BEFORE: In the last few Doc Blocks I watched films like "The Accidental President" and "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump", but that doesn't seem of have made much difference, because here we are, he's running for President again. But back in 2016, nobody knew what kind of President he was going to be, like "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" and then we all found out the hard way, didn't we? I mean, he dismantled the U.S. pandemic response team about a year before the COVID pandemic, I don't think he could have done more damage to the country if he tried, and he wasn't even trying. Thousands of lives could have been saved if he hadn't taken that action to "reduce big government" and somehow he undid the one agency that could have been most helpful in 2020. For that reason ALONE he should not be elected again, but of course I've got thousand other reasons why, listing them here would take up the whole review.
And now he said during the recent debate that his team "took on COVID", what a bunch of bull.
This is also a bit of clean-up, because this doc (and tomorrow's) have been on the list for YEARS, at least three or four, but there never seemed to be slots for them - so sure, I"m late with this film but maybe there's something in this film worth stressing, even if it's perhaps like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.
David Letterman carries over again from "Bathtubs Over Broadway" and moves into second place overall.
THE PLOT: In this David and Goliath story for the 21st century, a group of proud Scottish homeowners take on celebrity tycoon Donald Trump as he buys up one of Scotland's last wilderness areas to build a golf resort.
AFTER: This documentary comes from the Michael Moore school of filmmaking, meaning it's OK to ambush your subject if that's the only way you can get footage of him, and if you can't do that, it's OK to film footage of yourself trying to get an interview and failing, or standing outside in the building lobby, or even trying to call him on the phone, when you KNOW he's not going to answer that call. But I guess from a documentary standpoint, you do what you can instead of what you can't.
The film came out in 2011, and the issue at hand was a golf course that The Trump Organization wanted to build in Scotland, the ancestral home of golf. Why they felt Scotland needed another golf course when they probably already had hundreds, I have no idea. But of course it comes down to profit, if Trump felt there was money to be made in Scotland by building a resort similar to Mar-A-Lago, well of course that's what he'd want to do. And who cares if building that resort interfered with the ecosystems there, or the lives of the local residents, these are petty concerns, people are like ants to him, he just doesn't care about anyone but himself, we've seen this time and time again.
The local government was prepared to give him anything he wanted, waive regulations, approve any plans, and you know what that means, they were either paid off or they also had dollar signs in their eyes over what the resort would bring to the local economy. Jobs for local residents, at least that was the promise, but most likely that was just another one of Trump's lies or empty promises. And you can probably guess how people felt about being told that their houses were in the way, and they were going to be forced to sell the house and move elsewhere, despite how long they've owned that house or how long their family had been living on that piece of land. We have a thing in America called "eminent domain" that sometimes kicks in, it Scotland they call it "compulsory purchase" but they both mean the same thing, "Hey, you're in the way and legally, you're going to lose your house." (Read up on the one guy in Brooklyn who wouldn't sell his property and got in the way of building what is now the Barclays Center, it's the same story.)
The other precursor to this story is the origin story for Mar-a-Lago, which I learned earlier this year (after watching "Unfrosted") that Marjorie Post, the cereal executive, originally had the resort built and she lived there for years. When she died she willed it to the U.S. Parks service, thinking it could serve as a type of "winter White House" for whoever was President, if they wanted to get away to Florida for a week here and there. (oddly, that's what the news called it when Trump was President...). But the Parks Service found they didn't need it for that purpose, so they put it up for sale. Trump wanted to buy it, but the government didn't want to sell it to him, because he'd probably ruin it. So Trump started buying up all the land AROUND Mar-a-Lago, and he threatened to build huge skyscrapers on that land that would completely block Mar-a-Lago's view of the ocean, which would completely de-value the property, and that's when he was mysteriously able to buy the property he wanted.
So they really should have known the depths he would sink to in order to get this golf course built in Scotland. He held press conferences where he said that the locals lived like "pigs" in decrepit houses. He filed injunctions against the other houses, saying that portions of them were built on the land he now owned. There was footage of Trump that aired on the Golf Channel where he told his underlings, "I hate that house, it's ugly, get rid of it, I don't care how." All of it was just a form of the "Golden Rule", the one that states that whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Look, I'm not saying this sort of thing doesn't happen all over the place, shady tactics pulled by real estate developers. I'm sure when casinos were being built in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and other places, similar things went down, with the developers using the excuse that all those casinos and resorts would be great for the city, great for the locals, great for the environment (somehow) when it was all just a smokescreen for putting more money in their own pockets, and the pockets of any government officials who helped railroad the construction through. When we first started visiting Atlantic City regularly (2014, I think), Trump had two casinos there, though one had just closed and the other, Trump Taj Mahal, was being actively picketed by striking workers. I'm not really a pro-union guy, but neither will I cross a picket line if I can avoid it, I just don't want any trouble. So there were a dozen other casinos that weren't being picketed, so we figured we'd just go gamble in them, problem solved. The Taj Mahal closed soon after, because Trump lost interest and also decided to run for President, and that casino became the Hard Rock. The other was the Trump Plaza, which closed shortly after Trump tried to sell it, failed to sell it, then had his name taken off of it. Closing that casino put about 1,000 people out of work, but why should anyone at the top of that food chain care about the peasants? So then that property just sat there, closed and dormant for seven years, which makes no sense to me. Why not rush the demolition and/or sell the property so a new casino could be built, which would create more jobs? Apparently there was a lot of legal wrangling and debate about what to do with it, implode it or demo it, auction off the right to set off the explosives, etc. There's still nothing there except a parking garage and a beer garden, which I can't quite wrap my brain around.
In the end, there was something akin to a happy (?) ending, of sorts. After making the lives of the local residents who wouldn't sell their properties and others who were protesting, Trump just decided that it wasn't worth the effort. Or he got more interested in running for President, it's a bit tough to say. Also, someone had proposed building a giant wind farm off the coast, right near the property that Trump had been working on developing. Which is funny and ironic, because Trump was beaten by his own tactics - this sounds a lot like how he forced the sale of Mar-a-Lago, just surround the place with unappealing things so whoever owns it doesn't want it any more. Plus, we may have discovered Trump's weakness, which is windmills - he's certainly complained about them at his rallies, almost as much as he's complained about low-power showers and low-flush toilets. So if you want to get rid of Trump, just build a bunch of windmills - maybe install a ring of them around the White House, I'm just saying. Sounds crazy, but who knows, it might work.
Anyway, there's a sequel film so maybe I'll get an update about the Scottish golf course affair later today. If there's not much to write about, then I'll just list my 100 reasons to not elect Trump for President again. Surely I must have at least 100, and the way he treated the residents of Scotland can be #101.
Also starring Donald Trump (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Donald Trump Jr. (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Anthony Baxter, Kevin Brown, Paul Cheshire, Mickey Foote, Michael Forbes, Molly Forbes, Sheila Forbes, Martin Ford, Ian Francis, Martin Glegg, Dr. Jim Hansom, Paul Holleran, Audrey Kennedy, David Kennedy, Emily Maitles, Sarah Malone Bates, David McCue, David Milne, Susan Munro, Paul O'Connor, Richard Phinney, Alex Salmond, Charles Skene, George Sorial, Stewart Spence, Andy Wightman, Stephanie Williams, Ian Wood with archive footage of Peter Riegert (last seen in "Belushi"), Joe Strummer.
RATING: 5 out of 10 clips from the movie "Local Hero" that were weirdly prophetic
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