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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (17642)	11/25/2003 1:12:07 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793882

Getting Rough Over 'The Reagans' Rough Cut By Lisa de Moraes Tuesday, November 25, 2003; Page C07 Showtime programming chief Robert Greenblatt yesterday blasted as "ludicrous and specious" CBS CEO Leslie Moonves' comparison of "The Reagans" to Oliver Stone's flick "JFK," in which the director argued that Lyndon B. Johnson orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy. Joining Greenblatt in the Showtime phone news conference, the producers and director of "The Reagans," who have kept silent during the kerfuffle over the miniseries because they still had some series in development at CBS, finally defended themselves. They claimed Moonves never told them he had any problems with the program, which he canceled at the eleventh hour after the Republican National Committee sent him a letter demanding it be vetted by Reagan friends and colleagues or that it be accompanied by a crawl declaring it a work of fiction. Greenblatt also dismissed as hooey Moonves' assertions that he had been taken by surprise by the rough-cut version of the miniseries and that the producers promised him a love story about the former president and first lady but delivered a hatchet job. "Les Moonves is chairman of CBS; the scripts, casting and every single day of the dailies were available to him," Greenblatt said during the lively phoner that capped an otherwise mind-numbing day of phone news conferences in which broadcast suits debated which network will be the biggest winner in the November ratings race that wraps tomorrow night. During CBS's phoner, Moonves was asked again about "The Reagans," and again he said that when he saw the rough cut it was not what he had expected. "If he didn't know what the movie was he was getting, it was not the fault of the producers, the director or anybody else associated with this film," commented Greenblatt, a recent hire at Showtime, which is owned by Viacom, the same company that cuts Moonves' considerable paycheck. Greenblatt is either very naive or very brave. During his phoner, Moonves said it was okay for Showtime to air the program because the pay cable network has different standards than does CBS. "I would not have ordered a movie from Oliver Stone. What can be done in a feature film and what can be done on pay cable can take a very decided point of view on historical issues, and they can be interpretive. Oliver Stone accused Lyndon Johnson of orchestrating the assassination of John Kennedy. I could not have put that movie on CBS. It wouldn't be appropriate. . . . We felt like this was something that was better off on cable," Moonves said. Greenblatt also took Moonves to the woodshed for claiming he did not rush "The Reagans" to get it on the air for the November sweeps, when viewing levels are used to set ad rates. Hours earlier, Moonves had said for the umpteenth time, "It wasn't rushed on the air any more than any other project is." But Greenblatt, a former Fox network exec who more recently has operated from 20th Century Fox studio as a successful producer of TV series, explained to reporters that a project like "The Reagans" usually enjoys 10 to 14 weeks of editing. According to the director of "The Reagans," Robert Allen Ackerman, they were told by CBS to deliver a rough cut less than a week after they had finished shooting. "That explains why they were so up against the wall," Greenblatt said. Ackerman said Directors Guild of America (DGA) regulations about production were "completely thrown out of the window" at CBS's insistence, though he said the producers agreed to the stepped-up schedule. "CBS said they needed the movie so we threw out all the DGA regulations and did something completely unheard of: assembled a [two-night miniseries] in less than a week," he said. Ackerman said Moonves never approached the production team with his grievances about the project. "Had CBS approached us, had Les Moonves approached us and said, 'There are problems. It appears to be unbalanced,' I'm sure we would have been open," Ackerman said. "We were never given that opportunity, that dialogue never took place and in a sense we were banished," he said, explaining that CBS delivered a slew of "non-negotiable edits" to the project. "We were just told that these changes had to be put into the movie without any conversations." Ackerman said CBS then began to "more or less butcher" the program with its own editing. "What they were doing was making it incoherent. By the time they got finished with the editing process they went through without consulting any of us, they found they had an incoherent movie and one that they couldn't air," he said. James Brolin, who plays Ronald Reagan in the program, told reporters that Moonves has been one of his "heroes" until the CBS exec scrubbed the project, and that he's "baffled as to how this has all turned out." "The Reagans" producer Craig Zadan said the RNC's successful drive to get his miniseries banished from CBS is just the beginning of a new chilly period for producers. "When we made this movie we believed we could make a movie about any artistic subject and have it air on a broadcast network. Now we're starting to feel like things have shifted," Zadan said. During his phoner, Moonves insisted once again that "we are not going to shy away from controversy in the future. "We welcome controversy; I would have loved to put this on if it showed more of the other side of the picture." Greenblatt seemed skeptical. "I wonder if anybody speaking to Les [during the morning news phone conference] asked about his May sweeps movie about Charlie Manson," he said. "That might be under a good bit of scrutiny right now." washingtonpost.com