Отредактировано crazy-capri (2017-03-19 13:24:09)

Though the character wasn’t wholly based on the Donald—in a nod to Ted Turner, Clamp also owns a vast, niche-focused cable network—his merchandising-mad mindset and man-about-town demeanor is clearly indebted to Trump’s end-of-the-decade persona. As the ’80s came to a close, Trump was famous enough to have earned his own board game and a spot alongside the Ramones and Rick Moranis in a primo Bobby Brown video. Yet he also was under increased scrutiny in his hometown, most notably from Spy magazine, which famously labeled Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian” and questioned his financial dealings.

At the time, Trump was “overbearing and obviously kind of goofy,” says Haas. “He was an emblem of what was going on in the ’80s and ’90s with greed and money and crassness, and [the idea of] the whole world being for sale. But he still seemed sort of harmless.”

The Clamp character was similarly unthreatening. Though conceived as far more devilish—and despite the fact, at one point, he runs an evil Gremlin through an industrial paper-shredder—the final big-screen incarnation of Clamp is likably rah-rah, even helping rescue Manhattan (“‘Developer Saves City’—I like that!,” he says at one point, imagining his future headline). This is largely due to the performance of Glover, a stage actor who’d played a magnificently, magnetically sleazy hood in 1986’s 52 Pick-Up, but who portrayed Clamp with a bright-eyed goofiness (“He was so likable and boyish and gee-wiz, he started to become sympathetic,” says Dante). Still, Clamp’s ambitious streak remained intact. “It’s hard to imagine politics wasn’t going to be in that character’s future,” says Dante.