[symple_heading style=”” title=”By Ken Stone” type=”h1″ font_size=”” text_align=”left” margin_top=”20″ margin_bottom=”20″ color=”undefined” icon_left=”” icon_right=””]
Troy of Tucson, a poverty-stricken former landscaper, blames his situation on “refugees” and rails against certain kinds of feminists.
Phil Ceparano, a Long Island plumbing and heating business owner, doesn’t mind most Mexicans. “They’re not all rapists,” he says. “You go to the store and they’ve very nice.”
But he says leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement are merely looking for fame and financial gain — like the Rev. Al Sharpton, “a piece of crap as far as I’m concerned.”
Deplorables? Maybe.
But Leighton Woodhouse finds humanity and heartache as he unpacks the lives of this pair and two others in a documentary called “Trumpland” that began airing this week on Fusion, including online.
A 41-year-old director living in Highland Park, Woodhouse might have a similar beef as Troy. At least about interlopers from Flint, Michigan.
On Tuesday, Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore announced the surprise debut of “Michael Moore in TrumpLand,” which some critics see as mainly an homage to Hillary Clinton with an Ohio backdrop.
“I had not heard of Moore’s project until it was reported in the news,” Woodhouse said via email. “I haven’t had any contact with him. I have no idea if he changed his title because of our film, or if he’s even aware of it.”
Woodhouse’s “Trumpland,” executive-produced by Nando Vila, profiles what the director calls four “regular Trump voters” in New York, Arizona and Texas. It’s part of The Naked Truth series on the left-leaning Fusion media group owned by Univision Communications.
“It’s a fun, informative and surprising look into the minds and hearts of [Donald] Trump’s supporters,” he told MyNewsLA.com. On Wednesday, the film first streamed on Facebook Live. Netflix will have it eventually as well.
Also profiled with a handheld camera are a mechanic on Staten Island and a retired schoolteacher in Houston.
Woodhouse, a freelance journalist, puts his UC Berkeley master’s in sociology to good use in his “Trumpland,” revisiting his subjects anew and showing comforts as well as catastrophes.
He intercuts Trump rallies as well as footage of news and pundits, including one who says the Republican’s supporters are “people who don’t matter in the overall course of humanity.”
Certainly, Woodhouse found folks with interesting sidelines, especially plumber Phil, who shows off his collection of movie monster action figures he boasts may be worth as much as $750,000.
“I donated to Trump two times before Christmas,” Phil says. “Got two Christmas cards,” one to his name and one to his family’s. “Who does that? Took a lot of thought. Very nice of him to do.”
Bob — a “moderate Republican” — says he has no problem with gay rights. “Why is that an issue?”
Bob hopes “moderate Muslims” exist, but doubts it. “How do you think you’d like Sharia law?”
Troy is the film’s most complicated subject, shown grilling hot dogs next to his mobile home because he can’t afford electricity. (His milk turned to cheese after the fridge stopped.)
“It’s either pay the power or neglect the kids,” he says.
A quarter of Troy’s $11.25-an-hour baking-job pay goes to wage garnishment, he says. He seethes with anger over Mexicans who cross the border to do landscaping and undercut his rates by dropping the cuttings off in their own back yards or Dumpsters — something Troy wouldn’t be able to do.
Troy says: “I’ll scrub a damn toilet with a toothbrush with a smile on my face if it will pay my bills.”
The supreme irony is revealed: Troy’s mother is from Sinaloa, Mexico.
Such twists are the treasure of “Trumpland,” especially at the end when a silver-haired Trump supporter in her expensive-looking home dines with her Bernie Sanders fan Argentine daughter-in-law (a green-card holder) and other Hillary Clinton supporters.
The women sip wine and argue over immigration.
Setting their stark differences aside, they toast themselves as family.