Where's My Roy Cohn?
As polemical documentaries go, Where’s My Roy Cohn? makes its case with an abundance of evidence. Its case is simple: President Donald J. Trump learned everything about the ruthless exercise of power from notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. It’s no spoiler to quote the movie’s last line: '“Power in the hands of someone who is that reckless and that arrogant is a very dangerous thing.”
Cohn launched his career as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s anti-Communist purges, helped get Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for treason, and went on to represent New York mob bosses and to befriend Ronald Reagan before he was president — as well as mentoring young Trump. The fact that Cohn was disbarred in the 1980s for ripping off his own clients and repeatedly lying about it under oath tends to bolster the judgmental point of view of director Matt Tyrnauer (Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood).
Among the things Cohn lied about “over and over and over again” (to quote one interviewee) was the fact that he was gay and, in the mid 1980s, dying of AIDS. (His later years are fictionalized in Tony Kushner’s gay-themed Angels in America plays, leading to award-winning portrayals of Cohn by Al Pacino, Nathan Lane, and others.) Tyrnauer traces Cohn’s lies about his sexuality back to the 1950s, connecting Cohn’s attraction to young, Nordic men to McCarthy’s fall from grace, a little-known victory for justice over the closet.
Tyrnauer’s sources include a spectrum of figures, including the now-indicted Trump ally Roger Stone, several Cohn relatives, a former Cohn boyfriend, one-time Cohn pal Liz Smith (the gossip columnist who died in late 2017), and a number of journalists and others who dealt directly with Cohn. The subject himself is seen in many media interviews, archival news stories, and apparent home movies. Tyrnauer keeps focused on the Trump/Cohn parallels and links, but he can’t be justifiably accused of talking only to Cohn’s enemies. As is repeatedly evident — does this sound familiar? — Cohn’s most damning accuser is often Cohn himself, lying on camera despite all evidence to the contrary.
Tyrnauer’s team clearly did their homework in digging up archival footage, perhaps to a fault, as some stretches of the film linger on old footage of yachts, parties, printing presses, prostitutes, and so on, stalling the narrative now and again. But the picture of Cohn seems both complete and well supported by the facts presented. Trump himself has only a supporting role, particularly in a segment that details the alleged illegalities involved in building Trump Tower. But Tyrnauer’s goal isn’t to damn Trump because he associated with Cohn but because he emulates Cohn, a man who once told a journalist that he had a “total failure to sympathize with the emotional side of life.” Cohn, Tyrnauer argues, taught the young real estate developer his cardinal rule: “Never admit you’re wrong. Never apologize.”
Where’s My Roy Cohn? is must-see viewing to anyone who wants to better understand that world that produced Trump, a world of lies, cheats, mobsters, corrupt journalists, and egocentric celebrities where Cohn thrived for decades. After all, Cohn himself says in one interview, “Donald just wants to be the biggest winner of all.”
Grade: A-minus. Rated PG-13. Opens Nov. 1 at the Grail Moviehouse.
(Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute)
