Despite my constant screaming into the abyss about how the culture does not need fictionalized television representations of the 2016 election, it looks like we’re getting another one.
Fresh off the heels of high camp/schlock auteur Ryan Murphy’s recent announcement that the seventh season of American Horror Story will focus on the real-life horror story of the 2016 election, the New York Times reports that Mark Halperin and John Heilemann will be publishing an “insider, blow-by-blow account” of the 2016 election, with a focus on Donald Trump’s befuddling ascendancy and eventual win.
The forthcoming book is a part of their Game Change series chronicling the past three elections and will be published in 2018. In a surprise to absolutely no one, it will also be made into a movie for HBO, directed by Jay Roach and executive produced by Tom Hanks. Fantastic.
Of the book and its subject, Halperin told the Times “Trump in particular, as much as he’s covered and has been covered, in some ways he’s an undercovered figure, in terms of Trump the man, and that’s one of the things we’re going to do with the book.” Great. Awesome. Perfect.
Who will star in this adaptation? God, I don’t know. The Washington Post tossed Meryl Streep’s name into the ring for Hillary. Alec Baldwin, the man who puts on a bad suit and a lot of bronzer to embody the spirit and mannerisms of Trump probably won’t be in the running, though. “But as great as Alec Baldwin is, the idea behind this is less caricature, and more interesting dramatic portrayal that’s not a cartoonish caricature,” Halperin told the Times.
Please, world, hear my cry: We don’t need anymore mini-series, books, TV shows, capsule collections or commemorative Kleenex boxes about the election. What’s been done is done. We’re still living it. No need to drag the hideousness of the past year and a half into the light.