One of the lesser important side effects of hiring a cartoonish business tycoon—one who used to really permeate our pop culture at one point—to run the country is that we remain surrounded by relics of his past life. Before he spent his days targeting Black NASCAR drivers and ignoring the threat of COVID-19 until it was too late, Donald Trump was an enduring symbol of ostentatious wealth, access, and high society—an ideal accessory to celebrity culture. Whenever film and television needed someone to represent the culture of wealth (or simply stand as a New York ambassador of sorts), Trump was called upon to make a cameo. Per IndieWire, fans have called on Ben Stiller to eradicate one of those cameos—a five seconds-long appearance in 2001's Zoolander—by editing him out of the film entirely. Stiller, however, is not making any plans to erase Trump’s appearance in it anytime soon.
On a recent episode of The Daily Beast’s podcast, The New Abnormal, Stiller confirmed that he will not be yanking the scene out of the cult classic. “I’ve had people reach out to me and say, you should edit Donald Trump out of Zoolander,” Stiller said. “But at the end of the day, that was a time when that exists and that happened.”
In the scene, Trump is standing next to Melania on the red carpet of the VH1 Fashion Awards. “Look, without Derek Zoolander, male modeling wouldn’t be what it is today,” Trump states to E! News. It’s only five seconds! Just a quick little snip and nobody would even know the difference! But alas, Stiller is right: Trump’s presence spans a number of decades and resulted in quite a few appearances across a number of current-day favorites, like Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, The Nanny, The Drew Carey Show, and Home Alone 2, just to name a few. “There were so many movies [back then] that had a silly cameo from Donald Trump,” Stiller said. “He represented a certain thing.”
Stiller used the rest of his time on The New Abnormal to talk about the ways comedy has evolved over the years, including how something like Tropic Thunder—a film that includes blackface—would be received today. “Today, Tropic Thunder probably would not have been made, because the atmosphere would just feel wrong.” You can listen to the full 19-minute episode here.
114 Comments
I dunno, as long as we’re editing blatant, offensive racism out of things when it’s just used for jokes, I fail to see a difference between removing blackface and removing Dolt 45.
But why male racists?
I can also see similar arguments being deployed to justify Trump cameos:“It was a different time. We didn’t know it was wrong.”“It was the ‘00s. Everyone should have known by then there’s no excuse for a Trump cameo, even for comedic purposes.”
Did we, though? Until 2008, when the Obama campaign triggered him into showing his true colors, most folks just knew of him as “that tacky rich guy with the stupid reality show.” Heck, Zoolander came out before The Apprentice even started.
He didn’t start with the birther stuff until 2011.
He was sued for violating racial housing discrimination laws in 1973. He put ads in the newspaper calling for the death penalty for the Central Park 5, and continued to call for the deaths even after they had all been exonerated. It may not have been widely known, but he has shown racist tendencies pretty much as long as he’s been a known public figure.
I prefer we edit him out of the White House instead.
We will celebrate the day he leaves… office. – Goat Lives Matter, West Coast, United States, 14 hours ago
Im getting so fucking smashed if he loses.
Me, my partner and my housemate at the time polished off a bottle of tequila the day he was elected in commiseration, before going to a pub to drink some more. It’d be nice to get drunk at the other end of the emotional scale if and when he loses.
Yeah I’m not going to work that day and I doubt I’ll sleep. Although truth is with mail in ballots so important, it won’t get called for days.
Perhaps even MONTHS…https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undelivered-thousands-of-mail-in-ballots-rejected-for-tardinessThis might get ugly.Whatever you think about Trump, editing him out of things is pretty damn low on the priority list right now. If a five second cameo triggers you that much, you have a lot bigger problems to deal with.
Ahhhhhhh don’t tell me months. I want 2020 to at least end on a positive note before I catch Covid.
It may not be officially certified but the winner should be able to be ‘called’ before morning.
True, but if it is close, no one will be willing to call it. JFK/Kennedy was decided by about 100,000 votes that even today is clouded by some accusations of malfeasance in Chicago. Bush/Gore came to what, 500 votes in Palm beach County? And the networks that did call it, and have to retract it, do not want to make that same mistake again. Also both of those were pre high speed internet or not internet at all, so things moved a little slower. Trump/Clinton was not called until nearly 3 AM, though I think that was more due to the shock by the networks, and they kept holding out hope. If it is close this time, there will be lawyers ready to go before the sun rises the day after election day.This one is going to be interesting. There is a passion on the pro/anti Trump side, there seems to be a collective MEH for Biden, and TBH his VP pick is going to matter as I suspect that Biden will not make it through his first term and voters want to know who is next up at bat. Also, if a Supreme Court justice decides to retire or dies before election day that will add an additional level of intensity.
