Roeper:Hard for any film to separate Reagan fact from fiction (barf, barf, barf BARF!)

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | 11/5/03 | Richard Roper

[RightWingAtheist]

we learned in the great debate over the Ronald Reagan TV miniseries is that many conservatives, including the chairman of the Republican National Committee, think you're stupid.

Yes, you. And you. And everybody out there in TV Land. They think you can't tell the difference between James Brolin, who played Republican presidential candidate Robert Ritchie on "The West Wing," and Ronald Reagan, who was president of the United States for eight years. They believe you can't figure out that a mini- series starring the Australian actress Judy Davis as Nancy is not a documentary, but a "docudrama."

Before CBS announced Tuesday that "The Reagans" would be delayed until 2004 and shifted to the Showtime network -- and here's hoping it doesn't steal air time from that documentary series about the porn czar known as "Seymour Butts" and his wacky family -- RNC chairman Ed Gillespie said that historians should be allowed to screen the docudrama in advance, or the network should run a "crawl" at the bottom of the screen letting viewers know that they're watching a work of fiction.

Great idea! Perhaps the crawl would have been along the lines of: "DEAR IDIOT: THIS IS NOT A COLLECTION OF SCENES FROM THE SECRET WHITE HOUSE MULTI-ANGLE HOME VIDEO LIBRARY. IT'S A DOPEY TV MOVIE, WITH LOTS OF MADE-UP STUFF IN IT. ALSO, THAT PORTLY GUY ON 'THE KING OF QUEENS' ISN'T REALLY MARRIED TO THE UNBELIEVABLY HOT LEAH REMINI. THEY ARE BOTH ACTORS. HOWEVER, IT IS TRUE THAT EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND ..."

Great. Thanks for clearing that up for us.

It's Showtime, folks!

"We live in a culture today of reality TV," said Gillespie. "Lines between fact and fiction get blurred. I am concerned that the portrayal of [Reagan] and his wife is not historically accurate."

Gillespie's got a point about the blurring of lines between fact and fiction, especially when it comes to Reagan's presidency.

For example, there was that time in 1983 when Reagan pulled out the wrong set of 4-inch by 6-inch cue cards when meeting with a foreign leader. (Knowing that their leader would rather watch movies such as "The Sound of Music" than peruse briefing materials, Reagan's staff regularly supplied him with cue cards to help him navigate the political waters.)

Then there was Reagan's habit of repeating the "true" story about a heroic bomber pilot in World War II who sacrificed his life and went down with his plane because his wounded gunner couldn't bail out -- a tale culled not from the history books, but from the 1944 movie "A Wing and a Prayer."

And who can forget Reagan co-opting the "Dirty Harry" quote, "Make my day," or his schtick about the supposed Cadillac-driving welfare queen from Chicago? The man had a way with fiction.

Any resemblance ...

Of course, the GOP's concerns weren't about Reagan's blurring of fact and fiction when he was president, but with a TV miniseries that reportedly distorts Reagan's views on homosexuality and AIDS and portrays Nancy in a harsh light as well. Kudos to the super-conservative New York Times for breaking this story!

(Full disclosure: As film critic for WBBM-Channel 2, I'm on the payroll at Viacom. And I'm with the Sun-Times, and we're rivals with the Tribune, and Trib. Co owns WGN-Channel 9. And I used to work at Fox. And "Ebert & Roeper" airs in Chicago on WLS-Channel 7. Oh, and I get union scale when I'm on the "Tonight Show," which airs on NBC-Channel 5. So whenever I write about anything on Channels 2, 5, 7, 9 or 32, there's no hope for objectivity. Besides, I have a supersecret evil liberal agenda, as part of the Great Media Conspiracy Act of 1994. Just so you know.)

There's also the question of whether it's appropriate for a TV movie about the Reagans to air as the 92-year-old former president suffers from Alzheimer's disease. It does come across as unseemly.

These are legitimate gripes, and one can't blame the GOP for staging a preemptive strike to kill the movie. After all, the Democrats have acted in a similar manner, whether it's been a concentrated effort to derail the theatrical release of "Primary Colors," in which a fictionalized Billy Clinton impregnated a black teenager, or the many boycotts over the years of all those salacious docudramas about the Kennedys.

