Trump in the Rough: Anthony Baxter on A Dangerous Game

Anthony Baxter's A Dangerous Game revisits the Menie estate and the residents whose David v Goliath battle with property tycoon Donald Trump he documented in You've been Trumped. He explains how he found similar battles happening around the world

Feature by Jamie Dunn | 03 Sep 2014

If you were ever on the fence as to whether the Shredded Wheat-haired billionaire Donald Trump was a good guy or not, Anthony Baxter’s brilliant muckraking documentary You’ve Been Trumped from 2011 should set you straight. It showed how the property tycoon bulldozed his way into Aberdeenshire to build ‘the world’s greatest golf course,’ destroying a stretch of coastline and intimidating the local residents who didn’t bend the knee and sell him the homes they’d lived in all their lives. While making the film, Baxter got threatened by Trump’s security goons and manhandled and arrested by the local constabulary. The Scottish media and, most disconcertingly, the Scottish government were won over by Trump and the 6000 jobs he promised to bring to the region.

Cut to three years later and Anthony Baxter is back with follow-up A Dangerous Game to show that the golf course has been built and the precious coastline destroyed, but not much else has changed. The residents’ lives are still being made a misery by the Trump organisation and none of the promised prosperity for the region has materialised. Trump, meanwhile, has moved on to his next golf course in Ireland. Baxter spoke to The Skinny by phone from his home in Montrose to discuss the situation and explain how this second film led him to find similar tales all over the world.


““People often ask me what Trump’s like, but I don’t really care what he’s like as a person. It’s what he represents that I think is dangerous” – Anthony Baxter


The Skinny: What drew you back to this story?

Anthony Baxter: "It was two things really. One was the fact that when we showed You’ve Been Trumped in the communities around the world people were saying to me “The same thing is happening here!” It’s not always Donald Trump, but as Robert Kennedy Jr says in the film, “There are Donald Trumps everywhere.” What people like him represent is the billionaires who come into communities and say they’re going to bring all this economic prosperity, but in reality that seldom seems to happen and the price paid by the environment is enormous. The Scottish story was about a site of special scientific interest being destroyed to make way for a golf resort for the super-rich, but elsewhere it can be about water, as it is in Dubrovnik, the fear that a huge, sprawling golf resort will have a massive impact on the town’s water supply, or it’s about pesticides, as the fear is in The Hamptons, where a golf course is built on top of an aquifer. It was something I couldn’t resist trying to follow, particularly the Dubrovnik case.

"And then in Scotland, despite the huge outpouring of public opinion and shock that followed the screening of You’ve Been Trumped on the BBC, the harassment of the local people was continuing. So I found it extraordinary that when Michael Forbes won the Top Scot award in a public vote and when it was broadcast on BBC 2 people were appalled by what they saw, but I was aware that a bank of earth was still being heightened around Susan Munro’s house, that Molly Forbes, it turns out, still hasn’t had a full working water supply four years after the water was cut off to her and Michael Forbes by the Trump organisation. This has continued despite everything! And that was something that I found just too compelling to ignore. I just felt a need, really to highlight how power and money can manipulate the media."

The media and politicians may not have taken any notice, but Donald Trump certainly did…

"It was a complete shift and an unexpected shift really. But I think he was probably aware of just what a foothold the first film had – which he had dismissed completely, not only in Britain, but elsewhere – and that resulted in him agreeing to do an interview. It was an important thing to do because I wanted to be able to put to him what was continuing to happen on the ground, but also the wider issues as well. What people like him represent."


Anthony Baxter interviewing Donald Trump

Can you talk about the sit down – after all that time chasing him, were you satisfied with how it went?

"It was extraordinary on one level because I’m sitting there asking questions that I tried to ask him in the first film, but I was also conscious that I didn’t want to look back too much; I wanted to look forward too. And he was charming when the interview started, and his mood changed as the interview went on. People often ask me what he’s like, but I don’t really care what he’s like as a person. It’s what he represents that I think is dangerous, not only for the future of golf, as we touch on in the film, but also the planet."

He did threaten you with legal action on Twitter. Did anything come of that?

"He threatened to sue the BBC when they were airing the film: he launched an 11th hour legal bid to stop them from showing it, and, as you say, he’s tweeted before that he’s going to sue me, but the fact is we were just reporting the facts. It’s quite difficult to see what legal grounds he would have and I think that’s probably what most lawyers would say as well."

Can you lay out some of the facts and figures from the film? It seems the people of Aberdeenshire got little of what they were promised…

"[Trump] came to Scotland, claimed he was going to invest 1.5 billion dollars and build 15,000 houses and a luxury hotel – and everybody reported that. And in actual fact he’s created in Scotland fewer than 200 jobs. All that’s happened is that a site of special scientific interest has been destroyed for a smattering of jobs. Alex Salmond was on camera saying 6000 jobs were going to be created. Well the figures suggest otherwise. It’s slightly depressing that politicians haven’t questioned the story and also there hasn’t been an investigation into what has happened in Scotland to make sure that this kind of thing can’t happen again, whether Scotland is an independent nation or not."

You’ve touched on it already: the media have been pretty complacent on this story. As traditional media slowly dwindles, do you see it as the responsibility of filmmakers to fill the gap?

"The traditional way of working was that journalists working on the ground would cover the boring council meetings, they’d go and sift through reams of documents to find a story, and then the local television and radio would pick up on those stories and would bring them to a wider audience. But that just doesn’t happen anymore. It is often left to filmmakers to come in where traditionally there would have been someone else investigating the story. But the problem is that isn’t sustainable either, because filmmakers like myself aren’t earning a salary as it were and it’s hard to get these films off the ground."

There’s some added whimsy in this film thanks to the presence of your golf-mad uncle, Denis. Can you explain why you wanted him in the film?

"He represents what golf was really about when I used to come to Montrose on holiday as a kid. It was really a golf course for the people. It was part of the town. It’s not an exclusive playground for the super rich. And Denis in a way epitomises that: he’s very into it being a game for everyone. But it’s been hijacked by these super-rich people who build golf courses in places that cannot sustain them, like Dubai, where Donald Trump is building a new golf course in the middle of the desert where, whichever way you cut it, it makes absolutely no sense at all to move millions of tonnes of sand around, pipe in water and make this green oasis in the desert gated-off for very wealthy people. That is the polar opposite to Denis and his approach to the game."

Is the story complete now?

"In terms of documenting it, it’s come to a natural close for me. But I think the story is likely to continue and I just hope that other journalists will pick it up and continue to investigate the claims made by Mr Trump and others like him."

A Dangerous Game is released 12 Sep across the UK by Montrose Pictures, with advanced screenings happening in Scotland from 5 Sep