Reds (film)

Beatty came across the story of John Reed in the mid-1960s. Executive producer and film editor Dede Allen remembers Beatty's mentioning making a film about Reed's life as early as 1966. Originally titled Comrades, the first script was written by Beatty in 1969,[lower-alpha 3] but the process stalled. In 1973, Beatty was offered the role of Reed in Sergei Bondarchuk's Soviet film production Red Bells, but declined, and felt further driven to make his own biopic about Reed to compete with the Soviet version.[5]

In 1976, Beatty found a suitable collaborator in Trevor Griffiths, who began work but was delayed by his wife's death in a plane crash.[6] The preliminary draft of the script was finished in 1978. Beatty still had problems with it and he and Griffiths spent four and a half months fixing it. Beatty also collaborated with his friends Robert Towne, Peter Feibleman and Elaine May to continue polishing the script after shooting had begun.[7][8]

Beatty achieved tremendous success with 1978's Heaven Can Wait, which he produced, starred in, co-wrote and co-directed for Paramount Pictures. The success gave Beatty the clout to seek funding for his long nurtured Reds project, which was difficult to secure because of the controversial Communist subject matter and high price tag.[6] Beatty succeeded in interesting both Warner Bros. and Paramount, before the head of Gulf+Western (Paramount's parent company), Charles Bluhdorn, agreed to finance the project.[6] Bluhdorn soon had second thoughts, and attempted to dissuade Beatty with the promise of underwriting a $25 million alternative to Reds of Beatty's choice, but Beatty remained committed.[6]

Beatty originally had no intention of acting in the film or even directing it because he had learned on projects such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Heaven Can Wait (1978) that producing a film alone is a difficult task. He briefly considered John Lithgow for the part of John Reed because the two were similar in appearance, but eventually Beatty decided to act in the film and direct it himself. Nicholson was cast as Eugene O'Neill over James Taylor and Sam Shepard.[6] Nicholson was older than the young O'Neill he was playing, and having just completed work on Kubrick's The Shining (1980), was in a "most shambolic" and "grotesque" physical state, according to producer Simon Relph. But Nicholson was committed to the role and appeared at the start of filming four months later having lost the weight he had gained and looking much younger.[6]

Beatty also chose to cast non-actors in supporting roles, including George Plimpton, the editor of The Paris Review, who played the character of Horace Whigham. Jerzy Kosiński, a Polish-American novelist, was asked to play the role of Grigory Zinoviev, but he initially refused because he was a fierce anti-Communist and feared that he might be abducted by the KGB if he went to Finland to film.[6]

To gain perspective on the lives of Reed and Bryant, Beatty filmed interviews with a group of men and women, referred to only as "The Witnesses", as early as 1971. American Film identified the witnesses in its March 1982 issue.[9]

In a capsule review for The New York Times, film critic Vincent Canby refers to them as "more than two dozen very, very old people, billed only as The Witnesses, whom Mr. Beatty interviewed about the Reeds and their long-gone times." He went on to say, "More than anything else in Reds, these interviews give the film its poignant point of view and separate it from all other romantic adventure films ever made."[10] "The most evocative aspect of the presentation is a documentary enhancement – interviews with a number of venerable 'witnesses,' whose recollections of the period help to set the scene, bridge transitions and preserve a touching human perspective", wrote Gary Arnold of The Washington Post.[11]

When principal photography began in August 1979 the original intention was for a 15- to 16-week shoot, but it ultimately took one year. Filming took place in five different countries and at various points the crew had to wait for snow to fall in Helsinki (and other parts of Finland), which stood in for the Soviet Union, and for rain to stop in Spain. Beatty asked the Soviet government for a permit to film in Moscow but was denied.[5] A cottage in Kent was used to depict exteriors of the Reeds' home in Croton-on-Hudson, which in reality was a small early American saltbox house. The interior sets built at Twickenham Studios and EMI-Elstree Studios were also enlarged to evoke the "flavor" of the real home without reproducing it exactly.[12]

Other English locations included Frensham Ponds in Surrey, which stood in for Provincetown, the Smeaton Room of the Institution of Civil Engineers at One Great George Street for the Liberal Club meeting room in Portland, and the interior of Lancaster House for that of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.[13] Another round of filming began in 1980 in New York City, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, including Paramount Studios.[5]

The Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro was banned from shooting the scenes shot in the U.S. after he was unable to gain an H-1B visa and because local trade unions blocked him from doing work on the film. The film encountered similar problems with trade unions in the United Kingdom, and had to hire a separate British crew and pay British actors enrolled in Equity at Screen Actors Guild-rate salaries in order to allow American actors to film scenes in the U.K. These trade disputes caused the film to run heavily over budget, but the studio ultimately recouped its costs after financing the film with a low-interest loan from Barclays Bank as part of a tax-shelter plan.[5]

Actress Maureen Stapleton was due to begin shooting her scenes in London in November 1979, but she refused to take a plane because of a fear of flying. Because it was the wrong season for ocean liner travel, the production had to arrange for Stapleton to travel on a tramp steamer, which broke down in the North Atlantic and had to be towed to Amsterdam.[6] This caused another unwelcome delay. Beatty would also not stop the camera between takes, letting it roll continuously, and insisted on a large number of takes. Paul Sorvino said he did as many as 70 takes for one scene; Stapleton had to do 80 takes of one scene, which caused her to say to Beatty, "Are you out of your fucking mind?"[6]

Beatty and Keaton's romantic relationship also began to deteriorate during filming. Peter Biskind wrote about the making of Reds, "Beatty's relationship with Keaton barely survived the shoot. It is always a dicey proposition when an actress works with a star or director—both, in this case—with whom she has an offscreen relationship. Keaton appeared in more scenes than any other actor save Beatty, and many of them were difficult ones, where she had to assay a wide range of feelings, from romantic passion to anger, and deliver several lengthy, complex, emotional speeches." George Plimpton once observed, "Diane almost got broken. I thought [Beatty] was trying to break her into what Louise Bryant had been like with John Reed." Executive producer Simon Relph adds, "It must have been a strain on their relationship because he was completely obsessive, relentless."[6]

The editing process began in early 1980, with as many as 65 people working on editing down and going over approximately 2.5 million feet of film.[6] Post-production ended in November 1981, more than two years after the start of filming. Paramount stated that the final cost of the film was $32 million, which would be the rough equivalent of around $80 million in 2007.[6]

The film introduced the song "Goodbye for Now", written by Stephen Sondheim, recorded by Jean-Pierre Rampal and Claude Bolling. The song was later recorded by Barbra Streisand for The Movie Album (2003).

The film is recognized by the American Film Institute in these lists:

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #55
• AFI's 10 Top 10 – #9 Epic Film