Two years ago there was a cable movie about Bobby Kennedy in which he had conversations with his dead brother JFK. Good thing the Dems put a stop to that!

Oh wait. That movie aired. Same with questionable dramatizations such as "America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story," "Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis" and "Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot." These and many other Democrat-unfriendly TV movies have been broadcast largely without challenge.

Hmmm. I guess conservatives are just a lot more thin-skinned about this sort of thing than their liberal counterparts.

[RightWingAtheist]

Well, Richard, I'd like to hear how you reacted to the successful "Stop Dr.Laura" campaign, or the how all of the criticism of Mel Gibson's "The Passion" by liberals who hadn't even seen it resulted in Fox dropping it, and sent Gibson shopping around for a new distributor. No really, why haven't taken Frank Rich to task for that?

[SwinneySwitch]

"Hmmm. I guess conservatives are just a lot more thin-skinned about this sort of thing than their liberal counterparts."

Nope. It's just that the demonrats have lost their souls! IMHO

[slim mackerel]

Well, Mr. Roeper! I like your attitude. I'm sure you will greet my soon to be released docu-drama depicting Martin Luther King Jr. as a chicken eating womanizer with much enthusiasm.

Libs sure love democracy until they get the short end of the vote.

[PaulJ]

How about a TV biopic (or whatever they call it) with Clinton telling Hillary,"Rwanda?!? Why in the world would I care about a bunch of Africans? This is an election year"
Or better yet, a week after JFK died, a TV movie with him saying, "Castro? I'll tell you what, Bobby. You take care of Castro and I'll take care of Marilyn Monroe.And bring me another joint, my back hurts."
Or LBJ....well you get the idea.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

So I guess it's okay to lie to forward a political agenda, and calling it a "docudrama" instead of a documentary is the rationale. People are actually quite gullible. Although they realize that all the dumb fat guys with the hot wives are merely actors playing their roles, they tend to believe a lot of the crap they see on television that is disguised as news by Rather, Brokaw, et al.
I guess they could do a "docudrama" about their favorite liberal, Bill Clinton. They could show him not having phone sex, not getting bj's in The Oval Office, and not finishing himself off in the sink. They could also show him telling the truth under oath and fighting terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1992, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the embassies in Africa, and the USS Cole.

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

Normally I don't mention things, but I am noticing a pattern here. Anybody else find it annoying that Richard Roper writes with such horrible prose! I mean the multitopical rants he uses, bouncing from one unrelated subject to another, the over use

of

short

paragraphs. I'll give anyone one guess what these prose remind me of; Maureen Dowd. The tactic of trying to employ sarcasm to cover up a temper tantrum;

Oh wait. That movie aired. Same with questionable dramatizations such as "America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story," "Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis" and "Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot." These and many other Democrat-unfriendly TV movies have been broadcast largely without challenge.

Don't hate us because we are beautiful, Dick. Its not my fault that at the end of the day Conservatives respect Reagan more than star struck female Democrates love JFK. More importantly, who cares if liberals can't stick up for Democrates, that's their problem right?

I find it ironic that a film critic like this is so similar to the Hollywood elitist that they cover. When it comes down to it, they can't hide their bias, they talk about Reagan they go off on emotionally charged tangents. They completely meltdown. Davis, Brolin, the screenwriters, when they got to talking about it-they couldn't put a respectable product out. Just like Roper writing about the subject, this article/rant is pathetic. No surprise it comes from that glorified supermarket tabloid, the Sun Times.

[ElkGroveDan]

They think you can't tell the difference between James Brolin, who played Republican presidential candidate Robert Ritchie on "The West Wing," and Ronald Reagan,

I can only imagine what this guy would say if conservatives put out a movie where Hillary orders her thugs to deep-six Vince Foster. Its just a movie after all, no one will believe its real.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

many conservatives, including the chairman of the Republican National Committee, think you're stupid.

Yes, you. And you. And everybody out there in TV Land. They think you can't tell the difference between James Brolin, who played Republican presidential candidate Robert Ritchie on "The West Wing," and Ronald Reagan, who was president of the United States for eight years. They believe you can't figure out that a mini- series starring the Australian actress Judy Davis as Nancy is not a documentary, but a "docudrama."

