Notes on Your ‘Rise of The Donald’ Pitch

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/opinion/sunday/notes-on-your-rise-of-the-donald-pitch.html

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FROM: DIRECTOR

TO: WRITER

O.K., look, I know I’ve been out of the country and out of touch for more than a year. And yes, I was pleased you were finally sending me a comedy feature, not a documentary idea or a script based on a board game, app or piece of cutlery. But frankly your “Trump: Rise of The Donald” idea is the most ill-conceived movie pitch I have ever received.

1) Your central character — “Trump/The Donald” — is just TOO BROAD. There may be a taste for a supersize American-cheese blowhard fantasy compendium of all the ills of Western civilization poured into one guy, but you need a MUCH lighter touch.

2) TONE. The tone is all over the place. You can go satirical (implying your rival’s father shot J.F.K.). You can go surrealist (the rants). You can go gross-out (the menstrual blood). You can go dark (the white nationalist delegate). BUT NOT ALL IN ONE MOVIE.

3) The physical attributes of “Trump/The Donald” are way overblown. “The coarse cotton candy thatch of synthetic mane” — perhaps doable. But to ladle on the “broiled ham visage, toasted golden under the sun lamp” is just FAR TOO MUCH. Even in the dystopia you paint, he needs to be a believable candidate, right?

4) “Build that wall” needs another pass (or five!) as your imagined rallying cry. I’m afraid to say it is sophomoric in its satirical obviousness. Honestly, this moronic version of the imagined right will do your liberal cause more harm than good.

5) From here on in the implausibilities metastasize. “He is not a war hero, he’s a dummy”? REALLY? About the character who spent two years in solitary confinement? And this is meant to play as something other than a career ender? That’s just a bit silly, O.K.?

6) Even in a “knockabout” comedy, that a serious candidate could suggest barring the entry of all Muslims to the United States is not funny because there’s no RING OF TRUTH. You’ve just got to try harder. Also, I personally would not feel good polluting the world with this kind of racist fear-mongering even as satire. You just never know how this material will play in the real world!

7) Likewise, and I’m getting tired pointing out all the holes in your story, but a candidate who referred to Mexicans en masse as “rapists”? Yeah? Really? “Ha-ha-ha.” Sorry. Dead on Day 1 of the campaign. You see there really does need to be some thread of logic to Trump/The Donald’s crazy/zany sayings, otherwise it starts to feel like the character you have invented can say anything. I’m not Buñuel. I don’t do dreamscapes.

8) The descent into violence of the campaign? I guess. If you must. But in the middle of the second act he is already goading his disciples into cathartic violence? It leaves you nowhere to go.

9) It may do for some collegiate parody to have a bloated plutocrat bragging about his “size” in a presidential nomination debate, but for a proper piece of work? You need to up your game!

10) Sloppy plot alert! Please, think! Is it really plausible that the Republican bigwigs you have denouncing “Trump” just fold and accept him once he seals the nomination? And your fictive polls show support for him growing? No! See by this point in your story you’ve had lots of “fun” as your Trump character has alienated Latinos, women and African-Americans (not having him immediately reject K.K.K. endorsement is in bad taste — obviously a cut). I’m sorry, but your plot doesn’t make sense. There must be consequences to your character’s actions. That is screenwriting 101.

11) Finally: endings. It was a shame you sent this through before deciding on your finale. For the record, I actually kind of enjoyed the presidential debate break-down-naked-rant sequence. Haunting! But I think there’s something in the simple: Nomination — Victory — Trade War — Paranoid Freakout — Exchange of Thermonuclear Weapons With China variation. One of the more believable elements!

Over all — trash. Page one rewrite.