Makers of 'The Reagans' Bash CBS Editing
DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press
NEW YORK - The director of "The Reagans" complained Monday that CBS butchered his made-for-TV movie, ultimately making it too incoherent for the network to air. "We were, in a sense, banished" from the editing process before CBS ditched it, director Robert Ackerman said.
CBS decided last month to cancel its movie on the former president, shunting it off to Showtime on cable. Showtime will air the filmmakers' version Sunday. Producers and the stars of the movie commented extensively about it for the first time in a conference call Monday.
"We were disappointed in many of the changes," one said, "and not just on a political level. We had crafted what we thought was a sensitive look at an iconic American life, and what was left after the editing was barely recognizable."
Asked for an example, scriptwriter Waxahachie Slim cited the controversial 'railroad scene' in which Reagan is scene beating a hobo to death 'just to watch him die.' "Was there some controversy over the historical accuracy there? Of course," said Slim, "but I think it spoke to a larger truth - the hobo was wearing a union pin to memorialize Reagan's attitude towards organized labor."
Even more controversial, but certainly topical, is the deleted scene in which Michael Jackson, economist Milton Friedman and First Lady Nancy Reagan cruise Lafayette Park in an increasingly desperate and jittery search for smack dealers. Attempts by the screenwriters to portray the excerpt as an allegory for the Republican Party's 'economic hypocrisy' fell on deaf ears at CBS. "No Freakin' way," CBS President Moonves was said to have decided. "We're not portraying Nancy Reagan as associating with negroes. Drudge and Rush would have a fit and a half."
The new version is said to focus more on the softer side of the Reagans, emphasizing the human interest stories that the President was so fond of. In one re-shot scene, Reagan is the pilot of a B-17 in World War II who crashes in Nicaragua, where he meets the fiery Latin lass Maria Conchita Alonso, played by Caspar Weinberger. They eventually break up when he returns to California to fight a Cuban invasion of Berkeley, which he defeats with explosive-tipped arrows and some timely squealing to the FBI.
Perhaps most galling were alterations in the script to address a perceived slant in the portrayal of Reagan's mental faculties. Often described as 'detached,' the former President was shown in the original version as 'dumber than lint - and not the smart kind of lint, not college-material lint.' In the revised version, Reagan is shown debating a piece of lint - and winning.
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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