A new movie, featuring a grim-faced actor as president aboard Air Force One, has prompted a veteran of the genuine First Plane to reveal all about the experience. Hold on to your cocktail forks, this may be a smooth ride. Ted Gup is Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland's College of Journalism and a writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Time, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Newsweek, Mother Jones, and other publications.

All the talk about the movie "Air Force One" has moved me to wade in with my own recollections.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you I haven't been on the First Aircraft since the heady days of Bush and Reagan, but believe me I saw plenty. Here's what I remember most -- the M&Ms and the toilet paper. The M&Ms ( plain, no peanut ) came in a white box with a gold presidential seal. In fact everything came with a presidential seal. There were plastic cups embossed with the seal. Napkins too.

Even the free packs of cigarettes came in a special presidential wrap. Under Reagan ( or was it Bush?) the matches were powder blue. On the front was the seal, on the back a drawing of Air Force One and in raised gold letters, the words "ABOARD THE PRESIDENTIAL AIRCRAFT."

The bathroom was no less well-stocked than the toiletries counter of Saks Fifth Avenue. And the toilet paper was to die for -- the softest paper in the land, doubtless made exclusively for the First Bottom, though it lacked the presidential seal.

Forget the jokes about plane food. The china was fine, the glass real, the dining gourmet. The menu, printed each day, featured a choice -- one I recall was filet mignon or fresh poached salmon.

I was not then a real White House reporter, just a fill-in, someone who followed Him when no news was expected -- when He spoke at grade schools and factories, or attended the funerals of distant relatives (if they were close, the real White House reporter got the nod.) At times it was so boring we would have welcomed a hijacking or failed engine. My beat was called, ominously, the "body watch." After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, it became a rule to have someone tag along. Air Force One has a door that allows for the turning radius of a casket and one wall holds hooks conveniently ready for a drip I.V.

Security was always tight. To sit down in your seat you had to raise a long, hinged plank of wood that served as a table. At first I thought this was to prevent any one from suddenly rushing forward. Later I realized it was just a way to further humiliate the press, forcing us to announce when we had to go to the john. It was like a pen for sheep, which, come to think of it, it was the perfect metaphor for how the press covered the White House -- tethered to handouts and forced to raise their hands to speak.

Usually the First Spokesman would come back and lean over the table, eager to answer questions. It was only later I realized why. He could be totally confident the roar of the massive jets would drown out his words and render them inaudible. It was a perfect farce.

Once I was required to sit with the "Boys in Blue," a stony-faced contingent from the Air Force dressed smartly in blue jump suits. The first time I made the mistake of introducing myself. I was left holding out my hand in mid-air. For five hours they sat speechless. I suspect they were there to take over the cockpit in case everyone up front came down with food poisoning or flu. God knows they weren't needed for fire-power. There was plenty of that in the cabin up front.

Still, as a white-knuckle flier it was the one plane I always felt comfortable in. Other planes were routinely rerouted out of our path and even the weather patterns seemed to yield before the First Passenger. As for terrorists, everyone aboard had been scrupulously cleared by security checks and a bank of metal detectors.

A few weeks after the flight we would get the bill. They always gouged us shamelessly, but there was little choice. If it was your first time, you would receive an elegant certificate signed by the pilot attesting to your presence on the flying White House.

As far as I recall, there was never much of a hazard in the air. These days it seems the greatest risk on Air Force One, or on the ground for that matter, remains protecting the President from himself.