This is the second of a three-part interview with Mark Joseph, producer of “Reagan,” the 2024 biopic starring Dennis Quaid. You can read the first part here.
Did the fact that you were telling the story of a man so many currently alive remember, and of whom volumes of footage exist from both his days in entertainment and politics, make creating the movie more or less challenging?
It gave us an extraordinary amount of material, but it also meant everybody had his or her own Ronald Reagan. People remember exactly how he walked, how he talked, how he tilted his head, even how he told a joke. You don’t have the freedom you might have portraying someone from 200 years ago. The bigger challenge, though, was getting beyond the public Reagan. We already have thousands of hours of footage of President Reagan. Why make a movie just to recreate footage people can watch on YouTube? The movie had to show the things the cameras didn’t capture — the young man in Dixon, the lifeguard, the actor struggling in Hollywood, the collapse of his first marriage, his relationship with Nancy, his faith, his disappointments and doubts. Those things allow you to understand the man who eventually stood at the Brandenburg Gate. That’s also why we broke one of the supposed rules of Hollywood biopics and covered roughly 80 years. I don’t think you can understand Ronald Reagan without understanding what formed Ronald Reagan.
What most surprised you about the reaction to the film?
The intensity of it. We knew there was an audience for the movie, but I don’t think we anticipated people standing and applauding at the end or the number of reports we would get of people crying in theaters. And then there was this enormous disconnect between many professional critics and ordinary moviegoers. That was fascinating. The industry projections underestimated the film, and then the audience showed up. I figured our Rotten Tomatoes fan score would be 75 percent or so, but never anticipated a 98 percent. I think some people came expecting a political movie and discovered a human story. And one of the things audiences responded to most strongly wasn’t even necessarily Reagan defeating the Soviet Union. It was Reagan and Tip O’Neill. People saw two men who could fight like crazy politically and then sit down together as human beings. I think people realized how much we’ve lost that.
What did you discover in the course of researching for the film that most surprised you?
Probably how much of the Reagan we eventually saw as president was already there decades earlier. His faith was one. I knew about it intellectually before starting the project, but talking to people who actually knew him confirmed how real it was. It wasn’t something invented when he entered politics. The other thing was his humanity. Reagan has become an icon, particularly for conservatives, and icons can become one-dimensional. But he experienced real failure. His career went down. His first marriage failed. He had family difficulties. There were plenty of moments when the eventual outcome of his life wasn’t remotely obvious. I discovered things that had been lost to history. He nearly died in a plane crash in the 1970s. John Hinckley intended to shoot him upon arrival at the Washington Hilton but stopped short when Reagan smiled and waved at him — things like that.
What was the most enjoyable part of assembling the soundtrack?
We had Bob Dylan, Gene Simmons, Clint Black, Phil Keaggy, and others in the film itself. We also were able to use songs like Genesis' "Land of Confusion" and "Wild Thing" by the Troggs. We had "Wild Thing" in there as temp music, and one day while I was talking to Jon Voight, he told me that it was written by his brother. So we got the friends-and-family discount. Then we separately had a soundtrack of songs inspired by the film, and for that I went out to 50 artists and just waited to see who would respond. I wanted legends of the last 40 years, so it was gratifying to have the likes of The Commodores, Tanya Tucker, Wayne Newton, Travis Tritt, Alabama, Ricky Skaggs and others respond. But of course I also think about the "almosts." Alice Cooper wrote and recorded a demo for me called "The Last Ride," and Dolly Parton wrote and recorded a duet with Dennis, but we just couldn't get to the finish line in time. And I really wanted "Desperado" and "Landslide" in the film, but we couldn't get clearance. We couldn't clear "Boots and Saddles" for Bob and "Smile" for Gene, but they weren't meant to be. But overall, it was an honor to produce songs for so many legends.