Tony Kushner on why he wouldn’t write a Trump or Reagan character: “There’s no core coherence”
Award-winning playwright and The Fablemans screenwriter Tony Kushner doesn't like characters like Donald Trump or Ronald Reagan
Aux News Tony Kushner
How many times, over Donald Trump’s many long years in the public eye, have you thought his behavior was simply too cartoonishly villainous to believe? (If the answer is “none times,” um, feel free to stop reading.) Award-winning playwright and screenwriter of The Fablemans Tony Kushner prefers his bad guys with a little more substance, which is why you won’t find any Trump (or Ronald Reagan) stand-ins in his work.
Speaking with Slash Film about his screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical film, Kushner reflects, “I’ve always felt like, I don’t know how you would write a character if you can’t understand the way the character self-ideates. How does the person straddle their own contradictions? I mean, unless they’re psychotic, in which case they don’t have to do that.” He adds, “This is why I don’t think I really want to write Donald Trump as a character. I didn’t want to write Ronald Reagan as a character, because I don’t think there’s any core coherence and I don’t think they bother with it.”
“Your character lacks core coherence”—now that’s a playwright burn if there ever was one. Kushner acknowledges that the “danger” of writing more substantive villains is that “it can lead you into a place where you’re writing Nazis and trying to make people feel sorry for them.” Thankfully, that is not the case with The Fablemans’ bad guys, who are merely high school bullies.
As such, Kushner has no problems making those characters three-dimensional, because “most people, including people who behave pretty despicably, you have to think, ‘How does this person understand him or herself and what’s their internal ego ideal?’” He explains. “How do they explain the moments to themselves when they fail to live up to either their own standards or what we would consider more generally shared standards of decency and good behavior?” No, Donald Trump doesn’t seem like the kind to worry about living up to a shared standard of decency. It’s excellent advice for writers, though!
33 Comments
“Core coherence?!”
Stop using words Trump doesn’t know!
I’ve noticed shows and movies occasionally try to do a Trumpian character, but they can never quite match the sheer pettiness of the actual person. Like writers are generally taught that it’s good to have deep, nuanced characters who have good parts and bad parts, or even if you’re writing a melodrama villain there’s a certain grandeur you wanna get. And along comes a guy who makes Biff Tannen look like freakin’ Macbeth.
Something people keep forgetting is that Trump is old, he’s been a public figure for a long time, and a fair few cheesy 80s/90s villains – including Biff Tannen – were based on him. He’s an archetype unto himself.This is also why noone should have been surprised that he attained the presidency: pop culture had been predicting it for literally decades.
Had any of these Trump-like characters actually been president?
iirc Dennis Hopper’s Bowser was
Who is this guy who denigrates? Has HE ever been president? And nobody somebodies always put down people of greatness… The ignorant arrogance of the MSM mushrooms in this thread is typical of the liberaltardation that infects these people with such epic clinical Cognitive Dissonance. That minority has more degrees in nothing than IQ. A whole page full of Social Justice warriors in the safe spaces spew spores….
Right – there are no redeeming qualities. “Oh at least he loves his family” – he doesn’t.And he’s fractally petty. You would have to script every scene where every action he takes is petty, from how ice cream scoops are doled out to who gets credit for every idea. It would be exhausting to watch.
Maybe that’s just it with those guys: they don’t have core coherence so they’re constantly attempting to change the reality around them to make up for that lack of internal cohesion. I feel like there’s a way to make that work on screen, but you’d have to spend so much time with that person to explain what’s going on you’d end up just doing Branded to Kill or American Psycho over and over again.
“Constantly trying to change the reality around them”Sounds like Cthulhu.
Tony Kushner became famous for Angels in America, a play that features Roy Cohn – real-life Roger Stone accomplice, Reagan advisor, and Trump family consigliere. So, this kind of feels like bullshit?
Cool, you don’t get Angels in America. Cool. Thanks?
that’s a good point, although, I think Roy Cohn had an internal coherence based on self-hate.
One of the ultimate crescendos is the character most like Kushner having to stand Kaddish over him. It’s deeply concerned with his humanity, even as it finds it woefully lacking.
It’s a fair enough comment but Angels was written over thirty years ago, so it’s not unreasonable for someone to change their opinion about a topic like this.
I watched Comey Rule a couple of weeks ago, which Brendan Gleeson as Trump, the only dramatic portrayal of Trump I’ve heard of that wasn’t going for goofy caricature.And man, this guy comes across as so petty, childish, and stone stupid. I wouldn’t believe this was a real adult if I didn’t see some guy much like this plastered across media and news for years and still, incredibly, vaunted by a weird cult of people who can only aspire to be that petty, childish and stone stupid.
I don’t know how you would write a character like this as a credible adult human either.
Kushner acknowledges that the “danger” of writing more substantive villains is that “it can lead you into a place where you’re writing Nazis and trying to make people feel sorry for them.” I feel this is a deeply weird take for a writer to have, but hey maybe that’s why I’m not an award-winning playwright/screenwriter.
It sounds like that idea of writing anti-war movies still mskes war look awesome.
Imagine a movie that follows a man living in Germany in the late 1930’s. He’s a good father and husband—even a good neighbor—and we, as viewers, grow to sympathize with him, because that’s basically how fiction works. But then, the final scene: he puts on his uniform and reports for duty; Uh-oh, he’s a soldier. Ya know? Of course, producing such a thing might have been an interesting exercise—and the product itself might have something to say about the nature of bureaucracy or loyalty or evil or war—it might even be some people’s idea of “great art.” But was it responsibly conceived? Was it worth making?I don’t think it’s weird at all for writers to worry about these things.
