Trump Films (the Best Films)

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.