Ronald Reagan first visited the Berlin Wall in 1978, during the Carter administration. While there, he reportedly told his aides: “We’ve got to find a way to bring this down,” says Mark Joseph, producer of the 2024 film “Reagan.”
“Reagan” is a biographical movie starring Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan and Jon Voight as KGB agent Viktor Petrovich.
In this episode, Joseph shares why it took nearly 20 years to bring this film to the big screen, and what it was like to film during the height of COVID-era restrictions.
Joseph, who’s also the founder of MJM Entertainment, is the author of “Making Reagan: A Memoir From the Producer of the Reagan Film.”
The movie is based on Paul Kengor’s book “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.”
That book, Joseph said, helped him understand Reagan and his passionate drive to end what he called the “evil empire,” the Soviet Union.
“There have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books written on Ronald Reagan, but Kengor was the only one who went to the church Reagan grew up in and said: ‘Can I see the sermons that young Ronald Reagan would have heard as a child?’ And the current pastor said they’re in the basement, in the box. Nobody has ever asked to see them before.’ So when he opened the box, he found a lot of anti-communist sermons by the preacher,” Joseph said.
The film received sharply divided reviews: On “Rotten Tomatoes,” 98 percent of the audience gives a positive rating, but only 18 percent of critics’ reviews are positive.
That may be a new record.
“We have the greatest gap between critics and film goers of any movie ever made in Hollywood history. ... I’m really proud of that. I don’t make movies for critics. I make movies for the film goers,” Joseph said.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