Anything is possible, but my prediction is it won’t be close.
There’ll be some voter registration fuckery in a couple states that will be contested and some recounts threatened probably, but at the end of the day Biden’s coming out with more EC votes than Trump’s 2016. Current polling averages give Biden 270+ with TX, FL, OH, GA, NC, OH still on the table as ‘toss-ups.’
It just comes down to your first point, “there is a passion on the pro/anti Trump side.” One of those sides is significantly larger than the other.
Last night surprised me a bit. I think there is still a LOT of Trump voters either lying or just keeping their mouth shut. These poll numbers are a rerun of 2016 and I think if the Biden party does not get wise soon enough they are going to fall into the same trap the Clinton campaign did and believe too much in these polls. Also I simply do now know how much they are willing to get Biden out there on the trail unscripted or if they can keep up with Trump. One thing I think they learned is that he will go anywhere, and Biden will need to keep up with him and do the same thing, but I just don’t see Biden with the physical stamina to keep it up. Bernie had it in 2016 and pretty close to it this year, but damn Biden is going to be 78 in November and he is not a spry 78 at that.
that’s so true. It just sucks that I want to go vote in person and have my vote counted in the early totals (which drive turnout later in the day) but I just can’t, I’ve gotta mail it in in case anything bad happens and I can’t make it. like…the west coast is less of a toss up, but this year early wins in Virginia or (fingers crossed) Pennsylvania could affect evening voting in Texas, Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada.
I plan to get fucked up either way, will just have different reasons to drink
Here here to that.
I’m getting smashed regardless. For different reasons, but none the less neccessary.
I’m going to dance in the streets, I kid you not. Probably will have some rum too.
If I lived in a major city I’d do the same.
I live in Texas-Lite and I don’t gaf!
I’m buying a bottle of vodka before the election.If Trump loses, mixed drinks for me!If Trump wins, I’ll just pop off the cap and start chugging.
If only it were that easy! Even if we vote the bum out of office come November (no guarantee there!), his stain upon our country’s history (move over, James Buchanan, we have a new worst president challenging you for the title) will remain and spread far into future terms. He has certainly lowered the discourse—don’t think that “Twitter as an official channel for the administration” is ending anytime soon!—even further than the depths it had sunk to previously. This is purely speculative, but I have a feeling Biden will come to regret it if he wins the office. He’s going to be the janitor/handyman, cleaning up and fixing the mess left by his predecessor, trying to budge the Overton window slightly left when he gets a chance. Barring some great fortune landing in his lap (or conversely, great tragedy quelled during his term), I feel like he’s going to end up a one-termer. I honestly hope I’m wrong about all of this…except for the voting Trump out of office thing.
All of that is his stated goal, to spend one term fixing Trump’s mess then handing things off to a younger, more progressive successor.
Considering how old he is, I get the impression that Biden wouldn’t want more than one term anyways. I always got the impression that the goal was to try to pass the torch to whoever his VP is after his term is up.
I always got the impression that the goal was to try to pass the torch to whoever his VP is after his term is up.Now, if he (or the team dedicated to the task) would actually make a pick. Is he waiting for it to be his October suprise? If so, I can’t really decide if that’s really smart or really stupid.
