“…And Good Business Is The Best Art”: The Apprentice

Although director Ali Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman are certain to put a disclaimer title card at the beginning of The Apprentice that notes creative license was taken in retelling the story of Donald Trump’s (played by Sebastian Stan) rise to power in New York during the 70s and 80s, it’s no “embellishment” that Andy Warhol and Trump orbited orbited the same circles. In fact, the two first met at Roy Cohn’s birthday party on February 20, 1981 (Cohn was turning fifty-four, and would only have five years left to live), which Warhol would mention in one of his diary entries two days later, commenting of the event, “Black tie. The Mafioso types weren’t in black tie, though… There were about 200 people. Lots of heavies. Donald Trump, Carmine DeSapio, the D’Amatos, David Mahoney, Mark Goodson, Mr. LeFrak, Gloria Swanson, Jerry Zipkin, C.Z. Guest and Alexander, Warren Avis, Rupert Murdoch and John Kluge.”

The significance of these two theoretically “divergent” types encountering one another in a Cohn-curated environment is taken the utmost advantage of by Sherman, who uses this kernel of hobnobbing history to create a scene of dialogue between Warhol and Trump in The Apprentice that allows the former to wield a riff on one of his famous aphorisms, “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business. They’d say ‘money is bad’ and ‘working is bad.’ But making money is art, and working is art—and good business is the best art.” (Trump conveniently seemed to gloss over the word “good” in good business though, even if he chose to cite the quote in 2009’s Think Like A Champion.)

On this matter, Trump can agree with someone as “liberal” as Warhol. Even if, like Cohn, Warhol’s politics (just as his sexuality) leaned more toward “a.” As in amoral and apolitical. That two so ostensibly “different” personalities could converge in a milieu with Cohn as the common denominator spoke to something about both Cohn and Warhol. In Warhol’s case, that his bottom line wasn’t just ahout making more money, but also attending any event with name-dropping potential for his diary. As for Cohn, an association with Warhol was yet another “Easter egg” about his so-called hidden sexuality. A sexuality that Trump, like so many things, chose to ignore. Or at least turn a blind eye to. After all, his friendship with Cohn was much too beneficial to let homophobia get in the way (until it finally did because of Cohn’s overt AIDS symptoms). Besides, Cohn literally made his career out of persecuting the LGBTQIA+ community during what was known as the Lavender Scare of the 1950s, a “companion piece” to the Red Scare, if you will. Of course, the irony was obvious considering Cohn’s own homosexuality. And the irony quotient was further upped because of how enthusiastic fellow homo J. Edgar Hoover was about Joseph McCarthy and Cohn’s concerted effort to expel anyone suspected of homosexuality from government.

Even after McCarthy was disgraced and the tide turned against him and his tactics, Cohn was able to rise from the ashes and become the fixer to turn to in New York when someone had legal issues. And Trump had plenty of those starting in 1973, when the Department of Justice brought a civil rights lawsuit against the Trump Organization for its discriminatory practices against Black applicants attempting to rent an apartment at various Trump properties. It is at this point in time that Sherman sets the stage for the story to commence, for it is where Donald Trump truly starts to get on the path toward becoming Donald Trump. A “persona” that fully congeals and peaks in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan had taken control of the government and turned America into a “neoliberal paradise” (in other words, hell for most people), much to the delight of men like Trump. And even men like Warhol (who was a capitalist before he was a gay man).

Warhol and Trump’s paths would cross again amid this “new world order,” soon after meeting at Cohn’s birthday party. In fact, Trump actually stopped into The Factory to discuss more of their favorite thing: “business.” Or the art of business (clearly, Trump would later take from that Warholian sentiment in titling his first book The Art of the Deal). At the time, there was talk of Warhol furnishing paintings for the then “still in production” Trump Tower. He did, indeed, create a series of “portraits” of the building (that meta flair) to be displayed in the lobby, but, per his August 5 (the day before his birthday), 1981 diary entry, “I showed them the paintings of the Trump Tower that I’d done. I don’t know why I did so many, I did eight. In black and gray and silver which I thought would be so chic for the lobby. But it was a mistake to do so many, I think it confused them. Mr. Trump was very upset that it wasn’t color-coordinated.”

