April 26, 2025 • 32 mins
The “Reagan” movie, starring Dennis Quaid, faced numerous challenges during its production, including pandemic-related shutdowns, an actor’s strike, and concerns about audiences returning to theaters. “Reagan” released in theaters on August 30th, 2024, and is a historical drama which chronicles President Ronald Reagan's life from his humble beginnings to his presidency. Newt’s guest is film producer, Mark Joseph, who has also authored a book titled "Making Reagan," detailing the two-decade journey to create the movie. Mark Joseph will be speaking at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley on April 29th, the event will be accessible both in-person and virtually. Please go to: https://www.reaganfoundation.org/events to register.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of News World. Imagine making a movie
in the middle of a global pandemic, forcing it to
shut down twice, waiting for an actor's strike to end,
and then hoping people will feel comfortable returning to movie
theaters again. This is what the producers, directors, and actors
of the Reagan movie endured to bring it to the screen. Reagan,
(00:28):
starring Dennis Quaid, was released in theaters on August thirtieth,
twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
The historical drama.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Follows President Ronald Reagan's life from his impoverished childhood and
Hollywood stardom to his role as President of.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
The United States.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Reagan is now available to stream on Amazon Prime, YouTube,
and Apple TV. Reagan film producer Mark Joseph has released
a new book about the film called Making Reagan, which
follows the two decade journey to make the film. Mark,
(01:13):
welcome and thank you for joining me on News World.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Well, thank you for having me, mister speaker.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So I have to ask you, why did you decide
that you had to tell Reagan's story.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Well, I begin the book with driving myself in a
minivan with my wife and four young daughters between the
age of one and six. Or something like that. Driving
through Illinois to my cousin's wedding and I'm pulled over
for speeding, and I look at the ticket and it says,
first of all, you must appear in court in person,
(01:44):
because I was caught in a speed trap and I
was so far over the speed limit. But I looked
at the ticket and it said you must appear in Dixon, Illinois,
And I realized for the first time that I was
driving through Ronald Reagan's hometown, unaware of that. But it
left me with having to spend the night in Dixon
to face the judge the next day for this horrific
crime of mine. And I had twenty four hours to
(02:07):
kill in Dixon, and that was the genesis of the
whole idea. But what made me think about a movie
especially was just realizing Dixon is a very very normal place.
All I could see was a holiday in a gas
station at a pizza hut. But it just showed again
where our leaders come from very normal places. Prime ministers
(02:28):
of other countries the job is handed to them by
their father or grandfather, but most of our leaders come
from ordinary places like Dixon. And that was my inspiration.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I've been studying Reagan, working with Reagan, campaign with Reagan,
actually for about six decades. I was shocked to realize,
but you have a story I had never heard about
eleven year old Ronald Reagan. Share with us how decisive
this was in shaping him.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Paul ken Gore had a book, had a couple of
books that were so interesting. But what really interested me
about ken Gore. I have a friend named Terry Maddingly
who's a religion columnist, and Terry will often say that
religion is often the ghost in people's stories because it
explains things about them. Whether it's Michael Jackson, you know,
wanting to hold onto childhood because he wasn't allowed to
(03:15):
celebrate his birthdays as a kid, or Christmas, or Ronald Reagan.
It's often is an explanation for why people behave, and
in particular with Reagan. Ken Gore had gone to the
church that Reagan grew up in and asked if he
could see the sermons that young Ronald Reagan heard as
a child. Well, the pastor said, amazingly, think of all
the books written on Ronald Reagan, he said, nobody has
(03:36):
ever asked to see them before they're in the basement.
In a box, and so that's where Ken Gore found
all these things, and he found out that Reagan's pastor
was very anti Communist, which explains a lot of Reagan's life.
Reagan was about eleven and a half. I think he
had just found his dad Jack, drunk in the snow,
I think fairly recently. And I think his mother realized,
I've got to give this kid something or he's going
(03:58):
to grow up to be just like dad. And so
she found this book, our hypothesis of pastor gave it
to the mother, but she gives it to her son.
It's called That Printer of You Deell's and it's a
rather unremarkable fiction book written by a religious author, but
it turns out to be a turning point in young
Reagan's life. And the hero of the book is a
(04:19):
young man whose father is an alcoholic, and the young
man finds God and grows up to become amazingly a
United States congressman. And so Reagan reads this book at
eleven and a half and he goes to his mother
and he says, I want to declare my faith and
be baptized. What I couldn't figure out was he couldn't wait.
The pastor said, well, you have to beat to your
twelve in our denomination Disciples of Christ, and he insisted
(04:42):
he had he baptize at eleven and a half, and
he convinced the preacher to do it. That always mystified me,
what's the rush? Can't you wait six months? But that
denomination really equates salvation with baptism, and so I think
in young Ronald Reagan's mind, he couldn't go six months
in this unclear state, and so he wanted to be baptized.
But that really turned his life around, and instead of
(05:04):
becoming a congressman, he goes to Hollywood detours and becomes president.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I had never seen the story before. It does help
explain a lot. Now, when did you decide you had
to make the Movie's.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Working at a company called Walden Media. We had done
the Chronicles of Nardia Ray because of when Dixie holes
all these fun movies, and I really wanted to make
it there, but the owner of the company it was
too political for him, and so I realized I had
to kind of leave and develop it on my own.
So that was about the time this incident and Dixon happened,
(05:37):
and I carefully was watching other attempts to make Reagan movies.
And interestingly, Reagan's fans, as you probably know, are incredibly
protective of their man, and so anytime of Hollywood wouldry
to make a movie, they would come out in force
against it, often with reason. They were suspicious of those
of us at Hollywood. And so when James Brolin made
(05:59):
a movie called The Ray Pagan's, they came out against
that one and essentially forced CBS to move it from
Showtime to CBS, and it really didn't do very well.
And then a few years later, Will Ferrell announced that
he was going to make a Reagan movie, and the
whole joke was that Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer's as president
and they had to convince him that he was acting
(06:20):
in a movie to get his job done as president. Well,
this lasted about forty eight hours before poor Will Ferrell
had to pull out of that one, because again Reagan
fans were so vocal. In fact, the reason I know this,
mister speaker, is that our page people thought our Facebook
page was the movie's Facebook page. And I remember somebody
put on our Facebook page. Will Ferrell graduated from such
(06:40):
and such high school. He's in the Wall of fame
at his high school. Please call this number and demand
he be taken off the wall of fame at his
high school. So you can imagine the pressure that poor
Will Ferrell was feeling from Reagan's devotees. So that project
ended in forty eight hours. Michael Douglasnett was announced as
a Reagan film, but the fans were not happy about that,
So it left the space open to us, and I
(07:03):
think that his fans realized pretty quickly that we weren't
out to destroy him. We were out to just tell
the story fairly. I spent a lot of time with
people that knew President Reagan and Ronald Reagan as governor.
But at the same time, we were also very careful
not to align ourselves with anybody. For instance, the Reagan
Library and Foundation. They were good to us, but we
(07:24):
had no official relationship. They didn't approve of scripts or
anything like that. I wanted the film goer to know
that we had kept the integrity of not being bound
to anybody, but just to tell the story fairly.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Now you're off on your own. How hard was it
to raise the money?