Yeah, when we see a man and a woman pretending that their names are Ronald and Nancy Reagan we're so stupid that we think that they are trying to influence the audience's opinion of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

I mean, they could have made the same fiction and called the lead characters "John and Sally Wilson," but they didn't.

We're so stupid that we consider a "docudrama" to be a synonym for "propaganda."

In the real world it is the media who think that they can fool most of the people all of the time--so much so that they are offended at the suggestion that we-the-people could elect a candiate when they are shilling for his opponent.

[Paul Atreides]

I'm still waiting for "The Juanita Broaddrick Story" to be made, as well as "The Kathleen Willey Story," "The Paula Jones Story," "The Gennifer Flowers Story........"

[Paul Atreides]

What Ms. Roeper fails to mention is, LIBERALS LOVED THE KENNEDY MEN PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY WERE CHEATERS. The Kennedys were loved because they used the number one liberal tactic: THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS. For every Kennedy movie/bio/documentary, featuring a negative aspect of a Kennedy, there are ten that deify that particular Kennedy.

[Rodney King]

concentrated effort to derail the theatrical release of "Primary Colors," in which a fictionalized Billy Clinton impregnated a black teenager,

No, that was the real Billy Clinton.

[wildbill]

Roper's Wrong! People can't separate fact and fiction--at least that's true of highly paid unionists at the NEA. In Oct. 2002 the following occurred:

Oct. 09, 2002. Leaders of the National Education Association had better switch off their television sets and start studying Reality 101.
Last week, after viewing NBC's prime-time show "The West Wing," the national educators took the incredible step of issuing a news release headlined: "NEA backs President Bartlet's call for school quality." The episode featured Bartlet's plea for more teachers and better-funded public schools
In its news release, the NEA also applauds the fictitious President Bartlet for pointing out in his weekly address to the nation that there's "too much mayhem in our culture - and we can do something about that."

And those are teachers, Mr. Roeper.

[weegee]

Richard Roper admitted grinning ear to ear when he heard that Rush Limbaugh had problems with addiction. Richard Roper is an evil idiot.

[Fledermaus]

Roeper is a troubled man fighting his homosexual urges and has to listen to Roger Ebert spew his idiocy one a week.

[weegee]

Roper's "partner" Ebert had a hard time swallowing the politics of this purely fiction film:

THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE
ZERO STARS (R)

February 21, 2003

David Gale: Kevin Spacey
Bitsey Bloom: Kate Winslet
Constance Harraway : Laura Linney
Zack: Gabriel Mann
Dusty: Matt Craven
Berlin: Rhona Mitra
Braxton Belyeu: Leon Rippy
Duke Grover: Jim Beaver

Universal Pictures and Intermedia Films present a film directed by Alan Parker. Written by Charles Randolph. Running time: 130 minutes. Rated R (for violent images, nudity, language and sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

"The Life of David Gale" tells the story of a famous opponent of capital punishment who, in what he must find an absurdly ironic development, finds himself on Death Row in Texas, charged with the murder of a woman who was also opposed to capital punishment. This is a plot, if ever there was one, to illustrate King Lear's complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do.

David Gale is an understandably bitter man, played by Kevin Spacey, who protests his innocence to a reporter named Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet), whom he has summoned to Texas for that purpose. He claims to have been framed by right-wing supporters of capital punishment because his death would provide such poetic irony in support of the noose, the gas or the chair. Far from killing Constance Harraway (Laura Linney), he says, he had every reason not to, and he explains that to Bitsey in flashbacks that make up about half of the story.

Bitsey becomes convinced of David's innocence. She is joined in her investigation by the eager and sexy intern Zack (Gabriel Mann), and they become aware that they are being followed everywhere in a pickup truck by a gaunt-faced fellow in a cowboy hat, who is either a right-wing death-penalty supporter who really killed the dead woman, or somebody else. If he is somebody else, then he is obviously following them around with the MacGuffin, in this case a videotape suggesting disturbing aspects of the death of Constance.

