Matthew Milam's Thoughts On Everything

I loved Reagan and was
always fascinated with old movies in general and his old pics
in particular.  This was my homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood
with B-movie actor Ronnie Reagan mixed up in an adventure more suited for
Indiana Jones.  It was a tongue in cheek spoof of the great wartime
adventure movies the best of which was Desperate Journey which Reagan made
in 1942 with Errol Flynn. 

Selznick paid me to
write the script based on a 10 page outline that I did.  I was really happy he
liked the story because if I hadn't found him I doubt I'd have ever written the
complete screenplay on spec.  I wrote the
script in December of '88 because I knew Reagan was leaving office in January '89
so I thought the timing was perfect for us.

In retrospect we were four years
too late on it.  I wish I had met Danny
in 1984 and written the script in early '85 when Reagan began his second
term;
had we been that lucky then I think the movie would have gotten made. So
our timing was off but I still think I was ahead of the curve. 

Unfortunately
I didn't move out to Hollywood until January of '85 and even if I had
met Selznick that early I didn't have the writing skill to do Secret
Adventures.  I had to develop my writing ability by writing sample
scripts for TV shows like Magnum P.l. and Airwolf and Riptide and Knight
Rider (none of which sold but with each script I wrote I became better
at it).

I
came up with the basic idea the one page overview in 1987 and at some
point in 1988 is when I figured out what the complete story would be and
I did a 10 page outline.  Luckily I read an article about Daniel
Selznick and the video documentary he had produced titled "Reagan's Way"
and I called him and told him I had a really fun story that I thought
he would love to produce titled "The Secret Adventures of Ronald Reagan"
which he really liked as I thought he would.  He optioned my outline
and then tried to sell it to the cable TV networks but none of them
wanted to develop it so he told me I had to write a complete screenplay
for it and he'd be able to pay me a modest amount to do so.   

After
I finished the script, Danny
felt that it needed a director attached to it in order to sell it to a
studio
and he put together a list of comedy directors who he thought would be
good for it.  Blake Edwards was at the top of the list followed by John
Landis but both of them passed on it.

Then
we got lucky and Ted Kotcheff read it and liked it and invited us up to
his house to talk about it and Ted became officially attached to direct
it, this was right after he had a solid box office hit with "Weekend at
Bernies" but we were never able to get it
financed. 

Certainly
not the fault of Kotcheff who would have done a great job on Secret
Adventures.  The problem we came to discover is that the script was a
complex political Rorschach test.  People who
liked Reagan thought it made too much fun of him and people who hated
Reagan thought it portrayed him too heroically. 
 
Sadly there were many more of those who hated Reagan here in Hollywood and they
just could not bring themselves to get behind a movie that made him into a
hero.  He stumbled and bumbled his way through this adventure and
used dialog he had memorized from his wartime training films that he did when
he was in the Culver City Commandos.  He never served overseas he did
his patriotc duty here in Hollywood like many other stars of the era most
of whom I put on the War Bond Express train so we could see him
interact with all of them. 

If you have the complete
script feel free to post it as a pdf file so people can read it.  I'd
love to some day be able to get it going but it was always an expensive
movie.  We thought about doing it in black and white with obviously
fake rear screen projection shots to make it look as if it was really made
in 1944 when Reagan was 33 years old.  That would have been a lot of
fun. 

We were hoping to be able to make it at Warner Bros. where
Reagan did all his movies but they didn't want to make it.  Very sad
because the script is so good natured and such a tongue in cheek homage to
those old movies.   Casting it would have been a lot of fun to
try and find a young actor who looked as much like Reagan did in those days as
possible. 
 
I wanted Bruce Boxleitner who in 1989 really did look like Reagan circa
1944.  I remember pitching it to his agent at William Morris she
loved my energy and enthusiasm and she liked it but we were never able to
get it going then a year or two later I pitched it personally to Alec
Baldwin who in 1990 was very bankable and we would have been able to get it
financed easily with Alec attached, this was right after Alec did Hunt for Red October and he
was super hot. 

