Showtime Gives 'The Reagans' An Earlier Date With Destiny
By Lisa de Moraes
Tuesday, November 18, 2003; Page C01
Viacom-owned cable network Showtime has changed its mind about running the controversial Reagans miniseries early next year, as previously announced, and will instead air it in two weeks.
"I got so sick of people writing about it, making political pronouncements about a movie that no one has seen," Showtime Entertainment President Robert Greenblatt told The TV Column. "I decided, let's just get it on the air as soon as we can."
He denied speculation that Showtime moved up the airdate to Nov. 30 because "The Reagans," with all its juicy, audience-attracting controversy, was in grave danger of becoming roadkill when HBO debuted its adaptation of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Angels in America" on Dec. 7.
While most of the furor surrounding "The Reagans" has focused on one line delivered by James Brolin as President Reagan -- "They that live in sin shall die in sin" -- by way of explaining his seven-year public silence on the subject of AIDS, "Angels" is a six-hour argument that the Reagan administration was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans in the '80s because of its inaction on the disease.
One source close to "The Reagans" said the producers talked Showtime suits into moving up the airdate on "The Reagans," which had originally been slated to debut on CBS last Sunday night.
That was before the Republican National Committee started complaining to CBS CEO Leslie Moonves about the four-hour miniseries, basing its complaints, as did all others who weighed in, on a published report about the project and a seven-minute promotional trailer that had been sent to television critics.
This, in turn, caused Moonves to investigate and discover, much to his surprise, that he had purchased a miniseries about the Reagans -- based in part on the book "First Ladies," by former Nancy Reagan speechwriter Carl Sferrazza Anthony -- with a point of view different from that of the Republican Party. After trying for days to carve up what was to have been the centerpiece of CBS's November sweeps special programming to placate Republicans, Moonves decided to bail on the miniseries altogether, calling it a "moral" decision.
"The Reagans" was then sold to the pay cable network Showtime, which is owned by Viacom, as is CBS. But while CBS is available in virtually every home in America, Showtime reaches only about 15 million.
"Showtime is looking for controversy. Showtime wants to be the next HBO. This is the first time it's had an HBO-quality movie," one source said by way of explaining why the cable network might want to take on the Republican sore spot.
Greenblatt said Showtime will telecast the project as the producers and director envisioned it. Executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron and director and co-executive producer Robert Allan Ackerman issued a statement yesterday saying, "We are proud to live in a country where everyone, including artists and writers, has the right of free speech."
That said, Greenblatt acknowledged that the "live in sin, die in sin" line is toast.
"We decided we'll give them that," Greenblatt said. "On that point we yield to the detractors." That's because, he explained, the screenwriter acknowledged that she had no source citing Reagan as ever having said those exact words. But Greenblatt added, "We hope people will write that we could have put in the accurate line, which was even worse."
He said he was referring to the former president's comment about AIDS victims that's found in "Dutch," Edmund Morris's authorized Reagan biography, that goes: "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague" because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."
"We decided to give Reagan a break," Greenblatt said.
The scene remains; only the line is cut. Reagan will remain silent, which, Greenblatt says, "we think is more effective and dramatic."
"The Reagans" was originally envisioned as a two-night miniseries airing over four hours with commercial breaks. For Showtime it is being reconstructed to run on one night, in less than three hours and without commercials. The Republican National Committee continues to contend on its Web site that "the only proper" way to telecast the miniseries, even on Showtime, is to have it edited by a panel of Reagan friends and colleagues. In lieu of that, the RNC wants Showtime to run a crawl at the bottom of the screen during the telecast declaring it a work of fiction.
Greenblatt said he has not been contacted by the RNC about the project.
One of the show's loudest critics, Michael Paranzino, a government affairs consultant from Maryland who set up the Web site boycottcbs.com to protest the miniseries, told the Associated Press yesterday that he did not intend to actually watch the movie on Showtime. No sense letting facts get in the way of his groundswell of outrage.
And what will CBS be airing on Nov. 30, the night Showtime lets the public see the movie CBS feared to air?
CBS will broadcast "Finding John Christmas" -- a heartwarming holiday drama, the network assures us, about a former firefighter who quietly slips back into his home town, until a local newspaper splashes a photo of him wrapping a tattered American flag around a shivering dog on its front page, which sets everyone looking for him, especially an emergency room nurse (Valerie Bertinelli) fighting to keep her hospital open in the wake of budget cuts who thinks this canine-loving stranger might be the beloved brother who vanished 25 years earlier. |
