We start with “The Kennedys.”

For those of you new to planet Earth, Surnow’s the Executive Producer of “The Kennedys,” a $30 million, eight-part miniseries that just completed a successful cable run on the Reelz Channel. It starred Hollywood heavyweights Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper, Tom Wilkinson, and Katie Holmes and was originally set to air on the History Channel, until a last minute decision was made by the parent company’s board (Hearst, ABC Disney, NBC Universal) that the series didn’t meet History Channel’s standards.

No one bought that excuse for a second because at the center of this political storm sat Surnow, one of the rare, openly conservative players in Hollywood. From day one, the leftist knives were out and the narrative created that a conservative producer was determined to produce a hit-job against liberal Camelot. As early as last year, a left-wing documentary filmmaker launched a direct attack on the series that garnered a lot of attention and likely led to some of the the surviving members of the Kennedy family to successfully pressure History’s board to dump a completed project. 

Apparently, History lost millions ejecting the mini, but eject it they did, stating, “we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.” 

Keeping in mind that this is the same History Channel that airs “Pawn Stars” and two hour celebrity-laden love fests to Howard Zinn, one of the most dishonest historians ever, there’s really no way to interpret what “a fit for the History brand” means. But in part-one of my two-part interview, I go right at the central issue: the historical accuracy of “The Kennedys.”

As you’ll read below, the historical vetting process was not only intense but something Surnow welcomed and agreed with:

Big Hollywood: The place I want to start with is at the end. I want to know how you feel about things now.  I don’t want to use – it’s probably not a fair use of the word because you didn’t do anything wrong — but with the ratings and the reviews, you must feel somewhat vindicated. 

Joel Surnow: I think you’re right, I don’t know if I need to be vindicated by the people who tried to stop this from airing. But we knew we had a really great show.  Some of the reviews that trashed us were just outright ludicrous, and clearly agendized.  They were not in touch with reality or critical analysis; they were just personal towards me, and some towards Katie Holmes. That’s the nature of reviews. 

We’ve had everything from four stars to the other, but I would say on average we were given pretty strong reviews all the way through, and just anecdotally, the response from people — especially the people I care about, people who I work with, who are my peers — is that they seem to really be enjoying the show.  So it is sort of a vindication.  It’s a vindication because any time you do this you wonder, “Will anybody even wanna watch this?” 

BH: That’s the normal part of it but, obviously, there was another element added here. 

JS: Another degree of difficulty for sure. 

BH:  Now, you’ve made a distinction that I wanted to make sure we get to up front. Everyone, including me, has been saying, “The History Channel, The History Channel, The History Channel.”

JS:  The History Channel are our allies.  They got as screwed on this as we did.

BH: And they’re owned by ABC, NBC, Disney?

JS:  And Hearst. I know that NBC has the smallest share, but they’re all on the board.

BH: And these are the same people, I think, that snuffed the Path of 9/11?

JS: Yeah, the Disney people did.

BH: That’s another very troubling part of it.

JS: It’s very powerful.

BH: And partisan…

JS: Yes. 

BH: Let’s talk about the historical accuracy issues. I’ve read about the detailed process you went through in getting The Kennedys’ scripts approved. Cyrus [Nowastreh] went through the same thing with Path to 9/11.

JS:  Which is fair…

BH:  Totally agree.

JS: You should have your history right on the History Channel.

BH:  Did the same people who said, “This script is approved. Go ahead and shoot it,” are they the same ones who later turned around and said, “We don’t want to air it. It’s not right for our network”? Is that a fair representation?

JS: No.  The History executives and historians were the ones who approved the script.  The ones that said we don’t want to air it were the people above History – the corporate board.

BH:  So the board had never approved the script, but the History executives had?

JS:  The board doesn’t get involved in stuff like that.  That wouldn’t be a function of the board. However, having said that, I’m sure that History felt a great deal of pressure to ensure the board what they were putting on the air was historically accurate. 