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Well, a good chunk of the book is about that process.
It's very interesting between conservatives and liberals. I think it's
fairly obvious that liberals handle media much better and believe
in it. There's a reason that George Soros is involved
in funding sun Dance and different film festivals. He understands
the power of it. So it wasn't like there was
(08:03):
people lining up to fund this venture, and so we
had to do it the old fashioned way. Was really
finding groups, some film related and others that wanted to
get behind it. But it was a long process. But yeah,
as a general rule, I think that the political left
understands how to move public opinion better than the political
right does. I think the political right thinks if I
(08:24):
can just convince you of the correctness of my ideas,
you'll come over, Whereas the political left understands to tell
me a story. And that was something Ronald Reagan understood
very well too.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Of course, were people writing large checks or what was happening.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
We had a big range, but we didn't want a crowdfund.
I didn't want to do that. That just did not
seem appropriate for our Reagan story. So it was entities,
individuals and some film related folks, people that know film,
and then we had a credible opportunity with the state
of Oklahoma, which I think about thirty seven percent. They
(08:59):
will give you t rebates at the time, so that
was terrific. We shot in Oklahoma. The governor was very helpful,
but a good chunk of the budget came from those
tax rebates from Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Was there ever a point where you thought this is
just too hard and consider walking.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Off every other day. It shouldn't have taken me nineteen
years to make this movie, but we had so many
delays along the way, and as I talked about in
the book, some funders would pull out, and some people
were just kind of posing as funders and I eventually
would smoke them out. But just the delays we had
along the way. To make a movie, all your stars
have to align. You have to have the talent ready,
(09:36):
you have to have the financing read of the distribution.
So you can get two or three on board and
one or two are not ready, and so you have
to wait for the other two parts to come to fruition.
So once we sort of had our act together and
we're ready to go, then Covid struck. I was thinking
about George W. Bush that had a book called Decision points,
I think it was, And I had one of those
decision points when COVID struck, and I remember my co
(09:58):
producer John Sullivan came to me, we have a decision
to make. Do we go or not go? And literally,
we began shooting in September of twenty twenty, right in
the smack middle of COVID. Everybody else had the common
sense to wait until it was over. But I remember thinking,
mister speaker that I have friends who were dying around me, literally,
and I thought, how pathetic a creature I would be
(10:19):
if I died almost making this movie. And so I said,
let's go for it. And we don't know what that means.
It cost us about an extra two million dollars just
because of all the precautions that haved be taken. Essentially,
the set is a medical clinic. Basically every day it's
taking an extra hour or so to get everybody tested
every single day. And then we had COVID breakouts in
(10:42):
the set. So because of the CDC guidelines, anytime one
person got COVID, the entire set had to shut down
for ten days, which of course makes no sense. Normally
you would contact trace it. So we shut down twice
twenty days. We have paid salaries during that time, so
it just made it exceedingly difficult. Then we also because
of that, we were delayed by about eight months because
(11:02):
we couldn't shoot the young Reagan lifeguard scenes. It was
too cold now, so we had to wait to the
following spring to shoot those. And just when you think
we're ready to go, then the actors strike hits, and
so we had about one hundred and eight days of
an actor's strike. In the meantime, I'm carefully monitoring the
public opinion polls about our people were ready to go
back to theaters, and so that was initially very high
(11:25):
that something like forty percent did not want to go
back to a theater because it was too dangerous. Still,
so I waited till that got done a single digits,
about eight percent before we released the film. Also, I
should mention that Russia Ukraine war even affected us because
we had vendors from some of those countries and we
had to cancel all those contracts. So it was really
one thing after another.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
In the middle of all this.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
In order to make a film, you also have to
have a script, and to do that you've got to
talk to people who knew Reagan.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yep, So how did that go?
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, I spent time with I don't think you and
I intersected, but I spent time with about fifty of
the folks, from Ed Me's to George Schultz. And Ed
was the only person that read the script. He was
the one that I think kind of represented that Reagan
dumb and he had just one note. His one note
was that Jack Reagan's dad. We were probably a little
bit harsh in the first draft, you know, he said,
(12:33):
from all that I know, I think Reagan's dad was
more of a likable drunk, not a mean drunk. And
so we revised that a little bit to try to
make that accurate. But from Justice Kennedy, Justice Scalia, to
folks that worked with him and knew him, we just
got a lot of their stories in and just little
snippets here and there that help us to develop the
character George Schultz. It was good. If you noticed in
(12:55):
the film, you know, you'll see that Schultz and Reagan
have a confrontational moment, and we talked about that, and
you know, he wasn't necessarily a true believer. He was
more in the moderate camp, and so it was great
to have that conflict as well between the kind of
the Reaganite part of the operation, maybe the Dana Roorbacher types,
Peter Robinson types, and the George Schultz types, to have
(13:16):
that conflict happening as well. And I would have people
tell me stories. And I remember one in particular one
of his aides. I said, look, everybody's saying Reagan is
so nice and so perfect and so great, and said,
you've got to give me some humanity here. Would he
ever lose his temper? He said yeah, He said he
would lose his temper, would very quickly be a flash
of temper and then to be over. I said, well,
give me an example, and he said, well, one day
(13:38):
I gave him his schedule and he looked at the
schedule and he said he threw his glasses down across
the table and he said, guys, I cannot do all
this in one day. Then it quickly passed. So that
was helpful because you want to make sure you have
the full humanity of the person.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I noticed that you chattel with John Barletta. I found
him to be an endless number of good stories about
Reagan as a human being. I was delighted that you
had a chance to talk with John.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, I spent time with John. I also brought Dennis
Quai to meet John as well, and they had some
good time together. You know, it's really unfortunate he passed
away from cancer before we could shoot the movie. But
he died just before we began shooting. But he sat
down with us and recounted the last rode. The film
ends with that last horse ride. Now, in real life,
the ride happened the day before, not the day after,
(14:26):
because once they had that conversation, Reagan never wrote again.
But this is a movie, not a documentary, so we'd
have a little fun with that. But John was really helpful.
He told us. He told us that Reagan was more
religious than the public thinks, and he considered the ranches
outdoor cathedral and they would have very deep conversations about faith.
(14:47):
I should mention that we hired a terrific actor to
play him, called Trevor Donovan. And the night before I
had Trevor call Barletta's sister and they had a nice
chat and she said, you're doing a Boston accent, aren't you,
And poor Trevor said yes. Then he spent the next
twenty four hours hitting a Boston accent down and did
a great job for us.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Well, Barlotte told me this great story about early on
there at the ranch and Reagan goes out riding. Suddenly
they hear shots, and you know, the Secret Service goes crazy,
people yell shots. They all rather well, Reagan was wearing
a pistol. He was shooting at crows who were sitting
(15:29):
on the line.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, we actually shot that scene. It just didn't make
the final cut.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I'm curious, in terms of making a movie, why did
that not make the cut.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
We have a process that we go through. There's the
cut that I want to show the world, and there's
the cut that the world wants to see. And so
part of being a filmmaker is just coming to terms
of that reality. And so we screened the film for
three thousand people in eleven states leading up to the release,
and it helped us work out the kinks. There's a
(15:58):
reason the film is that an ninety eight percent approval
rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and that's because we worked out
a lot of the things earlier that people were having
a problem with, and that was one of them. But
I would say the biggest issue was Originally we didn't
meet Dennis Quaid until about twenty five minutes into the film.
