“This movie is good but it’s old,” I said to Swamp Rabbit. “It should be remade and updated.”

We were watching was A Face in the Crowd (1957), starring Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes, a folksy conman turned reality TV star who becomes a populist demagogue with great power and influence. The movie must have seemed over the top when it was first released. It is over the top. No way Americans could be hoodwinked into electing to the highest office a fascist clown with delusions of grandeur.

Not until the Trump era, that is.

“I’ll tweak the story to make it contemporary,” I told my scrofulous neighbor. “The main character will wear a suit and have orange skin. The corporate overlords who suck up to him will be Silicon Valley billionaires. His handlers will stream campaign ads and text each other. Viagra will replace Vitajex. The woman who betrays him will be coarse and lowdown, like Stormy Daniels, not Patricia Neal.”

Swamp Rabbit was unimpressed. “You ain’t no Elia Kazan. You ain’t got the money to make a movie like that. If you did, it would be the worst sequel since Exorcist II.”

I told him the movie would be a remake not a sequel. My main problem would be with the screenplay’s climax. In the original, Lonesome Rhodes’ army of fans turn against him when he mocks them after making a TV speech, unaware that the sound is still on. His political career is finished.

In the remake, the general public won’t disavow their demagogue. They’ll remain loyal even after he mocks them to their faces. I’ll base the key scene on Trump’s words to the crowd at a recent rally in Tennessee: “It’s amazing. When you stand up here, it’s just like — the love. I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap [for] me.”

Sure enough, the Tennessee crowd laughed and applauded him. True life is stranger than fiction, and often more depressing.