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The Reagans

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The Reagans is a four-hour miniseries about U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his family which CBS had planned to broadcast in November 2003 during fall "sweeps", but was ultimately broadcast on November 30 of that year on premium cable channel Showtime.

Production

The miniseries featured James Brolin as Ronald Reagan, Judy Davis as Nancy Reagan and covers the period in time from 1949 when Reagan was still in Hollywood, through his governorship of California until Reagan's last day in office as President in 1989.

Controversy

About a month before it was scheduled to air, portions of a draft script of the documentary-drama were leaked and published by the New York Times and the Drudge Report. As a result of these stories, the miniseries began to be widely criticized by conservatives as an unbalanced and inaccurate depiction of Reagan. CBS reportedly had ordered a love story about Ronald and Nancy Reagan with politics as a backdrop, but instead received what they later claimed was an overtly political film. Supporters of the film claimed that these criticisms were simply partisan bias, and were an attempt to censor a film because it did not always portray the former president in positive light.

Conservatives began criticizing it before it was broadcast and claimed that it put words in Reagan's mouth and condemned it as leftist historical revisionism. Some of the criticism was based upon early drafts of the script and featured scenes that were either never shot or dropped from the final version. Eventually, after several weeks of outspoken criticism by conservatives, on November 4, 2003, CBS withdrew the broadcast claiming that it did "not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans" ([1]). The network chose instead to broadcast the miniseries on the premium cable channel Showtime, which along with CBS is owned by Viacom.

CBS's denial that it was yielding to the furor did not persuade its critics. The producers of the movie noted that, before the outcry from Reagan loyalists, CBS had approved both the script for the miniseries and had seen dailies as they were shot, and the film had been approved by two sets of lawyers. Jeff Chester, head of the Center for Digital Democracy, a communications lobbying group, said that CBS had chosen not to offend Republicans at a time when the federal government was considering rules restricting ownership of local television stations. CBS executives "made a business decision," he said. "In doing so, they clearly caved in to the political pressure." Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, commented that the decision "smells of intimidation to me.".

Controversial points

One of the most controversial points in the script was the depiction of Reagan telling his wife during a conversation about AIDS patients, "They that live in sin shall die in sin." The screenwriters admitted that there was no evidence that Reagan ever said this; however, they pointed to Edmund Morris' fictionalized biography of Reagan, which quotes him as saying, "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague [AIDS]." This line was dropped in the Showtime and DVD versions of the film. The Reagans producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, have insisted that every fact, though not every line of dialogue, was supported by at least two sources. However, according to Patti Davis, one of Reagan's daughters, no family members, or close friends of the Reagan's, were consulted by the filmmakers throughout the production. During the Reagan administration many critics said Reagan should have made the government spend more money to find a cure for AIDS. Critics further claimed that scriptwriters were attempting to smear Reagan, perhaps for espousing the belief held widely by Christians that homosexual sex is sinful.

Another factor which has caused critics to claim bias was that Reagan is played by James Brolin, who is the husband of Barbra Streisand, a stridently outspoken critic of the Republican Party.

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