The writers of Idiocracy are bringing the movie back to the forefront 10 years later, and you can thank Donald Trump.
Writer Etan Cohen and director Mike Judge are planning to release anti-Trump advertisements, according to an interview with BuzzFeed. After noticing many similarities between the presumptive Republican nominee and fictional President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, played by Terry Crews, Cohen sent out this tweet in February:
He thought it would just be a passing comment, but it ended up receiving a lot of attention. It was favorited and retweeted nearly 4,000 times, becoming perhaps his most popular tweet, and was even written about in various publications, including Business Insider and the Huffington Post. The idea to create satirical advertisements followed soon after. “This is what satire is for,” Cohen told BuzzFeed. “To be able to hold up a mirror and say, ‘This is crazy.'”
The movie, released in 2006, is set 500 years in the future where anti-intellectualism is running rampant and America has voted a former professional wrestler, just like Trump, into the White House.
The movie is meant to satirize our country’s obsession with celebrity and entertainment culture, which is how numerous people have explained Trump’s rise. “Obviously, when writing the movie, we knew that that was true about TV and movies and pop culture,” Cohen said in the interview. “But it was a crazy joke to think that it could be extrapolated to politics. It seems to be happening really rapidly.”
Cohen did note at least one difference between Trump and Camacho: “Camacho actually realizes he needs advice from other people, and knows that he’s not the smartest guy in the room.” He added that, if given the choice, he’d vote for Camacho over Trump.
