Movie Nights with the Reagans

by Mark Weinberg

  Despite Deaver’s foresight in meeting with the filmmakers, the timing did not line up: Rocky IV didn’t premiere until November 1985, a full year after Reagan’s forty-nine-state landslide. To make matters even more interesting, the version that hit theaters was not the same one that Anderson, Stallone, and Deaver had discussed in 1983. A legal dispute arose later between Anderson and Stallone over who owned the rights to that particular story. It was ultimately settled out of court. Stallone wrote the final version of Rocky IV.

  Rocky IV, which centers on tense, brutal confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in the boxing ring, coincided with the first real thaw in Soviet-American relations since well before President Reagan took office. The new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, was widely credited for the change. With his Western mannerisms and intellectual-minded wife, Raisa, “Gorby” was a different kind of Soviet leader. Compared with his predecessors, he was more open about Communism’s shortcomings. The president liked Gorbachev personally and enjoyed telling him jokes. Asked if he was concerned about the growing popularity of his Soviet counterpart, Reagan put the situation into proper perspective. “I don’t resent his popularity or anything else,” he said. “Good Lord, I costarred with Errol Flynn once.”VII

  The same month of Rocky IV’s release, Reagan, Gorbachev, and their wives met for the first time at a crucial summit in Geneva. There was another Reagan in attendance as well: Ron Reagan, the president’s son, a talented writer covering the 1985 summit for Playboy. He never asked for special access or favors. He worked hard at a small space in the Press Filing Center at the InterContinental Hotel there and never used his status to his advantage. Neither of his parents asked that he be treated differently, but since Ron and I knew each other, I checked in with him from time to time during the summit. One evening, after all of the events were done and he had filed his story, Ron joined me and two magazine photographers for dinner. Then we went to a casino. When he showed his driver’s license to enter the casino, the security guard looked at the name and did a double take.

  The Reagans were always especially happy when Ron was at Camp David. He sometimes came up with his wife, Doria, for a day of horseback riding. The rides, Ron told me later, were “my fondest memories.” One reason was that he could see his dad in the best of spirits. “As you know, my father was seldom happier than when he was on the back of a horse,” Ron said. But he also confided a secret.

  When Nancy decided she wanted to marry Ronald Reagan, she realized that she’d have to fall in love with horseback riding, too. Yet for all of the times Mrs. Reagan joined her husband on horseback, she never truly enjoyed it. The president was blissfully unaware of this, even after decades of marriage.

  “My mother was less than thrilled about this activity but would gamely participate to please her husband,” Ron said. “She took pains to hide from him her anxiety about saddling up.”

  Once, while Ron and Doria were out riding with his parents, the president decided to have a little fun, going from a lazy stroll to a gentle canter. Everyone in the riding party did the same. As Nancy bobbed uncomfortably up and down on her horse, she called out to her husband, “Honey! Doria wants to slow down.”

  This, as Ron recalled, was accompanied by a nervous look in Doria’s direction to ascertain whether her daughter-in-law (who was, in fact, quite content with the faster pace) would contradict her.

  As Ron told it, “Doria, as usual, did the kind and sensible thing under the circumstances and let this little deception go unchallenged.”

  Movie nights were certainly less intense than the horseback rides. The Reagans were both relaxed as we prepared to view Rocky IV. The Reagans liked the Rocky films—and as far as I knew, they’d seen all of them. (We’d watched Rocky III together at Camp David in 1982.) Rocky IV was a special iteration of the familiar saga of the poor-but-proud Philadelphia fighter who made his way to an improbable world championship. In this case, the film’s stakes were far higher: it was literally a test of the free world versus the Soviet machine, which took the form of rival boxer Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren. (Drago’s wife is played by Stallone’s future spouse, Brigitte Nielsen.)

