THE REAGAN SHOW: A Fascinating, Timely Conceit

I watch a lot of films. But there are only so many hours in a day, and I’d rather not waste my time on dross. So I’m always on the look out for a sure thing. An actor, director, or a production company that only make good films. In this never-ending hunt, the closest I have found to a guarantor of greatness is Dogwoof.

The London-based documentary distributor, founded in 2004, has an ever-growing slate of formidable films. The Act Of Killing, Life Itself, Best Of Enemies, Cameraperson, Kate Plays Christine, Iris, Cartel Land, Blackfish, Weiner; if you’ve loved a documentary in the past few years, the odds are that Dogwoof distributed it.

So when the opportunity arose to watch The Reagan Show, the latest entry in Dogwoof’s imposing stable, I leapt at it. And I was not disappointed.

The Reagan Show

No presidency before this one was so often judged as if it were a performing art. I shudder when it’s suggested that politicians that come after him are going to have to succeed first on television. – Peter Jennings

Over the eight years that Ronald Reagan held the highest office in the USA, his administration generated as much footage as the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations combined. And it’s this material that makes up The Reagan Show.

Spanning the entirety of his presidency, The Reagan Show is constructed solely from White House footage, clips from Reagan’s film career and contemporaneous news reports. The only talking heads are from the time period: Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and a baby-faced Chris Wallace.

It’s a fascinating conceit, and a real feat of editing. Co-directors Sierra Pettengill and Pancho Velez are aided by the wealth of material they have to play with. Much consists of what is effectively the White House blooper reel. There’s an early example of this when we see Reagan sit down to record a campaign ad for John Sununu. Reagan’s epic struggle over the Governor-to-be’s name is very funny; when the camera cuts off after another blunder, you wonder just what the president said that his team decided against keeping for posterity!

Some of the footage used is to set the atmosphere of what it was like to live in America during the Cold War. A TV news report captures a candlelight vigil in Lawrence County, Kansas, which had suffered nuclear annihilation the evening before in famed TV movie The Day After.  It’s a haunting scene, made even more so when a little girl who had been an extra in the film exclaims that in a potential nuclear holocaust “More than half of the people will probably just die right away, and that’s what I want to happen. I don’t want to survive “.

The calm with which she says this is chilling, and it’s a perfectly chosen clip to encapsulate the day-to-day contention with imminent mortality that was universal during the Cold War years. It’s in this fraught world that we find the film’s centre, the battle between two superpowers and their warring leaders.

Reagan Vs. Gorbachev

Though The Reagan Show covers Reagan’s entire presidency, it’s focus is on his relationship with bitter rival, soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Whatever people thought of his policies, most people agreed that Reagan’s mastery of messaging is what got him in the White House. No other politician could compete with the ability of Reagan to capture the attention of an audience with his actorly charisma and elegant delivery. No one, that is, until Mikhail Gorbachev.

Though the rivalry between Gorbachev and Reagan could have resulted in a nuclear apocalypse, The Reagan Show suggests that the two men were far more concerned with how they looked on TV. We see the two premiers record competing New Year’s messages, Reagan’s to be broadcast to Russia, and Gorbachev’s to the US. As soon as the cameras have stopped rolling on Reagan, he says “Take that Gorbachev!”

Despite Reagan’s background as an actor, Gorbachev was a worthy competitor in the ongoing PR battle. He even proved popular with audiences in the US. On his first state visit to Washington, we see Gorbachev meeting with surprisingly appreciative crowds. One lady proclaims “The guy is a PR genius!”.

Late in the film we’re shown Reagan’s visit to Moscow, where he is assailed by members of the press. They challenge him on multiple fronts: the space race, his comments about Russia being ‘the evil empire’, and his lack of self-criticism. It’s a wincingly awkward encounter, and a definite score for Gorbachev, who had by this point, hired a Washington PR consultant to help him in his competition with Reagan.

The Reagan Show isn’t concerned with declaring Reagan or Gorbachev the winner of the fight, instead underlining how one of the most pivotal, and potentially disastrous rivalries of the twentieth century was fought on the most superficial, often downright silly level.

It’s disconcerting, and yet as we have seen recently, the shallow, but telegenic way that politicians deal with serious events has gotten worse, not better. The film makes this clear with the parallels it draws between Reagan, and the current American president.

Trump Parallels

Despite being about a three-decade old presidency, The Reagan Show has a timeliness that commands your attention, and that’s mainly down to the comparisons it makes with America’s 45th president, Donald J. Trump.

Before Trump was declaring his intention to ‘Make America Great Again’, that phrase was proclaimed loudly and proudly at rallies by Ronald Reagan. As the film is constructed from footage from the eighties, it never actually mentions Donald Trump’s name. This clip of this shared catchphrase is as explicit as The Reagan Show gets in invoking Trump, but the many other similarities between the two men are impossible to ignore.

Reagan had an evasive and antagonistic relationship with the press, as Trump does today. A humorous sequence shows the various methods that Reagan would employ to avoid the members of the fourth estate; walking into a waiting helicopter whose whirr would conveniently drown out any questions, staging power cuts, and an ‘impromptu’ birthday singalong, started by the first lady just after her husband is challenged by a journalist. Trump may be less inventive in his avoidance tactics, but he’s just as prolific in using them.

Both presidents also share an affinity for putting on a show. A commentator wonders whether “[Reagan] is just a salesman, with plenty of style and little substance.” The Reagan Show exhibits multiple examples of the president engaging in photo ops, like when the first couple are on holiday at Rancho del Cielo. A voice proclaims “The President’s going to ride horses and chop wood”, and then we watch him (and a very uncomfortable looking Nancy) proceed to do just that, accompanied by an off-camera symphony of flashbulbs. Watching this section evokes memories of Trump’s forays into trucking and mining.

Of course, it’s not a new thing for presidents to be taking part in photo ops; they’ve been doing it for as long as there’ve been cameras. But the subtle way that The Reagan Show draws out the similarities between the number of photo-ops and the oft-accused emptiness of both Reagan and Trump, is another example of the editing prowess that makes the film so smart and so watchable.

Conclusion

Over the eight years of his presidency and the 75 minutes of The Reagan Show, we see a man who sailed into office thanks to his Hollywood-built character as an American hero, face the more difficult side of having a reputation based on style rather than substance.

And it’s this style-over-substance view of the 41st president that begs the question, would Donald Trump have been able to ascend to the presidency without Reagan paving the way three decades previously? Based on the evidence the film provides us with, the answer is a definitive no.

The Reagan Show is sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, and always fascinating.

What’s your favourite political documentary?

The Reagan Show is released on June 30th in the US, distrbuted by Gravitas Ventures and CNN Films. For all other upcoming release dates, click here.