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I was close to people who made Red DAwn and believe me, MGM did everything they could to get people to see that movie -- there was no "well organized" effort to keep poeple from seeing it -- HOllywood read what they thought was the conservative temperature of the public at the time and made that movie in order to capitalize on that. It had a huge ad campaign. Believe me, Hollywood doens't make movies and then try not to sell them. The Beast was a different matter, and much simpler, really: it was put into production by the head of Columbia, DAvid Puttnam, who had been fired (for a series of huge flops) by the time he was replaced by a new head of production, Dawn Steel. DAwn Steel didn't want to put any promotional money into a movie whose success would only have brought glory to the previous guy in her job -- she wanted to save that money for her own projects. Take it from me, becuase I work here: it's ONLY ABOUT MONEY.

The effort I was referring too was led by the likes of Siskel and Ebert, a wide range of leftist movie reviewers, and snide remarks made some hollywood types unconnected with the movie (I wish I could remember who they were).

I know that hollywood makes movies to make money. I'm not an idiot. My use of the term may be overbroad, but in my usage in encompases not just actors and movie companies, but the industries that surround, support and feed off it. Did shows like "Entertainment Tonight" choose to interview the actors at the time? Not that I can remember. As for the reviewers, they universally ignored or slammed the movies in the fashion I described, and most of their reviews were factualy incorrect.

As for hollywood disavowing the Soviet Union, some held their noses a bit during the latter part of the Afghan conflict, but continued to offer aid and comfort for Soviet/Communist policies elswhere in the world. And we won't even get into the collective orgams the entire left (Hollywood included) had over our old pal Gorby.

Another part of the problem is actors. Many big name actors won't do parts in movies that are anti-communist. Let say Beatty had starred in Red Dawn instead of Reds, do you think things might have been different for those movies respectively? If Swayze had been as big a star then, as he is now, Red Dawn would have done much better, because his drawing power would have overcome the hostile reviews. If the internet had been as mature then, as now, that movie's fortunes would have been much different as well. Just as this article suggests.

As for your insider status in hollywood, and what people tell you behind the scenes about their political attitudes, its what they say and do publicly that matters in the end.

As for Swayze, I know a bit about him. When he was making that movie about lepers in India (where he played the doctor), he, his brother and the film crew bunked with my brother and his fellow Marines in the Calcutta embassy for several weeks (because of protests against the making of the film). Apparantly, he was not too happy with the way the film was marketed, or what was said about it (Red Dawn that is).