Daniel Bekerman never set out to produce a political film.
That despite the fact that He Apprentice, The film that his production company Scythia Movies, based in Toronto, took on, is about one of the most polarizing political figures of recent times: the former president of the United States and current presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Also despite the fact that both Bekerman and director Ali Abbasi have stated that the film is in no way a hit or propaganda, but rather an emotional character study aimed at people of all political persuasions. (Bekerman described it as “a conversation starter, to say the least.”)
Still, that is not how it has been interpreted.
The biopic that begins and ends long before its subject enters politics has itself become a hot-button political issue, which Bekerman says is a test case for whether Hollywood has an appetite for films intended to challenge or influence in the public, or if they simply exist as something beyond. Pure escapism.
SEE | The Apprentice trailer:
“If there are companies, in this case the large corporate distribution system, that [are] “They are willing to let that type of culture of fear and intimidation govern their decisions, so that is an explicit type of world to live in,” he said.
“That happened to us. And, you know, maybe we're a little bit of a canary in the coal mine on that.”
Although The apprentice Arriving in 115 theaters across Canada on Friday, its journey to the screen has not been easy.
After a cease-and-desist letter from Trump's legal team, the film's main financier, Kinematics, backed out, with a statement from the company citing a “creative difference.”
That followed a variety itemreporting that Dan Snyder, a Kinematics supporter and Trump ally, first led support for the project because he was under the impression it would be a flattering portrayal of the former president, before launching a campaign to re-release the film after viewing it.
Industry “fears repercussions,” says distributor
The film was only able to reach theaters after a truly herculean process. grassroots funding campaign and a last-minute investment from independent distributor Briarcliff Leisure.
That company's founder, Tom Ortenberg, was also behind the distribution of Michael Moore's Iraq War film. Fahrenheit 9/11the drama of child abuse of the Catholic Church Stand out and the documentary about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi The dissident He also fought to spread the Christian criticism of Kevin Smith. Dogma against protests by religious groups.
“He's the only dealer who had the guts to stand up to him and not be intimidated by those threats,” Bekerman said of Ortenberg.
Meanwhile, Ortenberg himself told the Hollywood Reporter that virtually every studio and distributor was “running away from the movie” not because of financial or artistic concerns, but because of the industry's deep-seated fear of something truly cutting.
“They are cowards” he told the media. “Many in the industry fear the repercussions if Trump wins the election. And to me, that's heartbreaking. “I still like to think that we, as an industry, are better than that, and I keep being reminded that we are not.”
cinematic lightning rod
Ty Burr, who was the Boston Globe's film critic from 2002 to 2021 and currently writes for the Washington Submit, agrees.
“Especially in these incredibly polarized times, a film that is perceived as political is just going to be… a lightning rod for people on both sides,” he said.
This is especially evident in this case, Burr said, given the filmmaker's attempts to argue that the film is not really political.
He says that position is “false or naïve or both, because you can't talk about Donald Trump without him being political right now, and really for the last eight years.”
But the reason for promoting a film as non-political – and for studios and distributors to keep such productions at arm's length -, he says, runs much deeper than any concern about Trump regaining office.
Instead, it suggests there is a widespread reluctance to bother the public.
That can be seen in everything from studios screening franchise films to focus groups of dedicated fans to the films of director Lee Isaac Chung. intentional decision to keep any mention of climate change out of tornadoes— something Burr called “an act of commercial cowardice.”
That's not to say that political films, or at least films that inevitably become entangled with ongoing political debates, don't get released. the movie September 5about the hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics, will be published at the end of November.
Russians at war had appreciable coverage at this year's Toronto International Film Pageant. Dennis Quaid Reagan The biopic hit theaters a little over a month ago, and Sound of freedoma movie that was immensely popular among QAnon followersIt earned almost 20 times its budget at the box office.
But they also tend to encounter opposition. The apprentice, Sound of freedom and reagan They were all forced to look for independent financing options outside of the traditional Hollywood system. and then Russians at war Screened before journalists and industry members at TIFF, large protests caused public screenings to be paused, while the film was abandoned by its distributor.
and while September 5 was acquired by Paramount, Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg reclaimed TIFF specifically chose to exclude it, “apparently because it could spark controversy related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Meanwhile, Feinberg's Oscar shortlist, which projected the film as no. 1 among best picture nominees, has already generated the kind of online controversy that Burr says can scare off distributors.
'Russians at Warfare' had two screenings at TIFF on Tuesday, after the pageant suspended screenings earlier this week due to security concerns. CBC's Britnei Bilhete has the latest.
'There goes ticket sales'
To avoid this, studies sometimes take another path.
Civil warThis year's Alex Garland film about the disintegration of the United States was marketed as a kind of commentary on the polarized nature of contemporary politics. Despite that, the film remains almost completely apolitical, a strategy that Burr says allowed him to hijack the emotion of a political moment without actually engaging with it.
“Serious movies that deal with politics and come out of Hollywood… will do everything they can to not take a stance,” he said. “Because taking a stance threatens to alienate half your audience. And there goes the ticket sales.”
Aaron Michael, a Canadian TikTok creator and Newfoundland-based film expert who researches and documents box office failures, says concern has only grown in recent years.
While releasing a film that criticizes the beliefs of an entire group always runs the risk of minimizing box office receipts, such films almost always tend to at least break even, Michael explained. Since 1992 Bulworthto Chris Rock's house Head of state and 2014 Kill the messengerHe said that their relatively smaller budgets were often low enough to ensure a favorable box office return.
Now, he says, “there is definitely a drop in box office performance.” While past films like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 could earn more than $200 million, Michael says the era of the $100 million politically minded documentary is over.
It is part of a trend that, as Reported variety earlier this year, it influenced the closure of Participant Media. That production company, founded with the express mission of creating films that “inspire social justice and humanitarian action,” worked alongside Ortenberg on Stand outand was behind Green Paper, lincoln and An uncomfortable truth.
For companies like Participant to throw in the towel suggests an extreme lack of appetite for movies that could divide audiences, which Michael suggests could be a telling reality for the future of the film landscape.
“If you focus the movie and the audience is split down the middle, no one will touch that,” he said. “No one wants a movie that is divided in half.”
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