The gay rights community applauded Tim Gunn when the Bravo reality TV star and former teacher at Parsons' fashion design school released a video on YouTube expressing support for struggling gay teens in the wake of a string of recent suicides. In a particularly revealing moment for the otherwise stoic academic, Gunn told the tale of his own suicide attempt as a 17-year-old.
"I'm very happy today that that attempt was unsuccessful, but at the time, it was all that I could contemplate," he says. "I thought, I need to end things right now."
Gunn survived the 100-plus-pill attempt, and on the video, celebrates his current success.
He relates to his viewers, "I understand the desperation. I understand the despair. I understand how isolated you can feel." He even advocates himself as among the personal supporters of troubled gay youth.
At the end of the clip, he directs viewers to the Trevor Project, a national 24-hour, confidential hotline for gay and questioning youth, with which Houston's hometown artist Trey Speegle is heavily involved.
Despite having a name befitting a gay porn star, Gunn has shied away from public disclosure of an active homosexual life. In fact, he admits to not having had sex since a brutal breakup in 1982 and describes himself as "very single." In an interview with Metro Weekly, he explains that he was unaware of his sexuality until the age of 22, and his high school troubles stemmed from a crippling stutter and severe loneliness at boarding school.
Yet through it all, Gunn has followed his own mantra: "Make it work."
Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice.
Before he was elected president, Donald Trump was a New York businessman who transitioned into a reality TV show host that played upon his bombastic personality. His effect on American politics over the past eight years would not have been possible without his early experiences, some of which are explored in the new film whose title cheekily references that reality show, The Apprentice.
It introduces viewers who may not know the entire history of Trump (Sebastian Stan) to his relationship with lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who was known for using all sorts of sleazy tactics to win cases. The film shows Trump meeting Cohn in the early 1970s, right when the Trump Corporation, then led by Donald's father Fred Trump (Martin Donovan), was being sued for violating the Fair Housing Act for not renting to Black people.
Cohn’s success at limiting the damage in that case leads Trump to fall in love with the way Cohn approaches life, and he proceeds to call upon him for advice and help in many aspects of his own life. These include trying to strong-arm New York City officials into giving Trump a big tax break on his first hotel, setting up an odious prenuptial agreement with Trump’s soon-to-be bride, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), and more.
Directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Gabriel Sherman, the film is both crystal clear in how it wants Trump to be portrayed and yet somewhat subtle in the way it goes about it. Opening with Richard Nixon’s infamous “I am not a crook” speech, the parallels between that fallen president and one who would go on to be indicted for many crimes while president aren’t at all difficult to parse. And yet, the filmmakers do a good job of methodically building their case for how Trump became the person he is today.
This includes showing the young(er) Trump as somewhat awkward and out of his depth, literally going door-to-door to collect rent at Trump Village apartments and still having family dinner with the whole Trump clan. Learning at the heels of Cohn builds his confidence, especially after Cohn reveals three rules that he lives by: 1) Attack, attack, attack, 2) Admit nothing, deny everything, and 3) Claim victory, and never admit defeat.
Because it’s a two-hour film, the truth of what it’s depicting likely falls somewhere on the spectrum of another thing Cohn tells Trump: “There is no truth.” Still, there are factual bases for much of what the film dramatizes, and even the sequences that might be made up completely fall right in line with the type of man who still refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election. When Trump and Cohn essentially switch roles as the bully and the wimp when the film moves from the ‘70s to the ‘80s, it comes as no surprise.
Stan, in his second starring role in two weeks, does a fantastic job of evolving the character of Trump. He eases into the verbal and physical traits for which Trump is now known, and the slow build helps him tremendously. Cohn is easy to hate as a real person, but love as a movie character, and Strong bursts off the screen with his performance. He is an early favorite for Best Supporting Actor, utterly transforming into a despicable person from which you want to hear every horrible syllable.
Because of Trump’s overwhelming recent influence on American society, The Apprentice is next-to-impossible to view in an unbiased manner. And the filmmakers likely don’t want you to, as they are obviously trying to demonstrate how Trump has long been this way, and it took him becoming president for the whole world to see it.
