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Aug. 8, 2024 - The Charlie Kirk Show
20:57
Who Was Ronald Reagan? ft. Dennis Quaid
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Hey everybody, thanks for watching the Charlie Kirk Show.
Dennis Quaid talks about the new Reagan movie.
Amazing conversation.
You guys are going to love it.
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Joining us now is Dennis Quaid, who is the star of the upcoming Regan film.
Dennis, welcome to the program.
Honored to have you here, and amazing movie.
Congratulations.
Oh, thanks.
Thanks for having me, Charlie, and thanks for the review.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I'm a huge fan of yours, have been for many years, and honored to have you here on the program.
So, why did you decide to be part of Regan?
What about Regan's story captured your imagination and wanted you to be part of this great work?
He was my favorite president, number one.
And I voted for him back in 1980.
I voted for him, went home.
I had a roommate at the time.
I said, who'd you vote for?
I said, Reagan.
He said, you are kicked out of the hippies.
So I turned in my card.
That was it.
I was offered the role, 2018.
And at the time, I didn't say yes, but I didn't say no.
Because a shiver of fear would up my spine.
Reagan is one of those figures in history, like Muhammad Ali, everybody in the world seems to know what he looks like, sounds like, walks like, and has an opinion.
And I didn't want to do an impersonation of him, you know, and I really wanted to get down to Uh, finding out what, really what made him tick.
I mean, that's, that's what acting is really all about.
It's the things that make us human.
And, uh, when I went up to the Reagan Ranch, I was invited up there, which is not open to the public.
It's, it's, uh, friends bought it after his passing.
And they even, uh, he and Nancy, it was the Western White House back then.
And their clothes are in the closet.
It's like they're going to come back any second.
They didn't change a thing.
And driving up the five miles of the worst road in California to get to the top of the mountain and coming out into that pasture, I could feel Reagan there.
It was a humble band.
And the house was 1100 square feet.
They had a king size bed.
It was two single beds that were zip tied together.
This is the Western White House that he had, but I could feel him there in that place.
And that's what I said.
Yes.
It's and his story is uniquely American one.
I want to play just a little bit from the movie here, which I encourage everyone to go to go watch and to go to the film to go check it out on August 21st.
Let's go to here.
This is cut 114 the famous tear down this wall speech play cut 114.
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Now, Dennis, based on my amateur understanding of history, there was a debate of whether he should say that or not and it wasn't in the speech.
Is that correct?
Yeah, and to put it in context, it's a nice swelling of a moment in a movie, but if you live through those times, and it's...
It was monumental to really say that the Berlin Wall, I mean, I was there myself when they were taking it down.
I got a couple of chips from it, went over there and got to take a sledgehammer to it.
Wow.
But we, my generation, we grew up, you know, with drills out of the blue at school to get under our desk, you know, that, you know, an atomic attack drill.
You know, and lived in fear.
And it was very real that there was going to be a nuclear confrontation between the USSR and the United States.
And Reagan not only ended the Cold War, he won the Cold War.
And He also, as a nation, gave us confidence.
We were a nation in decline back in the late seventies, so they said, and Reagan said, no, we're going that way.
And that's what great leaders are all about.
The courage that he had to give that speech, and it was really a defining moment of the West versus communist totalitarianism, still echoes in today's time.
The story of Reagan, though, is one where he always was up against some sort of odds.
They called him a cowboy that couldn't win his presidential elections.
You know, he wasn't always successful.
He ran multiple times.
We have a clip here from his speech in 1964.
But before I play this, though, talk about your parents and the backstory of this 1964 speech.
I was in my dad's truck.
We were going from Houston to Galveston.
I'm from Houston.
And Reagan was giving what they call the speech, Rendezvous with Destiny.
That's what we're about to hear at the time.
My dad was like pounding the dash like, you go, Ronnie.
And for me, you know, at the time, that was the first time I was aware of Reagan as a political figure.
Before that, you know, he sold borax soap on Death Valley Day.
Bedtime for Bonzo.
Yeah, bedtime.
And so that was the beginning of my awareness of Reagan.
And the speech was He was outstomping for Goldwater.
Everybody knew that Goldwater wasn't going to win, but it was his entrance into national politics and he made quite an impression.
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The context of what we're living through is remarkable and some of the similarities
I'm not sure, do you touch on this in the movie, because I'm working my way through it, of Reagan getting shot, and any... Yes.
Okay, so obviously that is kind of in play, given recent events, unfortunately.
Yeah, very relevant.
The movie opens with that, you know, the assassination attempt on him, which really changed him.
As well, you know, he said, my life is no longer mine.
It's, you know, it's working for the man upstairs because he was saved by that.
But Reagan was, besides getting assassinated, what made Reagan great is that he governed and lived his life by principles.
And those are not, the principles don't have anything to do with political party.
But they do have a lot to do with leadership as a president and us as a nation to live by and governed by principles.
Because sometimes if you go by those principles, you will make an unpopular decision.
But it might be the right decision because of those principles.
And in the long run, that is what we'll see you through.
This movie is a way, you know, you mentioned at the top about your amateur story, and I'm sure you know a lot about history, but if you're under 35, if you were born Uh after 1985 this will be a uh this movie is a great way to see what this country used to be like and feel what this country used to be like really and what it still can be if it's about us uniting as people not under a political party but just uniting as people what we can do
And if you're born before 1985, it's a reminder, really.