Our Genius test audiences were saying, Hey, I came here
(16:19):
to see Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan. What's going on here? Welcome,
I'm not seeing him for twenty five minutes, and so
we realized, yeah, that's probably a mistake. So we brought
the assassination tip pround to the beginning. But it's just
a process you go through and maybe someday we'll have
a highlight reel or something a little but it's a
fun scene. Also, I should mention on Barletta a couple
things that come to mind since you asked about him.
(16:40):
First was he told me one day he came in
and he saw Ronald Reagan and Henry Fonda commiserating about
how their daughters didn't share their political beliefs. I thought
that was kind of a funny thing for him to observe.
And the second was, as part of our research, came
across a fellow who said he was in a group
at church that amazingly enough, think about this, mister speaker.
(17:00):
So Reagan is president for eight years, he comes back
to his home church in Los Angeles, and the pastor
Don Muma makes him retake the membership courses of his
church because he hadn't been around for eight years, so
he made him retake the six week course with new members.
And so one of the members in the group said
that Reagan had told them, the entire group that he
had met with Hinckley personally to forgive him. And I,
(17:23):
of course, i'd never heard this, and you probably haven't
heard this, And so I checked with Barletta and he said,
to my knowledge, didn't happen, but he could have snuck
behind my back and done it. But he checked with
missus Reagan. She had never heard of that. I checked
with the head of Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, where Hinckley was
a local institution, and amazingly, he did tell me that
Reagan tried. He said, Reagan called and said I'd like
(17:44):
to meet with Hinckley. And I said, mister President, please
don't do that. It's a very bad idea to reward
assassins with personal visits. So he says, as far as
I know, it didn't happen, but it could have happened,
but Barletta had no record of it either.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
That's wild.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Now, I also have to tell you, I didn't realize
that Reagan's favorite candy was not jelly beans.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
It was eminem's.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Well, don't tell the jellybilly folks, but no, we partner
with them. I think it was one of his aides,
what was her name. She would say that she would
smuggle eminems into his suit pockets. So I think it
was both.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I mean, he had jelly beans on the desk.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
That's right. For official purpose, it was jelly beans, but
he had a hankering for the eminems and he would,
especially later after the presidency, he would try to sneak
them into his coat pocket and Nancy would find them.
But the jellybully folks did very very well by Ronald Reagan.
They sold a lot of jelly beans, and officially that
was what he said. It helped him with smoking, to
stop pipe smoking. I think it was.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Were any of the kids helpful?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
They have their own projects, and so I didn't want
to interfere with They have their own documentaries and books
and things. But I had met with Mike maybe fifteen
years ago, and so Mike had given me some stories.
His feeling, too, was probably best to kind of stay
away from all of us and do your thing. So
I kept a respectful distance, but I hope they've had
a chance to see it.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
As you go through all that research, did any of
it significantly change your perception of Reagan?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, that's a great question. I think all of us
who are in some way in public life, we have
these moments where let's just say you've spoken to a
thousand people or three hundred people, whatever, and you leave
the room and you're like, oh, so glad that's over with.
You know, we all have moments like that. And with Reagan,
(19:30):
I remember it was Dane Robacher who said he was
exactly in public who he was in private. There was
no moments like that were ah, so glad we're free
of that guy. He would be the same person in
the group as he was later when it was just
the two of you. So that was interesting. I also
discovered that Ronald Reagan wrote some songs. I had no idea.
(19:50):
Said out with Mike Kerb who was the former lieutenant
governor of California, as you know, and he says, oh,
by the way, Reagan and I wrote two songs together.
And I said, excuse me, He said, yeah, we wrote
these two songs together in the back of a limo.
He says. One day we were writing somewhere. I said, well,
do you have them? And he said yeah. So I
gave one of them to Lee Greenwood and we have
an album coming out soon of songs inspired by the film,
(20:13):
and I had Lee rewrite some of the music and
lyrics to it. And so it's called Begin the World
Over Again. And literally, Ronald Reagan and Mike Kerb wrote
that in the back of a limo in nineteen seventy six.
So from the grave he speaketh, and we'll hear Ronald
Reagan's lyrics Begin the World Over Again with Lee Greenwood.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
When I saw the movie the way he is John
Voight as a KGB agent, I thought it was really
interesting casting.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
How did that come about?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Well, I wish I could take credit for it, but
all I can take credit for is waking myself up.
I had just hired a writer, Howie Klausner, who wrote
Space Cowboys for Clint Eastwood. And you know, the relationship
between a producer and a writer is one that you
don't want to trample in their area. You want to
let them have free reign and do their thing. And
at the same time, you know, guide the process. But anyway,
(21:00):
I just hired him. I dreamed the first ten minutes
of the movie, basically putting the KGB agent and the
whole thing. And I remember thinking to myself, in my
half awake, half a sleep state, if I don't wake
myself up and write this down, I will never remember
this in the morning. If you've had that happening before,
I've had that happened to be a lot. I willed
myself to wake up, wrote her all out, sent it
to him, and then waited, you know, waited for him
(21:23):
to say, who do you think you are? Let me
do my job, and instead he said, this is great.
Let's run with this, and so he took that opening,
came up with the whole script. As far as Voight,
John and I had met years ago. It's funny. We
were both on an awards ceremony and we were both
waiting for our cars to arrive out in the sidewalk,
and so I told him what I was working on,
and we kept in touch. But John was really helpful.
(21:45):
He had been to the Soviet Union before and after
its fall, he'd been to Russia after and was so helpful.
And what actors bring to the table is. He said,
when I was there earlier, their eyes were dead. After
they were free, their eyes came to life. I can
see the average Russian just something in the eyes, and
that's intangible that you can't really put on a piece
(22:08):
of paper. And John had great stories of being there
and his mother with him, and his mother actually pestered
poor Boris Yeltsin. They ran into him on the street
and eighty something year old mother went up to yelts
and he says, I'd like to have that pin you
have and he said, well, this is for members of
the Duma. I can't just give it to you. Says, oh,
you can get another one. Just the fun interaction that
(22:28):
they'd had, so all those personal experiences really helped us
to tell the story.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I'm a big fan of Dennis Waide. I think he's
a remarkable talent. How did you settle on him to
be Reagan?
Speaker 3 (22:55):
You know, he was always my first choice, just because
there's a certain intangible fact that Dennis has. He's got
that same smile that Auschuck's grin. But later I would
learn that there were a lot of other similarities. His
mother was also very religious. His father was also alcoholic,
and you know, Jane Wyman and Meg Ryan have a
(23:15):
lot in common. They were sort of the up and
coming actresses as their husband's careers were kind of fading.
And Dennis would be the first to tell you he'd
go to New York City and people be screaming his
wife's name and forgetting about him walking next to her.