  The plot of the film was simplistic. The Soviets boast of building the world’s greatest fighter, a muscled warrior and Olympic champion who in manner and appearance seemed more like a machine than a human being. Lundgren utters forty-six words in the entire ninety-one-minute film.VIII A televised exhibition fight with the American boxer Apollo Creed, Rocky’s friend and former opponent, goes awry when Drago beats Creed to death. For extra pathos, Creed dies in Rocky’s arms in the middle of the ring. Rocky agrees to fight Drago at a match in the Soviet Union to avenge his friend.

  As the rivals train for the upcoming bout, the differences in their conditioning styles showcase the wide gap between their characters and the worlds from which they come. In a trademark Rocky training montage, Drago flexes his muscles hooked up to all manner of computers and instruments while intent Soviet scientists look on, determined to craft the perfect fighting machine. And they have no compunction about cheating. Drago is shown being injected with a needle presumably full of steroids. Rocky Balboa, on the other hand, sequestered for his own training in a remote Siberian cabin, works out the old-fashioned way by lifting logs and rocks and scaling mountains—not to mention outrunning the sinister KGB agents who trail his every move.

  That scene reminds me of one of Reagan’s favorite stories about the difference between our societies, which he shared in a speech in Nebraska in 1987:

  “And you young people who are here, let me tell you a little true incident. A scholar from our country recently took a trip to the Soviet Union. He happens to be able to speak Russian fluently. In the taxi that was taking him to the airport in this country—a young fellow—and in conversation with him discovered that the taxi driver was a student, working his way through school. And he asked him what did he want to be? And the young fellow said, ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ Well, by coincidence, he got another young fellow driving the cab in Moscow. And he got in conversation with him, in Russian, and found out that he was a student and working at the same time. And he said, ‘What do you want to be?’ Just remember this difference between two countries. This young man said, ‘They haven’t told me yet.’ That’s the difference.”IX

  Rocky’s fight with Drago became a metaphor for the ongoing battle with the Soviet Union, at least as it was seen in the West at the time. The Soviets are fierce, humorless, and aggressive. They boo Rocky when he appears to fight. The full politburo shuffles into the arena to watch the bout, including a grim-faced actor who resembles Gorbachev. Rocky, in turn, is all heart, emotion, and resilience. As the fight goes on, and he never gives up, he improbably turns the cheering Soviets to his side. Winning a come-from-behind victory, the bloody but unbroken Rocky delivers a somewhat incoherent mini-lecture to the assembled crowd and, by extension, the Soviet Union:

  During this fight, I’ve seen a lot of changing. I didn’t know what to expect. I seen a lot of people hate me, and I didn’t know what to feel about that, so I guess they didn’t like much nothin’ either. During this fight, I’ve seen a lot of changing, the way yous feel about me, and in the way I felt about you. In here, there were two guys killing each other, but I guess that’s better than twenty million. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!

  In the film, even the Gorbachev-like character rises and applauds the American fighter. The other apparatchiks seated around him then stand and follow his lead.

  It was easy to see why a number of conservatives hailed the film as the “greatest Cold War movie ever made.”X (CNN recently listed the film as one of the top five Cold War films of all time.XI) It was also easy to see why those who supported negotiations and coexistence with the Soviets were less enthusiastic. A reviewer in the New York Times lamented, “Outside the boxing arena, the greatest victory is compromise, a message Rocky ref
uses to learn, and a lesson his fans will never accept.”XII Roger Ebert was unimpressed, calling the film the Rocky series’s “last gasp, a film so predictable that viewing it is like watching one of those old sitcoms where the characters never change and the same situations turn up again and again.”XIII

  Rocky IV infuriated the Soviets. A group of cultural officials from the Soviet Union denounced the film by name (along with Stallone’s Rambo series and Red Dawn). One, Yevgeny Yevtushenko—a poet, an ardent anti-Stalinist and a frequent critic of Soviet government, and a proponent of glasnost—grouped those movies together as “war-nography.”XIV The Soviet minister of culture expressed bafflement at why the films were being shown, since they seemed to contradict the Reagan administration’s expressions of hope for improved relations. This stance demonstrated another difference between capitalist and Communist regimes. The Soviets controlled their media, along with the arts and entertainment industries, and assumed that the American government did the same. There was also more than a little hypocrisy in their comments. As the New York Times reported at the time, Americans were “often harshly depicted in Soviet films,”XV citing a 1984 television miniseries that depicted Americans as murderers and a 1983 film that showed them to be “violent psychopaths.”XVI