And a great look back, because the movie's, besides being about Reagan, it's about all of us.
And I'd like to get all of us baby boomers to go back to the movies again for this.
Yes, that's right.
This is one that I think everybody will enjoy.
Movies are meant to entertain.
And, you know, Reagan was called a warmonger as well.
And he was, you know, a cowboy.
He was going to get us into problems.
And, you know, it was an actor who wasn't smart enough to, you know, handle the economy and all that.
And, you know, he got us through.
So, Dennis, you kind of mentioned this.
We have a primarily younger audience that doesn't know the story of Reagan.
You mentioned this, but I'm sure because you are one of the best in your craft and just looking at, you know, watching parts of the movie and seeing it and working my way through it, you did an amazing job of embodying him and really portraying him as he was, not as how you wished he was.
Can you talk about the research and the study that you did in preparation For effectively doing the first Reagan movie ever.
I mean, there were other small ones, but this is the... This is the big one.
Yeah, it is.
You know, it had the blessing of some of his family, let's put it that way, and the cooperation.
We shot it at the Reagan Ranch, for instance, which was incredibly cool.
We were doing these scenes that happened, you know, in history, and you're standing right there, and the Reagan Library, he was in Air Force One, But it's, you know, I did not want to do like a love letter about him.
And I'd lived through all these times.
And there were times when I was mad at Reagan, you know, when it came to negotiations or talks with the Russians, especially at Reykjavik, when he said no and got up and walked out of Gorbachev.
And, but, you know, I, I thought, well, he's turned into an old conjurer.
Why did he do that?
But, but that was really the impetus, which, which really did, uh, where the Soviets collapsed and ended the Cold War.
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the next video.
The applicability to today's time is remarkable, and I want to just encourage the audience here, you guys, tickets are available now at reagan.movie, and this is not a political thing, this is a historical, just, accomplishment.
Alright, Dennis, tell us about Ronald Reagan's whistle-stop tour with General Electric.
Well, this was before he was even in politics.
He had a job as a spokesman for GE, General Electric.
And he took, in doing that, he went around the country to all the factories, and not into just the business offices of the higher-ups, but he went out on the floor and he talked to the men and women who worked for GE on that.
And that really was the beginnings of his political base.
And, you know, Reagan was a Republican.
He used to be a Democrat, by the way, and he switched over in 64.
But he was, had that, he had that common touch.
Regular people, you know, at all classes really communicated with him,
the great communicator.
And that was part of the beginnings of his political base.
What in this process of the study that you did with Reagan, what is one or two
things you learned about him that you want the audience to know about when they
see the film and they dive deeper into the life of Ronald Reagan?
Number one, he was not a perfect man.
He was a human, like all of us, with, you know, flaws, maybe not so obvious as some of the flaws that we see in other politicians these days or whatever, or ourselves.
But he was, there was also, Reagan was called a great communicator, yet everyone I talked to in my research about him said there was a place in him that was Impenetrable that you could get so far and then you it was tough to get any further a very private place in the end which I think was for one thing with so many people around you and and having that place of privacy in there where and I think that place is also where he
Communicated with God which is the only prayer minute in meditation, and I'm not trying to set it up that you know he was like having a telephone call with God, but he was you know as part of it is the bedrock of of him as a person and It's that was what was very That's what I wanted to get to where he came from and also There was insecurities.
I'm an actor myself, and I know that Reagan Did not get to the place where he wanted to get to as an actor.
You know, I think he had feelings of less than actually with that insecurity.
He was married to Jane Wyman towards the end of his career when his was going down and Jane's was coming up and she won an Academy Award, in fact, which in relief to that.
That's when he became vice president and then president of the Screen Actors Guild.
That's not a job that any actor wants to have.
That's what you have when acting is not really working out, you know?
Or you're kind of at the end of your career, which was, in a way, I think, him finding God's purpose for himself.
You know, we're all in a search for that.
It's not so obvious to us all the time, and it's very surprising how God's purpose for us comes into our lives.
I know with myself, I say, you know, I've got to be careful about what I ask God for, because He just might give it to me.
That's right.
He's going to give it to me in a way that I'm going to go, wait, wait a minute, that's not what I meant at all.
And it's how we respond to that, which is a test in our lives.
And I think that's what you see in Reagan.
Dennis, thank you for doing this and spending time with us.
I think this is one of the most important films to come out in the last decade.
I've been wondering, when is the Reagan, you know, story going to be told?
I grew up just loving Reagan, still do, and admiring him.
People can check it out at reagan.movie, and we need to... You know, I'd like to say, too, if you don't mind, this is not like going to a classroom, because I hate movies like that.
You know, this is a story of a person That it's inspiring, I think, and the relationship that he and Nancy had in a person's life, but it's also about the American people, about all of us.
Yes.
Where we are today and yesterday.
I love it.
Dennis, thank you so much.
I want our entire audience available exclusively in theaters August 30th.
General public, groups of 50 or more can see it August 21st, Reagan.movie.
Dennis, thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Charlie.
Thanks for having me.
God bless you.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
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