Traditionally, the pick is announced shortly before the convention, which means it’s currently still earlier than most VPs have been announced, so Biden is in line with most on that front. For the record, here’s a list of when VP candidates were announced in recent memory: Mike Pence July 14th, Tim Kaine July 22, Paul Ryan August 11, Sarah Palin August 29, Joe Biden August 23, Dick Cheney July 25, John Edwards July 6, Joe Lieberman August 8, Jack Kemp August 10, Al Gore July 9. There are some early July ones here, but there are a lot of August and late July announcements as well, and I don’t see any correlation with announcement time and winning here.Plus he probably wants to vet the VPs as much as possible, to make sure that there aren’t any nasty surprises in their past that most don’t know about yet. It’s also quite possible that a decision hasn’t been made yet, and the offer is almost certainly extended to the person before the public is informed, and it may take time for that person to decide if they want the position or not.I’ll expect we hear who the candidate is around August 1st, which will be about an average time for when they’re normally announced. Now if you feel that he should announce earlier, that’s fine, but he is following the normal playbook so far as far as timing for the VP pick is concerned.I also want to stress that I don’t particularly like Biden very much (although I’ll still be voting for him because the alternative is so much worse), but I fail to see how this is hurting his chances that much. He’s currently leading by pretty much every metric, and the VP pick matters much more for him than most, because there is a pretty big statistical chance that he will die or be incapacitated during his term, and even if that doesn’t happen, it’s likely that his VP pick will be the next standard bearer for the party. So I’m fine with him taking his time. It’s not a decision that he should rush.
He’s currently leading by pretty much every metric, and the VP pick matters much more for him than most, because there is a pretty big statistical chance that he will die or be incapacitated during his term, and even if that doesn’t happen, it’s likely that his VP pick will be the next standard bearer for the party. So I’m fine with him taking his time. It’s not a decision that he should rush.I’m just worried because “there’s no chance Trump will take this” was the line I kept hearing during the last presidential election cycle, all the way up to the point that the results were announced (and even then, there was a lot of disbelief). Having that VP pick nailed down would at least give me chance for hope…or omens of doom if the pick is bad and wrong. So I suppose you’re right…but I won’t stop worrying and fretting about this until the election is actually called.
I get where you’re coming from there, and I’m worried too, but I think that that is why he needs to take his time and pick a VP that will be good rather than rushing it. I don’t think that there are a ton of people out there hesitating to vote for Biden because they don’t know who his VP is yet. And those like that who do exist should have plenty of time to decide about what they think of the VP if Biden announces his choice in late July or August.I’m not arguing that Biden should assume that he has it in the bag and just not try, which would be the wrong thing to do, but that he doesn’t need to rush to try to get attention or make a desperate ploy at the moment. I fear a VP pick being a Sarah Palin-esque disaster much more than him announcing one too late. I agree that waiting until October would be too late, mainly because it would be almost impossible to get the person on the ballot.There are some people that were floated that I think would be disasters, and some that I quite like (I’m not going to go into which ones that I think are which unless you want to know; I don’t think that it’s that relevant to what we’re talking about), so I think that it would be better to be sure that the person is the best person rather than picking it as soon as possible. Also, while Trump is dominating the news right now, it only seems to be hurting him. His approval and head to head poll aggregators on Fivethirtyeight are continuously going down. Unless things start changing for the worse, I don’t think that Biden needs to change his current strategy at the moment. Also, COVID makes most traditional campaign methods a bad idea at the moment.I also think that you’re coming from a good place, we both desire the same things, and people can certainly disagree on what the best strategy is, and you could certainly be right. I never claim to know everything (I certainly didn’t see Trump’s victory coming), and I could certainly be wrong, but my opinions are still my opinions. We’ll see what happens.
Yeah, agreed.“Edit” means fire from a cannon, right?
When are the Harts going to denounce Trump? Includes bonus footage of Mrs. Cunningham and Michael Bluth.
Ugh! Run away Mrs. C! Run away and never look back!
If you find a hideous malignant tumour in your body, you make an effort to cut it out. No difference
A movie clip can’t increase in size.
I am also not going to edit Donald Trump out of the dashcam footage from my car when he used the crosswalk against the lights.
I would give him props for hanging on all the way from 49th to 56th Street, but I’m pretty sure he did that because it was a cheaper ride home than a cab.
I can’t really say he permeates “our” pop culture (at least from my perspective) since I was only intermittently aware of him (or his excesses) until the election season began in 2016. Never been a fan of “reality” TV in its various permutations and I remain unimpressed by ostentation with no sense of style or class. But that’s just me.
Tropic Thunder does have a satirical point or two to make.Zoolander less so…
Maybe there’s more to life than being really, really, really ridiculously satirical?
MerMAN!
Non-issue. I hate the guy but who honestly gives a shit other than people who care way too much about dumb shit like this?
