By Jason Apuzzo. Mark Joseph’s planned Reagan biopic, Reagan, is getting a lot of attention right now. James Brolin, who played Reagan in the Showtime miniseries The Reagans, is suddenly claiming that he loves Reagan (don’t tell Babs that); Mark Joseph is also telling Fox News that his film will deal with Reagan’s “plan to defeat the Soviets” (which certainly jibes with what he’s told me); and the film’s screenwriter talks today to the Wall Street Journal about the transformation of his own attitude toward Reagan.
I think all this discussion is great, and I very much wish the best for this film project – but I just want to caution everybody that Reagan has thus far not secured its financing yet, or a cast, or a director, or distribution. What this means, practically, is that this film is a long way from hitting theaters. I’m assuming that announcements about financing and cast/crew are imminent, but until then it’s hard to judge all this properly.
The irony here is that there’s actually quite a good film in theaters right now featuring Reagan called Farewell (starring Fred Ward as Reagan, and featuring Willem Dafoe, David Soul and others) – that depicts Reagan respectfully and intelligently – during one of the most decisive moments of his Presidency. Farewell deals with the famous Cold War spy case ‘L’Affaire Farewell,’ an episode which Reagan himself called “one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century.”
We really liked Farewell here at Libertas, including its depiction of Reagan (see Joe Bendel’s LFM review here), and we encourage Libertas readers to go see it since it’s still being rolled out nationwide. The realities of the business are that the better a film like Farewell does, the more likely Reagan will actually get made – and receive the distribution it deserves.
As LFM’s Joe Bendel said about Farewell, “[I]t is an engrossing film. It also might be the fairest shake Pres. Reagan has gotten on screen since his inauguration in 1981 …” So go check it out. I’ve put the trailer below.
Posted on September 9th, 2010 at 3:33pm.
Thank you for reminding me about this. A guy in my anthro. class saw it recently and said it was really good. Kind of amazed this got made.
It is amazing, although apparently becoming less so these days …
One other interesting thing is that the kid I know who saw it didn’t read anything political into it. He just looked at it as a pretty decent spy thriller. I’m not sure that all the anti-Reagan brainwashing has really taken hold with the younger generation. They seem willing to give The Gipper a fair shake.
That’s interesting. I can’t really say, except that I think the narrative on Reagan is probably still up for grabs.
The huge fact that looms over the Reagan legacy is our victory in the Cold War. It’s very hard to get around that, frankly. His revival of the economy was another enormous aspect of his legacy, but economic tides to some extent come and go. Defeating an enemy like Soviet communism was a landmark event.