The Weekly Screed (#896)

A Commodious White House

by David Benjamin

“This man was not naturally wicked, but, on the contrary, as guileless as any man that ever lived. His great simplicity, however, together with his cowardice, missed the better life and then was led on into lustful and cruel habits.”

                                                         — Cassius Dio

MADISON, Wis. — There are going to be movies about Donald Trump. Sometime in the coming decade, a competent, literal-thinking director like Adam McKay, who did the Dick Cheney biopic, Vice, will take up the weird tale of Maga-Man, rendering him both strangely compelling and appalling.

My preference, though, is for a more whimsical filmmaker to give Trump the Commodus treatment. We all know who Commodus was, right?

Okay, for those who skipped Latin class, a quick review. Commodus was the son of perhaps the greatest and wisest of Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius. Well, alleged son. Marcus spent a lot of time away from Rome and his wife, Faustina, liked to sleep around, especially with big sweaty gladiators. Commodus’ mother’s frequent sexual wanderings go a long way toward explaining why he was so completely unlike his cerebral and philosophical pop.

Commodus, actually, didn’t think Marcus was his dad, either. He fancied himself the son of Zeus (the god). 

Marcus Aurelius once wrote, in his Meditations: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” Commodus, not fond of reading, probably didn’t pick up on this sort of fatherly counsel. Commodus wandered so far into the ranks of the insane that he could have played Curly Joe to Nero and Caligula’s Larry and Moe.

 

For instance, one day, he decided to change Rome’s name to Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana — “Commodusland” for short. Romans all had to call themselves Commodiani. Commodus also named the months of the year after himself (yes, he had twelve names, most of which he made up on his own).

 

There’s more, including his penchant for cutting off people’s heads, and killing crippled people, lions, giraffes and ostriches before crowds of bloodthirsty Commodians in the Colosseum.

 

There’s even more we don’t know, because the history of Commodus’ 15-year reign is spotty. But all those wide historical gaps make Commodus great grist for the movies. Despite the brevity and insignificance of his rule, Commodus has been richly fictionalized in two epic movies. In The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), he was depicted maniacally by a young Christopher Plummer. In Gladiator (2000), Joaquin Phoenix gave moviegoers a deeply Freudian, disturbingly creepy version of Commodus.

  

Most of the stuff in both flicks was spurious. For example, Commodus in real life was not fond of his sister Lucilla, nor she of him. Lucilla was among at least thirteen of Commodus’ boon companions who plotted at one time or another to murder him. After foiling Lucilla’s conspiracy, Commodus sent her into exile and then — just to put a cherry on the sundae — had her killed.

 

In Gladiator, director Ridley Scott fingers Commodus for offing his father. This occurs after Marcus tells his (alleged) son that he’s not qualified to succeed him as emperor. It’s true that, in reality, Marcus Aurelius regarded Commodus as weak, greedy and malignant. Regardless, four years before his death — of natural causes — Marcus anointed the kid as heir to the throne. So, no patricide.

 

But here’s where we can start the Trump version. We meet his dad, Fred, who recognizes all of little Donald’s myriad character flaws. But Fred, as long as he’s alive, resolves to prop the kid up, pay off his creditors and cover his screw-ups. This would be one of the movie’s true-to-life elements. But even this part would be larded with fiction, because Fred Trump — a racist slumlord with a heart of frozen dogshit — was no Marcus Aurelius. He wasn’t wise. He wasn’t even Caligula.

 

Besides, this film’s about Don, not Fred. Our director — I’m thinking the Coen brothers — could create a semi-fictional Trump along the lines that directors Anthony Mann and Ridley Scott dreamed up for their fictional Commodi. In both movies, Commodus is a bully who loves to pick fights, surrounded by toadies who make sure the fight is rigged. History does not record whether Commodus knew he was getting help to maintain his unbeaten streak, but he gloried in his rare talent for effortlessly slaughtering chained-down lions, wounded soldiers and amputees.

 

A parallel scene in the Trump biopic would show our hero, after the 2016 election, waving in triumph to more than ten million giddy believers mobbing the National Mall. Meanwhile, behind the bleachers, Mark Zuckerberg and Vladimir Putin are sniggering diabolically and doing complicated Muscovite handshakes.

 

Commodus was so intoxicated by his martial prowess in the arena that he took to calling himself Hercules, wearing a cape fashioned from the head and pelt of a lion. Picture, in the Trump movie, Donald preening in front of the mirror with his leonine comb-over and his extra-long priapic red tie.

 

While Commodus loved to wage battle against enemies real and imagined, he had no discernible attention span, changed his mind and then changed it back on the spur of the moment, showed no interest in governing and preferred to keep his subjects in a constant state of fear. He pacified them with a steady diet of red meat, bread and circus. He was paranoid, cowardly and a marathon liar.

 

Commodus trusted no one, especially those closest to him. Among his myriad murders were his sister, his brother-in-law, a few cousins and his last wife Bruttia Crispina. His mistress, Marcia, suggested to Commodus that he kill his “chief of staff” Cleander and — for good measure — Cleander’s son. So he did.

In my Coen brothers flick, I’m thinking that somehow, a few of Donald’s nearest and dearest — say, Mike Cohen, Roger Stone, Hope Hicks, Mad Dog Mattis, maybe even Don, Jr. — “disappear” under mysterious circumstances. Fictionally, of course.

 

What’s missing? Well you can’t produce a Hollywood flick without a little romance. Ridley Scott had Commodus lusting and groping incestuously, if not very accurately, after his sister. We can do better, however — and more believably — in the Trump movie.

Ivanka, right?

The last problem — I leave this to the Coen brothers — is how do we end this epic? In both of the old movies, Commodus died by the sword, mock heroically, on the floor of the Colosseum. In reality, he was poisoned by Marcia (his own true love), but then he upchucked the deadly draught and had to be strangled by his fitness coach, whose name — I’m not making this up — was Narcissus.

Trump, of course, has no fitness coach, but he does have a stable of golf pros — from Turnberry to Mar-a-Lago — who spend every round watching Donald kick the ball out of the rough, drive his cart onto the green, take a mulligan on every shank and pick up forty-foot putts. He also has a trophy wife who never wanted to darken the White House’s doorstep and whose life is an endless cycle of tongue-biting embarrassment. What jury would convict her?

I would not even hint, however, that we could end the movie the way Narcissus ended Commodus. God forbid such a fate even for our narcissist-in-chief. Nowadays, thank goodness, we don’t behead our relatives or strangle our petty tyrants in the gym. 

We don’t have to. We’ve got Nancy Pelosi in the House.