He told me to send the script to his agent which I
did and a couple weeks later Alec's agent called Selznick to tell him that
Alec read it and liked it but because of Alec's personal hatred of Reagan there
was no way he could ever see himself playing Ronnie Reagan as a secret wartime hero even though it was a comedy. 

Alec was a Liberal
Democrat and still is.  I have always been more of a Libertarian and
I thought Reagan was a great President.  History and Public Opinion seem
to now be with me on this as Reagan's recent 100th Birthday retrospectives
back in February show.  Even Obama is now trying to appear
Reaganesque. 

So you never know, I might be able to get this movie
financed some day.  If I ever become hot here in Hollywood or if I
win the Super Lotto Jackpot then I'd finance it myself and I'd do it for a
low budget as we envisioned 20 years ago to make it look like an old movie done
for cheap back in 1944.  
 
Another old movie I love is Spielberg's "1941" from a brilliant
script by Zemeckis & Gale.  "1941" is hilarious.  I
wanted to get Eddie Deezen to play Reagan's sidekick a guy named
Kilroy.  I also wanted to get Pierce Brosnan to cameo as the British
MI-6 Agent "Nimrod" who Reagan replaces on the secret mission into
Germany to rescue Einstein from Hitler.

 
And I wanted to get Wendie Jo Sperber to play Meyer Mishkin's secretary she has
a crazy crush on Ronnie and if you watch 1941 you'll see just how funny
these actors were and how great they'd have been in Secret
Adventures.  

Anyone who likes old
movies will love the script and if they like Reagan they'll really love
it.  I drove up to Reagan's house in Bel-Air back in 1989 after he
had moved back to Los Angeles.  I handed the script to the Secret Service
agent at the guard gate and told him I'd like him to give it to Reagan to
read. 

I don't know if that agent ever did this he might have just read
it himself and decided that it "made too much fun of Ronnie" to
actually show it to him.  If that agent kept it from Reagan then he
did a great disservice to Reagan because Reagan had a great sense of humor and
he would have loved it he'd have laughed out loud on every page of the
script. 

I also wrote a 20 page
outline for the sequel titled "The Further Adventures of Ronald
Reagan" which took place in 1947 and it opened with Ron and Mel (Melanie
his female secret agent accomplice) hanging from Mount Rushmore in a
homage to North by Northwest.  The joke was that "this actually
happened to Reagan" so when he made it back to Hollywood he met with
Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman and told them about it and they stole it and
used it in North by Northwest which they made 12 years later.  

The sequel story also
had Reagan mixed up with Howard Hughes and the climax was here in Los
Angeles during the flight of the Hughes Spruce Goose which we see Reagan
inside of fighting enemy agents Russians who have sabotaged the Spruce
Goose which is why it never took off it just sort of skimmed across the
harbor. 

And
we cut to inside the plane and Reagan is fighting Soviet bad guys with
Hughes at the controls trying to take off and yelling at Ron to get rid
of the bad guys.  So that was
another "kiss with history" moment. There are a lot of other fun
moments in the sequel story and a hundred of them in the script. 

Hopefully you have the
script with the old photos at the front and back of it I used actual
photos of Reagan from the 1940's to help convey the fun of
the era and to remind people of what Reagan looked like in those days.    
 
I have a wonderful letter from Ernie Lehman in my files I sent him the script
and the sequel story and he loved both he especially loved "seeing
himself with Hitchcock meeting with Reagan and Ronnie telling them of his
recent adventure on Mount Rushmore."

Lehman wrote to me that "it
didn't actually come about that way but your way is much more enjoyable and
entertaining than how we did come up with it".  I never got to meet Lehman but his letter was wonderful.  

And that's the no longer
secret story of how my Secret Adventures of Ronald Reagan never got made.  A lot of good scripts never get made.