Saturday Night Live’s James Austin Johnson gave the Tribeca Festival a taste, and analysis, of his celebrated stream-of consciousness Donald Trump impression. He often wings it.

“It wouldn’t feel like Trump if there wasn’t this queasy feeling in the audience of ‘what is he going to say?’ and so I have to improvise for the character to kind of come alive. So I’m throwing in stuff,” he said Saturday after a few presidential riffs that jumped from China to Japan to Korea to Carrie Underwood to Lady Gaga to Iran, delighting the audience after the world premiere of Josh Greenbaum’s new documentary, Playing POTUS.

The film explores how comedians parody leaders and help define them to the public, an important conversation currently amid presidential tirades against late night hosts, and after The Late Show With Stephen Colbert closed up shop last month. Asked outright during a Q&A if he was afraid, Johnson said. “I hope my name never comes out of his mouth.”

“One time he [Trump] started to talk about me,” Johnson said. “He was at a rally, he was talking about Alec. He was like ‘Alec Baldwin, he’s a sick puppy. There’s a new guy doing it now, but we don’t watch the show. They say he’s pretty good.’” But, the comedian added, “I’m doing a version of it that I feel is sustainable. Because I do think that there’s a little bit of a game of Operation that all of comedy is playing right now.”

Playing POTUS, based on Peter Funt’s book of the same name, features an assortment of SNL alumni and comedian including Johnson, Chevy Chase, Dana Carvey, Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Keegan-Michael Key, Alec Baldwin, Kate McKinnon, Tina Fey and more who have played presidents and prominent political figures. Former SNL writers Robert Smigel and Jim Downey joined Johnson and the director for a conversation after the screening.

“These impressions have power,” Greenbaum said — increasingly so as people turn away from the news, “putting comedy and the work these people do in a more and more powerful and impactful position.” The doc noted that Winne The Pooh is banned in China after its president was once compared to the rotund bear of the classic children’s story. That started in 2013 as the leader was walking side by side with the taller, slimmer U.S. President Barack Obama.

“I just don’t want to ever go down that path,” he said. “And hopefully this small film will remind us that we are lucky and should fight to protect these voices.”

Emotions spilled over at a gathering of Hollywood workers, union officials and a current and former FCC commissioner opposed to the planned Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger on Saturday, with some arguing that the mega-merger on top of other recent challenges in the business would mean the “death of Hollywood.”

Writers, actors, crew members and small business owners made dire predictions for the proposed $111 billion transaction at the “Main St. vs. The Merger” town hall at Beverly Hills’ Lumiere Cinema. Some expressed feelings of powerlessness at the prospect of one historic studio swallowing another, a transaction Warner Bros. shareholders approved in late April. Others, including moderator and former FCC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, urged that the transaction isn’t a done deal yet and called for hope.

On Friday, Reuters reported that California, New York and other state attorneys general are preparing a lawsuit to block the merger after California attorney general Rob Bonta previously promised to look into the deal.

Nevertheless, many in the room didn’t seem to be banking on that suit stopping the transaction. One person who identified as a producer, but like many speakers at the town hall didn’t say her name, described a Paramount-Warner Bros. deal in existential terms. “A domino fell during the pandemic. Another fell during the writers’ strike. If Paramount merges with Warner Bros., it may be the final domino that knocks everything down,” she said.

The fear is that the Hollywood mega-merger would lead to thousands of layoffs, the removal of a key buyer in the marketplace for projects and less work for those already facing the downstream effects of an industry contraction and previous consolidation. One television writer who spoke at the meeting said that he had a project in development with CBS Studios that slowed down once the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger was announced. He has had to make a career pivot this year. “If this merger goes through, this will be the death of our industry, I believe,” he said.

In a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter, a Paramount-Skydance spokesperson said, “Opposing this deal means opposing expanded consumer choice, new opportunities for creators and workers, and greater competition throughout the creative ecosystem — the opposite of what antitrust law is meant to achieve. It also means giving entrenched incumbents like Netflix an advantage they do not deserve. We will continue to fight against any attempt to derail a deal that plainly benefits consumers, creators, and the industry as a whole.”

The mood in the room was heavy as audience members questioned how they could make an impact. “As someone who tries really hard to keep people positive and motivated and inspired and empowered and, ‘Let’s keep going, let’s keep doing it, I am starting to feel… do you know what I mean? The hard. And it’s getting hard for me to keep others inspired. And I don’t like that,” a self-described actor and comic said, her voice cracking.

Some expressed frustration that more elected officials and labor unions weren’t stepping up to challenge the merger, with performers’ union SAG-AFTRA especially coming under fire.

A panel of speakers including Writers Guild of America West president Michele Mulroney and board member Adam Conover, as well as current FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez and a representative of the International Documentary Association and Future Film Coalition, Marjan Safinia, didn’t negate the pessimism. (“It’s the death of a great American industry,” said Conover in his opening remarks.) But they did suggest action items, like telling personal stories on social media, calling political representatives and joining larger groups to lobby for a stop to the deal.

Bedoya also maintained optimism about the potential attorneys general suit. “This merger can be blocked,” he said in his opening remarks. “I have to say there is every reason not just to think that Attorney General Rob Bonta will step in along with other state attorneys general to block this merger, there is every reason to think they will win.”

In addition, Bedoya said a challenge to the merger could come in the form of a lawsuit from a private citizen or labor union, legislation, a European Union review of the transaction or funding from Middle Eastern ventures falling through amid the war in Iran.

The town hall arrived just days after Ellison’s Paramount Skydance became embroiled in a new scandal at CBS News. In an overhaul of 60 Minutes, management fired executive producer Tanya Simon and correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi and hired columnist-slash-filmmaker Nick Bilton to lead the storied newsmagazine. Longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley subsequently was fired after laying into management at a meeting on Monday, claiming CBS News head Bari Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes.”

Though speculation swirled about whether other correspondents would follow Pelley out the door, Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim said on Friday they would stay because “we don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.”

Back at the Lumiere theater, Gomez, the sole Democrat left at the FCC, addressed the frustration in the room with a call to action. She argued the public backlash to ABC pulling Jimmy Kimmel off the air last year reinstated the late-night host in his role and demonstrated the power of everyday voices.

“I know it’s exhausting, I’m exhausted,” she said. “Every day I’m speaking out about some new horror that this administration is doing, particularly on the First Amendment. I’m exhausted. But it’s not time to be tired. It’s time to get inspired because your voices really do matter.”