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August Commentary from George Spiro Dibie My Friend, The Producer CBS Television and its parent company, Viacom, Inc. in Delaware, are producing a four-hour television miniseries called The Reagans. It is scheduled to air in time for the November sweeps in order to attract large American audiences and maximize advertising revenues. The miniseries features James Brolin as Ronald Reagan and Judy Davis as his wife, Nancy. Ronald Reagan was born and raised in Tampico, Illinois on the plains of the Midwest. He was an actor on radio and in movies, and became president of the Screen Actors Guild, all in Hollywood. He was governor of California, in Sacramento, and President of the United States, in Washington, D.C. All of those places played prominent roles in his life, however none of them will be visible to the audience, because CBS Television and Viacom, chose to produce The Reagans in Montreal. There is no polite way to say it. This is an insult to Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and to the American people. At a time like this, it borders on being unpatriotic. Don’t count on the political pundits on the network’s television and radio programs, who are so glib about questioning other people’s patriotism, to say a word. To the corporate greed-heads, patriotism ends when profits are involved. That brings me to the main point. Now that the hiatus is over, and many of our members are going back to work, beware of producers who pressure you to waive your contractual rights. They are going to say they are “your friend.” They will claim they need your help to keep production in the United States. But, that simply isn’t the truth. What they want to do is squeeze higher profits out of your hide by pressuring you to betray your brothers and sisters and future generations of members. Every time you agree to waive a contractual right, “your friend,” the producer, is sending notes to the studio lawyers as future negotiating points. If you agree to use an extra camera without an operator, during our next negotiations, they will insist you don’t need that operator on your crew. Every time you give in to pressures from sleazy producers to waive your contractual rights, you are jeopardizing your future and betraying your true friends, the honorable producers who keep their words when they make contractual agreements. We are all concerned about run-away production, and rightly so. We haven’t ignored this problem. We have negotiated many special contracts in order to help legitimate low budget films stay in the United States. We are putting unrelenting pressure on the politicians who should be on our side, because filmmaking is a vital part of our economy and national culture. When “your friend” the producer pressures you to waive your contractual rights, remember chances are they are like the people who decided it was alright to produce The Reagans in a foreign country. Here is a suggestion for CBS Chairman Les Moonves. If he isn’t ashamed of producing The Reagans in a foreign country, why hide that fact from the public? How about running one of those text lines under the pictures when The Reagans airs? It could say, “We produced this program about the lives of an American president and his wife in Canada in order to make more money. You can count on CBS to put profits ahead of patriotism.” You can fax Les Moonves at (323) 653-8276. As always, I look forward to your comments and suggestions. Please e-mail them to me. George Spiro Dibie, ASC
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