Reagan was the Original Forrest Gump Who Struck Lucky

[DieboldMustDie]

by Trevor Royle: June 6, 2004 in the Sunday Herald (Scotland)

It was fitting perhaps that Ronald Reagan died on the eve of the D-Day celebrations. Unlike other Hollywood actors such as Jimmy Stewart who gave up tinseltown to fly for the US army air force, Reagan remained an actor, not a doer. Later in life, before Alzheimer's disease cruelly felled him - he called the affliction "riding into the sunset", another Hollywood cliché - he would tell Israeli politicians that he remembered seeing the liberated concentration camps at the end of the second world war. It sounded good, but too bad that he was not wearing a uniform at the time but was working for a documentary unit.
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0606-01.htm

[LittleApple81]

1. But that is better than being Chance('Chauncey Gardiner') in "Being There"

That is what Bush* reminds me of. But Chance was not malicious and Bush* is.

[ochazuke]

2. Was "Being There" about Reagan?

I think it was a criticism of a society that didn't look at things critically or analytically, instead imposing it's own hopes and desires upon them. But I think the idea for the script was inspired by the rise of Reagan. Does anyone know for sure?

[LittleApple81]

3. It very well might have been. And now that you mention it,

Reagan had that aura...
It was made in 1979...

[kskiska]

4. The analogy was made at the time

re: Reagan, and applies to him more so than Bush*.

The book was published prior to the Reagan administration, though, and was about the media.

[kcwayne]

5. No, the book "Being There" by Jerzy Kosinski was written in 1971

I think it would be a huge stretch to suggest Kosinski had Reagan in mind that long before Reagan came to national prominance.