Conservatives movie goers should steel themselves for a new documentary making its Sundance Film Festival debut next month.
“Reagan,” by filmmaker Eugene Jarecki (“Why We Fight”), promises a fair account of the GOP icon – according to Jarecki’s brother, Andrew.
Andrew Jarecki told WWTW last week the upcoming documentary offers “a really unique take on a person” with “a lot of ambiguity.”
“Ronald Reagan was neither devil nor saint. Yet he’s been turned into this icon. In reality, he’s a complex person,” Andrew Jarecki says of his brother’s project.
Sounds great – on the surface. But it wouldn’t be the first time an unfair and unbalanced project was described in such moderate terms.
Consider “Fair Game,” the retelling of the Valerie Plame outing so blatantly dishonest The Washington Post used its house editorial space to condemn it. Yet “Fair Game” director Doug Liman told reporters he adhered to court transcripts to hew as close to the truth as possible.
Balderdash.
There’s reason to assume Eugene Jarecki’s “Reagan” film won’t treat the subject fairly. He contributes to the liberal Huffington Post and his “Why We Fight” feature is hardly the work of a neocon filmmaker in action. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t whip up a razzle dazzle documentary on Reagan that neither deifies nor denigrates him, but he enters the project with a clearly left of center mindset.
I’m also reminded of my chat with Stefan Forbes, the director of “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.” The otherwise compelling film clearly leans left and includes talking heads like far left politico Eric Alterman of “The Nation” to help shape the narrative. Yet Forbes swore he took a fair approach to the material. In his mind, I bet he did.
Reagan is nothing less than a legend to those on the Right, and he’s beloved even by those who don’t swear allegiance to the GOP. Will the film take unfair swipes at him in order to please a small segment of the movie-going public – profits be darned?
A previous biopic of the late president doesn’t give us hope. “The Reagans,” a mini-series originally slated for CBS but later punted off to Showtime, put some pretty cruel words in Reagan’s mouth in order to make him look like a monster.
Documentaries deal in facts, or, at least they should. But we’ve seen too many examples lately of directors fudging the truth by errors of omission, cutesy editing and using biased experts to nudge the narrative.
A fair, honest account of President Reagan would make a powerful documentary. We’ll have to see what the real deal offers next month.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
When Hollywood makes a movie (documentary or otherwise) about a conservative politician, they consider anything short of an outright hit job to be “fair”. Remember when Oliver Stone said that his movie “W.” would be a balanced look at George W. Bush? By that standard, it would only have been politically biased if the film had consisted of Michael Moore screaming “fascist!” at Bush’s face for the whole 2 hours.
Great example, JimmyC. People claimed “W.” was fair because Stone didn’t depict Bush as the devil incarnate. The ‘fair and balanced’ measuring stick was so out of whack anything short of that seemed honest to some people’s eyes.
Until I hear otherwise about this one, “In the Face of Evil” is all I need re. Reagan.
As I have stated previously, documentaries all have an agenda. My brief interview for a documentary on an artist showed it to me well. I gave answers that the documentarians didn’t think moved their agenda forward so I was cut.
Reagan is such a repellent demon for the liberal mindset all I can say is this documentary is D.O.A. in my opinion.
Its hilarious!
The only people that will see this movie will be the left.
We won’t.
The same 17% of the country that sees all of this crap. The “true believers”.
And so what?
They are sad angry uneducated people driven by corrupt theology.
Watching W. was like watching a SNL skit with better production funds.
I’m going to give these guys the benefit of the doubt until I hear otherwise. Seeing a documentary about the greatness that was Reagan, but went out of it’s way NOT to mention his flaws would be an equal travesty of history, in my judgement. If we want to see an accurate portrayal we need to accept that not all aspects of Reagan were righteous. He was human after all, and yet was a great man, and leader.
I appreciate Reagan more, because I know and understand these aspects of his character, not less.
Can we trust the new Reagan documentary?
No.
Nope.
Seems the Dems are once again trying to rewrite History and portray those the Tea Party and Conservatives use as a measuring stick into a anything but. I guess it needs to bomb at the box office just like “W” and “Fair Game” have done to once again prove that 70% of the country respects the man we called “The Gipper”.
So it will be “a really unique take on a person” with “a lot of ambiguity”, eh?
Was Reagan not a man wholly confident in his beliefs and his ability to act on them? If I were to pick a word to describe Reagan, “ambiguous” wouldn’t even be considered.
And a “unique” take on him? Will it be unique because it will be contrary to how the MSM, Democrats, and entertainment industry has depicted him? Or will it be unique like W. was – an unbearable, over the top caricature? I’d be interested to know who their target audience is.
Let’s watch this thing before passing judgement. ‘Why We Fight’ may not have been pleasant for us conservatives to watch, but it was factual.
Trytobe – This post clearly states that I’m not condemning the film before seeing it. But it’s hard not to consider the factors behind the movie and its creator.
That said, the final product turned out to be precisely as I feared and I explain why here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/hbos-reagan-wheres-the-rest-of-him/