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Inside Funny or Die and Johnny Depp's Insane Donald Trump Movie 'The Art of the Deal'

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Joe Randazzo has been one of America’s leading satirists for the last decade, as the editor of The Onion and then working with Adult Swim. His name has been gold with comedy nerds in the know, and this week, Randazzo got a huge boost of public recognition with perhaps his biggest and most high-profile project yet: Funny or Die’s scathing and absurd “adaptation” of Donald Trump’s 1987 business book/memoir, The Art of the Deal.

Written and produced in secret, and then launched online Wednesday, the 50-minute short has got a delightfully bizarre conceit: it pretends to be a TV movie adaptation of Trump’s book, written, directed, and starring “Trump” himself. Obviously, Trump didn’t participate; instead, Johnny Depp is covered in thick makeup to resemble a Frankenstein version of the real estate mogul-turned-presidential candidate.

Randazzo spoke with Yahoo Movies on Friday, taking us inside the making of the bold faux-biopic.

How’d this crazy thing come together?
I had actually gone in to pitch them a slightly different thing about Trump, and we had a meeting about it, and they came back to me with, “Why don’t we make a movie out of his book, The Art of the Deal?” They said, “We’d like you to write it,” and after I wrote the script, they were shopping it around. Nobody was really able to attach to it. But Adam McKay had Johnny Depp coming in for a meeting because he’s such a big fan of all of Adam’s movies. And they said, “We have this Trump thing, do you think you’d want to do that?” I guess it was like an hour and a half meeting and he agreed to do it.

He does like to transform.
I think he kind of wants to play around and try new things and he was really interested in the challenge of doing it. I wrote it very quickly, we shot it in four days, it was a really quick turnaround. I think the whole thing was different and interesting and exciting for him. He was amazing, obviously, and he got everybody else excited. At that point we were able to really ask anybody if they wanted to do it and they at least considered it.

How long did it take to apply that insane makeup to Johnny Depp?
It was a couple hours. He was in there with the makeup team. He really wanted to bury himself in that. It was a challenge because it was so much, but it really did add this sort of monstrous look to him that I don’t think was completely intended, but was very welcome.

He really immerses himself.
He really does get deeply, deeply into the role. I only saw him out of makeup on the last day. It was really weird to realize, “Oh yeah, I’m working with the biggest movie star in the world the last four days.” Once in a while, a little bit would slip out. He was such a nice, funny guy, so it was like cracking jokes with Donald Trump. It was amazing to watch him. Every take he would do something different. He’s been doing this for 30 years, so just how intimately he knows his place in front of the camera.

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Depp as Trump in ‘The Art of the Deal’ (Funny or Die)

The script mostly stuck to what’s in The Art of the Deal, whether it was stuff about Trump’s old lawyers or his Manhattan real estate dealings.
We wanted to examine the stuff that he felt was important and talk about things that he really did do, that in the book, he thought was great — but if you look at it, were really bad. He’ll find a way to make anything sound like a victory. It’s interesting how he’s put together his media empire, so I think the challenge was finding funny interesting, weird ways to present the stuff he had in his book. Some of it, we didn’t use because it was just kind of boring. And some stuff we put in that sounded like they were jokes. But stuff like moving homeless people into Central Park South apartments, that was a real idea he had. He really did sue the NFL. He really did say in the book that they wouldn’t let him join that nightclub unless the promised not to sleep with other members’ wives.

He really did work with Roy Cohn and loved Roy Cohn, who was one of the most despicable humans of the 20th century [Cohn was Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s defense attorney in the 1950s]. I think it was a way to mix in fact and fiction to show how many big blind spots the guy has.

At the end, you have Depp play the current-day Trump, but throughout most of the film, you show a restraint in not referencing his presidential run or infamous quotes.
We tried to put in a couple lines that felt like they were would be natural foreshadowing but would echo stuff that he said, but he kept saying crazier and crazier stuff, and we kept having to update it. There was one thing where we found a way to make reference to his saying that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and people still love him It was outrageous when he said it two weeks ago, but since then he’s said a bunch of other stuff. We try to do little hints about it, but we realized that it was going to feel dated because people wouldn’t remember these things, because he’s constantly topping himself.

Do you think Trump is beyond satire, in that he’s so absurd himself that he’s impossible to top or take down with jokes?
Well, I think he is pretty impervious to criticism, except that he’s his own worst enemy. You can tell he has a very, very fragile ego. I think he lives in constant fear of ridicule, but he’s not willing to admit it. But at some point, something’s going to push him over the edge. I don’t know what it is, I didn’t know if it’s going to be this movie, but he’s his own worst enemy.

He may get the nomination, but I don’t think he can win a general election. He’s kind of a cipher: He stands for dissatisfaction with establishment politics, political correctness, and Washington, D.C.. But I think if it’s him versus a legitimate candidate, that rings very hollow. I think he’s terrified that people will see he’s actually an insecure little baby.

He’s pretty willing to sue people, were you worried about that at all?
I think we were planning on it. We haven’t heard back from him yet, but it’s parody. He’s capable of anything, though.

Trump has a strange charisma. I’ve only spoken to him once, but for a moment, he’s weirdly charming.
He’s a people person. He’s in real estate in New York City. If he was on our side, I would love it. If he was saying the stuff that Bernie Sanders is saying, I would love the guy. I do think he’s a complete opportunist, I don’t think he really believes 90 percent of what he says. I think he surrounds himself with sycophants who never tell him no, and maybe he has come to believe it. At some point I think he realized this presidential campaign was a real thing and now it’s a pride thing for him. If you ignore the content, he’s pretty likable. He knows what he’s doing. He’s kind of a master at manipulating an audience and manipulating the media. It’s just that the things are coming out of his mouth are horrible.

When Will Ferrell played George W. Bush on SNL, he made him sort of lovable. Do you think satirizing Trump can help him in a way? How do you avoid that?
Well he’s still a human being. So far, the only negative responses I’ve seen have been from people I assume are Trump supporters and probably didn’t watch it and said, “Why didn’t you do this about Hillary or Bernie?” But they’re not as funny. Hillary’s boring, and Bernie, there’s not a lot you can say about him. He doesn’t have a history of saying insane things. But Trump is a human being, and there are two instances where we tried to add some humanity: One, where he’s really hurt when nobody called about his birthday. And the other, the only time that anybody really refers to him as a human being who has done positive things is ALF, the puppet character. I don’t think we’re going to convince anybody one way or the other with this, but hopefully it’s entertaining.

Watch the trailer for ‘The Art of the Deal’ below:

Funny Or Die Presents Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal: The Movie Trailer from Funny Or Die