Posted on 11/13/2003 5:13:41 PM PST by L.N. Smithee
Buzz. It’s the magic word in Hollywood. And if you’re CBS and trying to attract a zillion viewers for your new TV-movie, The Reagans, it’s music to your ears.
By now, you know that to Gipper fans, The Reagans bears more resemblance to The Osbournes than to the married life of the 40th president. And to CBS, the astonishing media blitz around the four-hour special was only a happy accident.
But in hindsight it’s obvious that the TV-movie about Ron and Nancy had everything it takes to fan the flames of the ongoing culture wars. Hollywood! A conservative icon! Liberal producer-types! Barbra Streisand! (Well, her husband, James Brolin, anyway.) It even had a friend of Bill Clinton’s lurking in the background – CBS chairman Leslie Moonves.
How does a scenario like that look to a worried conservative, even one who hasn’t seen The Reagans? As former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan puts it: “Imagine these folks doing [something] on Reagan that presents him straight-forwardly as a great man. I can’t.”
Still, The Reagans is just a TV-movie, one that might have appeared without incident if the New York Times had not obtained a copy of the script, one that falsely accused Reagan of saying of AIDS sufferers, “They that live in sin shall die in sin.”
Word spread, and CBS had a publicity bonanza on its hands quicker than you could shout, “Bonzo! It’s bedtime!” Conservatives lashed out at what they believed was the project’s insensitivity, given the popular former president’s failing health. Nancy released a statement: “The timing is absolutely staggering to me. Obviously, it’s very hurtful.”
Talk shows obsessed on the subject. CBS and the TV-movie’s award-winning producers, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (Chicago, Life with Judy Garland, [gay-themed sitcom It’s All Relative]), became targets of conservative writers and pundits. Despite not seeing it, Pat Buchanan called the project an abomination and Jerry Falwell initiated a letter-writing campaign. A Web site organizing a boycott of both the network and the movie’s advertisers was launched.
Things only got worse when a six-minute trailer was sent out to the press, depicting a perpetually overwrought Nancy (Judy Davis) and a mildly befuddled Ronald Reagan (Brolin). Reagan’s son Michael, a syndicated radio talk-show host, got a copy. “It’s like watching a campy Saturday Night Live,” he says. “They make my father look buffoonish.”
Foul! complains Meron, who was still editing the two-part movie just weeks before airdate. “The final script is certainly not the final work. And this is not a documentary but a dramatic interpretation.” Moonves declines to comment but has indicated that he would make the TV-movie “fairer.”
The Reagans began life at ABC five years ago, as a project that focused on Nancy Reagan but the story widened when it was picked up at CBS. “We thought there’s a really great family story that goes beyond politics,” Zadan says. The script – which covers 40 years, from Ron and Nancy’s first meeting through his last day in office – draws from both political biographies and personal profiles.
“What we’re trying to do is just present what happened as truthfully as we know it,” says director Robert Allan Ackerman.
But the question for many skeptics will be “Whose truth?” Will the filmmakers, who describe themselves as “proud Democrats,” skew their portrayal of Reagan, especially in dramatized scenes?
“I don’t think anyone on this movie has a political agenda,” Meron says.
Maybe, but the second-guessing started early. First came the casting of Brolin. The press jumped all over that, [saying] he was married to Barbra Streisand – like he was going to depict Reagan in a bad way because of that,” Zadan says.
Brolin claims that he’s much more interested in portraying Reagan’s complex character. “Democrat, Republican, --[it] doesn’t matter to me. I was apathetic about Ronald Reagan, says the actor, who in makeup on the Montreal set uncannily resembles the Great Communicator.
If Reagan was difficult to cast, Davis was Nancy from the start. The Australian actress, however, admits that she had her qualms. “[The TV-movie is] going to be aired when America is perhaps more polarized politically than I can ever recall. It will be interpreted in that climate in a particular way,” she says. “I did not want to be involved in anything that would be a malicious attack.”
She says she found it a real challenge to portray this “woman who had such an extraordinary life and was so powerful….I did feel an empathy. She came under such shocking attack from the press.”
That empathy will probably deepen as the protests against CBS grow. There is clearly a disconnect between the filmmakers, who want a present a human, flawed Reagan, and the protesters, who don’t see any flaws. In Noonan’s words, “it shows disrespect.”
[Ronald Reagan] in many ways is a mythic figure, says CNN talk show host and former Clinton adviser Paul Begala. “A TV show isn’t going to change that. So he had his good and bad sides. Let it go.”
But not until after the November sweeps.
I would have no problem whatsoever with a project that took the Reagans' actual flaws in consideration. What annoys me is that the creators of this have made up shameful things out of thin air and defend them as "creative license" or "dramatic interpretation."
So he got caught making an ugly portraly of "fake Reagan", had to re-edit the work, and inferred that the criticism was hollow because he was "still editing it". He wouldn't BE editing it if he hadn't been caught. Which version will go to home video? Of course, parent company Viacommie was also behind the editing out of the boos Hillary received from police and firemen at the Concert For NYC and replaced them with cheers. This is even the version that eventually was released on DVD.
What a bunch of lying liars.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.