Year: 2015
Director: Robert Gordon & Morgan Neville
This is a documentary about the 1968 Television debates between liberal Gore Vidal and Conservative William Buckley centred around the Republican and Democratic conventions. These debates were an idea that ABC had because they didn’t have the money to cover either convention fully like CBS & NBC.
Both Vidal and Buckley were failed politicians, having both run for office earlier in the sixties and lost but otherwise had become successes as authors and social commentators. This finds Vidal just after the publication of Myra Breckinridge had become a cause célèbre, and Buckley cosying up to Ronald Reagan as he tried to define Conservatism for the future decades.
Both men came into the debates detesting each other and coming from polar opposites, Vidal gay ultra-left & Buckley Catholic establishment right-wing so from the first debate sparks flew and the animosity just grew until a flashpoint which shocked America and troubled Buckley until the day he died. That outburst probably set the tone for the political debates (or non debates) that we suffer today.
The film has plenty of wonderful archive footage especially the 1968 Democratic convention riots and is very enjoyable look back at which may have been ground zero in modern political coverage.
PS This available on Netflix
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Good political Docs
Just spotted this on Netflix and was wondering whether to give it a go, so you’ve made up my mind, thanks.
William F Buckley was always referred to as Mr Fbuckley on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in. Haven’t been able to think of him any other way since.