THE APPRENTICE

Join us for the film that kicked off the 5th season of TCFF Tuesdays.  Nearly 1000 of your friends and family packed the State Theatre to see this movie days before the rest of the country could.

This movie is not about Trump’s hit NBC reality show, The Apprentice. This audacious film is the origin story of Trump himself— when, he, Donnie Trump, still in his 20s, was “the apprentice.” Not on TV, but in real life, the actual apprentice to one of the most notorious, evil and conniving legal minds of the last century – Roy Cohn.

Friday, October 11th at 1pm, 4:30pm, 8:00pm
Saturday, October 12th at 1pm, 4:30pm, 8:00pm
Sunday, October 13th at 1pm, 4:30pm, 8:00pm

Finally, someone has made a documentary based on one of the best nonfiction books of this century, the seminal cultural/anthropological masterpiece, Bowling Alone. You wait for years hoping someone smarter than ourselves can figure out who we are, why we behave the way we do, and how did we come to accept a society so empty and hollow that it turns out our greatest killer may not be cancer or guns or a double mocha frappuccino, but rather the sad and simple fact that we are so friggin’ alone. Gone is the intimate sense of community, of human contact, of going over to give your neighbor a slice of Mom’s still molten strudel. Why has attendance at the PTA dropped by 50%? What happened to your neighborhood book club? Why was there only 1 person sitting alone in the State Theatre for the 4pm show two Fridays ago? Something doesn’t seem quite right, does it? And we can’t keep blaming it on the fact that we had a pandemic. It may be because some people have to work 2 or 3 jobs to get by. One thing’s for certain: The less real contact we have with each other, the more our society continues to crumble. And the more distant our Democracy seems to be in the rearview mirror. I’m guessing none of us wanted this.

All of this is to say that JOIN OR DIE is exactly the heartfelt, uplifting film you’ve been looking for because author Robert Putnam, now in his 80s, is convinced that we can create a better way. If there’s one documentary you see this year, this is that rare film that leaves you with a renewed sense of action, purpose and a specific vision for a way home. This movie will not stop the war in Gaza, it will not stop the upcoming climate catastrophes of 2025, but it might give you an idea or two on how to bring peace to your soul, and in doing so may bring about the healing of all those things just mentioned. And the first step might be as simple as playing darts at the corner pub with a bunch of strangers whose names you’re about to learn.

Tuesday, October 8th at 1pm & 7pm