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Front Burner Transcript for December 27, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

[Music: Theme]

JAYME POISSON: Hi, it's Jayme, and I hope that you are all enjoying your holidays. Today and throughout next week, we'll be going back to a few of our favourite conversations this year. I had a great time talking to Dan Beckerman, one of the producers of The Apprentice, back in October. The whole idea behind the film about Donald Trump was to show a side of him that hadn't really been seen before. It follows a young, awkward, ambitious Trump and his bid for respect among New York City's elites. The Apprentice opened to rave reviews, but was also subject to a huge pressure campaign from Team Trump to keep the film from the public. I talked to Dan about the film's complicated journey to the theatres, and the difficulty of telling a story about a man everybody already feels that they've figured out. Have a listen.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

JP: Dan, thank you so much for coming onto Front Burner.

DAN BECKERMAN: Thank you so much for having me.

JP: It's great to have you here. So before we get into the narrative of the film, Donald Trump is one of the defining figures of the 21st century; one of the most famous men in the world. And his story is one that's been told a bunch of times already, right, in books, documentaries, television shows, podcasts, more. What made you all decide to tell his story and why now?

DAN BECKERMAN: Well, you said it very well, which is that everyone feels they know Donald Trump, they know the persona. But that's the thing, they really know the persona that he is projecting out into the world. And what I think this movie accomplishes is it really shows how he learned how to create that persona. And he learned it from this lawyer named Roy Cohn, who was a very notorious lawyer, uh, but he was extremely skilled at building a narrative that would kind of win in legal cases. And he really imparted this knowledge to Donald, and he created-- well, he showed Donald how to create that persona that now we're all so familiar with. But what we don't know as well is, you know, kind of who's behind the curtain. [JP: Mm-hmm.] You know, I've started using the metaphor of The Wizard of Oz, near the end, when Dorothy and Tin Man and Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion arrive at the castle, and they're confronted by this giant green face.

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THE GREAT OZ: [booming voice] The Great Oz has spoken! [regular voice] Uh-oh... [booming voice] Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

DOROTHY: Who are you?

THE GREAT OZ: [booming voice] Oh, I, I, I am the great and powerful... [regular voice] Wizard of Oz.

DOROTHY: You are?

THE GREAT OZ: [regular voice] Yeah. Yes.

DOROTHY: I don't believe you.

THE GREAT OZ: [regular voice] No, I'm afraid it's true. There's no other wizard...

DAN BECKERMAN: But then Toto pulls back the curtain, and you see there's a very human kind of... a vulnerable man behind that curtain who's projecting this image of omnipotence of that green face. But who is that man behind the curtain? We're much less familiar with that. And that's how I'm seeing the movie, is really... is just showing how that all started. Showing how Donald, the person, learned to project this sort of all-powerful image that he wants us to see.

JP: You know, we meet Donald in this film when he's in his mid-20s, right. He's kind of this awkward Playboy, desperate to gain the respect of his father and New York City's elite. And it's at this point when he and his father are subject to a discrimination lawsuit from the State Department for allegedly refusing to rent to Black families. And, you know, it's at this juncture that he meets Roy Cohn. And just tell me a little bit about, you know, how Cohn enters his life and, you know, what happens in those early days.

DAN BECKERMAN: Yeah, it's one of my favourite parts of the movie, where you're just seeing this young, ambitious guy. And it's surprising to many people who watch the movie how much you get emotionally engaged with this young guy who just wants to get out from under his father's shadow.

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MARTIN DONOVAN: [as Fred Trump] Donald, the Chrysler Building is in foreclosure...

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] Well, the Chrysler Building--

MARTIN DONOVAN: [as Fred Trump] And you want to open a hotel around the corner.

[crosstalk]

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] Dad, the Chrysler Building is a landmark so it's absolutely fine.

MARTIN DONOVAN: [as Fred Trump] It's like adding a deck chair to the Titanic.

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] Dad, sooner or later you might have to accept the fact that I could be right, and maybe I know what I'm doing.

MARTIN DONOVAN: [as Fred Trump] Look, Donald, I respect what you've done. I really do.

