Reds

 On this date in 1981, "Reds" was released.

Warren Beatty came across the story of John Reed in the mid-1960s and executive producer and film editor Dede Allen remembers Beatty's mentioning making a film about Reed's life as early as 1966. Originally titled "Comrades," the first script was written by Beatty in 1969, but the process stalled. In 1976, Beatty found a suitable collaborator in Trevor Griffiths who began work but was delayed when his wife died in a plane crash. The preliminary draft of the script was finished in 1978. Beatty still had problems with it and he and Griffiths spent four and a half months fixing it. Beatty also collaborated with his friends Robert Towne, Peter Feibleman and Elaine May to continue polishing the script after shooting had begun.

Beatty originally had no intention of acting in the film or even directing it because he had learned on projects such as "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) and "Heaven Can Wait" (1978) that producing a film alone is a difficult task. He briefly considered John Lithgow for the part of John Reed because the two were similar in appearance, but eventually Beatty decided to act in the film and direct it himself. Nicholson was cast as Eugene O'Neill over James Taylor and Sam Shepard. Nicholson was older than the young O'Neill he was playing, and having just completed work on Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980), was in a "most shambolic" and "grotesque" state, according to producer Simon Relph. But Nicholson was committed to the role and appeared at the start of filming four months later having lost the weight he had gained and looking much younger. The role of O'Neill was always intended for Nicholson; according to Beatty, he believed that Nicholson was the only person who "could take his girl" (Diane Keaton) away from him.

Beatty also chose to cast non-actors in supporting roles, including George Plimpton, the editor of the Paris Review, who played the character of Horace Whigham. Jerzy Kosinski, a Polish-American novelist, was asked to play the role of Grigory Zinoviev, but he initially refused because he was a fierce anti-Communist and feared that he might be abducted by the KGB if he went to Finland to film.