Eventually, “The Donald” side-stepping use of Warhol’s paintings in the building would yield even stronger reactions to him and his then wife, Ivana, with Warhol writing flat-out (on January 15, 1984), “I still hate the Trumps because they never bought the paintings I did of the Trump Tower.” Interestingly, his hatred of them doesn’t seem to stem from what they represent, but from what he failed to be a part of/get paid for. Though surely that wouldn’t have stopped him from attending the black-tie opening gala for Trump Tower in the fall of 1983, as The Apprentice shows him to. While Cohn is, obviously, the true Trump foil/mentor of the film, there’s no denying the pointed inclusion of Warhol, however briefly. For, lest anyone forget, Warhol single-handedly altered the perception of art into something viewed as an assembly line business—from both the artist and the consumer’s standpoint. And that odious word, “consumer,” in relation to art really didn’t start to be in vogue until Warhol made art into something designed for mass consumption.

And, unlike, say, Keith Haring, Warhol’s intent was not for the “noble purpose” of disseminating art to people from all walks of life, but to make as much profit from it as possible. The same went for Trump in terms of buying up as much real estate as possible at a time when buildings in New York were selling for peanuts. It certainly wasn’t done as a “beneficent” way to “bring prestige back” to NYC, as Trump and his cohorts wanted to position it for their own “good PR” ends. One such key early cohort being Cohn (played to perfection by Jeremy “Kendall Roy” Strong). To be sure, the crux of The Apprentice—and where it gets its name apart from Trump’s shitty 00s reality show—is the Orange One’s formative relationship with Cohn. As such, The Apprentice reiterates that every dirty trick for “success” that Trump learned, he learned from Cohn, who took him under his wing as a client when few others would have bothered. Granted, it was Cohn who requested “an audience” with Trump first at what is supposed to be Le Club, a members-only place for somebodies and social climbers—Trump was clearly in the second camp.

As for why Cohn summoned a then “Robert Redford-looking” Trump over under the pretense of congratulating him for becoming the youngest member to join the club, Sherman explains it best when he says, “There clearly was a father-son dynamic to their relationship. On another level, there was a homoerotic subtext. One of the things I found in my research is that a lot of Roy’s lovers were young, blonde, blue-eyed men who bore a striking resemblance to young Donald. I think Roy was attracted to Trump, in a way, and this movie is sort of a love story.” Needless to say, a very fucked-up love story involving a gross betrayal from the “student who has surpassed the teacher” in terms of merciless cold-bloodedness. It’s a slowly mounting callousness he’s proud of, too, telling Ivana (Maria Bakalova) during their “courtship phase” (a.k.a. he relentlessly pursues her to the point of stalking) that there are only two kinds of people in this life: killers or losers.

Britney phrased it better when she divided the two kinds of people into “the ones that entertain and the ones that observe” on “Circus.” And yes, that’s what Trump turned his life into after securing the renovation of The Commodore hotel next to Grand Central, partnering (always a loose word with Trump involved) with Hyatt’s Pritzker family to reinvent it as the Grand Hyatt. It is Cohn, of course, who is speculated to have “silently” helped Trump push this deal through, complete with his standard brand of blackmailing select politicos. And while there might be no direct evidence to support that narrative claim in The Apprentice, sometimes, a bit of deductive reasoning is all it takes for something to be believable.

The same goes for the allusion to Trump being an avid user of amphetamines throughout the 1980s, another key component in The Apprentice to comprehending his gradual mutation into a Frankenstein monster—with Cohn as his Dr. Frankenstein. Sherman’s script is essential to unfolding that arc, along with his previous experience writing about another conservative monster, Roger Ailes, which eventually became a bestselling book called The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News – and Divided a Country. Sherman came to see Ailes as “a real-life modern-day Citizen Kane figure and someone who had been so kind of corrupted and corroded by his own lust for power.” This, too, is how he sees both Cohn and Trump, but especially the latter. And, as though to “subtly” underscore that point, the set design for one of Trump’s pre-80s yuppie apartments features a poster of Citizen Kane in the living room area. Undeniably, Trump has that same ego and empire (even if said empire is built on smoke and mirrors) as Charles Foster Kane. The New York Times thought so long ago, titling a 1983 article about the “mogul,” “The Empire and Ego of Donald Trump.” In it, the eponymous subject gives the telling quote, “‘Not many sons have been able to escape their fathers,’ said Donald Trump, the president of the Trump Organization, by way of interpreting his accomplishments.”

