With so many famous people calling New York home, it is not surprising that some of them catch the attention of documentary makers. Indeed, one of our better-known citizens is the main figure in a film that opened in Manhattan a few days ago. He happens not to be one of our more beloved citizens: Donald J. Trump.
Clyde Haberman offers his take on the news.The Day
We can almost hear you now thinking this is no great trick, casting Donald Trump as a villain. But in this film by Anthony Baxter, the developer comes across as singularly unpleasant ? greedy, bullying, heartless and boorish. He has about as many redeeming qualities as does Mr. Potter in ?It?s a Wonderful Life? or Gordon Gekko in ?Wall Street.?
Mr. Trump has been quoted as calling the documentary ?a failure? (while saying he has not seen it). It is certainly not going to break box-office records, playing here in an 80-seat theater at the Angelika Film Center, on Houston Street. But Angelika employees say it has drawn fair-sized audiences. ?You know,? one of them said, ?in New York most people are not big Trump fans.?
Neither are the Scots whose lives were upended when Mr. Trump blew in and snapped up 1,400 acres of land overlooking the sea. ?I have never seen such an unspoiled and dramatic seaside landscape,? he says on the Web site for his project, Trump International Golf Links. ?And the location makes it perfect for our development.?
Sure. You wouldn?t want to let a setting like that sit there unspoiled and dramatic. Mr. Trump?s idea of perfect for that spot was two golf courses, a 450-bedroom hotel, 950 vacation homes, 500 single-family houses, a golf academy and a conference center.
One of the golf courses opened last month. For now, Mr. Trump refuses to go ahead with the rest of the project because of unrelated plans for a North Sea wind farm. ?I want to see the ocean,? he says petulantly in the film. ?I don?t want to see windmills.?
You?d think golfers might be too busy keeping their eye on the ball to notice a bunch of blades spinning in the distance.
Be that as it may, many New Yorkers will recognize the inequality inherent in a struggle between a powerful developer and local residents who refuse to sell him their property.
One of them is Michael Forbes, a farmer and fisherman whose intransigence causes him to be mercilessly demeaned in public by Mr. Trump. ?His property is slumlike,? the developer says. ?It?s disgusting. He?s got stuff thrown all over the place. He lives like a pig.?
To which, Mr. Forbes says simply: ?It?s my home. I?ve stayed here for 43 years now, and he won?t put me out of it.?
New Yorkers can identify with real-estate holdouts like him. We?ve had our own. Some became iconic, like Hurley?s bar and restaurant, which refused to budge from its spot on Sixth Avenue when Rockefeller Center was built (and when the avenue was still officially called Sixth Avenue). Or like P. J. Clarke?s on Third Avenue, whose owners forced a skyscraper to be erected around them.
As Mr. Baxter?s documentary points out, a local council?s rejection of the Trump project as environmentally ruinous was overridden by the Scottish government, which was apparently impressed by a promise of 6,000 jobs.
New Yorkers have experience in this area as well. How many times have we heard developers swear, scout?s honor, that umpteen thousand jobs will be created, only to have the numbers shrivel or many jobs turn out to be temporary?
There?s another aspect that touches a New York sensibility: Must something be built simply because it can be?
This will be ?the most beautiful golf course in the world,? Mr. Trump says more than a few times. That may be. But it is still just a golf course. Even if you don?t subscribe to a view of the game often attributed to Mark Twain ? that it?s a good walk spoiled ? you might reasonably wonder if the world would be unbearable if no more courses were built.
Oh, one other moment in the film will resonate with New Yorkers. As Mr. Trump stands on the windblown Scottish coast, he asks for a mirror.
?Is my hair O.K.?? he says.
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