BH:  Certainly. Especially with the level of scrutiny you were under. And and I agree that’s a good process and probably makes for better storytelling, and you mentioned that one thing you had to prove to a historian was that a gun was part of the White House decoration.

JS: That was when we were shooting, that was the dailies. There was a rifle on the Oval Office wall, and [the historians] were microscopically looking at dailies.  They saw [the firearm] and said, “We don’t want JFK sitting in front of a rifle – it’s sending the wrong message.”  And then we had to dig into the pile to find the photographs to find JFK sitting in front of a rifle. 

BH:  So they were scrutinizing dailies, as well?

JS: Absolutely.  They not only approved the script, they approved the shows – the cuts of the show.

BH: Wow. I think a contextually fair historical representation is always important.  But then you look at what Oliver Stone gets away with – and I’m totally fine with this, because I believe in artistic freedom and am a huge Oliver Stone fan — but the double standard is glaring.

JS:  There’s been even more than Oliver Stone.  There’s a lot of people who do a first-level of accuracy and then make up a lot of stuff.  And you’re right; it’s fine.  But in fairness to Oliver Stone, I thought Nixon was a pretty solid piece of history.  And I think he went under the same scrutiny from the right from those who didn’t think that he could do an honest depiction, and I thought he actually did. I thought he pulled it off.  JFK was a fantasy, but it was interesting.

BH: Yeah, JFK was one my favorite movies of the ‘90s.  I thought it was brilliant.

JS: Yeah, but I don’t think it was real history.

BH: More like a rationalization.

JS: It was. But in a sense that becomes the legacy of the assassination, because it was a movie.  And I think that’s why the Kennedy family was concerned about circling the wagons [with The Kennedys] – because once something is imprinted on film, it lives in the upper imagination a lot more than a book.  There have been a million books about the Kennedys’ and all the questionable, iffy things that they’ve done.  But once it’s a movie or a TV show, it seems to live larger in public imagination.

BH: Do you know if the Kennedy family saw this, or did you offer to show it to them?

JS: I don’t think they did.  I heard one quote from Robert Kennedy Jr. trashing us and then saying he never saw it. 

BH: A lot of people are comparing what you went through to The Reagans. [a miniseries that came out in 2003 and after a conservative firestorm over accuracy ended up being bumped from CBS to Showtime].

JS:  That wasn’t at all comparable.  There’s a singular distinction involving the only thing that’s really important: The Reagans got canceled because the advertisers backed out.  The advertisers didn’t believe in the product.  And in our business, that’s the ultimate metric by which everything is judged.  Quite the opposite happened on The Kennedys.  Our advertisers pledged to go with us wherever we went because they loved the show so much. So there’s really no comparison.  And, by the way, I never saw The Reagans, so I don’t know anything about it.  I don’t even know if it was agendized or not, I just heard it wasn’t very good.

BH: Yeah, I didn’t see it either, but I think someone won an Emmy.  Another distinction, in my opinion, was that The Reagans was going to broadcast on the public airwaves; it was going to air on CBS, and it had no problem finding a home at Showtime.  You were going to be on cable –

JS: It started on basic cable, and went to basic cable.

BH: Exactly.  There’s a big difference between the public-owned airwaves and cable  But I didn’t even know about the advertisers. 

JS: That’s a big difference.

BH: Obviously, The Kennedys screened on Reelz, but it sounds as though it’s going to eventually be available all over the world. 

JS: It was sold in over 40 countries.  I think it goes onto Netflix starting [this] week.  And then the DVD comes out May 15th, so it’s going to be platformed everywhere.

BH: That’s terrific.  Is it going to be streaming on Netflix?

JS:  I don’t know if it’s going to be streaming.  That’s a good question.  It’s already the number one series buy on iTunes, which is great for us. It’s ahead of Walking Dead and Weeds and The Killing, all those shows that are out recently, and shows that have done well in the past.

BH: Do you know if History or AETN lose money on the decision to dump the series?

JS: Yeah, I think they lost a lot of money.