So all these things really pointed to Dennis.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Now.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
At the same time, because his schedule was pretty full
at the time, I had to talk to other actors too,
So we talked to other actors like Jim Cavizl who
played Jesus in The Passion Gosh, a lot of actors,
either the representatives or themselves. Christian Bale, Dennis is always
kind of first choice, and so when his schedule opened up,
that was our moment. And it took some convincing. You know,
(23:51):
he was just really intimidated by playing this character. It's
not an easy character to play. It's one thing to
play Abraham Lincoln, who's going to say that's not right,
you know, but he knows. But with Reagan, a lot
of us are still alive. So it was a really
daunting task for him. And what really sealed the deal
for him was we went up to the Reagan ranch
together and he just really felt Reagan's spirit there and
(24:13):
understood the character and decided to do it.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Quit since comes across as western enough that he felt right.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Yeah, he's from Houston. Originally had a ranch out in Montana,
just like Reagan did with his ranch. He's got the
skin if somebody's been out at the ranch, you know.
I later learned also that he and his father had
listened to the sixty four speech in real time driving
down the highway in nineteen sixty four. So that's the
kind of thing where he had actually lived at with
his dad, and he said his dad was putting his
(24:42):
hand on the every time Reagan would says me, you go, Ronnie.
He's kind of thing. So he had that from childhood.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I thought it was a little more surprising that you
had Penelope and Miller playing Nancy Leaan, how did that happen?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I had learned about her and seen her work, and
I just didn't know what Dennis was going to say. So,
I mean I went over to his house and said, hey,
what do you think about Penelope and Miller for Nancy?
And he said, Carlito's way and he said, absolutely, it's
a great choice. And so she was just somebody that
we had come across and learned that she was available
and that she was interested, and she really did her homework.
(25:15):
It was really amazing. She read book after a book
and reached out to some of the folks that Nancy
had worked with. And you know, in our testing that
I told you we had done earlier, she and Dennis
were always neck and neck at the top of people's ratings.
They just felt like she really captured I don't know
how you felt about it, because you knew Nancy, of course,
(25:36):
but it was a thing that she really kind of captured,
the angst and the protectiveness that Nancy had towards Ronnie.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
You talked about Reagan had a crush as a teenager
on Mugs Cleaver. Now I have to tell you, I
had never heard of Mugs Clever, and I don't know
how you found this.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Well. It's so funny because I read some of the
reviews and they would call it hagiography. And you know,
it's funny because that word never comes out if it's
just a normal person. It's only when it's Ronald Reagan.
But I'm thinking, did you guys watch the same movie
that I made, because in my movie, he gets, you know,
his girlfriend from childhood love dumps him, his wife dumps him.
(26:16):
He's washed up at fifty and he doesn't know what
he's gonna do with his life. So I don't know
if we're watching the same movie. But no. She was
the preacher's daughter and Margaret Cleaver, and they were engaged basically,
and she went off to Europe for the summer and
met an American guy in Europe and came back and
wrote him a Dear John letter. And so his life
was full of a lot of ups and downs, and
(26:39):
I think more than anything else. For a period of time,
I had originally had John Avilson, who was the director
of Rocky, to direct Reagan. And John was eighty one
years old and passed away before we began shooting. But
John would often tell me he was a wellspring of
great advice, and I would sit with him for lunch
and take notes as he was giving off these zingers.
But he would tell me these great Rocky stories of
(27:01):
how they got this scene in that scene, and he said, Mark,
don't forget the rock He was not about boxing. Boxing
happened to be his occupation. It's really the story of
the man overcoming the odds. And he said in the
same way, Reagan is not about politics per se of
the movie. It's about the man who happens to be
politics as his occupation, but it's really about him overcoming
the difficulties and the challenges he faced, and so that
(27:24):
really guided us throughout the process. And there's a love
story here. If you're not into politics, you know, you
can still enjoy it on that level as well.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
I don't know very many movies that have the gap
between the rating by filmgoers and the critics. When filmgoers
on Rotten Tomatoes gave Reagan a ninety eight percent, which
is astonishing, and the critics gave it eighteen. I mean,
(27:53):
I don't know very many other movies that have an
eighty point difference.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
It's the largest in history. So record was sixty five
not that I keep track of these things, but it
was a film called Boondock Saints that was sixty five points.
And so we've actually applied to Guinness World Book of
Records for the largest gap in history. They think it's
going to be a solid one. It's a new record
for them. Of course, film goores are really really smart.
You know, the people are very smart. They know what's
(28:18):
going on there. It's not possible to have an eighty
point gap for the same piece of work. And so
my favorite review, which I really appreciated the honesty, was
one reviewer said, I left after twenty minutes and still
reviewed the movie. You got to hand it to him.
I think that happened more often, but people just didn't
(28:39):
admit it. A lot of it was about Ronald Reagan himself,
what they didn't like about him.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
We live in a different distribution world than when I
grew up, because when I grew up, you either made
it in the movie theater or you didn't make it. Now,
you've also been streaming ever since.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Yeah, we hit number one at the box office on
day eight, so after a theatrical run for of all.
Of course, you can buy a DVD or Blu Rays
at Amazon Online, but it's also streaming on Apple TV,
on YouTube and then Amazon Prime where you can watch it.
There's a number of ways to watch it. You know
what's really great about the DVD Blu ray packages. There's
(29:15):
three ways to watch it on that thing. You can
buy it and you have a DVD and a Blu
Ray and a digital code in there. I joke that
you can give the digital code to your grandson and
then keep the Blu Ray for yourself and give the
DVD to your son or daughter and the whole family
can enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Good.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Well, now I understand you're speaking at the Reagan Library
and SeeMe Valley on April twenty ninth.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
I'm sure you've been there many many times I have.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Can people come to the event?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah? Please, I would love to have you come. It's
coming up in the twenty ninth. It's a good operation.
I've been to a number of libraries and they do
a really good job. They roll out dead Sea scrolls
and all kinds of interesting things, and they have a
pretty robust program of having speakers out there.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
They do, and as I understand it, if people can't
physically get to the event, they can join the event
virtually by going directly to Reaganfoundation dot org slash events.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Right, you've been there several times with your.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Books, probably been there fifteen times. Every time I've been,
I've had a great experience. That have a wonderful team.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
I should also add, mister speaker that we shot at
the Reagan Library and the Reagan Rancher in the library,
and because of COVID the place was opened. So we
shot for I think maybe a week on the real
Air Force one, and then the real Marine one, and
then the Kaal shootdown scene that plane also as well.
So to my knowledge, it's the first time that a
real Air Force one has been used in a movie.
(30:38):
It's usually a set.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
I didn't realize that. That's great.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, it's a little eerie to see that he's in
the exact same places that he would have been well.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
And of course that was when the Air Force one
was a seven h seven.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
It's a much smaller plane, and when you get in
it and you realize it, it's not exactly luxurious.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Oh my goodness. You can't take a shower or a
bath or anything in that thing. So the poor guy's
traveling around the world, and good grief, you'd think they
would take better care of our presidents.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
But it somehow worked. Listen, I'm going to thank you
for joining us in your new book. Making Reagan is
available now on Amazon and a bookstores everywhere, and we're
going to feature a link to buy it on our
show page. And we're really grateful that you take this
kind of time to talk with us.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Thank you to my guest Mark Joseph.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
You can get a link to buy his new book,
Making Reagan on our show page at nutsworld dot com.
