[clee1]

It looks like the public outcry over their revisionist history has forced them to backpedal.

An informed public CAN counteract any abuse of power.

[GeronL]

Oh, and so they refuse to re-edit it???

[SAJ]

Assuming this is an accurate report, why do I somehow think that the Clinton Broadcasting System bit off WAY more than it can chew on this little project? Heh heh heh...

And, next question, who's the idiot at Showtime who's going to put that operation in the crapper by laying out $9 mil for this revisionist hit piece?

[Fred Mertz]

I'd like to see it first in order to determine its true value.

[Jewels1091]

Guess CBS wants to play hot potato now...wonder is anyone else wants to play??? Think Bar is stomping around her house a little put out?????

[Moonman62]

If this is true, it's one of the smartest moves CBS has made in years.

[Yaelle]

I love it. We activists have MADE SOMETHING HAPPEN. Hit 'em in the wallet; it works every time.

[Steely Glint]

CBS really proved it was on the side of the Communists with this hit piece.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

Title: The War Over the Gipper (Conservatives erupt. CBS cowers. The director walks. The untold story behind the meltdown of ‘The Reagans’ mini-series)
Source: MSNBC
URL Source: http://www.msnbc.com/news/987895.asp? 0cv=KA01
Published: Nov 2, 2003
Author: Sean Smith and Marc Peyser
Post Date: 2003-11-02 01:20:51 by out damned spot
2 Comments



James Brolin and Judy Davis, who play Ron and Nancy in "The Reagans," have been silent about the film



The War Over the Gipper Conservatives erupt. CBS cowers. The director walks. The untold story behind the meltdown of ‘The Reagans’ mini-series

By Sean Smith and Marc Peyser NEWSWEEK


Nov. 10 issue — President Reagan is lounging in his pajamas trying to watch TV when Nancy starts that old argument again. “Al Haig’s got to go,” she tells Ron. Nancy never liked Haig, and now she’s needling her husband again. “You know what he did when you were in the hospital?” she asks. “I know he thought he was going to take control, but that’s not so bad,” Ron says amiably, between bites of an Oreo. Finally, she swoops in front of the president, placing her blood-red nightgown between him and the television, and gets him where it hurts most. “Get rid of Al, Ronnie, or you’re never going to end the cold war!” Bingo. “All right!” he says. “Now get off my goddamn back, will you?”

YOU THINK that fight sounds ugly? It’s nothing compared to the brawl over CBS’s “The Reagans.” This mini-series (scheduled for Nov. 16), is full of scenes from a marriage like the one above, some of them loving, a few of them nasty and many of them certain to tick people off. Two weeks after a leaked script ignited protests, “The Reagans” has become radioactive—and nobody’s even seen it yet. A Web site called boycottcbs.com recorded more than 45,000 hits in less than a week. Such commentators as Bill O’Reilly have made “The Reagans” the plat du jour on their menus, and the Republican National Committee now demands that CBS let historians vet the show. But the ugliest battle is inside CBS itself. Stars Judy Davis and James Brolin decline to do any press. Director Robert Allan Ackerman has opted out of the editing, and CBS executives are now cutting it themselves. As one person close to the film says, “It’s being edited with a machete.” Sources tell NEWSWEEK that the network has even considered selling the $9 million film to Showtime.

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What’s even more amazing is that none of this happened sooner. “The Reagans” was always meant to be a warts-and-all portrait of an American icon, with ample attention to the president’s hands-off approach to governing, his wife’s behind-the-scenes power plays and their estrangement from their children. Still, CBS thought the movie was, so to speak, fair and balanced. It credits Reagan with defeating the Soviet Union, and its central theme is the First Couple’s love affair. The script was vetted by two teams of lawyers, and producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, who would not be interviewed by NEWSWEEK, have insisted that every fact (though not every line of dialogue) is supported by at least two sources. Before a New York Times story last month detailed conservatives’ complaints, network executives reportedly loved the movie. “They all thought it was brilliant,” says someone who worked on the film.

But the day the Times’s story broke—”The Reagans” crew calls it “Black Tuesday”—the movie instantly became trouble. CBS chairman Leslie Moonves, who approved both the script and a juicy eight-minute trailer, ordered the lawyers to look at the movie again, and asked for assurances that the facts were all in order. When he was told everything was fine, Moonves started editing anyway. “There are things we think go too far,” he told CNBC’s Tina Brown last week. (Moonves also declined to be interviewed by NEWSWEEK.) At that point, Ackerman removed himself from the editing in protest and the actors stopped talking. “Nobody seems to know what’s going on,” Ackerman told NEWSWEEK. “Whatever is going on is going on very secretly.”




As of late last week, the film had been through at least three edits. The most incendiary line—where Nancy asks the president to do more for AIDS victims and he replies, “They that live in sin shall die in sin”—has been cut. So has footage of a young Ron Reagan Jr. doing ballet. (Go figure.) Most of the other cuts come from Nancy’s scenes. For all the concern about how the president is portrayed, Davis’s take on Nancy looks like Lady Macbeth in a couture dress. “The film version is so milquetoast compared to what her daughter wrote,” says Carl Anthony, a producer of the film who once wrote speeches for Nancy. “It’s odd to me when people get all worked up, because it’s called a dramatization. They forget what that means.”

