I would soon learn that my fate was one shared by the rest of the press, the vast majority of which was barred from the premiere of Melania, a documentary that Amazon bought for an eye-watering $40 million and reportedly spent another $35 million promoting. That $75 million price tag is a steep hill to climb for a movie expected to bring in just a few million on opening weekend. As Amazon flooded televisions and billboards across America with the striking face of the first lady, social media matched it with screenshots of theater floorplans showing few, if any, seats reserved.

It is a peculiar situation, a film in desperate need of promotion being so stridently withheld from the very reporters the studio needs to cover it. It wasn’t just Sulichin who helped maintain a hermetic seal on the theater doors: Amazon did not allow reporters beyond the Trump-Kennedy Center’s red carpet. The center’s chief Ric Grenell was of no help either, though this should come as little surprise—despite his past as a diplomat, Grenell has stood out in Trumpworld as particularly hostile toward the press. (I recently sent him an email greeting, but was met with a rather undiplomatic reply in which he diagnosed the media with “an extreme case of TDS,” or Trump Derangement Syndrome.) In the run-up to the event, Ratner’s team agreed to an exclusive interview with a Vanity Fair writer, only to ghost her when the appointed interview date approached.

While barred from the screening itself, the press was allowed to cover the procession of cabinet secretaries and elected officials who marched the black carpet, which kept with the monochrome branding Melania used for both her autobiography and the new documentary. There was Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., House Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “I’m a big fan of Melania,” said Kennedy, adding, “she’s a supporter of my agenda.” Ratner—whose Hollywood career was derailed in 2017 by a suite of sexual misconduct allegations, claims that he denied at the time—arrived with Marc Beckman, a producer on the film and a longtime adviser to Melania. “For me, it’s the biggest moment of my whole life, my whole career,” said Ratner, whose pre-Too credits include directing the Rush Hour franchise, which brought an $850 million box office haul, and producing The Revenant, for which Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar. How will he measure the success of this film? “Definitely not by the box office!” Ratner said. “I’ve already succeeded.” And where have you been all these years? “I was lying low,” he replied cryptically. (Ratner will direct the upcoming Rush Hour 4, which Paramount greenlit after Trump privately and publicly urged the Ellison family, which owns Paramount, to bring back the franchise.)

Among the assembled press, Dan Ball, a host at the pro-Trump outlet OANN, spent much of this time loudly insulting the reporters around him. When he interviewed Alina Habba, a former Trump lawyer who recently lost her job as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, he asked what she thought of the “shitty” media on the black carpet that night. “The fake news?” Habba asked. Ball, becoming increasingly agitated as the interview went on, complained that the media “never covers” Melania and concluded by calling the reporters in the room “mongrels.” Ball’s wife, a producer at OANN, chuckled. The floor around her was covered with glitter that had fallen off her body. “I feel like I’m at a strip club,” muttered one photographer. Ball was overheard saying glitter would be all over his face later in the evening.