Who wasn’t on the red carpet at the official Melania documentary premiere in Washington DC was so much more intriguing than who was. No offence to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, but if I wanted to see formalwear struggling to contain Crusades tattoos, I’d hang around outside the Spartak Moscow Christmas party. Not that it was a red carpet, because the carpet at the “Trump-Kennedy” Center was black. No one bothers hiding the grift any more, with the movie’s own producer openly explaining that this aesthetic was “all about supporting this luxury brand that [Melania’s] creating”. They should have dressed the event like a colon, since Donald’s is effectively where it was being held.
Anyway: arrivals. There was Melania and Donald Trump – she finally got him out of hair and makeup – who were holding hands, a coincidentally convenient way to cover his skin if his glam squad didn’t truck in enough concealer. In recent months, Trump has had terrible bruises on the tops of his hands and even more terrible excuses for why they keep appearing. Aspirin, Swiss furniture, shaking lots of hands – the list of things that aren’t cannula sites grows longer every week.
But how heartbreaking to look at the parade of henchmen and their out-of-towner wives and realise that there was absolutely no sign of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. What happened? Not only did Jeff’s Amazon pay hysterically over the odds to license and market the film, but he and Lauren have never met a red carpet they didn’t love. Certainly since she manscaped him and couples-dressed him and told him that that boring vanilla thing he did drove her wild. For the couture shows earlier this week, Lauren and Jeff rolled into Paris like Panzers – and were received with as little resistance – but were nowhere to be found at the premiere on Thursday night.
Could it be that the techlords are starting to realise what they got into with Trump? Take another of their number, Apple’s Tim Cook. As mentioned previously, MLK superfan Tim spent the night of the latest Minneapolis execution at Saturday’s White House screening of Melania. If he thought he got away with it, that impression was swiftly dispelled by reaction to the online photo of him posing with Melania director Brett Ratner. Oof. This is why leading industrialists should always insist on a no-Instagram rule in the chancellery.
But they haven’t, and this stuff does keep leaking out, unhelpfully for them. Erstwhile action director Ratner has nothing to lose, of course, which is why this is the first documentary he’s ever made, unless he once put a hidden camera in a women’s bathroom or something. OK, fine. Legally, I am required to state that Brett Ratner has never been accused of such a thing. That said, the sheer number of baroque allegations against him at #MeToo’s height was hard to keep track of. The actor Olivia Munn said she was sent to his trailer to find him furiously masturbating with one hand and holding a prawn cocktail with the other. (Ratner denies etc.) Olivia is currently starring in Apple’s hit Your Friends & Neighbours, so no doubt she was thrilled to see that her big boss Cook turned out to the White House last Saturday. Certainly, enough Apple employees of one level or another lost their shit sufficiently for Tim to release a statement calling for a “de-escalation” in times he’s expected to clink glasses with sex cases for presidential favours. Sorry – a de-escalation in tensions in Minneapolis.
Someone who knew once told me about how being one of Putin’s oligarchs worked. Every now and then you got a call from the Kremlin saying you needed to fork out and take this or that company or problem off the state’s hands. You put the phone down, swore a bit, and did what you’d been asked. It was sort of a turn system, and it would be one of the other guys’ turns next time round. Last summer it was Tim Cook’s turn, with Apple being railroaded into massively boosting its domestic supply chain spend. This time round, it must have been Jeff’s turn – but the Amazon founder seems to have judged that spending the price of an empty mining concession in the Urals on a Melania doc was enough.
As for how the film will do … hate to break hearts, but my bet is that Melania has a really good opening weekend for a documentary. As well it might, with those financial tailwinds. But the idea that no one in the US – obviously its key market – is going to see it is wishful thinking. How many tickets it sold at the Vue in Bolton just isn’t the deal many would like it to be.
Furthermore, there’s always another way to spin the numbers. House speaker Mike Johnson said of Amazon last night: “I think they will make money on this film. But it also has an inestimable value for its cultural impact … I think it transcends dollar figures.” Yup, this thing is Maga’s One Battle After Another – miles off breaking even at the box office but it gets over some hazy line on prestige metrics. Or as The Rock bristled over another crappy Amazon film he was in: “Red One has a long shelf life with multiple verticals, kudos to our Amazon partners for their strategic win, that’s just getting started.”
But the worry for the techlords must be that the increasingly erratic Trump is only just getting started with them. Whose turn will it be next? You’ve heard plenty about tipping points this week – but the big one will be when the cost of doing business starts to really cost these guys business.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
