Whatever you think of Donald Trump, he is certainly one of the most polarising figures in modern history.
Comedic, borderline mentally-ill reactions to him genuinely do seem like some kind of Trump Derangement Syndrome, only matched by another kind of TDS – Trump Devotion Syndrome – among those who believe that any mistakes he makes are simply 4D chess if only everyone else were smart enough to keep up.
Neither side would accept that he might be a fallible, complicated human being like the rest of us. It is either monster or God Emperor with nothing in between.
In Hollywood, they almost overwhelmingly veer in one direction. Here is a hint – it’s not God Emperor.
So much so that the director of Home Alone 2, Chris Columbus, wishes he could remove Donald Trump’s cameo from the movie. This cameo lasts approximately seven seconds.
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle a week ago, Columbus reaffirmed his own statement that Trump only appeared in the movie because he wouldn’t let the production use his Plaza Hotel otherwise. Trump has disputed these claims and said the production “begged him” to do the cameo.
Columbus says the whole sequence is now something he wishes simply didn’t exist:
“It’s become this thing that I wish it was not there. What’s going through this guy’s mind?. He said I was lying. I’m not lying. He said I begged him to be in the movie, but there’s no world I would ever beg a non-actor to be in a movie. But we were desperate to get the Plaza Hotel. But it’s there. It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”
Columbus also says that test audiences loved the cameo whenever they screened the film:
“We screened the film in Chicago, and when that moment came onscreen the audience went crazy. They cheered and they cheered and they thought it was hilarious. I think I know a lot about comedy, but I don’t, obviously, because I never thought that was going to be considered hilarious.”
Columbus, like most of Hollywood, forgets that Trump was a widely popular figure across the entire political spectrum and the entertainment industry before he ran for president the first time around.