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] [indistinct]. I hope so. I hope so, Dad. I really do.

DAN BECKERMAN: You know, his father pretty clearly made him feel like he was never good enough, and sort of makes all the children in the family feel that way. And Donald wants to prove himself. And he's trying to prove himself in the world of Manhattan in the '70s and '80s, where, you know, it's not like it is today. It was pretty gritty. It was a pretty tough world that Manhattan. And, uh, but he wants to show he can mix with the, you know, the millionaires. And, you know, there's a scene at a, early in the movie, at Le Club, where he's bragging to a young model he's on a date with that he's the youngest member ever to be accepted [JP: Mm-hmm.] into that club.

SOUNDCLIP

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] There's a skill to being a billionaire. It's a talent. You have to be born with it, and you have to have a certain gene, you know?

YOUNG MODEL: It's a pretty cool place.

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] Yeah, and they say I'm the youngest member ever admitted.

YOUNG MODEL: That must be a big thing.

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] It is, it's a very big thing.

DAN BECKERMAN: And that's where he meets Roy. And Roy's, you know, having drinks with, with, you know, pretty shady characters. Many of whom he represents, including mob bosses and things like that. And Roy sees Donald. And, you know, Roy was an... you know, a pretty remarkable ball of contradictions himself. Because he was a gay man but would frequently use information he had from the gay community against people in court cases. But he saw a young, young Donald and he invited him to his table.

SOUNDCLIP

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] What's your name, handsome?

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] I'm Donald Trump.

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] Donald Trump, nice to meet you. Roy Cohn.

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] The Roy Cohn? From all the papers and everything?

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] That's right. The Roy Cohn from all the papers. That's right.

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] Yeah, you're brutal.

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] I'm brutal.

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] Yeah.

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] That's right.

DAN BECKERMAN: And from that moment he took him under his wing, and it started this relationship that... you know, they-- both men had different, um, objectives. You know, Donald wanted to be accepted in this elite world of Manhattan elite. Although, probably quite shady. And Roy... Roy, you know, there was possibly an element of romance in Roy's mind, because, you know, a lot of Roy's boyfriends were tall and blond and... But he really saw in Donald, you know, a vessel that he could impart his worldview onto. And, and his worldview was really shaped by these rules he... Roy called them his 'rules for winning.'

SOUNDCLIP

[multiple clips]

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] You want to know how to win? I'm going to let you in on a little secret. There's rules. Roy Cohn's three rules of winning.

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] The first rule is the simplest: Attack, attack, attack.

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] Rule 2: Admit nothing, deny everything.

SOUNDCLIP

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] Rule 3: This is the most important rule of all. Okay? No matter what happens...

STAN SEBASTIAN: [as Donald Trump] Do you have to drive this fast?

JEREMY STRONG: [as Roy Cohn] ...no matter what they say about you, no matter how beaten you are, you claim victory and never admit defeat. Never admit defeat, Donald. You want to win? That's how you win.

DAN BECKERMAN: Never, ever, no matter what, never admit defeat. And that might seem kind of familiar. And also, I see that third rule as being about showing any weakness. Showing any vulnerability is, I think, the subtext of that rule. And we can see all those rules, really, they're quite simple. And we can see how they have been adopted and integrated into really kind of everything Donald does.

[music]

JP: Is the idea here essentially that Trump's shtick -- the bluster, the lying, the bullying, the vying for power, the charisma -- is essentially an imitation of Roy Cohn?

DAN BECKERMAN: Yeah, well, this is definitely a master/student story with Roy and Donald, but I think it may also be a case of where the student surpasses the master. Because Donald definitely did adopt Roy's worldview and, you know, kind of climbed into it like a second skin that he's been wearing ever since. And yet, Roy used those rules for winning cases when he was representing shady people. You know, he also is someone who was responsible for having the Rosenbergs executed, even when he was a very young man working with McCarthy.

SOUNDCLIP

[archival clip]

NARRATOR: The electric chair awaited the two convicted spies as the hour of their final reckoning approached. And then it was over. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had paid their debt to society with their lives. For the first time in its 177-year history, a United States civil court had decreed and followed through on the execution of two native born Americans on the charge of espionage.

