Dhamaka, on the making of Don

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan as Roy Cohn and Donald Trump in the biographical drama The Apprentice

To use a far-fetched analogy, Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice (2024), on the making of Donald Trump, as a real-estate shark and public figure, is a bit like the Amitabh Bachchan double-role picture, Don (1978)!

In the sense of how the rustic, buffoon Vijay (Bachchan) gets trained to play the suave, daring Don (Bachchan), by the cops, chiefly DSP D'Silva (Ifitikhar) - who wish to plant him into a crime syndicate.

The title, Apprentice, of course, comes from the reality show that made Trump famous - years thereafter, perverting American politics into a reality show of its own!

But it also beautifully relates to how Trump was, in fact, an apprentice of sorts, to a lawyer + political fixer, Roy Cohn - who similarly trained him to become a psychopathic badass; playing the killing fields of American business/real-estate.

There's a point in the movie, when Cohn prompts lines to Trump, during a business call, over the phone, in the car. You almost watch a new character emerge!

The three rules of Fight Club, for public discourse, that Cohn taught Trump, is literally the playbook of most demagogues in global politics, currently: 1) Attack, attack, attack. 2) Deny everything, admit nothing. 3) Always claim victory!

Filmmaker Ali Abbasi. Pic/X

You could stop there, and you'll know all you wanna know about Trump (and many others). His worldview expressed in the simplest simile: "Two kinds of people: losers, killers."

Riveting, insightful, The Apprentice, is supposedly the origin-story of Trump - the "square-jawed yellow-head", who "looks like Robert Redford," during the mid-80s, when Ronald Reagan coined ‘Make America Great Again', for a political slogan.

But this is effectively the story of Trump's cut-throat mentor, Cohn, who drops the ultimate truth bomb - that "truth itself is [man-made] fiction!"

That's Jeremy Strong. His character has the same first name as the surname of Logan Roy - Strong killed it as Logan's son Kendall, in the career-defining series, Succession.

Logan (Brian Cox) was inspired by media baron, Rupert Murdoch. Who, in turn, was part of Cohn's political circle. In The Apprentice, Cohn tells Trump, "Rupert's gonna be key". Cohn shares some traits with Logan as well. For Strong, somehow, the irony feels complete.

Al Pacino played Cohn in the HBO mini-series, Angels in America (2003). Strong, 45, with the deadest eyes in the world, is as solid as it gets.

So is Sebastian Stan, for Trump - never once reducing America's least intellectual President to a cheap mimicry; you can't spoof a spoof, anyway!

The Apprentice premiered at 2024 Cannes. I watched it uncensored at a preview screening, with a 100-odd desis, at PVR in Juhu, Mumbai.

Before the screening, we learnt the film wasn't gonna release the following Friday in India. Because the censor board had demanded cuts the director, Ali Abbasi, wouldn't concede to.

I DM'ed Abbasi on X. He wanted to talk; passing on his publicist's email contact to route this through. And then he ghosted. Which is fine.

A film like The Apprentice, about a desi politician instead, would be impossible to film, let alone release, in India. Or in Abbasi's native country, Iran, for that matter.

He'd earlier posted on X: "I ran away from Iranian censorship, only to meet corporate censorship in the US. Now, India! Really?"

Abbasi (Border, Holy Spider) is Iranian-Danish. Which allows him a fresh, outsider's perspective to Trump, or America, by extension. Somewhat the same way that Iranian-American Ramin Bahrani chronicled India's under-classes with The White Tiger (2021).

So far as India's censors are concerned, it's really a ‘you problem' for Abbasi. I've checked the certificate for The Apprentice.

They want "nude scenes" deleted. As if the clips exist with pornographic intent. Further, they've asked for the word "Negro" muted (without context) - perhaps to protect historical sentiments of India's black population!

Crucially, for however they arrived at precise ratio, they want to delete "scene of forced sex by 75 per cent," asking to "provide the source from where it has been obtained (sic)." This pertains to Trump and his, then, migrant/Slovenian-American wife, Melania.

Trump is a rapist. I don't say this. The film shows it. It's based on Melania's sworn testimony, even if retracted 25 years later.

That's one among the reasons that the making of The Apprentice, written by journalist Gabriel Sherman, on the making of Trump, was hit by multiple boulders ("corporate censorship"), including the financier backing out. None of the OTTs, let alone top distributors, were willing to touch it.

The film, without any cut (of course), released in US cinemas, albeit without fanfare, on October 11. For whoever sits on the fence on matters of elections, given campaigns that run for years, Americans already know Trump.

He's also served a term. The Apprentice will only help them understand him better. Is there a better way to vote than to know your candidate?

Ones disinclined towards the ex-President, I'm told, stayed away from The Apprentice, since they suffer from ‘Trump fatigue': "Will watch it after elections."

By then, the movie will be irrelevant - if he loses (a huge ‘if'). But the OTTs will easily pick it up. Either way, writing this on Oct 29: Do we know a more timely, important (equally entertaining) film, with US going to polls on November 5? Hell, no.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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