Newtsworld is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our
executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Special thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If
you've been enjoying Nutsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple
(31:44):
Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give
us a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my
three free weekly columns at ginglistree sixty dot com. Slash
newsletter it language this is needs work.
On this episode of News World. Imagine making a movie
in the middle of a global pandemic, forcing it to
shut down twice, waiting for an actor's strike to end,
and then hoping people will feel comfortable returning to movie
theaters again. This is what the producers, directors, and actors
of the Reagan movie endured to bring it to the screen. Reagan,
(00:28):
starring Dennis Quaid, was released in theaters on August thirtieth,
twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
The historical drama.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Follows President Ronald Reagan's life from his impoverished childhood and
Hollywood stardom to his role as President of.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
The United States.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Reagan is now available to stream on Amazon Prime, YouTube,
and Apple TV. Reagan film producer Mark Joseph has released
a new book about the film called Making Reagan, which
follows the two decade journey to make the film. Mark,
(01:13):
welcome and thank you for joining me on News World.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Well, thank you for having me, mister speaker.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So I have to ask you, why did you decide
that you had to tell Reagan's story.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Well, I begin the book with driving myself in a
minivan with my wife and four young daughters between the
age of one and six. Or something like that. Driving
through Illinois to my cousin's wedding and I'm pulled over
for speeding, and I look at the ticket and it says,
first of all, you must appear in court in person,
(01:44):
because I was caught in a speed trap and I
was so far over the speed limit. But I looked
at the ticket and it said you must appear in Dixon, Illinois,
And I realized for the first time that I was
driving through Ronald Reagan's hometown, unaware of that. But it
left me with having to spend the night in Dixon
to face the judge the next day for this horrific
crime of mine. And I had twenty four hours to
(02:07):
kill in Dixon, and that was the genesis of the
whole idea. But what made me think about a movie
especially was just realizing Dixon is a very very normal place.
All I could see was a holiday in a gas
station at a pizza hut. But it just showed again
where our leaders come from very normal places. Prime ministers
(02:28):
of other countries the job is handed to them by
their father or grandfather, but most of our leaders come
from ordinary places like Dixon. And that was my inspiration.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I've been studying Reagan, working with Reagan, campaign with Reagan,
actually for about six decades. I was shocked to realize,
but you have a story I had never heard about
eleven year old Ronald Reagan. Share with us how decisive
this was in shaping him.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Paul ken Gore had a book, had a couple of
books that were so interesting. But what really interested me
about ken Gore. I have a friend named Terry Maddingly
who's a religion columnist, and Terry will often say that
religion is often the ghost in people's stories because it
explains things about them. Whether it's Michael Jackson, you know,
wanting to hold onto childhood because he wasn't allowed to
(03:15):
celebrate his birthdays as a kid, or Christmas, or Ronald Reagan.
It's often is an explanation for why people behave, and
in particular with Reagan. Ken Gore had gone to the
church that Reagan grew up in and asked if he
could see the sermons that young Ronald Reagan heard as
a child. Well, the pastor said, amazingly, think of all
the books written on Ronald Reagan, he said, nobody has
(03:36):
ever asked to see them before they're in the basement.
In a box, and so that's where Ken Gore found
all these things, and he found out that Reagan's pastor
was very anti Communist, which explains a lot of Reagan's life.
Reagan was about eleven and a half. I think he
had just found his dad Jack, drunk in the snow,
I think fairly recently. And I think his mother realized,
I've got to give this kid something or he's going
(03:58):
to grow up to be just like dad. And so
she found this book, our hypothesis of pastor gave it
to the mother, but she gives it to her son.
It's called That Printer of You Deell's and it's a
rather unremarkable fiction book written by a religious author, but
it turns out to be a turning point in young
Reagan's life. And the hero of the book is a
(04:19):
young man whose father is an alcoholic, and the young
man finds God and grows up to become amazingly a
United States congressman. And so Reagan reads this book at
eleven and a half and he goes to his mother
and he says, I want to declare my faith and
be baptized. What I couldn't figure out was he couldn't wait.
The pastor said, well, you have to beat to your
twelve in our denomination Disciples of Christ, and he insisted
(04:42):
he had he baptize at eleven and a half, and
he convinced the preacher to do it. That always mystified me,
what's the rush? Can't you wait six months? But that
denomination really equates salvation with baptism, and so I think
in young Ronald Reagan's mind, he couldn't go six months
in this unclear state, and so he wanted to be baptized.
But that really turned his life around, and instead of
(05:04):
becoming a congressman, he goes to Hollywood detours and becomes president.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I had never seen the story before. It does help
explain a lot. Now, when did you decide you had
to make the Movie's.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Working at a company called Walden Media. We had done
the Chronicles of Nardia Ray because of when Dixie holes
all these fun movies, and I really wanted to make
it there, but the owner of the company it was
too political for him, and so I realized I had
to kind of leave and develop it on my own.
So that was about the time this incident and Dixon happened,
(05:37):
and I carefully was watching other attempts to make Reagan movies.
And interestingly, Reagan's fans, as you probably know, are incredibly
protective of their man, and so anytime of Hollywood wouldry
to make a movie, they would come out in force
against it, often with reason. They were suspicious of those
of us at Hollywood. And so when James Brolin made
(05:59):
a movie called The Ray Pagan's, they came out against
that one and essentially forced CBS to move it from
Showtime to CBS, and it really didn't do very well.
And then a few years later, Will Ferrell announced that
he was going to make a Reagan movie, and the
whole joke was that Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer's as president
and they had to convince him that he was acting
(06:20):
in a movie to get his job done as president. Well,
this lasted about forty eight hours before poor Will Ferrell
had to pull out of that one, because again Reagan
fans were so vocal. In fact, the reason I know this,
mister speaker, is that our page people thought our Facebook
page was the movie's Facebook page. And I remember somebody
put on our Facebook page. Will Ferrell graduated from such
(06:40):
and such high school. He's in the Wall of fame
at his high school. Please call this number and demand
he be taken off the wall of fame at his
high school. So you can imagine the pressure that poor
Will Ferrell was feeling from Reagan's devotees. So that project
ended in forty eight hours. Michael Douglasnett was announced as
a Reagan film, but the fans were not happy about that,
So it left the space open to us, and I
(07:03):
think that his fans realized pretty quickly that we weren't
out to destroy him. We were out to just tell
the story fairly. I spent a lot of time with
people that knew President Reagan and Ronald Reagan as governor.
But at the same time, we were also very careful
not to align ourselves with anybody. For instance, the Reagan
Library and Foundation. They were good to us, but we
(07:24):
had no official relationship. They didn't approve of scripts or
anything like that. I wanted the film goer to know
that we had kept the integrity of not being bound
to anybody, but just to tell the story fairly.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Now you're off on your own. How hard was it
to raise the money?
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Well, a good chunk of the book is about that process.
