Gene Hackman was on Larry King Live last weekend. Larry went on and on about all of Gene's great movies and I forgot he was in so many. He's the kind of actor that can star or plays great secondary roles in movies starring other people. It's easy to forget how pivotal he was in movies like BIRDCAGE or THE FIRM. And who can imagine anyone but Hackman in UNFORGIVEN? He didn't want to do Unforgiven according to Time film Critic, and Eastwood biographer, Richard Schickel. Schickel explained that Gene fashions himself a liberal and didn't want to be in a shootem up western. When Eastwood explained that the movie was really about the horrors of gun fighting, Hackman signed on.
So it came as a surprise when Larry King asked Gene Hackman about Ronald Reagan and Hackman was nothing but praise. Hackman, of course, qualified it by saying the he personally was a Democrat, but that he loved the way Reagan loved this country. That qualification should be enough to keep the cocktail party invitations coming.
KING: But you loved President Reagan.
HACKMAN: I did, yes. I'm a Democrat but I also loved the idea of that man. He was so committed to America. A beautiful American.
KING: You never worked with him, right?
HACKMAN: I didn't. But I met him. It's funny. We have an occasion to meet a lot of famous people, being in this profession. And I was sitting outside the Oval Office thinking, well, I'll get this over with and go to lunch, or whatever. When I got in the Oval Office, I was like, hey, this is really something. I was very affected by it and by him.
KING: It hits you.
HACKMAN: It does.
I haven't been able to forget that all week. I kept thinking that it had some sort of significance and that I wasn't putting it together. Yesterday I figured out what it was. Liberals love their patriotism to be safely in the past. That's why liberals can write books like THE GREATEST GENERATION that celebrate some past American glory, but treat current patriotism as jingoism.
During Reagan's Presidency the term was usually jingoism, but now even this early the first Hollywood liberals are embracing yesterday's jingoism as today's patriotism. It's probably true that Hackman has always felt this way about Reagan and had to conceal it until it was benign.
Clint Eastwood, who is still a registered Republican, had a falling out with Reagan that was the beginning of his resurgence as a "serious artist." You'll remember that Eastwood made FIREFOX and HEARTBREAK RIDGE in the 1980s, both typical 1980s pro U.S. action films.
Eastwood said he became angry with Reagan because he spoke at the World War II cemetery at Bitburg to mark the 40th anniversary to the end of the war. The West German Chancellor was a big ally of the United States and asked Reagan to make this speech and Reagan agreed before he realized that members of the SS were buried there. John Kerry can go and handshake the North Vietnamese, but Reagan shouldn't be anywhere near dead SS. Anyway, Reagan felt that he had already promised and West Germany was too big of an ally to not make good on the deal. Afterall, We had military bases in that country and nuclear missiles aimed at the USSR. Reagan met with several holocaust survivors before he made the trip and there were some protestors and it made the news, but it was pretty much forgotten a short time later.
I read a late 1990s interview with Eastwood and he was still rankled over this Bitburg trip and he said that it made him sever ties with Reagan. It just grabs me as a silly reason to not like Reagan anymore and if you combine that with Hackman's sudden admission that Reagan was a great guy you can only conclude that these Hollywood people need cover for their own patriotic feelings.
Now that I read Eastwood is directing the Spielberg (Clinton buddy) produced FLAG OF OUR FATHERS about Iwo Jima. Tom Hanks (another Clinton buddy) was everywhere raising money for the World War II memorial. Hackman admires Reagan. All of this leads me to conclude that liberals need their patriotism safely in the past.
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