It’s a little unnerving, to say the least, to sit among an audience of strangers when your film is screened publicly for the first time.

Oh sure, it’s really cool and everything you dreamed of when you got into this thing: celebrities, glamour, sparkly dresses and tuxedos. It’s one big love fest in Hollywood when you walk the red carpet. But beneath your cool exterior lies a gnawing unease and fear…

What if they hate it?

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Double that fear when you experienced that nightmare. What I have.

“Reagan” star Dennis Quaid is proud to be an American and to play the role of the 40th president. (Getty Images)

And so it was, at night “REAGAN” premiered on Hollywood Boulevard at the historic Chinese Theater, where shoe and handprints from the greatest films of all time silently await your offering. I wrote the script for this movie, which once again reinforces that fear, because every screenwriter knows that if a movie with Dennis Quaid, Jon Voight, Mena Suvari, Kevin Dillon and Penelope Ann Miller doesn’t work… it’s probably on you.

The lights are dimming. The film is rolling. Two hours later, fear gives way to tears of joy as our hero rides off into the sunset like a hero should and the audience stands, applauding through their own tears.

And it happens again, at another premiere event in another city.

And again, in a third city. This time, with an impromptu queue at the back of the theater, with people thanking me and director Sean McNamara, and once again, tears of joy were flowing. As the film was released nationwide, my phone and that of my group of brothers who spent nearly two decades of our lives creating and producing it were blowing up with messages from all over the country, reporting the same response.

It was as wonderful as it sounds.

And then I opened my first review.

And then a second. And a third.

Apparently, I and many people standing in tears across the country are simply wrong.

The lights are dimming. The film is rolling. Two hours later, fear gives way to tears of joy as our hero rides off into the sunset like a hero should and the audience stands, applauding through their own tears.

“The worst film of the year” This is how one of the most eminent critics put it. “A kid’s movie for the adult diaper set,” mocked another. And over 80% of his Rotten Tomatoes-tracked critic brethren agreed with him.

While at the same time, the same ratings service reported a staggering 98% positive audience rating, the largest gap in Hollywood history.

SO. Reviews: 18%. Viewers 98%. As my children would say: what is happening?

At first glance, this should surprise no one. And that didn’t surprise us. The hero of this film, Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, represents the gold standard of American conservatism. This is news to no one, the mainstream press and certainly Hollywood are firmly at the other end of this spectrum. So it’s easy to ignore the vitriol and simple nastiness, because it’s still the same old thing about our cultural division, along ideological lines. 82% of them hate it, it’s a bit extreme, but not that unexpected.

Dennis Quaid and Penelope Ann Miller as Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan (Rob Batzdorff/Rawhide Photos)

But I think there’s something deeper going on here, and it should give us all — liberals and conservatives — pause for thought as we look at what this film has seemingly laid bare in America’s cultural divide:

A tiny minority of people with oversized platforms don’t believe in heroes or are unable to overcome their own prejudices to recognize one when they see one.

I don’t write films for critics, but I learn from them. Even the meanest and meanest. From now on, an artist must never defend or explain his work, it must speak for itself to any viewer. And believe me, there are a dozen things I wish I had written better in this one.

Still, I smiled at one of the nastier critiques when the writer used the word hagiography in his evisceration of “REAGAN.” With respect, I feel it is my duty to this reviewer to explain the difference between a hagiography and a heroic tale.

Hagiography is a literary form. It dates back around 2,000 years and refers to the biography of a saint. With all of the saint’s faults, failures and weaknesses whitewashed and transformed into semi-divinity, as he or she roams the planet among us mere mortals.

The heroic story has been around for as long as human beings have been telling stories. Its central theme is the man or woman of flesh and blood who rises above the flaws, weaknesses, errors and failures common to us all, to fight a battle greater than themselves, even at the cost to give one’s life for one’s friends, one’s family or one’s country. .

This, at its core, is the true meaning and beauty of art: representing the finest human virtues and, until about 60 years ago, the most common form of storytelling in all media. But tastes have apparently changed in this third postmodern millennium.

Or did they?

Dennis Quaid said Reagan endured hardships similar to America’s current struggles before becoming president. (ShowBiz Direct)

If we really want to understand something like a 98-18 Rotten Tomatoes score between movie critics and “real” people (sorry, couldn’t resist), we first need to understand the context. And that requires a bit of history.

Almost everyone agrees that the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s changed everything in America. A lot of it, like the civil rights movement, speaking out against a terrible war, the moon landing, and rock ‘n’ roll, was very, very good.

But some of it… not so much.

Among this last category, we note the rise in power of the anti-hero in literature, music and cinema. And the antihero was the embodiment of the youth movement of the 1960s – the baby boomers as they came of age, questioning, protesting and rejecting many of the country’s previously shared values.

The heroic story has been around for as long as human beings have been telling stories. Its central theme is the man or woman of flesh and blood who rises above the flaws, weaknesses, errors and failures common to us all, to fight a battle greater than themselves, even at the cost to give one’s life for one’s friends, one’s family or one’s country. .

And a new wave of films reflects this, celebrating the anti-hero and/or deconstructing American traditions and values. Films like “Easy Rider,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Wild Bunch” took over from the previous decade’s “Rebel Without a Cause” and “On The Waterfront,” and the form really took off in the 1970s.

To be clear, this is not a review of these individual films, they are all very good, as are many others like them. Some made by the greatest filmmakers of all time.

But here’s the point. Behind this form hides a cynical, nihilistic and pessimistic vision which permeates all these formerly shared values. And it has become the dominant view among academia, the arts, and literature, particularly on American college campuses. It was cool. While a positive worldview of heroes, family, Judeo-Christian values ​​and America itself was widely considered cheesy, old-fashioned, square…the definition of uncool.

I went to USC Film School in the 80s and, with the exception of one professor, this view was represented by every one of my instructors, especially those who taught film criticism and, by the way , they hated Reagan.

And it is under them that today’s film critics have studied.

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So, of course, “REAGAN’s” 18% score among them was not surprising. What was surprising was the 98% score from moviegoers, including many Democrats, some of whom contacted me.

They got it. This is not a Republican film. It’s an American film. A hero’s journey, not a hagiography. It’s far from holy or perfect, for those keeping score at home. Reagan loses a girlfriend, a marriage, a child, a career, an election, and he’s basically ruined at the age of 50.

The Reagans owned a ranch near Santa Barbara, nicknamed the “Western White House.” Here, actor Dennis Quaid plays his title role in “Reagan.” (ShowBiz Direct)

And those people standing and applauding in the theater, with real tears? They too have experienced failures in their lives. They lost loved ones, jobs, a sense of purpose, and the very desire to live. But they believe in heroes. They know one when they see one. They remember a time when they were rightly revered, regardless of their politics, and they long for that time again. And they too hope to be heroic one day.

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That’s why I write films. That’s why we made this one.

And we will do it again. Soon. And now I have a record to achieve: having an even bigger gap between critics’ scores and movie fans’ scores.

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