It feels more than a little weird to write an opinion article about a minor biopic that nobody saw two days after a major national election. Oddly, it feels even weirder to write about said biopic when the man it portrays rapes a woman, betrays his closest friend, discriminates against Black tenants, fights against having to pay taxes, and is generally so devoid of true human emotions that you wonder if you should even be watching such a movie in the first place. However, said man also happened to have won said major national election.

Obviously, Donald Trump did not like such a biopic being made about his life. The biggest reason it was a minor biopic was thanks to legal battles with Trump’s lawyers, who threatened to sue over the movie. This made streaming platforms not want to touch it, and when it barely reached movie theaters as a result of a kickstarter campaign, there were only five weeks to market the film, and many US networks refused to run TV spots. This conflict around the movie raises, and accurately answers, the question about whether biopics should be authorized or unauthorized, accurate or inaccurate. It also demonstrates why the concepts of ethics in art can really only be handled on a case-by-case basis. No rules are necessary. 

To answer the first question, obviously a biopic about Trump that is pre-approved by Trump would be an awful idea. Despite this, there has always been this idea that you need to get a famous person’s consent to make a biopic about them. I see the logic of it. It is one of empathy. If you were famous and someone made a biopic about you and your life without your consent, it would probably feel awful. It also seems particularly unfair when a biopic made of a figure like Marilyn Monroe is exploitative. As in, her objectification and descent into addiction are portrayed very graphically on screen and her estate did not authorize it. Thus, I can see authorization would make sure that biopics avoid exploitation and indeed nonconsensual representation in general. 

At the same time, shouldn’t certain qualities matter more than authorization? I mean, the information in “The Apprentice” IS accurate. Yet, of course its accuracy is the reason why Trump doesn’t want it to be made. “The Social Network” was an unauthorized biopic that did not give any information nearly as damaging, and it too was non-consensual. So if you liked “The Social Network” and its dramatic situations, then you have to be okay with the movie’s lack of authorization. If we want to display the lives of famous people, sometimes we have to have an unauthorized and nonconsensual biopic about them. 

I mention at the beginning of the article that “The Apprentice” accurately answers the question of authorization, and I did love the movie. However, I also alluded to why ethics shouldn’t be handled on a case-by-case basis. Just because it was accurate, does not make it ethical. The same way an authorized biopic can still be unethical in its inaccuracy. 

Now that Trump has gotten elected, I almost find it a little callous the way the creators of the movie acted.

“It’s not written to influence people’s minds,” Gabriel Sherman, screenwriter of “The Apprentice,” said. “It’s written as art and what people take from it is their own choice.”

This, to me, seems to be the real ethical problem behind the making of the movie. This movie will obviously influence people’s minds, as it is a movie about someone running for president. In fact, the movie’s namesake, the reality TV show that was a very authorized portrayal of Trump, won him the 2016 republican primaries. So, I think that there is something just a little unethical about not admitting that your movie will have an influence in interviews. I understand that the movie is in a lawsuit and this might have had some bearing on what the creators could and couldn’t say, but if it didn’t, then I think they should have talked about their feelings towards Trump and said how they wanted people to vote in 2024. This false centrism is not tricking anyone and it feels more disingenuous than anything else. 

The movie does humanize Trump in all of his horror, and it was the screenwriter’s job to talk about that decision instead of playing it off as something unbiased. In simpler terms: It was definitely written to influence our minds! Tell us what it says! Essentially, the movie got around one ethical rule, but the creators ran into another problem because the world of ethics is complicated—especially when making a movie about someone who is going to sue either way. 

Henry Kaplan is a member of the class of 2028 and can be reached at hrkaplan@wesleyan.edu.