Warren Beatty’s 1981 movie,’ Reds’, is an epic story set during the Bolshevik Revolution of the early 20th century. Beatty won the Academy Award for Best Director; two of his supporting actors, Jack Nicholson and Maureen Stapleton, as well as the cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, also won Oscars (Friedman). Beatty claims that when he showed his film to then-President Ronald Reagan at a White House screening in 1981, the president expressed admiration for the film, but wished it could have had a happy ending. Beatty’s character, John “Jack” Reed, a radical American journalist, dies at the end of the film. Many people feel it was Beatty’s finest role.
