Stormy

[DanaK]

Peacock documentary chronicles porn actress turned Trump paramour Stormy Daniels and the aftermath of the scandal that Trump payed her off to keep quiet before the 2016 election. Streams March 18

[DanaK]

Trailer

 

[Bastet]

I thought this was okay - as the biopic, not investigative documentary, the filmmakers keep reminding people it is - but in need of tighter editing.  Stormy isn't anyone I want to be friends with, but it was interesting to see the events play out, over the course of years, from her perspective.

What it does best is show how used, bullied, and discarded she was by a string of men, and my eyes about popped out of my head when it was revealed the director of an earlier documentary was briefly involved in a romantic relationship with her during filming.  No.  That's Documentary Ethics 101. 

I understand her ex-husband's feelings, to an extent, about why couldn't they just go lie low somewhere and start a new life once they were being hounded, but dude needs to get real.  It's not easy to just pick a country and move a kid and pets there, and then what do you do for money?  She'd always been the main breadwinner, allowing him to tour with his band and bring home lunch money.  Despite only ever being labeled as a "porn star", she had become an accomplished director in that industry, but when she became infamous she stopped getting those jobs.  Realistically, how else was she going to keep supporting the family other than using her fame to pull in the bucks on tour?  I think it was driving an ice cream truck as the analogy she used, which was perfect -- if you'd been doing that for years, and then you don't do it during a record heatwave, you're an idiot.

The shift in the online comments, from calling her names the first time around to explicitly threatening her life after Trump was indicted, is chilling.

And the "This is all going to wind up being for nothing" exhaustion at the end is how a lot of people feel, and I found that to be the bottom line, even though the story hasn't yet completely played out.

I didn't pay attention at the time - never understanding why I should believe she was the hope of the resistance - to all the media appearances, so didn't know she'd done SNL.  It was cute how excited she was Kate McKinnon was going to play Rudy Giuliani.