corrente

To hear the right wing in this country go on and on about how films and TV programs get made is a source of endless frustration and amusement for anyone who's ever actually worked inside the entertainment industry. Whether it's O'Reilly, that gang that hangs out at The Corner, Chris Matthews, or Joe Scarborough, the mythic view expressed is of a small, closed community of exteme leftwing activists, all of whom know each other and check in regularly, to make sure neither they nor anyone else is straying from the path of "political correctness," and that virtually no projects gets off the ground without an America-hating seal of approval having been granted to it by one of these co-equal centers of power - Alec Baldwin, Jeananne Garafola, George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Stephen Speilberg, Michael Eisner, anyone working for Dreamworks, and, of course, that most powerful of all power couples, Susan and Tim, whose last names one needn't even bother with, that's how powerful they are.

Now, finally, comes a bit of reporting that actually mirrors the complex mix of creative and business concerns that produce, at the end of a long process, a film, or, as in this case, a new concept for a CBS series. If you want to really understand the process that gave the world "The Reagans," this is a must read.