US President Donald Trump is said to have hosted a screening of ‘Joker’ at the White House.
As first reported by CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz, the president “had people over for a viewing” on Saturday night.
A senior White House official then confirmed to Yahoo News that the guests included “family, friends, and some staff” and that the president liked the film.
The new ‘Joker’ is a stand-alone origin story about a man called Arthur Fleck who works as a party clown but dreams of being a stand-up comedian. He gradually descends into insanity and bloody violence as his dreams turn sour.
The film has recently passed the $1 billion world box office mark, and Joaquin Phoenix’s powerful lead performance has received widespread critical acclaim; however, the apparently sympathetic portrayal of Joker has raised questions as to whether the film is glamorising real-world violence – which the distributor Warner Bros. strongly denied.
Donald Trump has made brief cameos in 12 films and 14 TV series, including ‘Home Alone 2’ and ‘Sex and the City’. He is said to be an avid movie fan, and a 1997 New Yorker piece by a journalist who has shadowed Trump for three days states that he used to regularly screen movies on his private plane. That article names the 1988 martial arts film ‘Bloodsport’ starring Jean-Claude Van-Damme as Trump’s “old favourite”.
Some of his other all-time favourites include ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘Gone with the Wind’, and ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’, ‘GoodFellas’, and ‘The Godfather’.