Today marks the 100th anniversary of the late great President Ronald Reagan’s birthday, so it’s fitting that this year a biopic on his life, titled “Reagan,” will begin filming. Mark Joseph, founder of multi-media company MJM Entertainment Group and the film’s producer gave me an update on the film’s progress this week.

The first draft of the script is done, Joseph said. “I wanted the film to highlight both who Reagan was as a boy, as a man, as well as what his mission in life was, which was to roll back communism and the Soviet Union.” As those following this project know, he’s doing that with the help of two books optioned from professor and biographer Paul Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan and The Crusader.

“Ultimately people are going to the movies to see somebody’s story,” Joseph said. “The first book (God and Ronald Reagan) provides insight into who Reagan was. The second (The Crusader) is, frankly, it’s intrigue. It’s what’s going on behind the scenes – who is he working with to make his vision happen.” 

Having read The Crusader, I’ll verify that it’s Cold War intrigue through and through. In addition to the books and input from Kengor himself, Joseph said that he and screenwriter Jonas McCord have been consulting with Reagan contemporaries like Ed Meese and George Schultz.

Joseph followed his own unique path to becoming the film’s producer. “I think I kept waiting for somebody else to do it and when nobody did I guess I decided I should,” he said. It started when he got a speeding ticket while driving from Chicago to St. Louis. The ticket required a court appearance in Dixon, Illinois, Reagan’s hometown. Being in the town touched him. “About six months later is when I optioned the film rights to the books,” he said. (more…)

A Los Angeles Times article I read recently made me chuckle. It began by wearily tossing an exhausted barb at the 3-D phenomenon sweeping Hollywood: “With sighs of relief, critics last week took off their Polaroid glasses and looked at a couple of old-fashioned, two-dimensional films.” The big-screen photography of one of those pictures drew particular attention, with one critic noting that “It gives reality a true third dimension. . . the kind of 3-D you cannot get with mechanical tricks or by any other means except a rich comprehension and ingenious mastery of the visual storyteller’s art.”

Well, let me fess up. I read the article recently, yes — but in a fifty-year-old copy of the Los Angeles Times. The paper was dated May 6, 1953, and the two-dimensional film being praised for bucking Hollywood’s push towards 3-D was Shane.

It was a time when TV was cutting deeply into movie profits, and studios were scrambling to win back the wandering eyeballs of America. Cinerama, an ambitious, three-projector widescreen extravaganza, debuted in New York in the fall of 1952, with its test film This Is Cinerama garnering front-page fanfare and great acclaim. Bosley Crowther, the Roger Ebert of his time, gasped that it gave the audience “the same sensations. . . felt on that night, years ago, when motion pictures were first publicly flashed on a large screen. . . People sat back in spellbound wonder. . . as though most of them were seeing motion pictures for the first time.” In a single evening, the development of all-new expansive formats had become a fait accompli, and studios immediately began looking for ways to capitalize on the buzz. (more…)

So many big name stars, singers and sports legends have visited Washington over the years, the city is often referred to as “Hollywood on the Potomac.”  So, that’s the title of my new book (available now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Borders) featuring over 200 photographs and stories that detail the fascination between Hollywood stars and Washington power-players — from Presidents Truman through Obama. 

Here’s an excerpt: (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. | After spending two weeks on something akin to a fact-finding mission in depressed New York and depleted Washington, D.C., I found no answers to our nation’s mounting ills. I discovered that there is much to be angry about and unlimited reasons for deep concern. But on the evening after my return, the stars aligned on the outskirts of Los Angeles at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and for a brief moment I felt safe again in America.

On Saturday, my wife and I were privileged to attend the second annual “Celebration of Freedom Gala.” We joined more than 1,000 others who, like us, were electrified to honor 43 of the 98 living Medal of Honor recipients. We also gave our thanks to former first lady Nancy Reagan, war hero and actor Charles Durning, and Gen. David H. Petraeus. (more…)