DAN BECKERMAN: But Donald applied that worldview and those rules in a very different way than Roy had done. So I don't think it's as simple as Donald is just copying Roy. I think he took-- he understood the power of that, of that, those sort of techniques or that worldview, but he, instead of just applying them to legal cases like Roy did, he applied them to himself. And he really used them to create this image, like we were saying in the beginning, you know, this image of someone who cannot lose. Donald J. Trump, the man who-- with the golden toilet, who cannot lose. And he, by creating that persona, he actually gave himself an advantage in the business world and then later in the political world, where, you know, that's just a compelling character. Especially in America, where people, you know, the idea of the American dream is so fundamental. In the business world, for instance, you know, his reputation in negotiations with other business people, he would get, he would get things through. He would get an advantage in dealmaking. He was able to, you know, really short-change, you know, people working for him, not pay bills, using the currency of that character that he had created. And he, he recognized how powerful that was and then he applied it to politics.

JP: I should say, you know, this film is obviously fictionalized to some extent, but also, of course, of course, based on a lot of real things. And just, for, for people listening, how much of this film is fictionalized?

DAN BECKERMAN: Well, the film was written by Gabriel Sherman, who is an investigative journalist. Very accomplished; writes for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. And, you know, he also wrote The Loudest Voice in the Room that became a series about Fox News and had real-world impact on Fox News. A lot of the, you know... he heavily verified and well-sourced, uh, writing he did in that case. And he did that in this case as well, Gabe. You know, he-- every aspect of the movie is based on meticulous research. That said, you're right, it is a fictionalized account. It's a story. It's a movie. But where it matters -- you know, where there's, you know, perhaps some controversy -- I think you'll find in every case that, that it's based on, you know, very thorough research.

JP: Well, here's one of those moments, um, which I can imagine will ring alarm bells in Trumpworld. Uh, it is the, the depiction of Donald Trump's alleged 1989 rape of his wife Ivana Trump. An account which was based on her own testimony under oath in 1990. I'm sure this is something you all knew would inspire some controversy. And so, what is the thinking that goes into a scene which portrays a former U.S. president as a rapist?

DAN BECKERMAN: Yeah. And, you know, I cared a lot about that. I'm not interested in being, you know, accusing real people of things that are baseless or being sensational. And, you know, as the producer on this project, who is kind of, frankly, the most responsible, in, in the sense that, you know, the company is owned by me -- that produced the film, is owned by me -- and, uh, you know, I have, I have to take that responsibility extremely seriously. And so I did a very deep dive into that subject matter, and spoke with Gabe about it and looked at the sources for the information and spoke to many lawyers about it. And, you know, I was compelled to believe that the scene that we have in this movie is, is really quite fair, um, based on the information that's out there. First of all, it's based on a under-oath, um, court deposition that Ivana gave, herself, about this incident in-- during their divorce proceedings. And in the under-oath statement, she describes a scene that, uh, it's not exactly as it appears in the movie. But I would say what she described is actually worse than what's in the movie. And that she did, you know, to be thorough and fair, she did, later, in a book that was written about her, and sort of, there was a disclaimer that was put on that book. And in that book, it also describes a scene that's quite close to what we have in the movie. But in that book, there was a disclaimer that she gave in which she did not deny that it happened. She sort of tries to clarify that she didn't mean to imply that, uh, I think her, her, very-- fairly close to her exact words were: while I felt violated as a woman and these events did happen, I didn't mean to imply that it constituted rape in the criminal sense. So that's a--

JP: Right. I think it-- I just [indistinct]. "In a literal or criminal sense," is kind of--

