Don turns him into things that he is not: relatable, within reach.  I’m afraid that, no matter how gleefully the filmmakers throw Apprentice Don into abhorrent behaviors, the cinematic gloss will nonetheless leave audiences wowed.  The legendary French filmmaker and critic Francois Truffaut said—approximating here—that a true anti-war movie is impossible, as war will always look glamorous on film.

That right there is my existential problem with this movie.  It’s not provocative, no matter how the creators attempt to frame their approach.  They’re poking the bear, sure, but that serves no purpose other than to get the Don stew boiling.  This film doesn’t change minds, it doesn’t inspire thought.  It inadvertently glamorizes repugnant crimes.  It exploits the victims of those crimes, and calls that exploitation revelation.  There’s no excusing Apprentice’s portral of sexual assault, to note the film’s most egregious and dangerous scene.

There’s nothing here we hadn’t already heard or didn’t already know.  All The Apprentice does is provide an origin story for a supervillain, leaving that villain looking for all the world like an all-time hero.  This isn’t invention.  This is MAGA porn.

Jerry: It’s funny, this gets back to my premise with Presidencies – it’s not just about the one person. Particularly with Don, he wants it to be all about him. All day, every day, and though this portrayal doesn’t put him into the best of lights, this goes back to Roy Cohn’s three rules – always attack, never admit wrongdoing, and always claim victory. As long as folks are talking about him, it’s a victory.

Tyler: Roy Cohn, horror in his own right, manages to come off like a big ol’ softie as things wrap up in Apprentice world.  That’s another issue here—Cohn, pushed to the sideline, garners sympathy.

Jerry: And when you look into the historical Cohn (though, of course, complete fictional account here), he is a deplorable human being. Even if he is a product of the time, there were others who didn’t do what he did (and, indeed, fought against what he was trying to achieve). As a gay man, I understand the challenges to coming out at that point, but to actively work against the rights of others in order to secure your personal freedom is shameful.

Tyler: Well, Cohn in that respect taught his protege all too effectively.

Jerry: That he did – before we dive into Cohn’s influence on Don, what are your thoughts on Jeremy Strong’s portrayal of the completely fictional Cohn?

Tyler: He’s seductive.  For all his fraudulent actions and rules, Cohn in Apprentice feels genuine.  Whereas Don here is a dark and growing vacuum, Cohn is an ignoble weapon losing its edge to age and AIDS.  He’s real, at least as depicted by Strong.  That leaves us wanting more Roy.  I don’t know how I feel about that.

Jerry: Same, and especially as a student of queer history, I want to understand more of his experience. In juxtaposition to Don and Cohn’s supposed conservatism, there are some rather out of the expected scenes here. Should we talk about the orgy?

Tyler: The orgy is another moment that feels beyond the pale.  I can’t speak to the intimacies of Cohn’s sexual habits, but if the filmmakers were going for shock, they made the right choices.  I take exception to those choices, though.  Whether Cohn was a top or bottom is a question that, when raised by art this sensational, will invariably invite giggly scrutiny from many in the audience—and that very well seems the filmmakers’ intent!  I do believe we’re meant to walk away from that scene thinking that Cohn was a submissive deviant whose sexual preferences constitute hypocrisy not in the face of homophobia, but the insidious specter of macho “masculinity.”  When he develops AIDS, what we’ve been shown and how it was revealed is an ugly connection akin to Jenny coming down with the virus in Forrest Gump—the sexually liberated character brought to death by their embraced freedoms.  Cohn was a monster and betrayed his tortured brethren.  But even his sequestered proclivities shouldn’t be subject to sensationalizion, to scrutiny.

Am I giving Cohn too much credit here?  I’m coming at this as an ally with a film degree.  You are a proud gay man.

Jerry: So, first of all, thank you so much for being an active ally. And you are right in criticizing how a queer character is being portrayed by people who are not in the LGBTQ+ community. While I understand the plot intent of Don being directly exposed to something that he is seemingly against and having to reconcile that his mentor is a part of it, I think we do have to ask what was the ultimate intent of this portrayal and the sensational nature of it. Indeed, if Cohn had been the main character, how might it have been portrayed differently?

But, as it is Don’s story (of course it is – this fictional story, of course), we should also discuss Maria Bakalova’s portrayal of completely fictional character of Ivana Zelníčková.

Tyler: Bakalova’s role here is thankless.  The actress does a fine job, and endures a horrifying artistic choice that verges on irresponsible.

Jerry: Talk about a reprehensible scene, and I know you know which one I’m talking about. The book, the confrontation, and then everything else.

