This year marks the 110th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Long live the Gipper!
This month a film crew shot on location at the Reagan Ranch in the mountains northwest of Santa Barbara, California. This is the first time that a film production company has been allowed access to the Reagan Ranch and the Reagan Library, which is located nearby.
The film crew is shooting in preparation for the release of Reagan: The Movie, a new film about the storied American president, Ronald Reagan, which is due for release at the beginning of 2022. You can discover more information about the movie at reaganmovie.com.
If you can believe it, this film marks the first time that a big-budget feature motion picture has been made about President Reagan. Liberal Hollywood has already made a dozen movies about President Barack Obama before he even left office, but apparently, President Reagan had to wait 30 or so odd years before the former movie star had a movie commissioned that dramatized his life story.
Not that one needs to “dramatize” the biography of Ronald Reagan, which is a made-for-the-screen tale if there ever was one: Reagan went from a rural Illinois childhood to becoming a radio and film actor, U.S. Army officer, President of the Screen Actors Guild, General Electric Spokesman, Governor of California, and finally the blessed President of the United States of America.
The telling of Ronald Reagan’s story and America’s comeback after the gloom and stagflation of the Watergate-era, oil crisis, and President Jimmy Carter’s ineffective presidency is perhaps more needed than never.
Starring as Old Dutch himself is Dennis Quaid (a.k.a. one of the only actors in Hollywood who acknowledged the Trump’s Administration’s success in helping to develop a vaccine for the Coronavirus with Operation Warp Speed, and who was attacked by the Cancel Culture mob for appearing in a PSA, which was quickly pulled, that celebrated the Administration’s efforts), with Penelope Anne Miller (Carlito’s Way, Kindergarten Cop) playing Nancy Reagan.
Other cast members in Reagan: The Movie include Lesley-Anne Down, Robert Davi, and conservative stalwart Jon Voight.
The movie tells Reagan’s life story from age 11 to age 83, with a twist: the movie is told through the eyes of a KGB agent named Viktor Petrovich, who is assigned to monitor Reagan’s career from the 1940s through the 1980s.
Despite Petrovich’s constant warnings to the Kremlin that Ronald Reagan is “a Crusader” who poses as a potential mortal risk to the Soviet Union, Petrovich is largely ignored by Moscow – until it’s too late.
“The story of Reagan is a fascinating one whatever one’s politics,” said Reagan: The Movie producer, Mark Joseph.
“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.”
Lest you fear that the left-wing perverts in Hollywood might pull a fast one and try to sully the sainted Reagan name, we are assured by producer Mark Joseph’s conservative track record with over 45 film credits to his name, including The Passion of the Christ, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the free-speech documentary No Safe Spaces, which Joseph produced in conjunction with Jordan Peterson, Dennis Prager, and Adam Carolla.
To make the movie, Joseph interviewed 50 former aides and friends of the Gipper – one of which, former secretary of state George Shultz, just passed away this year on Ronald Reagan’s birthday, February 6, at the age of 100 years young.
Joseph eschewed Hollywood and produced the film independently, so he could make the film he wanted to – one that celebrated the life of Ronald Reagan – without fear or favor. Altogether, the project has been in the works for ten years.
Howard Klausner wrote the script for Reagan: The Movie. Klausner also wrote the screenplay for the box-office hit Space Cowboys (2000) and has been in the business for decades, but it wasn’t until he did Reagan: The Movie that he had such a fulfilling experience creating something for the silver screen.
“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,” said Klausner.
Klausner continued, “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.”
When asked what Klausner thought was the most formative moment of young Reagan’s life, he responded confidently:
“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.”
There’s a lot about Ronald Reagan we do know, but it looks like Reagan: The Movie has a few surprises in store regarding the life and times of the great American president, the one and only: Ronald Reagan.