Good answer—anyone arguing that a cameo in a comedy from 20 years ago somehow “legitimizes” or endorses Trump is going, in the words of a movie I agree couldn’t be made today, “full mentally-challenged individual who has been let down by society.”I also agree with him about Tropic Thunder, and that feels like a step backward, culture-wise, where we grow more, not less, obtuse about what the actual, obvious targets of a satire are, and instead double down on willful misinterpretation.
we’re also a bit late on the ‘legitimize trump’ front
Yeah, I just read that he won
oh damn dude get offline and grab some blankets
Caring about a decades-old Trump cameo is a waste of time and energy on par with adding thousands of dollars worth of his merch to your shopping cart and letting it sit there, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to take a break from the internet.
I thought Tropic Thunder was hilarious at the time, I even bought the Blu-ray. Now I can’t even bring myself to watch it again. I think it would make me more sad than happy. Times change. I’m not ashamed to admit that I used to find it funny, and I see no problem in not finding it funny anymore. I still like Zoolander though, and I keep forgetting Trump was in it. I’ve seen the movie multiple times and I honestly cannot remember that scene. I re-watched Iron Man 2 recently and the Elon Musk cameo made me cringe.
Tropic Thunder has not aged badly at all. There is a difference between blackface for cruelty and blackface for satire. Tropic Thunders blackface was a part of the story, not just a throwaway joke, and fit in with the overall theme of mocking hollywood and self important actors. And it was repeatedly addressed during the movie.
Tropic Thunder has not aged badly at all. There is a difference between blackface for cruelty and blackface for satire. Tropic Thunders blackface was a part of the story, not just a throwaway joke, and fit in with the overall theme of mocking hollywood and self important actors. And it was repeatedly addressed during the movie.And now, with all the controversies of white people playing Asian and straight/cis people playing gay/trans people as shameless award bait, it holds up really well. And the movie had black characters call him out on it. It wasn’t “Oh, look how transgressive we’re being.”
I understand why whitewashing roles is bad, and I also understand the issue with playing trans people given their underrepresentation. But how is a straight person playing a gay person inappropriate? I seriously doubt gay people are underrepresented in movies and theatre – if anything I would put money down that it’s the opposite! In that case the issue is with having enough representative roles written, not with representative actors performing.
I understand why whitewashing roles is bad, and I also understand the issue with playing trans people given their underrepresentation. But how is a straight person playing a gay person inappropriate? I seriously doubt gay people are underrepresented in movies and theatre – if anything I would put money down that it’s the opposite! In that case the issue is with having enough representative roles written, not with representative actors performing.Gay actors are underrepresented – as leading men. As action stars. I can’t name any. There are plenty of character actors and best friends. It’s a cliche that if a straight actor plays gay/bi/opposite gender etc, they win an award. Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Colin Firth in A Single Man, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain, Jared Leto on Dallas Buyers Club, Mahershala Ali in Moonlight, Sam Raimi as Freddie Mercury, Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, Charlize Theron in Monster, Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote. Even on Modern Family, the one with all the awards was the straight actor playing the gay character.Nothing against any of these actors. They’re great. It’s the system, that a straight guy playing a queer guy is ACTING and doing deep, interesting ACTOR work, while no one will let an openly gay guy be Star Lord or kiss Katherine Heigl in a movie. That’s what’s not fair.
Sam Raimi as Freddie MercuryI know you mean Rami Malek, but this is hilarious.
I want to see that movie now.
Hm. I get what you’re saying, but as a gay dude, all I really care about is the performance. Does the actor disappear into the role? Is the performance compelling? Is the story interesting? Those are things I care about.
Gay actors play straight people all the time. They’re just in the closet, so we don’t necessarily know about it. Now, that really sucks. IMO, if more actors came out all this wouldn’t be a problem.
But mostly I just care about the quality of the movie.
The point is a straight actor being playing gay is an award-bait stunt, like an actor gaining or losing a bunch of weight. I agree with you in general, but the idea that playing gay is how you prove what a talented actor you are AND actual gay actors gt shut out of everything but sassy best friend, is a problem. Why can’t Chris Colfer play the lead in an Oscar-bait romantic drama?
No it’s really not. Stop what you’re doing. It’s dumb
Gay actors are underrepresented – as leading men. As action stars. I can’t name any. Tom Cruise and John Travolta don’t count?
The first twenty minutes mocking the Hollywood machine and location shoots were amazing to me. after that everything else was gravy.
To be fair to me, that’s not the part I think didn’t age well.