And then earlier – “Killer means winner.” “Are you going to kill me?” Lots of cringe.

Tyler: The book!  Oh, the book.  There they go again, they’re poking the bear, making classroom jokes about Don’s prowess or lack thereof, while Don takes over the world and crushes Hollywood.

Jerry: It plays into exactly what he wants. It’s always someone else’s problem.

Speaking of someone else’s problem, I feel like we need to talk about Freddie.

Tyler: Oh, poor Freddie.

Jerry: At first, it seems like he’s going to be the redeeming part of Don’s journey – his troubled older brother that Don loves dearly and wants to help. But then, the dark side starts showing and increasingly comes up, to the point that, after Freddie’s tragic demise, when Don brings him up, their mother yells, “No! You do not speak his name.” She knows by that point what he’s done to Freddie and the entire family.

Tyler: Yeah, the moment where Freddie shows up at Don and Ivana’s palace, Don assuring Freddie that he’ll help, only to clumsily and clearly lie about guests so that Freddie will leave—it’s a pretty bald bait-and-switch.

I really chafe at this movie’s indelicate touch, Jerry.

Jerry: And he has multiple points of that – the whole thing with Cohn’s friend/partner Russell and having him at the Hyatt while he was sick then kicking him out when Don learned he was sick with AIDS.

I have to ask, though, with a movie about a completely fictional character such as Don, is there any way of making it without being indelicate?

Tyler: That’s a very fair question.

Jerry: A raw movie for a raw character. No getting around the reality of it. For this fictional character, of course.

The end, though – man. I could not convince my better half to watch this with me, so whereas I would have him tell me when certain medically grotesque moments were over, I had to just sneak peeks through my hands to see if we were done. It was absolutely brutal, which, I believe, was intentional.

Tyler: Humiliation is the goal.  But real-life Don is beyond humiliation!

He and his cadre are shameless.

Jerry: Oh, if Don was real-life, he would be the greatest ever, even better than Lincoln. If he were ever to become president, of course, which, you know, people were saying he should, and maybe that’s a good idea, but you know, he was busy being the greatest and building the best buildings and running the greatest casinos that the world had ever seen.

Seriously though, I think we’ve got a movie here that is complex for so many reasons, not the least of which is viewing it in our historical present. My question for you, Tyler, is if you’d watch it again.

Tyler: Oh, mercy, no.

Jerry: Talk to me about why not, and would you recommend this movie to the folks viewing this conversation?

Also, was this movie worse than Tennessee Johnson which we covered on an earlier conversation? The ultimate litmus test of bad presidential movies, I would say.

Despite the fine pair of breeches we ended up with afterwards.

Tyler: The Apprentice is an ultimately-feeble shot across the very big bow of a now-cinematic antihero who went out and did exactly what the filmmakers rather haughtily hoped they would help prevent.  Don won.  He won despite a whole lot of very serious challenges that dwarf this little movie that couldn’t.  It’s GoodFellas for Proud Boys.

Tennessee Johnson had some camp value to it.  If there was such a thing as, call it PrezCon, for all us amateur presidential history enthusiasts, a late-night whoop-it-up screening would be a studious riot.  The Apprentice would just leave everybody depressed.  Not to mention, presumably soon enough, under FBI investigation for watching.

Jerry: Well, good thing it’s all a fictional account, right? We don’t have to worry about Don co-opting a Reagan campaign slogan that he got from Roger Stone and turning it into multiple presidential campaigns, right? Right?

Tyler: Ah yes, we forgot the movie’s spot-the-nascent-bad-guy fun with Stone and Rupert Murdoch, amongst others.

Jerry: There was also an Andy Warhol moment because of course there was.

What a wild movie this was, my friend.

Tyler: Truly, brother, truly.  I can’t say I’m much the better for seeing it.

Jerry: And thankfully we watched it so that those reading this conversation don’t have to.

Seriously (and not saying anything against the acting talent in this film), there’s a host of other presidential films to check out other than this one.

Tyler: Jerry, for those of us who want to hear about presidents past, drop some info for us on Presidencies.

Jerry: For those who want to explore presidential history, I hope you’ll check out the Presidencies of the United States, available wherever you get your podcasts. The website is presidenciespodcast.com, but I’m also available on all major social media platforms, or you can shoot me an email at presidenciespodcast@gmail.com.

As always, I can’t thank you enough, Tyler, for a fantastic conversation, and I look forward to our next foray into presidential history cinema!

Even if the story of Don was completely fictional – so long as we keep saying that, we won’t get sued, right?

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