Month: April 2016

The N.Y. Post‘s Emily Smith is reporting that Will Ferrell has courageously abandoned the idea of playing a dementia-afflicted Ronald Reagan in Mike Rosolio‘s Reagan, a satirical comedy about Reagan’s second term. A spokesperson for Ferrell, 48, essentially told Smith that while the 48-year-old actor “had seen the script and considered signing on” to star in and produce Reagan, he’s decided to turn tail and quit the project in the face of outraged complaints about the project from the Reagan family.

Ferrell spokesperson to Smith: “The Reagan script is one of a number of scripts that had been submitted to Will Ferrell which he had considered. While it is by no means an ‘Alzheimer’s comedy’ as has been suggested, Mr. Ferrell is not pursuing this project.”

I presume I don’t need to explain that Variety‘s Justin Kroll wouldn’t have been fed the “Ferrell is doing Reagan” story if the idea hadn’t been fully vetted by Ferrell and his team. Kroll might have heard about the project on the fly, but if I know Variety procedure the story wouldn’t have run if Kroll hadn’t been assured by someone close to Ferrell (agent, manager) that Ferrell was definitely on-board.

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I posted HE’s best of the first third of ’16 list too soon. Because I need to add Paddy Breathnach and Mark O’Halloran‘s Viva (Magnolia, 4.29), which I finally saw last night, to the roster. Yes, I’ve been delinquent. I should have seen Viva eight months ago when it played Telluride. But I’m on it now. This Irish-made Oscar submission (even though it’s set entirely in Havana and is spoken in Spanish) may follow a predictable course with a payoff you can see coming from a mile away, but it still does the trick.

Some films know how to turn the tumbler lock just so. This one does that, I swear. You might be suspicious of someone describing a formulaic pupa-into-a butterfly saga as fresh and enlivening, but these are the words that came to mind ten minutes after it began. Have I seen films like Viva before? Yes. But did I believe it, feel it, go with it? Yes. Breathnach’s direction has just the right finesse, O’Halloran’s script is skillfully honed and assured, you can feel and smell the Havana atmosphere in every frame, and the performances are completely persuasive and affecting.

It’s about Jesus (Hector Medina), a poor Havana hairdresser with a crew of close-knit friends (mostly drag performers plus an apparent boyfriend who hustles tourists). The plot is basically about how Jesus’s attempts to become a drag-lip-synch star are interrupted when his alcoholic, brutish father (Jorge Perugorría) moves into his apartment after being released from prison. This angry macho dickhead insists that Jesus not work in the club for the usual crap reasons (it’s dishonorable to be gay, effiminacy equals weakness), and for some curious, deep-seated emotional reason Jesus temporarily obliges.

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I’ve tried to research this Secret deodorant ad to see who the actress is. I’m risking sounding like a clueless idiot, I realize, but I honestly don’t know her. Should I? She’s maybe…what, 23 or 24, but she’s got it — alert, foxy, seemingly smart, guarded but open, vulnerable. Right away I said to myself “who’s that?” If she were one of the Ghostbusters costars, I wouldn’t hate it as much going in. Whatever she does next, she needs to keep the glasses on. Update: Her name is Emily Labowe. (Thanks to HE reader Jesse Crall.)

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I skimmed through a draft of Mike Rosolio‘s Reagan last December, and liked it a lot. So did Will Ferrell, who is now attached to play Ronald Reagan in a film version that Ferrell will co-produce with Gary Sanchez Prods. If and when it gets made with a decent director in charge (no helmer is currently attached), Reagan could turn out to be Ferrell’s most substantive film ever. Which is a low bar, I agree, but still.

The conventional description is that it’s basically about a dementia-afflicted Reagan during his second term. (The script begins in September ’84 and ends after the 40th President has left office in ’89.) Reagan is out to lunch a good half the time, but finds a new confidence and clarity of purpose when an intern named Frank persuades the former actor that he’s playing the part of a U.S. president.

Reagan climaxes with the Iran-Contra scandal, which resulted in Reagan more or less admitting on TV that he didn’t remember approving the scheme.

The point or payoff of Reagan is that all U.S. Presidents are totems, players of roles, figureheads, and that the guys who really run the show are the permanent, behind-the-scenes players. In Dr. Strangelove General Jack D. Ripper declared that “war is too important to be left to politicians.” There’s a similar view espoused in Reagan: Democracy is too important to be left in the hands of the public.

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