I think this was a wise decision. Whatever you think of Reagan, his Alzheimers was no joke and to make it the object of mockery would have been beyond the pale.
I remember a running skit on Saturday Night Live that was exactly like this during Reagan’s presidency. Randy Quaid played Reagan, who thought he was indeed shooting a movie with him playing the President. Of course, this was before it became public knowledge that Reagan was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, so there was humor in the satire. Today of course, it would be considered tasteless, although no one is preventing such a movie from being made. I’m glad Ferrell pulled out of it. I always thought he was a pretty decent man.
I’m not saying Ferrell has a sterling reputation for high brow work, but I ding him some points for signing on and don’t return them all for backing out. Total dick move.
It does seem to be in pretty poor taste. Nothing wrong with mocking a president, but making fun of a guy for having Alzheimers is kinda shitty.
But he was a conservationist!
Here’s an article with what the script is actually about:
Dick is a great movie, and I could see Reagan being a good movie if done well, or terrible and offensive if done badly. But it sounds like from the script that Reagan himself isn’t the butt of the joke, it’s more that the people around him and using him are. But I could see that also bother people, including his family, if they think that Reagan was 100% with it during both of his terms and the movie is showing him as not, even if he’s shown sympathetically.
I have definitely seen Alzheimers played respectfully and funny. I have been in rooms where caregivers for people with Alzheimers, after the fact, had each other literally hurting from laughter while swapping hysterical war stories. (There are far more sad ones, of course, but the funny ones get you through.) However, I don’t think Ferrell would have been able to give it the depth it required to have worked as anything other than a low brow comedy.
He’s made some comedies that I laughed at (and more that I didn’t), but has he done anything to show dramatic talent?
Proof number 1,387,967 that liberals are hateful, mean spirited people that anyone would even consider making this movie.
Oh, just wrap yourself in the flag and go to sleep already.
Stranger than Fiction. While it has it’s moments, it’s not really a comedy, and it doesn’t at all revolve around Ferrell playing a clown or an idiot. Great movie, highly recommended.
That being said, the film described in the OP could, if done right, be another Being There. The odds of it being “done right” have gone up dramatically now that Ferrell isn’t attached to it.
Political correctness run amok, right conservatives?
Maybe he’ll see the error of his ways and star in God’s Not Dead: The Series.
NBC Nightly News was coincidentally airing a report about this project just as I was reading this thread. In the last few seconds the reporter intoned, “Will Ferrell has now said he will not pursue this project.” Which was hilarious since they just spent the last few minutes talking about it, complete with quotes from Reagan’s letter announcing his diagnosis and outrage from his daughter. It was like, they had this juicy story that they were determined to run even though it was now completely irrelevant.
Yes.
It really isn’t such a bad concept. But since it’s associated with Mr. Ferrell, it couldn’t come out as anything engaging and thoughtful (think The Truman Show), but only tasteless slapstick. On the other hand, if Vonnegut wanted to write that story, then you got something.
There is a funny movie to be made about Reagan and the whole “Reaganomics/Strategic Defense Initiative/Iran-Contra Scandal” kerfuffle. However, portraying Reagan’s dementia from undiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease is not it. Really, the clown in the story is Oliver North.
There is also a good drama to be made about Reagan’s personal friendship with Michael Gorbachev and how that led to the INF and START treaties, although it probably better focused on Gorbachev and the risks he took in liberalizing the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact.
There is, however, a fantastic parody waiting to be made about George W. Bush and the machinations behind his presidency while he took vacation after vacation. Unfortunately, David Mamet seems to have given up writing biting political satire.
Stranger
MHO: Will Farrell is not funny under the best of circumstances.
Everything Must Go. Not a comedy at all, and he wasn’t bad in it. Shocked me, actually.
I had been saying since the middle of Reagan’s second term that he was probably dead, and they were using a wax dummy, or old footage for his public appearance. The news that he was not all there did not shock me in the slightest.
I am fairly certain that his family knew he had Alzheimer’s before his second term was over, and possibly his close aids and cabinet did as well. I think a great fraud was perpetrated on the American people. If Reagan gets raked over the coals for it, so be it.
Now, that’s assuming that the project sticks to what a jerk Reagan and his advisors and family were (by the end, Reagan may have been too far gone to be truly complicit, but there was probably some point when he was still mostly lucid that he got the news, and made his own choices). Generic pot shots at Alzheimer’s, or patients other than Reagan, wouldn’t be appropriate. Keep the focus narrow.
I think you’re misremembering the skit. Reagan would appear like a genial grandpa with the public, but each time he was with just staff, he became a sharp commanding presence.