Comedy website Funny or Die dropped a fake TV movie Wednesday morning called “Funny or Die Presents Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie,” starring Johnny Depp as Trump.
The 50-minute video is a supposedly lost adaptation of Trump’s 1987 book, Trump: The Art of the Deal. In addition to Depp, the elaborate joke also stars Patton Oswalt, Jack McBreyer, Henry Winkler, Alfred Molina, Michaela Watkins, Christopher Lloyd, Kristen Schaal and Andy Richter, among others.
It was directed by “Apollo 13” and “A Beautiful Mind” director Ron Howard, who also provided the video’s opening narration. According to him, this lost Trump film was “thought to be lost in the Cybill Shepherd blouse fire of 1989” and “was written, directed and stars Donald Trump himself.”
“Trump was furious and vowed to never air his masterpiece,” Howard explained. “It disappeared for decades, until last summer, when it turned up at a yard sale outside Phoenix, Ariz. I had to physically wrestle it from a nice woman named Ginny. Stronger than she looked, very persistent. I’m not proud of what happened, but what’s done is done. It’s mine now.”
The video came out the morning after the billionaire mogul won the New Hampshire primary. It was the brainchild of Funny or Die editor-in-chief Owen Burke, who pitched the idea to Funny or Die co-founder Adam McKay, who in turn sold Depp on the concept.
“The plan was to move really fast because we thought Trump would go away, as least as a presidential candidate,” Burke told The New York Times. “When he bizarrely didn’t go away, we had a little more time. But that meant keeping the secret for longer.”
Burke described the intensity Depp brought to the project as “absolutely bananas.”
“Because we tend to move so fast, we’re usually just slapping wigs on people,” he said. “But Johnny brought, like, a whole team of professionals to help him get into character. Or at least style his hair.”
