This weekend, while at the Jersey Shore, I viewed the film Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid. I last saw Quaid about 45 years ago in the movie Breaking Away, an entertaining movie but one tarted up by Hollywood fictions, class warfare, and other such Hollywood canards. Suffice it to say, the real Breaking Away was about college boys in a bicycle race. It was a comedy about my school pals at Indiana University. Yet, Quaid, as I recall, put in a top-drawer performance.
The movie had drama, excitement, all the usual Hollywood stuff, except gratuitous sex and violence.
As Ronald Reagan in Reagan, he was stupendous. He is a genuine star, worthy of an Oscar and a glass of champagne. In fact, a whole bottle of champagne. The drinks are on me.
The movie covered President Reagan’s entire life in just over two hours, and the audience that I was with was restless for more. Of course, the New York Times and the Washington Post have panned Reagan, just as they panned the Old Cowboy’s entire presidency, even his near death in the George Washington University Hospital.
That scene was particularly riveting thanks to Quaid, but there are dozens of other scenes in Reagan that Quaid and his supporting cast brought to life. The movie had drama, excitement, and all the usual Hollywood stuff, except gratuitous sex and violence. You should see it, whatever you thought of President Reagan. Quaid’s interpretation of the 40th president will suggest to you that there was more to him than even I recognized.
The film did miss some of my favorite moments spent with him. There was the time I was called into the White House to cheer the President up during the Iran-Contra flap. In the many times I had seen him, the President was then at his lowest ebb. Egad — was he low.
I had hardly sat down in front of the Resolute Desk when he started to stammer out facts and figures that made me particularly uncomfortable. There occurred a lull in his disquisition when I interrupted him to say, “Hey, Mr. President, there is no need for all those facts and figures. I’m on your side.” That broke the ice. We all relaxed, and Reagan became Reagan once again.
Another time when we were together was when he came to my house for dinner with about 250 of his favorite bodyguards. I gave him The American Spectator’s rendition of Ron On the Rock, the rock being Mount Rushmore, and introduced him to the music of Frederick the Great. But producers and directors cannot capture everything in a life that lasted some 93 years.
I am just glad they captured what they did. And by the way, why not order my recent memoir How Do We Get Out of Here? for still more stories, including five other presidents and their casts of characters?
And thanks to our colleague, Paul Kengor, for providing the fabulous book upon which the movie Reagan is based.
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