If anything I’d argue that Tropic Thunder has gotten better with age. It was ahead of its time in portraying how Hollywood (and by extension the rest of white America) pays lip service to diversity in the most self-serving way possible.
I rewatched ‘IM2′ not long ago, and the Elon Musk cameo is just such a weird thing. He’s just there for a couple of seconds, taking up space in an obvious way, and then he’s not.
I thought Tropic Thunder was hilarious at the time, I even bought the Blu-ray. Now I can’t even bring myself to watch it again. I think it would make me more sad than happy. Times change. I’m not ashamed to admit that I used to find it funny, and I see no problem in not finding it funny anymore.I think it’s the opposite. It’s the ONE blackface gag that had a point. Where the punchline wasn’t “Oh look how naughty we’re being by doing something transgressive” but an actually funny joke, that aged EXTREMELY well, about parts for minorities going to white straight actors trying to get an Oscar nomination. (And Robert Downey Jr did, for a genre that never ever ever gets nominated for acting). The other blackface gags recently, like on 30 Rock or Scrubs, didn’t have a point. “Look at us being taboo” isn’t a joke. “lol random” isn’t a joke. This actually was. Sarah Silverman spoke about this, recently. Her take was correct, I think.
You think Jon Hamm’s blackface satire in 30 Rock didn’t have a point? Even with Tracy Morgan literally ending the sketch by attacking him?
You think Jon Hamm’s blackface satire in 30 Rock didn’t have a point? Even with Tracy Morgan literally ending the sketch by attacking him?I don’t think the joke “Wow, these old shows from the 50s that no one ever watches any more and are exclusively remembered for being massively racist, are massively racist” is a point that really needs to be made. The point of that sketch was the shock value. Sarah Silverman did the same joke on her Comedy Central show. She gave an interview a few years ago where she talked about her approach to comedy “I was praised for it! It made me famous! It was like, I’m playing a character, and I know this is wrong, so I can say it. I’m clearly liberal. That was such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actually thought it was dealing with racism by using racism. I don’t get joy in that anymore. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I’m not that person anymore.” https://www.gq.com/story/sarah-silverman-i-love-you-america-profile(Read the whole thing, it’s cool). And that’s the point. The point is she’s Sarah Silverman and the cool tastemakers like her, so she can get away with making that joke and knowing that no one will think she means it. She’s cooler and higher status than Jeff Dunham or Opie and Anthony. It’s hipsterism pretending to be comedy. It’s how hilarious it is to drink Pabst because everyone knows you aren’t really poor.
Fully agreed, and it’s handled well as a two-hander: using it as a target for both the lengths method actors go to for awards recognition and the Academy et al swooning for such bait, and the inclusion of Alpa Chino saying what’s on everyone’s mind (Brandon T. Jackson’s killer line readings of “WHAT the FUCK?” when Kirk hugs him after their altercation and “What do YOU mean, ‘you people’?” are as funny as anything in the movie)
Yeah, the whole “you never go full” r-word speech, while making a funny point about shitty Oscar-bait performances, was never great, but is pretty unwatchable now. The word isn’t necessary for any of Downey Jr’s characters, it’s just painful.
To be fair that was crass and offensive in 2008 just as it is today. It’s not like 12 years ago was the dark ages.
I agree.
12 years ago we had Louis C.K. and South Park doing N-Word bits on public TV, because comedy trends at the time emphasised the idea of fighting racism by taking away the power of certain slurs through the use of shock comedy.
Regardless of how you feel about then vs. now, we’ve objectively swung waaaay towards the PC end of the pendulum at the moment.
It used to be illegal for the bad guys to win in a movie. We’re fine.
Hey, that’s kind of coming back too!
Remember the massive controversy over Sam Rockwell’s character in Three Billboards?
Exactly, controversy. As in “some people said they didn’t like it”. Doesn’t quite compare to being enshrined in the law. I don’t remember Sam Rockwell losing his career over it or anything either.
That aspect of the film is hurtful without any redeeming qualities. I still would much rather watch Tropic Thunder than an inoffensive comedy that is also not funny.
Yeah, that r-word speech is what makes the movie problematic for me. It’s very cringey now.
I don’t think that’s fair. The entire point of that scene is to point out how people in Hollywood actually view mental illness and people with special needs, namely that they’re a gimmick that can be used to make money and win awards. The scene doesn’t land any punches unless Stiller’s and Downey’s characters use the kind of language that selfish asshole Hollywood actors more than likely use in that kind of situation.