The man in the cowboy hat illustrates my recently renamed Principle of the Unassigned Character, formerly known less elegantly as the Law of Economy of Character Development. This principle teaches us that the prominent character who seems to be extraneous to the action will probably hold the key to it. The cowboy lives in one of those tumble-down shacks filled with flies and peanut butter, with old calendars on the walls. The yard has more bedsprings than the house has beds.

The acting in "The Life of David Gale" is splendidly done but serves a meretricious cause. The direction is by the British director Alan Parker, who at one point had never made a movie I wholly disapproved of. Now has he ever. The secrets of the plot must remain unrevealed by me, so that you can be offended by them yourself, but let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein.

I am sure the filmmakers believe their film is against the death penalty. I believe it supports it and hopes to discredit the opponents of the penalty as unprincipled fraudsters. What I do not understand is the final revelation on the videotape. Surely David Gale knows that Bitsey Bloom cannot keep it private without violating the ethics of journalism and sacrificing the biggest story of her career. So it serves no functional purpose except to give a cheap thrill to the audience slackjaws. It is shameful.

One of the things that annoys me is that the story is set in Texas and not just in any old state--a state like Arkansas, for example, where the 1996 documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" convincingly explains why three innocent kids are in prison because they wore black and listened to heavy metal, while the likely killer keeps pushing himself onscreen and wildly signaling his guilt. Nor is it set in our own state of Illinois, where Death Row was run so shabbily that former Gov. George Ryan finally threw up his hands and declared the whole system rotten.

No, the movie is set in Texas, which in a good year all by itself carries out half the executions in America. Death Row in Texas is like the Roach Motel: Roach checks in, doesn't check out. When George W. Bush was Texas governor, he claimed to carefully consider each and every execution, although a study of his office calendar shows he budgeted 15 minutes per condemned man (we cannot guess how many of these minutes were devoted to pouring himself a cup of coffee before settling down to the job). Still, when you're killing someone every other week and there's an average of 400 more waiting their turn, you have to move right along.

Spacey and Parker are honorable men. Why did they go to Texas and make this silly movie? The last shot made me want to throw something at the screen--maybe Spacey and Parker.

You can make movies that support capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song") or oppose it ("Dead Man Walking") or are conflicted ("In Cold Blood"). But while Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in Texas.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

Hey Rog, "It's only a movie, only a movie, only a movie...".

[RightWingAtheist]

Roeper also named The Contender-little more than an unpaid two-hour election ad for the Democrats-one of his favorite flicks of 2000. Whenever some left-wing documentary or docudrama is released, E & R fall all over it, fawning about how it "shows the truth behind" such-and-such issue.

My dislike for Roeper stems from a non-political issue. When discussing the movies Red Planet and Eight-Legged Freaks, he made utterly snide comments about 50s sci-fi flicks that showed he hadn't actually watched a single one of them.

[driftless]

Normally I don't get too upset about a particular lying lib docudrama, but this time I'm glad they had to eat a little humble pie. For years they've been churning out "entertainment" and "harmless fiction" for tv and movies depicting Republicans as little more than greedy, neanderthal-like fascists who hate everyone. Now they're upset because one of their pathetic "dramas" has been derailed by a citizens campaign.

I guess they thought that they could kick conservatives forever, and we wouldn't react. Now they're crying censorhip. Boo hoo hoo. I'm still waiting for the conservative tv docudrama or movie that slams libs the way they deserve it. Has anyone ever seen a movie or a tv show depicting radical feminists or hard-liberals as evil and stupid... as they really are? You know the answer to that question.

[weegee]

I thumbed through a copy of Ropers' movie reviews at the bookstore when I learned that he was the permanent replacement for Gene Siskel.

Richard Roper said that he doesn't like the Little Rascals/Our Gang films because they are racist and they aren't funny. I think I even saw some sort of comment how he didn't even like watching black and white movies but I may be mistaken there.

[weegee]

Has anyone ever seen a movie or a tv show depicting radical feminists or hard-liberals as evil and stupid... as they really are?

It's been a long long time. The tv series "I Led 3 Lives" showed the different scams that the communists used to weaken America. Anything that doesn't draw parallels between modern liberalism and old party communism falls short in my estimation.

[RightWingAtheist]

If he doesn't like black-and-white, than he doesn't like movies. The only times when Ebert's rages are truly justified are when cannibals colorize the classics.