  Paradoxically, as was often the case behind the Iron Curtain, films castigated by the Soviet government for anti-Communist sentiments were sought by its citizens. In Moscow, Rocky IV was said to be in high demand.XVII The American public clamored to see the film, which grossed $300 million, making it the highest-grossing sports movie of all time. It held that record for decades, finally surpassed by 2009’s The Blind Side.

  After Rocky IV was over, none of the viewers at Camp David were impressed by the depth of the plot. The president quipped, “It had a very happy ending. He beats the Russians.”XVIII He marveled at Stallone’s physique—“the time he must spend in the gym!”—and said that both he and “the fella playing the Russian” looked like Mr. America.

  Reagan the viewer soon gave way to Reagan the film industry insider. The president commented that the movie offered some of the most realistic fight scenes he’d ever seen. By way of demonstration, he treated us to a lesson in Hollywood stunt work. He showed us how, in his day, fights were staged on movie sets to make it look as convincing as possible without hurting anyone.

  Of course, he reminded us, that didn’t always work. Reagan shared about how he once accidentally landed a real-life punch on a stuntman while filming a fight scene. The following week, that stuntman was replaced by his roommate, who returned the favor to Reagan by “popping him in the left eye,” according to Tom Carter, the military aide at Camp David that night, who remembered the story vividly.XIX

  In Reagan’s view, Rocky IV put the stunt-fighting techniques of his day to shame. “To me, it looked like they were swatting each other,” he remarked. Then the president pointed out something that only a trained eye would notice: “They can dub in the sound for a blow, but you can’t dub in the sweat flying all over the place from a blow.”XX

  Reagan’s eye for filmmaking did not deceive him. Rocky IV’s fight scenes were realistic, even more than our little group gathered for movie night could have imagined. The president had no way of knowing that while filming one scene in the boxing ring, Carl Weathers, who played Apollo Creed, was thrown three feet by Dolph Lundgren. He apparently threatened to quit the movie. Stallone himself was hit so hard by one punch that his breastbone slammed against his heart. Rushed to the hospital, he was in the intensive care unit for more than a week.XXI

  Regardless of how much Reagan admired Stallone and the film, his generosity had its limits. When Stallone’s people reached out to the White House offering to present the president with the gloves and robe worn by Rocky in the film, a young White House lawyer weighed in against the idea.

  “Rocky IV is a current Christmas season release, and [United Artists studio head Jerry] Weintraub’s offer seems a rather transparent publicity stunt to promote the film,” he wrote in a memo. “With the Rambo comments and White House dinner invitation, the president has already given Stallone more than his fair share of free publicity.” That young lawyer was associate White House counsel John G. Roberts, Jr., who went on to become chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

  By January 1986, when they watched Rocky IV, the Reagans had seen a number of other movies with a Soviet theme. One of the first of these was Reds, which was released in 1981, the year the Reagans moved into the White House. Reds told the story of John Reed, an American journalist and Communist activist, known for his firsthand, pro-Bolshevik account of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ten Days That Shook the World. Warren Beatty produced, wrote, and directed the film. He also starred as Reed, while his off-screen girlfriend Diane Keaton played Reed’s love interest, the political activist and writer Louise Bryant.

  Ronald Reagan had come to know Beatty when the younger man first arrived in Hollywood. They were friends despite their political differences. When Reds came out, the president invited Beatty to screen the movie at the White House. Beatty recalled that Reagan “was very complimentary about the fact that I had produced it, written it, acted in it, and directed it at the same time.”XXII The president appreciated all of the effort involved with each of these elements of the filmmaking process and no doubt admired anyone who could juggle them all as effectively as Beatty did in Reds. He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Reds was nominated for twelve Oscars, winning three. Beatty himself had been nominated in the writing, acting, and directing categories, winning for best director.

