{"id":16252,"date":"2015-09-12T03:23:07","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T02:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=16252"},"modified":"2015-09-12T03:54:59","modified_gmt":"2015-09-12T02:54:59","slug":"meeting-ivana-trump-donald-citizen-kane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2015\/09\/12\/meeting-ivana-trump-donald-citizen-kane\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After recently discovering a video of Donald Trump discussing <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Citizen_Kane\">Citizen Kane<\/a> (1941), it reminded me of an encounter I had once with his ex-wife in the South of France.<\/p>\n<p>Just in case you haven\u2019t seen the video with the property mogul and current Republican frontrunner, it was filmed by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Errol_Morris\">Errol Morris<\/a>\u00a0as <a href=\"http:\/\/errolmorris.com\/content\/aborted\/projects_donald.html\">part of a wider project\u00a0that unfortunately never got made<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The prescience and irony is something to behold, especially if <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4AQUySFGG3Q\">you know Citizen Kane well<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/upC8pX3RY0A\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It also reminded of a strange incident during the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2007_Cannes_Film_Festival\">2007 Cannes film festival<\/a>, when a friendly PR girl rang me and asked if I wanted to interview someone in a villa amongst the hills above the famous French town.<\/p>\n<p>Not being too busy that night, I agreed, thinking \u2018why not?\u2019 and was intrigued as to who this person might be. A director? Producer? Actor?<\/p>\n<p>As the taxi stopped outside the villa, you could almost feel the wealth and decadence in the air: palm trees peeking over walls, lights shooting into the sky and the noisy gaggle of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=Eurotrash\">Eurotrash<\/a> inside.<\/p>\n<p>My PR contact was waiting at the gates with two burly security guards hovering around her. I asked who my interviewee was, and she told me: \u201cIvana Trump. Donald\u2019s ex-wife\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Ah\u2026, yes. I vaguely remembered her. She and her (then) husband Donald were quite the celebrity couple throughout the 1980s, widely covered in gossip columns and magazines (including <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books?id=xaCC4gI-zJkC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;hl=fr&amp;source=gbs_ge_summary_r&amp;redir_esc=y#v=snippet&amp;q=Petr%20Pomezny&amp;f=false\">this interesting piece in Spy magazine<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Donald was even <a href=\"http:\/\/nypost.com\/2015\/08\/19\/that-time-donald-trump-was-parodied-in-gremlins\/\">referenced cryptically<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/00E6-eBvX4M\">Gremlins 2: The New Batch<\/a> (1990) and Ivana (post-divorce) even made an appearance in The First Wives Club (1996), with the memorable line: \u201cRemember girls: don&#8217;t get mad, get everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zAaCjCIrmWc\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After being ushered inside the garden party, I was directed to a path where fellow journalists were gathered and minders made sure they never went near the real action of the party which was covered by a big tent. But I was still scrambling for questions to ask her as just 30 mins earlier I had been in a hotel bar drinking quite heavily.<\/p>\n<p>Then, after a few minutes, she emerged with a handler whose role was unclear, and my short \u2018interview\u2019 began (after a female showbiz hack asked who would play her in a movie.<\/p>\n<p>(I come in around the 1 minute mark!):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/223474774&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Nothing revelatory for sure and truth be told, at the time I was not aware that Ivana was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AvEWDHtRUzo\">a regular showbiz fixture at Cannes<\/a> (sometimes charitable, often for lines of retail items) and afterwards it remained in my audio archives. After all it was only 1 question and unrelated to film!<\/p>\n<p>However, after seeing her ex-husband Donald wax lyrical on YouTube about Orson Welles\u2019 astonishing film debut, it took me back to Cannes 2007 and how the themes of Citizen Kane endure: money, fame, power and then what?<\/p>\n<p>Like Kane, Donald has amassed a fortune, gone through divorce and is currently <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/-6pIwzU9isQ\">running for political office<\/a>. What lies ahead for this loud, ambitious man who is dominating the Republican primaries?<\/p>\n<p>Will it be <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/White_House\">The White House<\/a> or a <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kFT083GhycM\">wrecked childhood nursery<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>&gt; Wikipedia on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ivana_Trump\">Ivana Trump<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Donald_Trump\">Donald Trump<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Citizen_Kane\">Citizen Kane<\/a><br \/>\n&gt; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/great-movie-citizen-kane-1941\">Roger Ebert&#8217;s review of Citizen Kane in 1998<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After recently discovering a video of Donald Trump discussing <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Citizen_Kane\">Citizen Kane<\/a> (1941), it reminded me of an encounter I had once with his ex-wife in the South of France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,19],"tags":[2535,2832,2833],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16252"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16261,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252\/revisions\/16261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}