And yet, if Cohn is to be viewed as his “surrogate father,” Trump most certainly hasn’t escaped his “daddy” at all, having adopted every tenet Cohn imparted and then some. Among those tenets (apart from “always attack, never apologize”) penned by Sherman being, “This is a nation of men, not laws,” “You create your own reality. The truth is malleable” and, not one to exempt physical appearance from his advice, “You’ve got a big ass, you need to work on that.” To that, er, end, Sherman delivers the ultimate Frankenstein scene during the film’s coda, as Trump proceeds to go under the knife for some liposuction and alopecia reduction surgery (all as “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” is eerily sung by a children’s choir at Cohn’s funeral). The “source” for confirming that Trump underwent these procedures (apart from having eyes)? Ivana’s divorce deposition. Along with her stating that Trump raped her—a scene that is harrowingly recreated in The Apprentice.

Although, in 2015, Ivana amended the statement she made (saying, “As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense”), Sherman was determined to include this scene, insisting, “I couldn’t stand behind a movie that didn’t explore Trump’s misogyny. I needed the film to engage with that, and this scene is the most powerful and visceral way. Sexually assaulting somebody you love is such a transgression. Dramatically, it showed the depth to which Donald Trump had sunk at that point in the story.” Sort of like Elvis with Priscilla (who also refers to a rape in Elvis & Me). Except that Elvis actually had a talent and Trump was, more than anything, threatened by Ivana’s star eclipsing his in a way that Elvis’ never was by Priscilla.

As for Cohn, he felt threatened by Ivana long before Trump. Not just because of his romantic jealousy, but because of his fear of Trump losing half of his “hard-won” assets, thus drafting an ironclad prenup that ends up offending Ivana in The Apprentice. But not as much as Cohn himself will end up being offended by Trump’s cold shoulder as he grows wary of associating with a “known fag.” AIDS being the ultimate outing device in the 80s (just ask Rock Hudson, summarily abandoned by his “good friends,” the Reagans when his condition became too much of a “political hot potato”). Even so, Trump offers one more “act of goodwill” by inviting him for a “goodbye forever” sendoff (thinly disguised as a “birthday celebration”) at Mar-a-Lago in early 1986, which Trump had freshly purchased in 1985. It is here that Trump gifts Cohn a pair of diamond platinum cufflinks. Ivana is the one to tell him that they’re fake and that “Donald has no shame.” This little detail layers the scene with heightened tension and emotion, as Cohn suddenly grasps the gravity of what he’s created through the revelation of how effortlessly Trump not only lies, but delivers those lies with such conviction. Sherman noted of these types of absurd moments in The Apprentice, “A lot of scenes in this movie seem so crazy that you think maybe a screenwriter invented them, but there’s actually a record of them happening.”

Sherman chooses to end the film just after Cohn’s death, with Trump in his office going over “talking points” for what would become The Art of the Deal. Written by Tony Schwartz (though Trump was sure to put his name on the book), who was hired by Trump precisely because of the unfavorable article he published in New York Magazine about the “real estate titan,” Trump is depicted as someone scrambling for anything of substance to say to his “ghostwriter” as material for the manuscript. Right out the gate, his past and childhood is something he doesn’t want to delve deeply into, saying there’s nothing “to” people other than wanting to make a lot of money and be winners—no psychoanalysis required to see that. With little else to probe, Schwartz tries to draw out some of the simple steps for making a “good deal.” Trump then regurgitates the three rules for success that Cohn had taught him long ago, listing the “rules” as though he thought of them himself.

And it’s a scene that’s entirely believable as fact, what with Sherman remarking, “People who have known Trump since the 1980s told me that Donald was using both the techniques and words that Cohn taught him. That’s really when the inspiration for the movie came about, thinking about the ghost of Roy Cohn inhabiting the body of Donald Trump.” Again, Trump hasn’t escaped his “father.”

Matt Tyrnauer, director of the 2019 documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn?, already established what Sherman reemphasized by stating to NPR, “Donald Trump is Roy Cohn. He completely absorbed all of the lessons of Cohn, which were attack, always double down, accuse your accusers of what you are guilty of, and winning is everything. And Trump absorbed these lessons and has applied them in every aspect of his life and career.” The one lesson Trump didn’t seem to absorb from Cohn, however, is that the truth always—but always—catches up to you. Granted, Cohn avoided paying fully for his sins by dying before he had to. Perhaps the same will be true of his protégé.