DAN BECKERMAN: "In a literal or criminal sense." Thank, thank you for that [JP: Yeah.] exact quote. But, you know, it's pretty close to what she said. And, you know, later when he was running for president, it's true she further distanced herself from it and said that, He's the father of my children. He'll make a great president. She did say that as well before she died. But it was important to me and I know it was important to Maria Bakalova, who played Ivana in the movie, to do justice to Ivana as a person. And I think a lot of the tragedy that is in this movie is in that relationship between Donald and Ivana. And, you know, to me, what I see in it is a kind of loss of humanity, um, in that scene, um, [JP: Mm-hmm] that I do think is, is tragic. People who've seen the movie, there's all kinds of reactions. But some people, many people, feel surprised at how much empathy the film builds for this person, especially early in the movie when you see him kind of struggling to prove himself. But obviously, neither do we, do we shy away-- do we-- we don't sugarcoat it, uh, some of the things, either. And overall, I [JP: Yeah.] think it adds up to, like I said, I think something that's sort of a tragic loss of humanity that occurs in this story, as the young Donald Trump kind of transforms into the guy we're not very familiar with right now.

[music]

JP: You know, as we've talked about, the film is about the making of Trump, the character. How he learned to leverage power and people to get his way. And in some ways now, art is kind of imitating life a little bit. When the movie premiered at Cannes, the film, as I said, received this long standing ovation. It appeared to be on this trajectory for a wide release and even critical acclaim and success. But then Team Trump became involved. The famously litigious Trump issued a cease and desist letter, and the billionaire, Dan Snyder, that put up equity for the film, reportedly sought to block its release. ABC and CBS also refused to air commercials for the film during the presidential debate. And you have since had real issues getting the film to theatres. And just, can you walk me through the series of events from Cannes to today?

DAN BECKERMAN: Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to start with the end, which is that we've made it through all those challenges. This is a good news story. We have made it through. The movie is coming out Friday, you know, and we have, you know, a pretty exciting release happening. You know, there's all kinds of reviews coming out and they're pretty, pretty darn positive, I have to say. And the movie is coming out. But yeah, cut back to the Cannes Festival, we had this incredible screening, you know. Pretty elated feelings all around. And then I think it was like an hour after the screening, one of the actors showed me on his phone, Oh, there's a tweet, and the tweet [JP: Hm.] threat from the Trump campaign. And then a couple days later, uh, there were cease and desist letters, with all kinds of, you know, frankly, pretty ridiculous accusations from, from Trump and his lawyers. Threatening, you know, us, but also any distributor who would dare to bring the movie to audiences. So, what that did is... Honestly, that was a chilling experience, because I saw how it did affect the big corporate distribution companies that typically bring movies out. You know, when they're, when they're going to go to a wider audience, you're typically working with a big company that's either a subsidiary of an even bigger company or just, in its own right, a giant kind of entertainment company. And those companies were intimidated by those threats from Trump. And there was a real chilling effect in the industry where, you know, we privately had conversations with people from many of those companies saying they loved the film and wished they could take it on, distribute it, but that they couldn't take the risk on it after those threats. They couldn't take the risk of, you know, being sued by Trump. They couldn't take the risk of alienating what they would see as half the country, you know. Even though the film, like we were talking about, is not really a political attack piece at all. It's-- that's not what it is. Nonetheless, those fears ruled their decision-making process. And I think I was really witnessing, you know, one, it's almost like A Christmas Carol, where you're seeing, you know, the possibilities of the future. And, you know, what I think I was seeing is, okay, yes, there's a direction the country, the United States, could go or any country could go, where a powerful-- if a person is powerful enough and they have low enough regard for the laws and conventions that, that suround things like free speech, uh, they can suppress speech. They can suppress stories. Without even, you know, changing any laws. They can simply use the-- they can use fear to suppress stories that they don't like. As long as they are willing to do it and the companies that would normally, you know, distribute art and movies, um, are willing to be intimidated, it can happen very quickly. And I think that's, that is essentially what was happening. And, you know, for me, I... Like, Ali Abbasi, our director, is Iranian-Danish. And his previous movie to The Apprentice, Holy Spider, there was an extreme reaction from the Iranian government to his film, which was very consequential for him personally. And, you know, [JP: Yeah.] it was certainly banned in that country, but it was, it went further than that in terms of consequences. And to think that his experience with the Iranian government, you know, suppressing his speech, in his next movie in the United States it's happening again, with just a different, powerful person, it says a lot.

