Trailer
Plot summary
Louise Bryant is a married journalist and suffragist in Portland, Oregon. She attends a 1915 lecture by the radical journalist John Reed and finds his idealism compelling. Their talk about world politics lasts all night, and she sees writing as her way out of a life she finds frustrating. She leaves her husband and follows Reed to Greenwich Village in New York City, where they spend time with activists and artists, among them Emma Goldman and the playwright Eugene O'Neill. They then move to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to concentrate on writing and join the local theater scene. Bryant's own work wins her a reputation as a feminist and a radical. Reed joins strikes alongside the Industrial Workers of the World and travels to St. Louis to report on the 1916 Democratic National Convention.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Reds (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Beatty would not stop the camera between takes, letting it roll continuously, and insisted on a large number of takes: Paul Sorvino said he did as many as 70 takes for one scene, and Stapleton had to do 80, which caused her to ask Beatty whether he was out of his mind.
- Maureen Stapleton refused to fly to the London shoot because of a fear of flying, and as it was the wrong season for ocean liner travel the production put her on a tramp steamer, which broke down in the North Atlantic and had to be towed to Amsterdam.
- The Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro was banned from shooting the American scenes after he could not get an H-1B visa and local trade unions blocked him, and similar union problems in the United Kingdom forced the hiring of a separate British crew, running the film heavily over budget.
- Jack Nicholson was cast as Eugene O'Neill over James Taylor and Sam Shepard, and having just finished Kubrick's The Shining he was in a most shambolic and grotesque physical state according to producer Simon Relph, yet he appeared four months later having lost the weight and looking much younger.
- Charles Bluhdorn, head of Paramount's parent company Gulf & Western, agreed to finance the project, then had second thoughts and tried to dissuade Beatty with the promise of underwriting a $25 million alternative to Reds of Beatty's choice, but Beatty remained committed.
- In 1973, Beatty was offered the role of Reed in Sergei Bondarchuk's Soviet film production Red Bells, but declined, and felt further driven to make his own biopic about Reed to compete with the Soviet version.
- In 1976, Beatty found a suitable collaborator on the screenplay in Trevor Griffiths, who began work but was delayed when his wife was killed in a plane crash.
