Reagan: The Movie — Finally By John Fund
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/reagan-the-movie-finally/
A great movie about the Gipper is in the works, and none too soon.
Saturday was the 110th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Just the day before, I spent some time in California with the team that is finishing a new movie on his life. It’s the first time that a film company has been allowed access to the Reagan Ranch and the nearby Reagan Library for such a project.
When Reagan: The Movie appears in theaters twelve months from now, America will have the big-budget film about the Gipper that should have made a long time ago. The telling of Reagan’s inspiring story and America’s rebound may have been delayed, but it will never be more timely. (You can find out more about the project at reaganmovie.com.)
Just watching 66-year-old Dennis Quaid (The Right Stuff, Soul Surfer) stride through the Reagan Ranch in a cowboy hat and jeans makes you realize the casting for this movie is perfect. Penelope Anne Miller (Carlito’s Way, Kindergarten Cop) is also a smart choice to play Nancy Reagan. The rest of the cast includes Jon Voight, Lesley-Anne Down, and Robert Davi.
The movie will tell the story of Reagan’s life from age 11 to age 83, as seen through the eyes of Viktor Petrovich, a KGB agent who is assigned to observe Reagan’s career from the 1940s through the 1980s. Petrovich constantly warns Moscow that Reagan is “a Crusader” who could do grave damage to the Soviet Empire. But he is largely ignored — until it is too late.
“The story of Reagan is a fascinating one whatever one’s politics,” the film’s producer, Mark Joseph, told me. “We came at it from the angle of wondering what his enemies thought of him and how they followed him and ultimately lost to him. Nobody knew him like his enemies did — and it’s through that lens that we tell the story. It’s impossible to understand the last century without understanding who Ronald Reagan was.”Joseph has been an executive on more than 45 films, including The Passion of the Christ, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the successful free-speech documentary No Safe Spaces (with Adam Carolla, Dennis Prager, and Jordan Peterson).
He consulted with or interviewed 50 of Reagan’s aides and intimates as part of his research. Among them was George Shultz, Reagan’s secretary of state, who sadly passed away yesterday — on Reagan’s birthday — at age 100.
The Reagan film has had a long journey. Joseph knew that he would have to make the film independently in order to avoid the strings and demands for script changes that financing from a major studio would entail. Raising the money, pulling together the right team, and then navigating the perils of production during a pandemic has, all told, been an arduous ten-year-process.
I sat down with Howie Klausner, the scriptwriter for the movie, during my time at the Reagan Library. Klausner has worked on many big Hollywood productions (Space Cowboys, The Identical). But he has never found the kind of creative fulfillment he’s gotten from the Reagan movie.
“It truly was that magical experience all writers long for and experience so few times in their lives — when the story tells you what it wants to be, and your job is to get out of the way and let it. You know you’ve found it when the characters begin to write themselves. And in this one, they did just that,” he told me.
When Klausner was hired to write the script, he told Joseph he wasn’t going to write a GOP commercial or a hero-worship film: “We wanted to tell the story of a life that constantly reinvented itself, rolled with the punches, failed miserably on occasion, and ultimately realized its purpose at the age of 70. I believe that explains the twinkle in his eye, the smile and wink he would extend even to his bitterest rivals, and his iron grip on the things he believed in most — freedom, his homeland, people, God.”
I asked Klausner what event was most significant in shaping Reagan’s life. He responded instantly: “When he was a lifeguard on the Rock River, outside of Dixon, Ill. He was credited with saving 77 lives. I believe it formed him as a man, down to his soul — that his lot in life was to watch out for others. To read currents and dangers that they could not see, warn them away, and, when necessary, dive in to save them.”
Our country is about as polarized as it has ever been in its history. Liberals have adopted some of the socialist ideas that this nation fought so hard against in the 1980s. The Republican Party that Reagan led is filled with too many angry voices and not enough sound plans to solve our real problems.
The Reagan film may be only a movie, but having read the script and seen some of it being filmed, I can assure you it carries a message, an example, and an inspiration that we’ve never needed more.
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