[music]

JP: You know, you said you're on track for a release Friday. What changed?

DAN BECKERMAN: We had one distributor, Briarcliff Entertainment, run by a guy named Tom Ortenberg, who has a history of, frankly, being brave in the face of these kinds of challenges. You know, he was the distributor of the movie Spotlight that the Catholic Church was very unhappy with, among many others. And frankly, he, you know, sorry to be crass, but he was the only distributor with enough balls to take on our movie. And so we have, you know, been working in a-- with very little money and very little time, but we have a plan to release the movie and everyone can go see it this weekend. And I do think people seeing this movie is a statement as well. It's a statement that, you know, powerful people shouldn't be able to silence voices that just are inconvenient or unflattering to them in their minds. That should not be something that's easy for them to do.

JP: One thing I wanted to ask you about is Dan Snyder's role in all of this. I don't know how much you can say, but. So this is the former owner of the Washington Commanders NFL football team. He is a friend of the former president. Originally, he believed, it's been reported, that this would be a flattering portrayal of Donald Trump, when he agreed to help fund the film. And, you know, he was allegedly approached by his son-in-law, who runs a production company. And he walked out of the screening when he finally watched the movie. And just, how exactly is it that this MAGA billionaire became one of the main funders of a film that Trump is now so strongly against?

DAN BECKERMAN: Yeah, I mean, look, I've learned over the course of my career that it's extremely difficult to finance any movie. So, you know, is there always a rhyme and reason? It's not always easy to see how a movie gets financed, but you, you basically, you have to do what you have to do. And the fact is, this movie would not have been made without Kinematics investing into it. And, you know, they've put out statements about, you know, why they felt they needed to part ways with the project, and I'll just let them speak for themselves on that. But ultimately, you know, I'm grateful for anyone who helps get the movies made that I, that I feel passionately about. There's usually only one very narrow path up the mountain to get a movie made, and this was ours.

JP: And final question for you. Are there any things that you learned about Donald Trump in the making of this movie that surprised you? Right, or... I think you're going to say yes to this. So, what are the things that you learned about him that surprised you, or any ways that your opinion or sense of him had changed at all over the course of this production.

DAN BECKERMAN: Yeah. I think, I think it just got me to understand more deeply, you know, how a person... You know, 'cause, you know, everybody in the world, we're all people. Even the ones that, you know, a lot of people don't like. You know, we are all people. And how does a person get from A to B? What happened [chuckles] that led to this character that we're all so familiar with, you know, having this role in our society? And I think that's where the movie really has something of value for audiences. Which is, we all understand ambition. We all can understand, in some way, feeling that you need to prove something to, you know, maybe to your family or to yourself. And to watch this character being built by him, by Donald -- he built this character -- he learned these techniques from Roy. And he used them to create this persona of the character he called Donald J. Trump. I see that as being him as a storyteller ahead of his time, because that-- where my mind went on that is that we're in this era where everyone has discovered the power of creating a public persona for yourself, where you curate meticulously how you're perceived in this public way, often through social media. We've all entered that era where that's kind of, you know, the main ingredient we use in -- many of us -- in our careers, socially. It's to create this projected image of ourselves that gives us real-world power. Donald learned to do that from Roy in the late '70s and early '80s, so to me it's actually completely intuitive that that skill of his would resonate in our era.

JP: Dan, this was super interesting. Thank you so much for coming by, and wishing you the best of luck with your release.

DAN BECKERMAN: Thank you so much.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Okay, that was my conversation with Dan Beckerman, one of the producers of The Apprentice. The film recently got two Golden Globe nominations in acting categories -- one for Sebastian Stan as Trump, and another for Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. That is all for today. Front Burner was produced this week by Joyita Sengupta, Kieran Oudshoorn, Lauren Donnelly, and Mackenzie Cameron. Music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chau. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Lokos, and I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to Front Burner, and we'll talk to you next week.

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Encore: Inside controversial Trump biopic 'The Apprentice' - Transcript

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