It's very interesting between conservatives and liberals. I think it's
fairly obvious that liberals handle media much better and believe
in it. There's a reason that George Soros is involved
in funding sun Dance and different film festivals. He understands
the power of it. So it wasn't like there was
(08:03):
people lining up to fund this venture, and so we
had to do it the old fashioned way. Was really
finding groups, some film related and others that wanted to
get behind it. But it was a long process. But yeah,
as a general rule, I think that the political left
understands how to move public opinion better than the political
right does. I think the political right thinks if I
(08:24):
can just convince you of the correctness of my ideas,
you'll come over, Whereas the political left understands to tell
me a story. And that was something Ronald Reagan understood
very well too.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Of course, were people writing large checks or what was happening.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
We had a big range, but we didn't want a crowdfund.
I didn't want to do that. That just did not
seem appropriate for our Reagan story. So it was entities,
individuals and some film related folks, people that know film,
and then we had a credible opportunity with the state
of Oklahoma, which I think about thirty seven percent. They
(08:59):
will give you t rebates at the time, so that
was terrific. We shot in Oklahoma. The governor was very helpful,
but a good chunk of the budget came from those
tax rebates from Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Was there ever a point where you thought this is
just too hard and consider walking.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Off every other day. It shouldn't have taken me nineteen
years to make this movie, but we had so many
delays along the way, and as I talked about in
the book, some funders would pull out, and some people
were just kind of posing as funders and I eventually
would smoke them out. But just the delays we had
along the way. To make a movie, all your stars
have to align. You have to have the talent ready,
(09:36):
you have to have the financing read of the distribution.
So you can get two or three on board and
one or two are not ready, and so you have
to wait for the other two parts to come to fruition.
So once we sort of had our act together and
we're ready to go, then Covid struck. I was thinking
about George W. Bush that had a book called Decision points,
I think it was, And I had one of those
decision points when COVID struck, and I remember my co
(09:58):
producer John Sullivan came to me, we have a decision
to make. Do we go or not go? And literally,
we began shooting in September of twenty twenty, right in
the smack middle of COVID. Everybody else had the common
sense to wait until it was over. But I remember thinking,
mister speaker that I have friends who were dying around me, literally,
and I thought, how pathetic a creature I would be
(10:19):
if I died almost making this movie. And so I said,
let's go for it. And we don't know what that means.
It cost us about an extra two million dollars just
because of all the precautions that haved be taken. Essentially,
the set is a medical clinic. Basically every day it's
taking an extra hour or so to get everybody tested
every single day. And then we had COVID breakouts in
(10:42):
the set. So because of the CDC guidelines, anytime one
person got COVID, the entire set had to shut down
for ten days, which of course makes no sense. Normally
you would contact trace it. So we shut down twice
twenty days. We have paid salaries during that time, so
it just made it exceedingly difficult. Then we also because
of that, we were delayed by about eight months because
(11:02):
we couldn't shoot the young Reagan lifeguard scenes. It was
too cold now, so we had to wait to the
following spring to shoot those. And just when you think
we're ready to go, then the actors strike hits, and
so we had about one hundred and eight days of
an actor's strike. In the meantime, I'm carefully monitoring the
public opinion polls about our people were ready to go
back to theaters, and so that was initially very high
(11:25):
that something like forty percent did not want to go
back to a theater because it was too dangerous. Still,
so I waited till that got done a single digits,
about eight percent before we released the film. Also, I
should mention that Russia Ukraine war even affected us because
we had vendors from some of those countries and we
had to cancel all those contracts. So it was really
one thing after another.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
In the middle of all this.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
In order to make a film, you also have to
have a script, and to do that you've got to
talk to people who knew Reagan.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yep, So how did that go?
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, I spent time with I don't think you and
I intersected, but I spent time with about fifty of
the folks, from Ed Me's to George Schultz. And Ed
was the only person that read the script. He was
the one that I think kind of represented that Reagan
dumb and he had just one note. His one note
was that Jack Reagan's dad. We were probably a little
bit harsh in the first draft, you know, he said,
(12:33):
from all that I know, I think Reagan's dad was
more of a likable drunk, not a mean drunk. And
so we revised that a little bit to try to
make that accurate. But from Justice Kennedy, Justice Scalia, to
folks that worked with him and knew him, we just
got a lot of their stories in and just little
snippets here and there that help us to develop the
character George Schultz. It was good. If you noticed in
(12:55):
the film, you know, you'll see that Schultz and Reagan
have a confrontational moment, and we talked about that, and
you know, he wasn't necessarily a true believer. He was
more in the moderate camp, and so it was great
to have that conflict as well between the kind of
the Reaganite part of the operation, maybe the Dana Roorbacher types,
Peter Robinson types, and the George Schultz types, to have
(13:16):
that conflict happening as well. And I would have people
tell me stories. And I remember one in particular one
of his aides. I said, look, everybody's saying Reagan is
so nice and so perfect and so great, and said,
you've got to give me some humanity here. Would he
ever lose his temper? He said yeah, He said he
would lose his temper, would very quickly be a flash
of temper and then to be over. I said, well,
give me an example, and he said, well, one day
(13:38):
I gave him his schedule and he looked at the
schedule and he said he threw his glasses down across
the table and he said, guys, I cannot do all
this in one day. Then it quickly passed. So that
was helpful because you want to make sure you have
the full humanity of the person.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I noticed that you chattel with John Barletta. I found
him to be an endless number of good stories about
Reagan as a human being. I was delighted that you
had a chance to talk with John.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, I spent time with John. I also brought Dennis
Quai to meet John as well, and they had some
good time together. You know, it's really unfortunate he passed
away from cancer before we could shoot the movie. But
he died just before we began shooting. But he sat
down with us and recounted the last rode. The film
ends with that last horse ride. Now, in real life,
the ride happened the day before, not the day after,
(14:26):
because once they had that conversation, Reagan never wrote again.
But this is a movie, not a documentary, so we'd
have a little fun with that. But John was really helpful.
He told us. He told us that Reagan was more
religious than the public thinks, and he considered the ranches
outdoor cathedral and they would have very deep conversations about faith.
(14:47):
I should mention that we hired a terrific actor to
play him, called Trevor Donovan. And the night before I
had Trevor call Barletta's sister and they had a nice
chat and she said, you're doing a Boston accent, aren't you,
And poor Trevor said yes. Then he spent the next
twenty four hours hitting a Boston accent down and did
a great job for us.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Well, Barlotte told me this great story about early on
there at the ranch and Reagan goes out riding. Suddenly
they hear shots, and you know, the Secret Service goes crazy,
people yell shots. They all rather well, Reagan was wearing
a pistol. He was shooting at crows who were sitting
(15:29):
on the line.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, we actually shot that scene. It just didn't make
the final cut.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I'm curious, in terms of making a movie, why did
that not make the cut.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
We have a process that we go through. There's the
cut that I want to show the world, and there's
the cut that the world wants to see. And so
part of being a filmmaker is just coming to terms
of that reality. And so we screened the film for
three thousand people in eleven states leading up to the release,
and it helped us work out the kinks. There's a
(15:58):
reason the film is that an ninety eight percent approval
rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and that's because we worked out
a lot of the things earlier that people were having
a problem with, and that was one of them. But
I would say the biggest issue was Originally we didn't
meet Dennis Quaid until about twenty five minutes into the film.
