Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019) * * *

 

Directed by:  Mark Tyrnauer

Where's My Roy Cohn? is a documentary about the late, controversial, and ultimately disgraced attorney whose name has resurfaced recently in connection to former president Donald Trump, whom Cohn once represented and mentored.   Cohn's life was portrayed brilliantly in Citizen Cohn (1992), in which Cohn was played by James Woods, and again by Al Pacino in Angels in America (2003), where Cohn professed to his doctor that he couldn't possibly have AIDS and, despite having sex with men, he is not gay either.  Roy Cohn was a mass of contradictions and hypocrisies and wasn't much bothered by ethics or scruples.  He was disbarred in 1986 a few months before his passing for forging a client's signature which awarded him control of the man's fortune.   The rumor is he dressed as a nurse to gain access to the man's hospital room.  It is not established whether the story is true, but after watching Where's My Roy Cohn?, we wouldn't put it past him.

Roy Cohn rose to fame, or infamy, during the McCarthy hearings as Senator McCarthy's right-hand man.  After McCarthy's demise, he graduated to representing mobsters and other notorious figures while enriching himself and becoming one of the most powerful men in New York.  During the 1970's, Cohn was a fixture at Studio 54 and began representing Trump in a series of lawsuits and other legal issues.  Cohn taught Trump to never apologize and never admit wrongdoing, which Trump has obviously mastered.   He was able, to the amazement of his friends and family, to bring his male lovers to Republican functions without being ostracized or shunned.   I'm reminded of Al Pacino as Cohn telling his doctor that he can call the White House at any time and within five minutes he would be connected to not the President, but the First Lady, whom he deemed even more influential.   He was intoxicated by power and knowing the right people.  This documentary reflects a man for whom cognitive dissonance was a way of life.   It will shock you and anger you, and those are the fitting emotions when discussing Roy Cohn.  

When privately diagnosed with AIDS, Cohn publicly announced he had liver cancer, not only to protect himself from publicly disclosing his homosexuality, but because in his mind, gay men are weak and contract AIDS.   Liver cancer somehow seemed like something a stronger man would have.   Through witnesses and news stories, we see Cohn's full-blown denial of his lifestyle in full effect.   What makes Roy Cohn at once fascinating and repulsive was his ability to destroy the lives of others without blinking an eye and his imperviousness to his own hypocrisy.  He would publicly and privately deny he had AIDS, but then used his political connections to seek experimental treatments for the same disease.  Cohn contracted the syndrome when it was in essence a death sentence and died on August 2, 1986.  I don't know how many mourners he had at his funeral, but I can't imagine he had many.