Actor Jon Voight talks to The Inside Reel about story, approach and appreciation in regards to his new film: "Reagan" from Showbiz Direct.
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00:00I am about to start the biggest war of this century and I'm not going to fire a single
00:16shot.
00:17You're going to blow up eight years of diplomacy.
00:18Well, if you think that got their undies they don't want, you just wait.
00:22What did the president know and when did he know it?
00:25What would you have me do?
00:26I want you to fight.
00:33Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
00:45Good morning, John.
00:46We've talked many times before.
00:47Thank you, sir.
00:48Hi, Tim.
00:49Good to see you.
00:50Good to see you.
00:51How are you doing?
00:52I'm doing pretty good.
00:54I think the one of the last things maybe we talked was Ray Donovan, but every single character
01:00has perspective and has to have perspective.
01:04Looking at Victor, did you have to do that or see his eyes on Reagan?
01:08How did you have to approach that from your perspective?
01:12Well, I think the story of Victor, at one point in his career as a KGB officer, recognized
01:33the spirit and the goals of Reagan as being appropriate and he fell in love with him.
01:41He said, this guy's the guy.
01:43This guy can do it.
01:46He can change our country.
01:47He can bring us back to sanity.
01:51That's an interesting journey.
01:55The film is not about my character, but that's the journey he goes on.
02:00The film is about Ronald Reagan.
02:02He was affected by Ronald Reagan and many people were.
02:07There's a fellow by the name of Victor, not Victor Petrovich, that's the character I played,
02:14but Yuri Bezmenov, who was a spy.
02:20You can look him up.
02:22There's a lot of video of him and interviews with him.
02:29He was a real spy and he changed his thoughts about it.
02:33He came to warn us about the many things that the Russian propaganda was going to do,
02:43was doing from the seeds that they'd planted in the 50s and 60s to take out, to destroy America.
02:51He became very helpful to us, although those seeds were planted and they're all around us now.
03:01But anyway, that's who I went to school on a little bit and I think I did the proper job with him.
03:10I will be frank with you that as a citizen, I would not like to see any political party
03:14outlawed on the basis of its ideology, because I still believe, Mr. Chairman, that democracy
03:20can handle it.
03:22I was a brand new KGB officer, given my first intelligence assignment, a certain actor and
03:29union leader.
03:31Which there's a purpose for your life.
03:34You can run from a bully for so long, but after a while, you're going to have to stand up to him.
03:40It's my boy!
03:44There's about to be another war right here in Hollywood.
03:46The commies on one side, the mob on the other, and you're right in the middle, son.
03:52If you put as much work into your career as you do making your speeches, you'd have an Oscar by now.
03:59Well, you always take a character on physically.
04:02I mean, you play him at different ages, but do those things help you?
04:07And on top of that, I mean, this guy was a psychologist too, your character in real life.
04:12So he understood watching people for their tells, how they acted, how they responded.
04:18Sure, right.
04:21Well, yeah, everything you're saying is appropriate to the character.
04:29And he was trying to, and my whole piece is with another, trying to educate a younger
04:36man and bring him along.
04:38And this younger man is played by Alexei Sparrow, who was a young Russian actor, performer,
04:45singer, who's terrific and a good guy.
04:49And he's lovely in the film.
04:51And so it's Victor trying to bring this fellow to an understanding of things.
05:00And I had a lot of help to become 35 years younger and several years older.
05:07And the older incarnation needed something, and then the younger incarnation certainly
05:13needed something.
05:14And I had a great, I had a great makeup fellow by the name of Scott Wheeler, who was just
05:23a very talented guy.
05:25And we got along very well.
05:26And I think that he did a terrific job.
05:29And that is the answer to your question.
05:36Thank you, Victor Petrovich.
06:14Watching the film, because your character obviously bookends exactly where this man
06:21went and how Reagan functioned, you know, did you get a better understanding of Reagan
06:26as a politician, as a person, or did you have a conception of him before you came to the
06:32film?
06:33Well, I wasn't able to, I learned a lot in terms of the film's process, because it was
06:39a very long film when it started.
06:41And there was an awful lot of information there.
06:43But I also have gotten a lot of information about Ronald Reagan from people who worked
06:48with him.
06:49And there's a whole group of people out there very active now, and very helpful in our society
06:56now, who worked under Reagan.
06:59And they all had very specific stories to tell.
07:02And, you know, he's talking about his humor, his decency, his strength, his, you know,
07:11and then you look at his journals, all of the writing about him.
07:17He's been written about as a modern president.
07:21He's the most written about president, I think, in the modern era.
07:27And then there's his own diary, you know, the Ronald Reagan diaries.
07:32Unbelievable that he wrote every day something.
07:35And he'd always start out with something like, it was a beautiful day today, or the sky was
07:41clear, whatever it is.
07:42Talks about the weather, talks about this.
07:44Very positive.
07:47And you get the idea of a very clean mind, very organized, you know, a person who wrote
07:54down little jokes to tell, you know, and he had a good sense of humor, and a great way
08:03of delivering the jokes, you know.
08:05And of course, his friends in Hollywood were his friends.
08:09You know, Frank Sinatra, or whoever it was, Jimmy Stewart, they were his friends, and
08:19they, you know, occasionally drifted by the White House.
08:24But he was the real deal.
08:26He was a great force for good in our presidency.
08:32And he reminded us almost daily of the founding principles and how they worked.
08:41And I still feel the same affection for him, maybe more so because of the film, now that
08:52I've examined him so clearly.
08:59I was a lifeguard on a river.
09:02And I learned how to read the currents.
09:10Not just the ones on the surface, but also the ones deep underneath the water.