| Director: | Robert Allan Ackerman |
| Music: | John Altman |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Producer: | Lynn Raynor |
| Cinematography: | James Chressanthis |
| Runtime: | 180 minutes |
| Network: | Showtime |
The Reagans is a 2003 American biographical drama television film about U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his family. It was directed by Robert Allan Ackerman and written by Jane Marchwood, Tom Rickman, and Elizabeth Egloff, based on the 1991 biography First Ladies Volume II by Carl Sferrazza Anthony. It stars James Brolin as Reagan and Judy Davis as First Lady Nancy Reagan. The supporting cast includes Željko Ivanek, Mary Beth Peil, Bill Smitrovich, Shad Hart, Zoie Palmer, Richard Fitzpatrick, Vlasta Vrána, Francis Xavier McCarthy, Frank Moore, Aidan Devine, and John Stamos.
The network CBS had planned to broadcast it as a 2-part miniseries in November 2003 during fall "sweeps", but it was ultimately broadcast as a film on November 30 of that year on cable channel Showtime due to controversy over its portrayal of Reagan.
The film covers the period in time from 1949 when Reagan was still in Hollywood, through his governorship of California until his last day in office as President in 1989.
In 1968, Reagan loses the Republican nomination to Richard Nixon. At the end of his 8 years of service as the California governor in 1975, Reagan vies for the Republican party nomination in 1976. Then-President Gerald Ford wins the nomination.
Patti Davis, one of the daughters of Ronald Reagan, is portrayed as a drug addict.
After the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981, American jets are shot down by Libya later that year.
About a month before it was scheduled to air, portions of the script were leaked. As a result of these stories, the miniseries began to be widely criticized by conservatives as an unbalanced and inaccurate depiction of Reagan. CBS reportedly had ordered a love story about Ronald and Nancy Reagan with politics as a backdrop, but instead received what they later claimed was an overtly political film. Supporters of the film claimed that these criticisms were simply partisan bias, and were an attempt to censor a film because it did not always portray the former president in a positive light.[1]
Conservatives began criticizing the miniseries before it was broadcast and claimed that it put words in Reagan's mouth and condemned it as leftist historical revisionism. Much of the criticism was based upon early drafts of the script and featured scenes that were never shot or were cut from the final version. Eventually, after several weeks of outspoken criticism by conservatives, on November 4, 2003, CBS withdrew the miniseries from the broadcast schedule and announced that the program did "not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans." The network chose instead to broadcast the miniseries on the cable channel Showtime, which along with CBS was owned by Viacom.[2] In a statement on its web site, CBS said:
CBS's denial that it was yielding to the furor did not persuade its critics. The producers of the movie noted that, before the outcry, CBS had approved both the script for the miniseries and had seen dailies as they were shot, and the film had been approved by two sets of lawyers. Jeff Chester, head of the Center for Digital Democracy, a communications lobbying group, said that CBS had chosen not to offend Republicans at a time when the federal government was considering rules restricting ownership of local television stations. CBS executives "made a business decision," he said. "In doing so, they clearly caved in to the political pressure." Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader of the time, commented that the decision "smells of intimidation to me."[1]
Reagans' daughter Patti Davis criticized the portrayal of her parents. She accused the show's producers of "astounding carelessness and cruelty" and said the script was "quite simply, idiotic." She said that her father was caricatured as a "demented evangelist", while her mother Nancy was made out to be "a female Attila the Hun." "To deliberately and calculatingly depict public people as shallow, intolerant, cold and inept, with no truths or facts to back up the portrayals, is nothing short of malevolent." "And my father, obviously, cannot correct the lies told about him."[3]
One of the most controversial points in the script was the depiction of Reagan telling his wife during a conversation about AIDS patients, "They that live in sin shall die in sin." Co-writer Elizabeth Egloff acknowledged that there was no evidence that Reagan ever said this.[4] [5]
This line was dropped in the Showtime and DVD versions of the film. The Reagans producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, have insisted that every fact (but not every line of dialogue) was supported by at least two sources.[6] However, according to Reagans' daughter Patti Davis, no family member or close friend of the Reagans was consulted by the filmmakers throughout the production.
Another factor which has motivated certain critics to claim bias was that Reagan was played by James Brolin, whose wife Barbra Streisand is an outspoken liberal.[1]
Barbra Streisand criticized CBS's decision not to screen The Reagans as a "sad day for artistic freedom" and said the network "caved in to right wing Republican pressure". Patti Davis commented that CBS did the "right thing" in pulling it from schedules.[3]
Brolin would later play Governor Rob Ritchie, a fictional Republican candidate for the Presidency in The West Wing, while his son Josh would play the 43rd President George W. Bush in the 2008 Oliver Stone film W.