TORONTO – It’s approaching midnight in Toronto and “The Apprentice” director Ali Abbasi is sitting with his intrepid distributor, Briarcliff Entertainment’s Tom Ortenberg, and producer James Shani, in the bar of the Ritz Carlton.
“We are getting toothless,” Abbasi says, referring to Hollywood. “The studio bosses told me themselves they’re not taking enough risk.”
None of them would take a risk on his feature film about Donald Trump, starring Sebastian Stan as a much-younger Trump and Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn, which just had a sneak screening for press at TIFF. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and, despite strong reviews, was snubbed by one US distributor after another.
Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment and Shani’s Rich Spirit closed a deal just last week to acquire distribution rights. They will release the film in 2,000 theaters on Oct. 11, ahead of the November election.
Abbasi, an Iranian-Danish filmmaker whose last film “Holy Spider” about a serial killer of sex workers in Iran made him a target of the Islamic government, did not imagine his film about Trump would be such a tough sell in a democracy.
“I thought – ‘Fuck Iran. Fuck the Islamic dictatorship.’ I thought, ‘I’ll make a movie in a free country.’”
But it has been unexpectedly difficult. And for him, the Hollywood rejection amounts to censorship. That bothers him, even as he appreciates the win of getting a deal done. “We’re here, yes, but I would call it a sort of censorship,” he said.
Hollywood “sells everything as if it’s ice cream. Not everything has to be political, but whether you like it or not – it’s content, it’s not ice cream. Even a Marvel movie is political in its own way. And what you choose not to say is also political.”
The movie has been in the works for six years, Abbasi said. He wanted to do a portrait of Trump, not because he aimed to do a hit piece, but because he considers the former president and current candidate an icon of American culture.
“Like Andy Warhol. Or Muhammed Ali,” said the director. “He’s a president of the age where truth is broken, and cubistic.”
He went to the studios to get financing, having worked with Sebastian Stan for years in developing the project. “They said to me, ‘We would love to do this film, but if Trump wins, if the studio gets sold – they’ll come after us.’ Or they would say, ‘We don’t want 85 million consumers to hate us.’”
Still, the movie came together three years ago, and then Jan. 6 happened. “Before January 6 there was interest. After that the emails came one after the other, ‘No. No. No. No,’” said Abbasi. “Everything fell apart. It fell apart a few times.”
In the end, he said, the movie is not terribly anti-Trump, although Dan Snyder, the conservative financier from Kinematics who backed the film, sold his ownership because he considered the film more critical than he expected.
“It’s an entertaining character piece. It’s not a hit piece,” said Abbasi. “Donald is really ‘made in America.’”
Donald Trump sent Abbasi a cease and desist letter, but hasn’t seen the film. Abbasi said he was curious what the former president would think.
“Trump will watch it, that’s for sure. And I’d really like to watch it with him so I can answer all his questions,” said Abbasi.