Tomorrow, Surnow has a very frank discussion about life as a Hollywood conservative in the midst of our ongoing culture wars.

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A couple of young siblings are sent to their estranged father’s house for the summer. Singer Miley Cyrus and Bobby Soleman play the brother and sister, Ronnie and Jonah Miller, who are both unhappy to find themselves forced to spend time with their old man, Steve Miller (played by Oscar-nominee Greg Kinnear). While sulking and adrift in teen angst, Ronnie (Cyrus) meets a local boy and starts to fall in love with him. The boy, Will Blakelee, is played by Liam Hemsworth, and he charms his way into dating the new girl in town.

The story focuses on Ronnie’s budding relationship with Will and her damaged relationship with her father. The former relationship quickly develops even though Ronnie’s first impression of Will is negative, to say the least. The romance is an innocent and sentimental one depicting Will as a rich young lad whose parents are predictably not impressed by Will’s new and less-privileged girlfriend. The love story is sometimes dorky and goofy but the characters are likable and the couple does have chemistry.

Ronnie’s other major relationship issue is with her father, who separated from the family years before but sent his children letters after. When he sees his daughter, she’s openly hostile to him but he still tries to be a father figure and encourages her to take up the piano again — an interest of hers before he left. Rumor has it that Ronnie’s father also started the local Church fire that burnt it down, although he does not remember if he actually did it or not because of medication he was on at the time.

This is Miley Cyrus’ first big non-Hannah Montana movie role and she does an okay job with it. She has potential to grow as an actress and her chemistry with Hemsworth is noticeable. But she sometimes goes overboard. With time, I think she will grow.

This movie reminded me of “Life As a House,” which is about a middle-aged parent reaching out to his estranged son during a summer they spend together. That was a better movie than “Song” but ”Song” does have some strong qualities and manages to overcome its predictable plot twists and cliches with likable characters and solid secondary story-lines (including one involving baby turtles).

Unlike “Dear John,” “The Last Song” does not have major problems in its third act that distracts from the story. However, like “Dear John,” it is a likable, old-fashioned teen romance that fans of romantic dramas and solid stories should enjoy.

A genre still salvageable, though in need of CPR stat, is the smart Hollywood comedy. These days, it seems were stuck with only an increasingly desperate Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell, the Judd Apatow gross-out collection, and overheated romantic comedies based on lame concepts like “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” or lamer still, catchphrases: “He’s Just Not That Into You” and “What Happens in Vegas.”  

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And while the Hollywood comedy may not be dead, every time I think it deserves to be killed there’s a spark of life, and most recently that spark came from “Ghost Town,” a delightful, heartfelt little sleeper from last year starring The Mighty Ricky Gervais and two actors I normally don’t care for: Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni (both have a television-level presence and project less warmth than ice).

Gervais is hilarious and perfectly cast as an anti-social dentist who wants only to be left the hell alone. After a near-death experience he finds himself haunted by a crowd of spirits who can’t move on until some bit of business of theirs is resolved. Since they can’t affect change in the real world, they need Gervais to do it on their behalf. Naturally, their constant presence combined their needing something from him is something he finds intolerable. 

The concept may sound thin and like it can’t go anywhere, but because the focus stays on the character development of the Gervais character and not the ghost gimmick, the idea never wears out its welcome. Neither “spiritual” (in that annoying Hollywood way) nor religious, “Ghost Town” is just a clever, emotionally engaging look at a lonely curmudgeon forced to re-engage with the world. The after-life aspect is handled impressively with a matter-of-fact approach – a vehicle with which to explore a character and nudge him along. [Here's my full review from last year]

Best of all, the climax is beautiful, memorable and very well crafted.

Directed and co-written by David Koepp, the biggest screenwriter working today, this sweet, romantic gem all but disappeared thanks to an almost non-existent marketing campaign. For those of you who missed it and are tired of what passes for a romantic comedy these days, you need to check it out. It’s available on DVD, and probably has been for a while, but I just noticed it today. 

Except for the marketing muscle, Hollywood got this one right.