No, I thought of that and I don’t totally disagree, but I think the scene works just as well without using that word. I don’t know, I’d rather ask someone with an intellectual disability how they feel than make my own judgement. Here’s what I found: “If you look at the sequences that use the word retard, if you substituted the N-word, none of them would’ve made it, you know?” from
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93540773Obviously, they’re going to be more sensitive about these issues than other people, but I’d default to not offending people just for one joke. Its not like there are a dearth of jokes about how out-of-touch and fake politically correct Hollywood is, that we have to desperately cling to the few that punch down.I don’t think they movie should be banned or edited or anything. Just that I’m not comfortable watching it.
zoolander has a blackface scene too
Imagine working on a project for a few months 19 years ago and suddenly people are in your face wanting you to go back and revise it. What project did YOU work on 19 years ago? Me, I recall I did some book illustrations. If the public starts clamoring for me to revise the illustrations my first question is “Whose going to pay me to do it?Oh, a Zoolander was about clueless narcissists who are 10 time dumber than they imagined themselves to be.
I was 16, toss it all in a bin and light it on fire.
So is he bad?
Melania looks very different in that pic. She is actually pretty, instead of looking like she just got back from having a facelift. She has what appears to be a natural smile, one that is extending to her eyes. Looks like she was having fun.
She looks coked out of her skull to me.
Thats possible too. Coke is fun.
Zoolander was one of a handful of movies that was shot on location in NYC before 9/11, but released afterwards. Ben Stiller chose to remove the Twin Towers with CGI. So it’s kind of funny that he’s already altered this movie to eliminate a painful reminder of one local trauma, but is now leaving in a cameo from the guy who would later allow something 10x worse than 9/11 to happen to NYC.
Zoolander was one of a handful of movies that was shot on location in NYC before 9/11, but released afterwards. Ben Stiller chose to remove the Twin Towers with CGI. So it’s kind of funny that he’s already altered this movie to eliminate a painful reminder of one local trauma, but is now leaving in a cameo from the guy who would later allow something 10x worse than 9/11 to happen to NYC.Holy shit I did not know that. Of course 9/11 was immediate. I see Stiller’s point, honestly. A lot of this stuff is overcorrction that we let Trump into the tent, let him represent business success and aspirational wealth, when he was such a garbage person. Why? We know about some of the racist stuff, eg Central Park Five. Why wasn’t it disqualifying.
As an avatar of aspirational wealth, probably more true of his cameo in Wall Street 2, here he’s at least partly representing a culture of shallow narcissism.
Well the Central Park 5 were guilty so….
Yeah, “Zoolander”s box office was hurt opening right in the shadow of 9/11, but caught on eventually on a successful home release run.
You mean, 9,110?
It just doesn’t matter. Seems kinda petty. Like fucking with Reagan movies wouldn’t have made him care about AIDS. Who cares. It’s a joke, he’s a joke. It’ll be more of an insult after he leaves. It’ll be “He peaked in Zoolander tbh”
I think that there is a bit of a difference in altering a film before it’s release to avoid being insensitive to a recent national tragedy, and altering it years later after it has been released and became a part of pop culture. There are some cases where I feel that the latter is justified, like the incredibly racist depiction of black centaurs in Fantasia, but I don’t think that that is the case here. Trump was a figure that popped up a lot in pop culture a lot during that time period. To edit that out I feel is erasing that history, history that needs to be confronted rather than erased.
I agree and don’t think Stiller (or anyone else) should actually edit out the Trump cameo. There are obviously a lot of differences between the two things. No pre-9/11 director who included the Twin Towers in an establishing shot was trying to show some grim harbinger of death — they were a famous landmark, and including them in the shot made the setting clear to an audience. The Twin Towers weren’t fated to collapse. They’d still be standing there with some slightly more vigilant airport security. Whereas Trump actually was a grim harbinger of death. All of those 80’s and 90’s cameos are now haunting reminders that his pathologies have always been with us, and we were all complicit in allowing him to infect our culture.