Our Genius test audiences were saying, Hey, I came here
(16:19):
to see Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan. What's going on here? Welcome,
I'm not seeing him for twenty five minutes, and so
we realized, yeah, that's probably a mistake. So we brought
the assassination tip pround to the beginning. But it's just
a process you go through and maybe someday we'll have
a highlight reel or something a little but it's a
fun scene. Also, I should mention on Barletta a couple
things that come to mind since you asked about him.
(16:40):
First was he told me one day he came in
and he saw Ronald Reagan and Henry Fonda commiserating about
how their daughters didn't share their political beliefs. I thought
that was kind of a funny thing for him to observe.
And the second was, as part of our research, came
across a fellow who said he was in a group
at church that amazingly enough, think about this, mister speaker.
(17:00):
So Reagan is president for eight years, he comes back
to his home church in Los Angeles, and the pastor
Don Muma makes him retake the membership courses of his
church because he hadn't been around for eight years, so
he made him retake the six week course with new members.
And so one of the members in the group said
that Reagan had told them, the entire group that he
had met with Hinckley personally to forgive him. And I,
(17:23):
of course, i'd never heard this, and you probably haven't
heard this, And so I checked with Barletta and he said,
to my knowledge, didn't happen, but he could have snuck
behind my back and done it. But he checked with
missus Reagan. She had never heard of that. I checked
with the head of Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, where Hinckley was
a local institution, and amazingly, he did tell me that
Reagan tried. He said, Reagan called and said I'd like
(17:44):
to meet with Hinckley. And I said, mister President, please
don't do that. It's a very bad idea to reward
assassins with personal visits. So he says, as far as
I know, it didn't happen, but it could have happened,
but Barletta had no record of it either.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
That's wild.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Now, I also have to tell you, I didn't realize
that Reagan's favorite candy was not jelly beans.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
It was eminem's.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Well, don't tell the jellybilly folks, but no, we partner
with them. I think it was one of his aides,
what was her name. She would say that she would
smuggle eminems into his suit pockets. So I think it
was both.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I mean, he had jelly beans on the desk.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
That's right. For official purpose, it was jelly beans, but
he had a hankering for the eminems and he would,
especially later after the presidency, he would try to sneak
them into his coat pocket and Nancy would find them.
But the jellybully folks did very very well by Ronald Reagan.
They sold a lot of jelly beans, and officially that
was what he said. It helped him with smoking, to
stop pipe smoking. I think it was.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Were any of the kids helpful?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
They have their own projects, and so I didn't want
to interfere with They have their own documentaries and books
and things. But I had met with Mike maybe fifteen
years ago, and so Mike had given me some stories.
His feeling, too, was probably best to kind of stay
away from all of us and do your thing. So
I kept a respectful distance, but I hope they've had
a chance to see it.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
As you go through all that research, did any of
it significantly change your perception of Reagan?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, that's a great question. I think all of us
who are in some way in public life, we have
these moments where let's just say you've spoken to a
thousand people or three hundred people, whatever, and you leave
the room and you're like, oh, so glad that's over with.
You know, we all have moments like that. And with Reagan,
(19:30):
I remember it was Dane Robacher who said he was
exactly in public who he was in private. There was
no moments like that were ah, so glad we're free
of that guy. He would be the same person in
the group as he was later when it was just
the two of you. So that was interesting. I also
discovered that Ronald Reagan wrote some songs. I had no idea.
(19:50):
Said out with Mike Kerb who was the former lieutenant
governor of California, as you know, and he says, oh,
by the way, Reagan and I wrote two songs together.
And I said, excuse me, He said, yeah, we wrote
these two songs together in the back of a limo.
He says. One day we were writing somewhere. I said, well,
do you have them? And he said yeah. So I
gave one of them to Lee Greenwood and we have
an album coming out soon of songs inspired by the film,
(20:13):
and I had Lee rewrite some of the music and
lyrics to it. And so it's called Begin the World
Over Again. And literally, Ronald Reagan and Mike Kerb wrote
that in the back of a limo in nineteen seventy six.
So from the grave he speaketh, and we'll hear Ronald
Reagan's lyrics Begin the World Over Again with Lee Greenwood.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
When I saw the movie the way he is John
Voight as a KGB agent, I thought it was really
interesting casting.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
How did that come about?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Well, I wish I could take credit for it, but
all I can take credit for is waking myself up.
I had just hired a writer, Howie Klausner, who wrote
Space Cowboys for Clint Eastwood. And you know, the relationship
between a producer and a writer is one that you
don't want to trample in their area. You want to
let them have free reign and do their thing. And
at the same time, you know, guide the process. But anyway,
(21:00):
I just hired him. I dreamed the first ten minutes
of the movie, basically putting the KGB agent and the
whole thing. And I remember thinking to myself, in my
half awake, half a sleep state, if I don't wake
myself up and write this down, I will never remember
this in the morning. If you've had that happening before,
I've had that happened to be a lot. I willed
myself to wake up, wrote her all out, sent it
to him, and then waited, you know, waited for him
(21:23):
to say, who do you think you are? Let me
do my job, and instead he said, this is great.
Let's run with this, and so he took that opening,
came up with the whole script. As far as Voight,
John and I had met years ago. It's funny. We
were both on an awards ceremony and we were both
waiting for our cars to arrive out in the sidewalk,
and so I told him what I was working on,
and we kept in touch. But John was really helpful.
(21:45):
He had been to the Soviet Union before and after
its fall, he'd been to Russia after and was so helpful.
And what actors bring to the table is. He said,
when I was there earlier, their eyes were dead. After
they were free, their eyes came to life. I can
see the average Russian just something in the eyes, and
that's intangible that you can't really put on a piece
(22:08):
of paper. And John had great stories of being there
and his mother with him, and his mother actually pestered
poor Boris Yeltsin. They ran into him on the street
and eighty something year old mother went up to yelts
and he says, I'd like to have that pin you
have and he said, well, this is for members of
the Duma. I can't just give it to you. Says, oh,
you can get another one. Just the fun interaction that
(22:28):
they'd had, so all those personal experiences really helped us
to tell the story.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I'm a big fan of Dennis Waide. I think he's
a remarkable talent. How did you settle on him to
be Reagan?
Speaker 3 (22:55):
You know, he was always my first choice, just because
there's a certain intangible fact that Dennis has. He's got
that same smile that Auschuck's grin. But later I would
learn that there were a lot of other similarities. His
mother was also very religious. His father was also alcoholic,
and you know, Jane Wyman and Meg Ryan have a
(23:15):
lot in common. They were sort of the up and
coming actresses as their husband's careers were kind of fading.
And Dennis would be the first to tell you he'd
go to New York City and people be screaming his
wife's name and forgetting about him walking next to her.
