Donald Trump owes his presidency to Hollywood. The 14 seasons he hosted “The Apprentice” transformed his image from tabloid punchline into decisive billionaire. He got his star on the Walk of Fame for playing this role, and millions of Americans bought the fiction.
When he turned to politics, though, even after being elected president, A-list Hollywood mostly turned up its nose at him, appalled. Now he seems to want to control what made him, but never paid him much respect. He’s succeeding.
Hollywood is no longer protected by its glamour and profit margins. It’s still reeling from the collapse of traditional business models — box office, cable fees, advertising — and the aftereffects of pandemic shutdowns and writer and actor strikes. Entertainment companies, up against tech behemoths with endless resources and an algorithmic sensibility, are desperate to consolidate. They have shed tens of thousands of jobs under pressure to make money-losing streaming businesses profitable. And that’s before A.I. makes these upheavals seem quaint. In this weakened state, the entertainment industry simply can’t afford to fight.
I’ve experienced this chilling moment in two ways, as a journalist who’s covered these media companies for years and as a screenwriter who has worked in Hollywood more recently.
When I covered these companies, they were powerful organizations with imperious public relations departments. The ethos was that they were not to be messed with. Watching these alacrity with which they’ve bowed to Mr. Trump has been a stark reminder of how diminished television networks are from even his first term. Back then, CNN, led by Jeff Zucker — who had put the future president on the air in “The Apprentice” when Mr. Zucker ran NBC in the aughts — covered Mr. Trump aggressively. The CNN reporter Jim Acosta was one of Mr. Trump’s nemeses in the Washington press crops. (A sign of the times: Mr. Acosta left CNN after being given a less prominent slot and now writes a newsletter on Substack.)
Last year, the film I wrote, “The Apprentice,” about Mr. Trump’s relationship with his mentor Roy Cohn, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to an eight-minute standing ovation. Within hours, a Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, called it “malicious defamation” and “election interference by Hollywood elites” that belonged “in a dumpster fire.” Mr. Trump threatened to sue the producers and any company that released it.
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