With the caveat that there’s a smoking hole where my brain used to be, I will attempt to compare “The Comey Rule” to the debate.
There were similarities in that they were both terrifying to experience. The film was an attempt to accurately and truthfully portray the continued reality of Trump’s terrible tenure as president, while the debate consisted mostly of a relentless attempt by Trump himself to dramatically distort truth and control reality. In other words, each in its own way was fiction. Both were TV shows, carefully planned productions, and in neither case did there exist a safe space from which to look back and say, “thank God that’s over with.”
In a strange twist, however it’s the movie that has more fidelity to reality because it reflects actual objective facts, events documenting Trump’s lies and malicious behavior that have been witnessed and documented to be true, whereas the debate was Trump’s desperate attempt to make a cavalcade of lies, his personal, subjective fictional view of the world, real.
Can you see why there’s gray matter dripping out my ears?
I can’t think of many instances where a film documenting real life events has come out while those events were still occurring. Usually the subject has run its course by the time it has hit the big screen. “All the Presidents Men” came out long after Nixon was gone. “The Social Network” came close because we were, and still are, so held in the tendrils of Facebook, but although Zuckerberg was a part of our daily existence at the time of the release, he wasn’t directly threatening our lives like Trump is. We are really in a unique situation. Literally, everything is on the line.
“The Comey Rule” is technically a biopick, based on former FBI Director’s book “A Higher Loyalty”. Jeff Daniels brings a unique and interesting humanity to the role of someone we all think of as a villain, and while the portrayal was a bit hollow, and it didn’t make me forgive him for what he did, at least I understood his purported motives a little better. But the real villain in the story is Trump, played with ice cold effectiveness by Brendan Gleeson, a well-known actor who disappears into the role in a way that is haunting and frightening. This film triggered all of my PTSD from 2016 and I’m sure it will do the same to you as it faithfully reproduces the events leading to the election, using actual TV footage to make it even more realistic. Ominously, Trump is only shown from behind in the early parts of the film, as he picks from a bevy of beautiful Russian women. As soon as the election results sink in, like a knife to your heart, you see far more of him than you ever wanted.
The film is broken up into two “days”, apparently encouraging you to temper your experience and not watch it all at once, thereby losing your mind. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop me from binging the entire thing. Curse you, Covid! Gleeson does a diabolically accurate job of putting Trump on your screen. Every comedian out there has an impersonation of the man, but this is not for laughs. He brings the tangerine Frankenstein to life in a way that is disarming and horrific, made so much worse because we are still under the crazed criminal’s crooked rule. Director/writer Billy Ray and everyone else involved should be given the Medal of Honor for getting this out before the election.
After all that, I went and watched the debates.
Definitely not a recommended move.
The real thing was infinitely more frightening. I’d close with the saying “truth is stranger than fiction” but in this case fiction has beaten the shit out of truth and is standing there watching it die.
Enough said.