INTERVIEW – MARK WEINBERG – former Reagan Press Secretary and author of new book “Movie Nights with the Reagans”

• BIO: MARK WEINBERG is a former spokesman, advisor, and speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan. He served on the 1980 Reagan campaign, all eight years on the Reagan White House staff, and two years thereafter as Director of Public Affairs in the office of former President Ronald Reagan. He currently works as a communications consultant in the private sector. Weinberg and his wife live in the New York City area with their two children.
• This Sunday marks the 90th Academy Awards ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.  In January, former Reagan press secretary Mark Weinberg started a campaign that started with an online petition to get President Reagan an honorary Oscar. This week – just ahead of the Academy Awards on Sunday, Weinberg released his brand new book from Simon & Schuster: Movie Nights with the Reagans: A Memoir.  In the book, Mark recalls the time where President Reagan expressed to him feeling snubbed by Hollywood.
• Former special advisor and press secretary to President Ronald Reagan shares an intimate, behind-the-scenes look inside the Reagan presidency—told through the movies they watched together every week at Camp David. What did President Ronald Reagan think of Rocky IV? How did the Matthew Broderick film WarGames inform America’s missile defense system? What Michael J. Fox movie made such an impression on President Reagan that he felt compelled to mention it in a speech to the Joint Session of Congress?
• “Perhaps that accounts for the rare expression of regret I heard Reagan make after he left the White House, when I was working with him at his post-presidency office in Los Angeles.  Having come home to Tinseltown, he was disappointed that the movie community never recognized the only member of its ranks to reach the highest office in the land.  “You would think,” he told me, “that after what I’ve done, being the only one from the profession to do so, they would commemorate it in some way.”  He had great affection for what he called “the motion picture business” and was hurt that that affection wasn’t returned. “