WATCHING MOVIES WITH RONNIE

The week of national mourning for Ronald Reagan is well behind us, but I can't resist one more related post. It turns out his presidential library has a list of all the movies he watched while on vacation at Camp David (which was pretty often, it seems). Looking through the list, I noticed a few things:

For one, Reagan watched a number of films that a) you would expect no president to see -- well, before Clinton, I mean, b) you would expect no seventy-year-old man to be interested in: "Return of the Jedi" and "War Games" (both June '83); "Ghostbusters" and "Last Starfighter" (both July '84); "The Gods Must be Crazy" (March '85); "Back to the Future" (July '85); 860111 Young Sherlock Holmes" (January '86); "Lucas" (April '86); "Top Gun" (May '86); "Short Circuit," "Karate Kid II" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (all June '86); "Crocodile Dundee" (December '86); "Raising Arizona" (Mar. '87); "Harry and the Hendersons" (May '87); "Princess Bride" (October '87); and "Throw Momma from the Train" (November '88). And the fourth-to-last film he watched there was "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (July '87). Not bad, huh?

Also, in September of '84 Reagan watched one film obviously made for teenagers, but which you certainly can imagine him watching: "Red Dawn."

A couple times he either liked a movie so much he rewatched it, or possibly couldn't finish it and had to start over: "Witness" (June 22 and 23, '85) and "The Glenn Miller Story" (October 11 and November 1, '85). And It seems Reagan also liked to watch a few of his own old films: "Bedtime for Bonzo" (June '84); "Hellcats of the Navy" (September '85), also starring Nancy; "Knute Rockne, All American" (October '87).

Lost to history is the film he watched on August 2nd, '88. It is listed only as "[Name of film not listed]." For shame! I would like to think it was something starring Chevy Chase.

And with that, we return to our previously scheduled blogging.

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posted by WWB at 10:04 PM |