Will the changes satisfy skeptics? Don’t bet on it. “I had some Republican call me yesterday,” says Jeff Wald, Brolin’s manager. “He said, ‘You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. He has Alzheimer’s and can’t defend himself.’ Could Jackie Kennedy defend herself when they did the movie on her?” Michael Paranzino, who launched boycottcbs.com, says nothing short of a complete remake would get him to cancel his campaign. “I think they should pull it from November,” he says, “bring in consultants who aren’t hostile to Reagan and try to come up with a truly balanced picture.” Of course if CBS does dump the movie on Showtime—both owned by Viacom—much of the heat would dissipate into the cable ether. But some who worked on the film worry about the long-term implications of “The Reagans” controversy. “This is censorship,” says one source. “A pressure group has had a major network rip this movie to shreds.” But we can look forward to one fun outcome: the director’s-cut DVD.

[Political Junkie Too]

Revisionist history has been incrementally occuring for some time now. It started with the furor over the Smithsonian WWII memorial in Washington DC, then the Disney movie Pearl Harbor downplayed Japan's aggression, and now the Reagan movie distorts his life.

It's good to see the people fighting back, demanding an accurate portrayal of the history we remember.

-PJ

[Calvin Locke]

Darn! I wanted to see the part where Jimmy Carter tries to bribe the Soviets to interfere in the elections to help Jimmy out.

[b9]

One reason for this could also be the threat of boycotted sponsors, like Hallmark. Saw an ad tonight for an upcoming Hallmark Hall of Fame movie scheduled for late November on CBS.

All I could think was how apoplectic Hallmark must be at the prospect of losing conservative customers :o)

[Timesink]

Schadenfreude

This is the New York Times CBS Schadenfreude Ping List. Freepmail me to be added or dropped.

---

This is the Mainstream Media Shenanigans ping list. Please freepmail me to be added or dropped.
Please note this is a medium- to high-volume list.
Please feel free to ping me if you come across a thread you would think worthy of this ping list. I can't catch them all!

[Lancey Howard]

Amazing.
Just 13 years ago or so, before Rush Limbaugh, Free Republic, Fox News, C-span, and the internet, the huge conservative majority of traditional Americans would have just rolled over, quietly seething, feeling like they were in the minority, and certain that there was nothing they could do about the liberalism that they knew was ruining the nation.
There has been a sea change, and it gives me great hope.

[Nonstatist]

have insisted that every fact (though not every line of dialogue) is supported by at least two sources.

What does this mean? SO if you have a line of dialogue that is a complete fabrication, thats not an errant fact? Or are they saying that although Reagan never said that sin thing about Aids it dfoesent matter, he meant it anyway?

Newsweak pimps for CBS, those leftist goons.

[Rose in RoseBear]

Pingpingping!

[Rockitz]

Now that this most recent effort has produced such good results, it's time to shut down CBS News with Dan RatTurd.

Boycott it's sponsors! Who are they?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Miranda Devine - Sydney Morning Herald (story at bottom of article)

Davis's idea of a service [Full Text] Trust Judy Davis to be part of a malevolent character assassination of former US President Ronald Reagan, who is in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease and in no position to defend himself.

Reagan, 92, and his wife, Nancy, are the subject of an American CBS TV docu-drama, The Reagans, to be aired in the US this month.

Judging by press leaks, the two-part miniseries deliberately portrays the Gipper as a hard-hearted, homophobic, moronic, religious nut, and Nancy as a pill-popping control freak and awful mother.

Playing Nancy is our very own Davis, 48, the Green Left Weekly pin-up girl.

The Drudge Report website says Davis's portrayal of Nancy was inspired by the movie Mommie Dearest in which Faye Dunaway portrayed Joan Crawford: "Wild mood swings, dramatic lighting, and tart-mouth insults are hysterically delivered by Davis."

Nancy Reagan, at 82, has devoted the end of her life to caring for her sick husband and preserving his legacy. She is said to be "in anguish" over the telemovie's lies and has tried in vain to stop it.

Davis couldn't care less. "If this film can help create a bit more questioning in the public about the direction America has been going in since the 1970s . . . it will be doing a service."

Playing the former president is James Brolin, whose wife, Barbra Streisand, is a Democratic Party shill who is "tight" with the telemovie's producers and spent months on set.

Davis pops up in Sydney from time to time making flowery speeches denouncing George Bush and John Howard, marching in anti-war rallies with John Pilger, or launching a book by her left-wing mate Stuart Rees, director of the conflict-plagued Sydney Peace Foundation.

A starring role in a fifth-rate hatchet job on a dying man is not much to be proud of. [End]

[Pharmboy]

I sent them an email last week saying that I would personally write and call each of the sponsors of the show and would work to extend a boycott to all involved. I think they got many letters like that.

[BJungNan]

What do you mean you are going to sell it! And you edited out what scene? Are you total cowards? Are you going to allow yourself and history to be run out of town by these right wingers?

Its not just the right. We are hearing from everyone. We even had a call of complaint about the script from Susan Estrich, Babs.

And who is she. She is off my Christmas party list, that's who she is. She can knock on my door at Christmas for hours. She's not getting in. And don't call me Babs. Only my friends are allowed to call me Babs, some of them anyhow.