So all these things really pointed to Dennis.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Now.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
At the same time, because his schedule was pretty full
at the time, I had to talk to other actors too,
So we talked to other actors like Jim Cavizl who
played Jesus in The Passion Gosh, a lot of actors,
either the representatives or themselves. Christian Bale, Dennis is always
kind of first choice, and so when his schedule opened up,
that was our moment. And it took some convincing. You know,
(23:51):
he was just really intimidated by playing this character. It's
not an easy character to play. It's one thing to
play Abraham Lincoln, who's going to say that's not right,
you know, but he knows. But with Reagan, a lot
of us are still alive. So it was a really
daunting task for him. And what really sealed the deal
for him was we went up to the Reagan ranch
together and he just really felt Reagan's spirit there and
(24:13):
understood the character and decided to do it.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Quit since comes across as western enough that he felt right.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Yeah, he's from Houston. Originally had a ranch out in Montana,
just like Reagan did with his ranch. He's got the
skin if somebody's been out at the ranch, you know.
I later learned also that he and his father had
listened to the sixty four speech in real time driving
down the highway in nineteen sixty four. So that's the
kind of thing where he had actually lived at with
his dad, and he said his dad was putting his
(24:42):
hand on the every time Reagan would says me, you go, Ronnie.
He's kind of thing. So he had that from childhood.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I thought it was a little more surprising that you
had Penelope and Miller playing Nancy Leaan, how did that happen?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I had learned about her and seen her work, and
I just didn't know what Dennis was going to say. So,
I mean I went over to his house and said, hey,
what do you think about Penelope and Miller for Nancy?
And he said, Carlito's way and he said, absolutely, it's
a great choice. And so she was just somebody that
we had come across and learned that she was available
and that she was interested, and she really did her homework.
(25:15):
It was really amazing. She read book after a book
and reached out to some of the folks that Nancy
had worked with. And you know, in our testing that
I told you we had done earlier, she and Dennis
were always neck and neck at the top of people's ratings.
They just felt like she really captured I don't know
how you felt about it, because you knew Nancy, of course,
(25:36):
but it was a thing that she really kind of captured,
the angst and the protectiveness that Nancy had towards Ronnie.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
You talked about Reagan had a crush as a teenager
on Mugs Cleaver. Now I have to tell you, I
had never heard of Mugs Clever, and I don't know
how you found this.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Well. It's so funny because I read some of the
reviews and they would call it hagiography. And you know,
it's funny because that word never comes out if it's
just a normal person. It's only when it's Ronald Reagan.
But I'm thinking, did you guys watch the same movie
that I made, because in my movie, he gets, you know,
his girlfriend from childhood love dumps him, his wife dumps him.
(26:16):
He's washed up at fifty and he doesn't know what
he's gonna do with his life. So I don't know
if we're watching the same movie. But no. She was
the preacher's daughter and Margaret Cleaver, and they were engaged basically,
and she went off to Europe for the summer and
met an American guy in Europe and came back and
wrote him a Dear John letter. And so his life
was full of a lot of ups and downs, and
(26:39):
I think more than anything else. For a period of time,
I had originally had John Avilson, who was the director
of Rocky, to direct Reagan. And John was eighty one
years old and passed away before we began shooting. But
John would often tell me he was a wellspring of
great advice, and I would sit with him for lunch
and take notes as he was giving off these zingers.
But he would tell me these great Rocky stories of
(27:01):
how they got this scene in that scene, and he said, Mark,
don't forget the rock He was not about boxing. Boxing
happened to be his occupation. It's really the story of
the man overcoming the odds. And he said in the
same way, Reagan is not about politics per se of
the movie. It's about the man who happens to be
politics as his occupation, but it's really about him overcoming
the difficulties and the challenges he faced, and so that
(27:24):
really guided us throughout the process. And there's a love
story here. If you're not into politics, you know, you
can still enjoy it on that level as well.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
I don't know very many movies that have the gap
between the rating by filmgoers and the critics. When filmgoers
on Rotten Tomatoes gave Reagan a ninety eight percent, which
is astonishing, and the critics gave it eighteen. I mean,
(27:53):
I don't know very many other movies that have an
eighty point difference.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
It's the largest in history. So record was sixty five
not that I keep track of these things, but it
was a film called Boondock Saints that was sixty five points.
And so we've actually applied to Guinness World Book of
Records for the largest gap in history. They think it's
going to be a solid one. It's a new record
for them. Of course, film goores are really really smart.
You know, the people are very smart. They know what's
(28:18):
going on there. It's not possible to have an eighty
point gap for the same piece of work. And so
my favorite review, which I really appreciated the honesty, was
one reviewer said, I left after twenty minutes and still
reviewed the movie. You got to hand it to him.
I think that happened more often, but people just didn't
(28:39):
admit it. A lot of it was about Ronald Reagan himself,
what they didn't like about him.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
We live in a different distribution world than when I
grew up, because when I grew up, you either made
it in the movie theater or you didn't make it. Now,
you've also been streaming ever since.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Yeah, we hit number one at the box office on
day eight, so after a theatrical run for of all.
Of course, you can buy a DVD or Blu Rays
at Amazon Online, but it's also streaming on Apple TV,
on YouTube and then Amazon Prime where you can watch it.
There's a number of ways to watch it. You know
what's really great about the DVD Blu ray packages. There's
(29:15):
three ways to watch it on that thing. You can
buy it and you have a DVD and a Blu
Ray and a digital code in there. I joke that
you can give the digital code to your grandson and
then keep the Blu Ray for yourself and give the
DVD to your son or daughter and the whole family
can enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Good.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Well, now I understand you're speaking at the Reagan Library
and SeeMe Valley on April twenty ninth.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
I'm sure you've been there many many times I have.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Can people come to the event?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah? Please, I would love to have you come. It's
coming up in the twenty ninth. It's a good operation.
I've been to a number of libraries and they do
a really good job. They roll out dead Sea scrolls
and all kinds of interesting things, and they have a
pretty robust program of having speakers out there.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
They do, and as I understand it, if people can't
physically get to the event, they can join the event
virtually by going directly to Reaganfoundation dot org slash events.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Right, you've been there several times with your.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Books, probably been there fifteen times. Every time I've been,
I've had a great experience. That have a wonderful team.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
I should also add, mister speaker that we shot at
the Reagan Library and the Reagan Rancher in the library,
and because of COVID the place was opened. So we
shot for I think maybe a week on the real
Air Force one, and then the real Marine one, and
then the Kaal shootdown scene that plane also as well.
So to my knowledge, it's the first time that a
real Air Force one has been used in a movie.
(30:38):
It's usually a set.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
I didn't realize that. That's great.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, it's a little eerie to see that he's in
the exact same places that he would have been well.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
And of course that was when the Air Force one
was a seven h seven.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
It's a much smaller plane, and when you get in
it and you realize it, it's not exactly luxurious.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Oh my goodness. You can't take a shower or a
bath or anything in that thing. So the poor guy's
traveling around the world, and good grief, you'd think they
would take better care of our presidents.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
But it somehow worked. Listen, I'm going to thank you
for joining us in your new book. Making Reagan is
available now on Amazon and a bookstores everywhere, and we're
going to feature a link to buy it on our
show page. And we're really grateful that you take this
kind of time to talk with us.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Thank you to my guest Mark Joseph.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
You can get a link to buy his new book,
Making Reagan on our show page at nutsworld dot com.
Newtsworld is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our
executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Special thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If
you've been enjoying Nutsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple
(31:44):
Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give
us a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my
three free weekly columns at ginglistree sixty dot com. Slash
newsletter it language this is needs work.
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