Big budget Melania Trump documentary premieres with splashy rollout : NPR
An ad for First Lady Melania Trump’s new documentary.
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
If you watch TV, you’ve probably seen the commercials. “Melania,” a big-budget film about first lady Melania Trump, premieres today with a spectacular event at the Trump Kennedy Center, recently renamed the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. It is expected to be released this weekend on 1,500 screens in the United States, a very unconventional release compared to other films of its type.
Amazon acquired the film for $40 million and is spending another $35 million on marketing, according to a source with direct knowledge who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
“It’s hard to imagine why this figure is justified for ‘Melania,’” said Jason Spingarn-Koff, a journalism professor at UC Berkeley.
Spingarn-Koff is a former Netflix executive who has worked on hundreds of documentaries. He says the market for documentary films is currently depressed and even Oscar-nominated documentaries aren’t shown on as many screens, if any.
Questions about what the first lady personally makes from the film and whether its outsized budget might have been an effort to curry favor with the president were not answered by the White House or Mrs. Trump’s personal office.
The film follows Mrs. Trump over 20 days in January as she prepares to re-enter the White House as first lady.
“Here we go again,” she says, looking directly into a camera as she enters the US capital for her husband’s second inauguration. It’s one of several quick clips from a trailer that features dramatic music, glamorous visuals and an intriguing moment of marital interaction, where she calls him “Mr. President.”
“Have you watched it,” he asks, although the trailer doesn’t reveal what it is about.
“I didn’t, yes, I’ll see it on the news,” Mrs. Trump says as the music swells again.
In an interview earlier this week on “Fox and Friends,” Trump was asked about the decision to include this scene. She said she was “very involved in directing the production and choosing the trailer.”
“I want to show people that they will see the communications and private communications between me and my husband,” Mrs. Trump said, further teasing her film.
Amazon did not broadcast a preview to journalists and critics, as is usually the case when promoting a film, and all scheduled Thursday screenings in theaters were canceled. Ticket sales were anemic and were mocked on social media, as well as by late-night talk show hosts.
At first glance, this appears to be a documentary, but the first lady is also an executive producer.
“In those situations, you could only have one take, so whatever we have, we have,” Mrs. Trump said in her “Fox and Friends” interview. “And I had a great team around me and a very talented director.”
That director is Brett Ratner, known for the action films Rush Hour and for being ostracized in 2017 after accusations of sexual misconduct. He denies any wrongdoing. He is not a documentarian. Mrs. Trump said in another Fox News interview that she chose him because he would fulfill her vision of a motion picture.
“Once the subject of the film is a producer or has editorial input or even editorial control, then I really think we’re in the business of public relations or, in this case, it seems to be myth-making work,” Spingarn-Koff said.
The first lady has a very carefully cultivated and controlled image, which creates an air of mystery around the one she capitalizes on with this film.
Kate Bennett wrote a book about Melania Trump and covered her for years on CNN, saying people are always looking for clues about what Melania Trump really thinks or who she really is.
“I don’t think the public will ever truly know Melania Trump’s deep thoughts and behind-the-scenes moments, by design,” Bennett said. “He’s a private person in his DNA.”
And, Bennett says, she’s also basically a Trump, a marketer, who rarely appeared on the campaign trail without getting a financial cut.
“There’s something really interesting about the fact that we see her most during this presidency on a screen, in a theater,” Bennett said. “This is unlike anything we’ve seen in traditional politics.”
Editor’s note: Amazon is among NPR’s recent financial supporters and pays to distribute some NPR content.