Yeah, I think that we really need to reckon with why our culture chose this talentless, odious hack and failure who’s only successes came from the fact that he had (most likely illegally) inherited massive sums of money as a symbol of aspirational success. It speaks to so much of the inherent attitude in this country that says that the rich are always rich because of talent, and never because they started out with advantages. No, Donald Trump is successful because he’s such a great businessman, despite the multiple bankruptcies and thousands of lawsuits and countless failed business ventures and…. etc., It can’t be because the system is set up to reward already being rich and not hard work or talent. Because if that were the case, then that means that pretty much every right wing economic argument is wrong, and some of the successful might not deserve their success, and that would make them feel bad about themselves, so we need to make lots of propaganda that says that’s not the case at all. The system is fine, and any attempt to make modest reforms to make it more equitable are socialist, and socialism is inherently bad because of the Soviet Union, despite many of said reforms being already implemented by governments who didn’t go on to commit mass murder against there own citizens, but no, having a sufficient social safety net will inevitably lead to genocide, somehow.While up until recently Trump was a mostly harmless symptom to a much larger problem (I’m speaking in societal scales here. The people that he sexually assaulted, the people that he discriminated against, and the workers that he took advantage of were certainly harmed by him, but it didn’t extend to the whole society), but the attitudes and systems that allowed him to be an influential public figure in the first place speaks to a societal rot that has been growing at least since the 80s, and that the younger generations seem to be thankfully mostly rejecting.
In an outtake of the Little Rascals (that they show during the credits) he spits out popcorn with several extras sitting right in front of him.
I think there’s a lesson to be learned here about taking the Bojack Horseman route and using “A Ryan Seacrest-Type” rather than the real thing.If it’s meant to be a parody or winking moment anyway then a) it’s probably funnier and b) when/if Musk/Trump/whoever turns out to be a real-life villain you aren’t retroactively dealing with garbage like this.At least until someone more integral to the cast/production turns out to be a real-life villain.
1) Zoolander was so over the top, that it benefited from grounding it in a very real-world context. These cameos from the VH1 awards show are shot in an almost verité style very faithful to the way they’d have shown on TV.2) Bojack constantly uses real identities like Andrew Garfield, J.D. Salinger, and beloved character actress Margo Martindale. Anyway, the Seacrest-Type character isn’t an attempt at anonymizing or distancing from Seacrest himself, the joke only works because they explicitly call him out by name (the joke is that Seacrest has no individually distinguishing talent or personality beyond a sycophantic mouthpiece, but somehow still managed the name recognition to anchor a presentation show).
I think George Lucas has already shown us the way on this one: replace Trump with a CGI Jabba the Hutt.
There’s Pat O’Brien… I was looking for the coked‐up voicemail awhile back and it seems like it had been magically scrubbed from the internet.
He couldn’t even fake looking like he’s not wracked with terror and disgust (and pain, maybe?) being on that set.
Doesn’t Tropic Thunder get a pass? I mean, the whole point is how fucking offensive it is. I’d say the only reason not to make it today is that it would be totally unbelievable that a major actor would agree to it. “Never go full retard and never go anywhere near blackface.”
No. Nothing gets a pass anymore because apparently context doesn’t matter. It’s just about appeasing the tumblr users
I’m fine leaving him in, because we need to remember he existed and how we got to this point to make sure we never do it again.
Let’s not forget his cameo on Da Ali G Show, where Ali G tries to sell him on his idea of ice cream gloves.
I’d say he fits perfectly into the movie, since one of the running jokes is how shallow and status-obsessed the fashion industry is.Who better to personify those qualities?
Zoolander? The movie with the coal mine blackface scene?
It’s not like Zoolander made Trump look less like a jackass so I have no problem with Ben Stiller’s decision.
Who ever thought Trump represented the ‘culture of wealth’ ? Trump was a corrupt narcissistic wanna-be that nobody took seriously since before big Daddy Fred died. Anybody that actually represented even an inkling of wealthy culture was laughing at Trump’s absolute lack of taste and burning desire to be recognized. He was always tacky and crass and void of culture (which starring in a reality TV show cemented). It’s. a shame more people don’t remember this.
Here’s why I’d like to see it taken out: I watch silly movies like Zoolander to escape for few hours from this 4-year waking nightmare. Seeing Trump’s bloated face even for a few seconds pulls me right back into it.Play JaJa Ding Dong!
I have a searing hatred for 45 as much as anyone, but I would prefer people trying to force this alteration into channeling their energy into issues and solutions that really, actually matter in the big picture of this year, election especially included.