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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 the 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.
Going into the festival, my producers had lined up screenings with every major studio and streamer. There was tremendous interest from buyers. When Mr. Trump’s campaign attacked the film, the radio went silent. Every major Hollywood studio and streamer passed. Eventually, the independent distributor Briarcliff Entertainment bought the film. It went on to receive two Oscar nominations.
Oddly enough, my film wasn’t universally detested by the right wing. A Washington correspondent for Breitbart, Matthew Boyle, was a fan of the movie and hosted me on his radio show. A longtime Trump confidant, Roger Stone, posted on X: “Roy Cohn was a friend of mine. The portrayal of Roy Cohn by actor Jeremy Strong in the new movie “The Apprentice’ is uncanny in it’s accuracy.”
Still, Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign has had its intended effect: Hollywood is paralyzed creatively. In meetings, studio executives say they don’t want projects that are political or could be perceived as anti-Trump. They seem genuinely afraid of an audience that they no longer understand and that may not share their progressive values.
Ben Urwand’s book “The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler” documents how studio executives in the 1930s, trying to protect access to the German market, allowed Nazi officials to review scripts and even removed Jews from credits. During the Red Scare, studios created a blacklist that banned suspected Communists from show business. Each time, studios claimed they had no choice. Each time, they did — and they made it.
The decision by Disney, ABC’s owner, to pull the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air “indefinitely” for comments he made after Charlie Kirk’s assassination feels like a dark turn in American culture. I’ve been following the news from London, where I recently moved with my family, and where Mr. Trump recently received the royal treatment in an attempt to keep his highness happy. People constantly ask me, what is happening to America? I don’t know what to say.
It seems to me Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were well within the bounds of protected free speech. But within hours of a threat from the Federal Communications Commission’s chairman, Brendan Carr, Mr. Kimmel was gone. Mr. Trump, who promised to end government censorship on Day 1 of his presidency, gleefully celebrated Mr. Kimmel’s suspension. It was chilling: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”
During his first term, the Justice Department sued to block AT&T from buying CNN’s parent company, Time Warner. Many suspected the litigation was motivated by Mr. Trump’s animosity toward CNN. The Justice Department lost the lawsuit.
The industry is in much worse financial shape today. Disney’s Kimmel call was the latest capitulation by a weakened and worried media company seemingly desperate to appease the administration. Before Mr. Kimmel, there was CBS’s owner, Paramount, settling Mr. Trump’s bogus lawsuit against “60 Minutes” and canceling Stephen Colbert while its merger with Skydance hung in the balance. (Paramount called the end of Mr. Colbert’s show “purely a financial decision.”)
Each time, the companies presumably were hoping that they would get what they wanted. Each time, Mr. Trump got what he wanted more.
Mr. Trump is now calling for NBC to drop the late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. Will Hollywood draw a line? Can it? One talent manager texted me that Mr. Kimmel’s ouster could be when Hollywood is finally galvanized to push back. The industry can tell stories that speak truth to power: Just look at films like “All the President’s Men,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Spotlight.”
I’m skeptical. Those films were released during a time of healthy box office sales in a culture that hadn’t gone fully berserk with social media. “All the President’s Men” came out in 1976, not that long after a newspaper helped bring down a president. “Good Night, and Good Luck" was a work of nostalgia, but still, in 2005, arrived when broadcast news still commanded some respect and made money. (Its more recent Broadway version seemed like nostalgia for nostalgia.) “Spotlight” premiered a decade ago, when the state of local journalism wasn’t as dire as it has become.
Today’s Hollywood faces a bleaker reality. We all do.
