{"id":8006,"date":"2019-11-03T18:06:42","date_gmt":"2019-11-03T23:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=8006"},"modified":"2019-11-03T18:06:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-03T23:06:45","slug":"review-wheres-my-roy-cohn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=8006","title":{"rendered":"Review: WHERE’S MY ROY COHN?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From Witch Hunt to \u201cWitch Hunt\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Roy Cohn died in 1986, but he never really left. The man died more than 30 years ago, but his tactics, his personality, and his amorality is on daily display in Donald Trump\u2019s White House.

In Tony Kushner\u2019s prize-winning drama \u201cAngels in America\u201d, \u00a0the villain is disgraced attorney-fixer Roy Cohn, \u00a0a character usually played with a \u00a0dastardly evilness that reaches almost comic-book proportions. \u00a0\u00a0

When then-attorney general Jeff Session\u2019s insisted on recusing himself from then-special counsel Robert Muller\u2019s investigation into Russia\u2019s alleged interference \u00a0in the 2016 presidential election, a furious, exasperated Donald Trump turned to his White House advisers and asked, \u201cWhere\u2019s my Roy Cohn?\u201d\u00a0 As in \u201cwho can bribe, cajole, blackmail, almost kill for me?\u201d

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Roy Cohn with Senator Joseph McCarthy. <\/strong>Courtesy of Sundance Institute.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer learned of Trump\u2019s plaint, he knew he had found the title for his documentary on Roy Cohn – a project Tyrnauer had considered the moment Donald Trump became the 45th<\/sup>\u00a0president of the United States.

He knew about the peculiar bond that once existed between Cohn and Trump. In 1973, Cohn was defending Donald and his dad Fred from being sued by the Department of Justice for racial discrimination \u2013 the Trump company was excluding blacks and Hispanics from their housing projects. \u00a0The case was settled, with no admission of guilt.

\u201cA settlement is a win,\u201d Cohn explained.

To Trump, a young and impressionable prot\u00e9g\u00e9, \u00a0Cohn imparted the wisdom of his trade.

\u201cAttack.\u00a0 Don\u2019t apologize.\u00a0 Never acknowledge you\u2019re wrong.\u201d

The \u201cfriendship\u201d lasted for 13 years, until word got out that Roy Cohn had AIDS. \u00a0Trump, a well-known hypochondriac, dropped his mentor.

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Cohn with Donald Trump.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With the help of archival footage, \u201cWhere\u2019s My Roy Cohn?\u201d takes us through the highs and lows of Roy Cohn\u2019s life.

A child prodigy, at the age of 24 he was a Justice Department lawyer helping to prosecute Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, accused of nuclear secrets espionage. The couple was convicted and executed. This \u201cwin\u201d led J. Edgar Hoover, then director for the FBI, to recommend Cohn to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who was planning a series of investigative hearings to root out communists.

The McCarthy hearings were more or less run by the senator and young Cohn. \u00a0They destroyed \u00a0the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people, many federal workers, many in the entertainment industry.\u00a0 As if this wasn\u2019t enough, Cohn convinced McCarthy to go after the US Army \u2013 for a very personal reason. \u00a0The resulting 1954 \u00a0Army-McCarthy hearings turned into a famous fiasco, culminating in the televised outburst \u00a0by the Army\u2019s attorney Joseph Welch, \u201cHave you no sense of decency sir, at long last?\u201d

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Cohn at Studio 54.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But it is the movie\u2019s very personal interviews with people who knew Cohn the best that make you pay attention.\u00a0 Feel a bit nauseous, even. \u00a0\u00a0Because, just how evil was this man? His \u201cfriends\u201d mince no words:

\u201cBeyond Machiavellian.\u201d

\u201cA personality in disarray. He had no boundaries. No scruples.\u201d

\u201cRuthless.\u201d

\u201cYou felt you were in the presence of evil.\u201d

\u201cYou felt you were in the presence of evil.\u201d

\u201cHe would take a fight against anybody.\u201d

\u201cRoy would get his lack of ethics, his lack of empathy, from Dora.\u201d

Dora was Roy Cohn\u2019s mother. His younger cousins, Dave and Gary Marcus, are eager to spill family history. Dora was the ugliest girl in the Bronx, and she had such a difficult personality, they\u00a0 claim, the wealthy family bought her a poor man by offering him a judgeship. Roy, grew up an only, spoiled child, and lived with his mother, \u201dthe original helicopter parent\u201d (David Marcus) until she died.

The hypocrisy revealed \u00a0in the documentary is astounding.\u00a0 As President, Cohn\u2019s good friend Ronald Reagan pretended that AIDS didn\u2019t exist, yet he helped Cohn get experimental drug treatment. In his lifetime, Roy Cohn denied he had AIDS, denied he was gay, yet \u201ceverybody\u201d knew. His boyfriend Wallace Adams says he would attend parties full of anti-gay Republicans as Roy\u2019s companion, and nobody minded.

Roy Cohn\u2019s heyday as a unscrupulous New York lawyer was the amoral mid-1950s.\u00a0 Among his celebrity clients were Aristotle Onassis and George Steinbrenner, but he advised Mafia clients as well, protected Catholic archbishops, \u00a0and introduced Robert Murdoch to influential acquaintances.\u00a0

In the last 20 years of his career, Cohn was investigated by federal authorities for perjury, witness tampering, and theft from clients.\u00a0 There was also the matter of his yacht, the \u201cDefiance\u201d, which mysteriously caught fire and sank, killing a crew member. Shortly before his death, Cohn was disbarred for unethical and unprofessional conduct.

Matt Tyrnauer is connecting the dots among power brokers, criminals, politicians, and supposedly democratic institutions with brilliant ease.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Understanding how blind ambition can go tragically mad is both frightening and enthralling.

The timing of \u201cWhere\u2019s My Roy Cohn?\u201d is perfect.\u00a0

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mercy thinks the timing is perfect for this documentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[206,810,1787,969,1812,972],"class_list":["post-8006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-documentary","tag-donald-trump","tag-history","tag-matt-tyrnauer","tag-roy-cohn","tag-studio-54","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8012,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions\/8012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}