To film The Brink, director Alison Klayman trailed a globetrotting Steve Bannon—Donald Trump’s presidential campaign CEO, then White House chief strategist—around America and Europe for 13 months. The result is an Oscar-caliber documentary of Bannon and other self-styled guru gallivants, as they meet and rally with a “populist” potpourri of white nationalist parties and would-be fuhrers.
These include Nigel Farage of the UK’s pro-Brexit Independence Party; Louis Aliot, vice president of Marie Le Pen’s French National Rally Party; and Erik Prince, the founder of the mercenary security outfit Blackwater (now known as Academi).
Klayman’s access for her fly-on-the-wall tell-all is credited to the film’s producer, Marie Therese Guirgis. Some 15 years ago Guirgis worked for Bannon and Wellspring Media, his arthouse film distribution company. The expose reveals Bannon to be a high-living and temperamental workhorse and ideologue. Socially clumsy, he repeats the same corny joke when posing with fans. The close-ups of the splotchy, pudgy-faced man Trump nicknamed “Sloppy Steve,” unceremoniously dropping him after only seven months in office, is truly a cinematically horrifying experience.
As Bannon jet-sets to Venice, Rome, Prague, Budapest, and across America, The Brink builds towards its shattering conclusion. It comes in the form of the Blue Wave that last fall swept into power some 40 Democrats, including New Mexico’s Deb Haaland, Massachusetts’ Ayanna Pressley, New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kansas’ Sharice Davids and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota—all of whom are glimpsed onscreen—altogether repudiating racism and Trump in a colossal electoral defeat.
I’ll bet Bannon now regrets allowing Klayman and Guirgis to go behind-the-scenes as eyewitnesses of his sorry takedown, splendidly chronicled in this nonfiction gem for the ages. What follows is an interview with the director and producer conducted by phone in Los Angeles.
Q: In light of the New Zealand mosque massacres, which came right after Trump’s pro-violence comments to Breitbart News, can you put into context Bannon’s role as a key crusader, globetrotting around the United States and Europe, inciting and promoting so-called “populist,” anti-immigrant white nationalist parties?
Alison Klayman: I think putting Bannon and the New Zealand mosque shooting and this film all in the same sentence is totally justified. People ask, “What unites them? What is their shared worldview?” Unfortunately, when you read that shooter’s manifesto—I’ve read excerpts—it sounds like Tucker Carlson, it sounds like conversations between far-right leaders in Europe concerned about “invaders” and decreased birth rates, and national character being diminished.
Marie Therese Guirgis: People ask us this question all the time: “Is he really racist? Or is it opportunism?” I have complicated feelings about that, although in the end I actually think it doesn’t matter. You have to look at his actions and the people he works with. But even in the beginning, the one thing I believed to be truly sincere about Bannon was a real anti-Islam, Islamophobic paranoia.
‘He creates this in-group identity and veiled and not-so-veiled references to traditional white Christian values. He’s smart enough to know that this is a manipulation.’
He made a film about Reagan, his first documentary [2004’s In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed], about Reagan taking on the Soviet Union. Basically, communism was the bogeyman and going to destroy the world. I believe Bannon puts himself in the position of a great world historical figure and thinks the fight against Islam is the current crusade. In fact, the Reagan documentary ends with the defeat of communism and the attack on the Twin Towers.
The Islam thing is real, in terms of his driving forces.
Q: Bannon’s show biz producing credits include Sean Penn and Julie Taymor movies and Seinfeld, as well as agitprop docs. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and your film ends with his getting $100 million from Chinese billionaire Miles Kwok. Is Steve Bannon a member of the economic elite?
Alison Klayman: 100 percent he is. There’s no question about that. He’s a millionaire funded by billionaires. It’s not just about his daily life experience and whether he flies private or stays in five star hotels. To me, it’s who’s funding his activities and so that’s who he’s carrying water for.
Q: In your film, Bannon’s always shown railing against what he calls “globalism,” as he jet sets around the world. At the end of The Brink, he refers to his cause as “global.” Is Steve Bannon the ultimate globalist?
Klayman: He correctly identifies some of the problems that have emerged for people as caused by globalization. But his solutions are only concerned with the movement of people. They don’t touch the movement of money and what corporations can do across the globe.
Q: He purports to be for the working class, but instead of appealing to economic interests he emphasizes ethnicity, in particular an anti-immigrant strategy.
Klayman: I love the moment in the film about culture and identity politics, because that was one of Bannon’s favorite talking points—that the left is only concerned with culture and identity politics. That conversation happened after AOC had won her primary. The stuff AOC talks about is actually trying to improve the lives of citizens and make a difference in their lives economically, as well as in terms of their health and well-being. And everything Bannon was talking about was 100 percent in the realm of culture and identity politics—creating this in-group identity and veiled and not-so-veiled references to traditional white Christian values.
It really bothered me. He’s smart enough to know that this is a manipulation.
Guirgis: There is a moment in the film when Bannon says, “anger is a great motivator.” This is something Bannon tapped into at Breitbart before working for Trump and now on his own. It’s not that Bannon and Trump are creating these racists, but they’re tapping into the inherent racism of lots of white people. They’re tapping into it and making it polite and permissible by using coded language.
The other thing—we never talk about this, but I think it’s really important—everyone focuses on Bannon, Bannon, Bannon. But Bannon is the mainstream of the Republican Party. He is not a fringe element. He’s on the phone with Lindsey Graham, with Jeff Sessions, Mike Pence’s team … Bannon’s not on the margins—this is the Republican Party.
Q: How much of a direct line does Steve Bannon still have to Trump and the White House?
Klayman: He’d always say during the time I was filming he doesn’t directly talk to Trump but goes through lawyers or other intermediaries. I don’t totally have ways to verify that. I’m communicating how he talked about it, which is that he was in touch and he had other ways to communicate. And it did seem like that was true.
Q: What makes Steve run? Does he have a personal life?
Klayman: He really is a workaholic. It’s important to show people, not just to understand him better but to understand that—if you want to fight for a world that is different from the world he’s fighting for—he’s not stopping. That’s what’s shaping his life. He’s also close to his father and has three daughters; they also matter to him. But he spends most of his time with the people who travel with him. That’s what drives him the most. He calls it “doing the Lord’s work.”
The Brink theatrically opens in Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles on March 29. For info: https://www.thebrinkfilm.com.
Ed Rampell is a film historian and critic based in Los Angeles. Rampell is the author of Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States and he co-authored The Hawaii Movie and Television Book, now in its third edition. This first appeared at Progressive.org.
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2019
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