4/29/2023 0 Comments Best of enemies documentary![]() Taking us back to the middle 1960s, there are grainy out takes of old television shows and glimpses of news anchors fixing their hair after they thought the rolling had stopped. We want to be able to point to a precise moment in time when American intellectual life went from respectful and potentially enriching to the crass, bloviating, screaming discourse we live with today that the story almost just works.īest of Enemies does what documentaries do best: It vividly evokes a different time and place, when the set of assumptions guiding life were different from our own. It’s a contention we want to believe so badly. Underneath the Right’s seemingly respectable political positions, Vidal seems to be implying, is anger and hatred and even the threat of violence.Īs metaphors go, this one’s not too subtle: it was Gore Vidal and William Buckley’s series of 10 debates during the 1968 political conventions, the filmmakers posit, that took American political debate from relative tranquility to distasteful contentiousness. Buckley looks angry and mean, and to almost every American in the 1960s and ‘ 70s, the photographs would recall the time Buckley called Vidal a “queer” on national television, before threatening to punch him in the face. ![]() Buckley, Jr., the right-wing firebrand of the 1950s, ‘ 60s, and ‘ 70s, debating Vidal in 1968. In the place of honor, centrally located above the bathtub, sits a series of photographs of William F. What about Vietnam? What about Richard Nixon? What about Lyndon Johnson, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the rise of Black Power, Brown Power, Red Power, feminism? Was there something aside from personal distaste that affected these men and their nation? Given the mostly civilized, highbrow rhetoric seen here and what we are now accustomed to, I'd say things have deteriorated considerably.Psychologizing Vidal and Buckley elides ideas almost entirely. Individually, these debates had profoundly affected their lives, but more universally it changed the landscape of political punditry. It was the seed that inspired an article in Esquire that led to a lengthy lawsuit that took years to settle. ![]() According to the documentary, both had a hard time ever forgetting the incident. Buckley and Vidal, these intellectuals with aristocratic bearing, had been reduced to children. Gore Vidal baits Buckley with a personal low blow. Their polite discourse ultimately condensed to a hostile exchange. The discussion centered on freedom of speech in regards to American protesters displaying a Viet Cong flag. The climax is fashioned around what is essentially an infamous altercation of name calling between these two loquacious rivals. Most of the conversation is heated but diplomatic. and Gore Vidal regarding the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. For Buckley, the documentary probably overstates his influence on the Republican Party when in fact he was might have just been in agreement with the more conservative Republicans in power.īest of Enemies centers on ten televised debates in 1968 between William F. At the same time, I do have certain bones to pick, not the least of which is the accusation that Vidal had ulterior motives for saying something unkind about Robert Kennedy. Buckley who in archival footage seems polite and eager to listen to different points of view on his television show, and at least until he is pushed too far in the debates with Vidal. With a documentary just last year about Gore Vidal, the more revelatory parts in "Best of Enemies" involve William F. The most surprising snippets involve fresh angles on the Chicago Democratic Convention which had already been so exhaustively covered and here go beyond just mentioning Gore Vidal, Arthur Miller and Paul Newman sharing a car.(I feel there should be a punchline there.) What the illuminating and snappy documentary "Best of Enemies" does well is provide behind the scenes information. Buckley debate opposing viewpoints in the studio during the two political conventions that year. With no televised debates between the presidential candidates in 1968, it was left to ABC who was desperately seeking an audience or any kind of attention really to make up for that by having Gore Vidal and William F.
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