I see your point and respect the argument you make. I suppose for me it’s more about what kind of story you’re trying to tell—depending on the execution, the hypothetical you sketched out could be good for a story exploring the nature of evil (as you suggested), but not every story needs (or can support) an in-depth character study about people who commit atrocities.
I guess I reflexively roll my eyes a bit when writers/creators talk about their audiences as if they were moral blank slates that can’t be trusted to comprehend “This character has complex motivations but is still an awful person,” but I was probably grouchy and reading too much into the comment.
I guess I reflexively roll my eyes a bit when writers/creators talk about their audiences as if they were moral blank slatesOkay, this I understand. But I guess I tend to excuse it in a guy like Kushner, who’s so well known for working on big, ambitious projects more occupied with history and moral considerations (not necessarily “morals,” per se) than smaller, personal stories, or style-driven blockbusters. Because, after all, he does tend toward a certain kind of blockbuster—so how much can he really assume about his audience? And if anyone gets to talk about navigating gray areas, maybe it is the writer of Munich and Lincoln.
That is treating your audience like children and making a film like designing a kindergarten level morality lesson. If you have to explain to your audience that Nazis were also humans, but were still evil so don’t feel too bad for them, then your audience is children or morons. How could it be irresponsible to depict your enemies as humans who made choices that led them down a different path rather than dehumanized monsters who do everything out of a love of cruelty and pain? Only if you’re making a propaganda film.The world has never been black and white and they started making film in color decades ago. There’s no reason for the morality of a story to be simple when that’s not a reflection of reality.
That is treating your audience like children and making a film like designing a kindergarten level morality lesson.Yeah.If you have to explain to your audience that Nazis were also humans, but were still evil so don’t feel too bad for them, then your audience is children or morons.Could be.How could it be irresponsible to depict your enemies as humans who made choices that led them down a different path rather than dehumanized monsters who do everything out of a love of cruelty and pain?Good question—but I never meant to suggest a film that was especially concerned with individual choice. The film I hoped to suggest, anyway, was one in which the character’s profession is regarded as entirely incidental to his character. He could just as well be a baker or a factory worker—because, guess what? A job’s a job.The world has never been black and white and they started making film in color decades ago. There’s no reason for the morality of a story to be simple when that’s not a reflection of reality.I wouldn’t argue with that. But I guess there’s no need for morality at all, according to some artists—or, no need to worry about it on a conscious level, anyway—and certainly no need to share such concerns after the fact. But not Kushner, apparently.
Reagan certainly had his issues, but comparing him to Trump is a false equivalence perpetuated mostly by people who were not alive when Reagan was. Reagan had actual political beliefs which may have been awful, but still puts him ahead of Trump who’s only belief of any kind is “I like to be worshipped and will say anything to get that.”
Regan believed Commies were bad because they were too cool for him in Hollywood. He committed treason and presided over a disastrous response to a deadly pandemic. Both of them were cancers for our nation and economy and the GOP made them heroes.
Those guys were two shit-peas in a pod.
That’s not the point they’re making. People can be similarly bad but have entirely different personalities and reasons for acting in such a way.
Both were narcissistic babies who the cool kids shunned and they made it their mission to fuck with those people.There is less difference than you think.
Reducing complicated personalities and political events to who sits at whose lunch table is a bit childish, don’t you think? So if the cool kids had been Republicans those two would have been Democrats? And at what point ever have the Democrats been cool?
Regan started his political career against communism because Hollywood communists thought he was a bore and he wasn’t getting cast in their movies. Trump busted his ass to be a celebrity, and has always been seen as a joke. They wanted to be cool and were jokes. Show me anything that disputes that.They joined parties that were filled with people against the cool people that shunned them. The name on the party never mattered to them. If Trump could have taken over the Democrats, you think he wouldn’t have tried? If McCarthy had been a Democrat, you think Reagan would have led the California GOP.Your lack of knowledge of politicians is what is childish, their actions were childish. I just pointed out the obvious.
Ok, you’re the one trying to psychoanalyze private individuals from their public faces, with one of those people long dead. That’s impossible and unverifiable. Just bitching about people you don’t like, basically.Hate them all you want but don’t pretend reading some articles gives you any more actual insight into their motives or behaviors than the self-aggrandizing journalists who wrote them. And I say self-aggrandizing because any journalist who takes up a topic like the innermost thoughts and feelings of a politician has abandoned all pretense of objectivity and is pretending to skills they do not possess.Your speculation is juvenile and pointless. As, I suspect, are most of your endeavors. Good luck with them.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/06/28/the-unknowableby 1938 he had swung so far toward the idealistic left that he tried to join the Hollywood Communist Party. He was quickly rejected, on the shrewd ground that he was not Party material (too garrulous, too patriotic). During the Second World War, he became addicted to the Reader’s Digest—so much so that he seemed to memorize every issue as soon as it hit the stands. Reagan has been rightly mocked for the condensed, packaged quality this gave to his thought, but at least until he left the employ of General Electric, in 1962, he was able to talk interestingly about subjects other than politics. From then on, all his considerable intelligence focussed on conservative doctrine, and his general knowledge atrophied.
“May”?????? Guess you forgot about AIDS.
Lack of logical thought processes, and critical thinking skills absent completely – simpletons. And not mentally healthy simpletons. A lack of complexity and occasional contradiction in various core beliefs is normal in a healthy human being. Being able to change your mind or hold two somewhat conflicting views simultaneously is NORMAL (such as). Bigly SAD.