  Despite Reagan’s appreciation for his friend’s hard work, he found nothing romantic about the Bolshevik Revolution the movie portrayed. At a twenty-fifth-anniversary showing of the film in 2006, Beatty admitted that Reagan was “probably not sympathetic to the characters in the movie.”XXIII But that is not to say he viewed them hard-heartedly. After watching the doomed young leftists Reed and Bryant struggle through love and war for more than three hours, the president offered Beatty a characteristically Reaganesque comment: “I was kind of hoping for a happy ending.”

  It is thanks to Beatty’s and Reagan’s enduring friendship that we have one of the sharpest observations attributed to President Reagan. He once told Beatty, whom California Democrats often fantasized about running for various offices, “I don’t know how anybody can serve in public office without being an actor.”XXIV He was not, of course, suggesting that all politicians were empty suits who could bluff their way through by acting. Reagan’s training as an actor gave him the skills and the style he needed to communicate effectively, whether it was working a small gathering of supporters, a tense Cabinet meeting, or a speech in front of tens of thousands. A politician must have vision, but an actor’s particular skills can be a big help in sharing that vision with others.

  If Reds was pro–Soviet Union, Red Dawn, which the Reagans watched at Camp David on September 7, 1984, was its opposite. This film, the product of the maverick director John Milius, presents the provocative, if unlikely, scenario of a Russian invasion of the continental United States, with assistance from its Communist allies in Latin America (some of whom infiltrate over the southern border posing as illegal immigrants). The movie opens with Soviet paratroopers landing on the football field of an all-American high school in an all-American small town: the fictional Calumet, Colorado. One of their first acts is to machine-gun a history teacher and then turn their fire on shocked students. It doesn’t get much more nuanced from there.

  A group of students led by brothers Jed and Matt Eckert (played by Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, respectively) flee into the mountains and become resistance fighters against the occupying Communist forces. They call themselves the Wolverines, after their high school’s team mascot (or, as one Soviet officer refers to it, “the local youth sports collective”). Other members of the group are played by 1980s teen movie stars C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, and Jennifer Grey (who would star with Swayz
e three years later in Dirty Dancing). Some place Red Dawn among the so-called Brat Pack movies, except this time the Brats pack heat.

  The violence of the film, and that much of it was committed by and against high school students, surprised a lot of people. The critics pounced. Bob Thomas of the Associated Press decried the violence, while the Los Angeles Times review remarked that “the battle scenes are neither dramatic nor convincing, merely brutal.”XXV It was the first movie to carry the newly created PG-13 rating.XXVI Condemned along with the violence was the movie’s anti-Communist, even pro-war, stance. The New York Times called it “incorrigibly gung-ho,” while the LA Times carped that director Milius “spent too much time playing to the rabid anti-Commies.”XXVII

  Audiences, however, were more receptive. Red Dawn earned $10.5 million in its first five days in theaters, taking the top box office spot away from Ghostbusters. A woman who saw the movie in Anaheim, California, reported, “I have never seen an audience reach such a fever pitch,” while another theatergoer recalled “high moments where people were shouting ‘Wolverines!’ ”XXVIII A few weeks after Red Dawn’s release, the Associated Press wrote a feature story on the differing responses to the film from critics and moviegoers, which included the headline “Viewers Cheer It While Critics Jeer.”XXIX

  I cannot recall any specific cheering or jeering from the Reagans when they watched the movie in Aspen in September 1984, about a month after its nationwide release. They generally disapproved of movies with over-the-top violence. Red Dawn did have some friends in Washington, however. Former secretary of state Alexander Haig, who had left the Reagan administration in 1982, had since joined the board of MGM/UA Entertainment Company, the studio that released Red Dawn. He called it “one of the most realistic and provocative films that I have ever seen,” adding that it offered “a clear lesson to all viewers, and that is the importance of American strength to protect the peace we have enjoyed throughout history.” To Haig, America’s “military posture” was key to preventing events such as those depicted in Red Dawn.