Best of Enemies
Description
As the 1968 Democratic and Republican conventions were about to commence, ABC News, nestled at the bottom of the ratings, decided to try something a little different: They enlisted the arch novelist Gore Vidal and archconservative William F. Buckley Jr. to act as post-coverage commentators. They knew that the two men hated each other and expected fireworks. What the executives got, however, was closer to a verbal WWIII, with the “libertine” author and the lip-licking Firing Line host going from passionate punditry to nearly throwing punches. The era of the talking head as partisan Screaming Mimi had officially begun. Rife with clips and with sophisticated contextual background, Best of Enemies zeroes in on how this ratings-grabbing experiment helped set the template for today’s TV news landscape. Documentarians Morgan Neville (Twenty Feet From Stardom, SFIFF 2013) and Robert Gordon take you back to a time when brainiacs were actual TV celebrities who palled around with political candidates as well as Playboy’s Hugh Hefner. They then chart how the very elements that made for stimulating civil discourse eventually turned contemporary-issues conversation into a public car wreck. This is intellectual one-upmanship as a take-no-prisoners cage match, one eloquent insult and bon mot at a time. —David Fear
Robert Gordon (left) is the author of six books on rock & roll, the blues and the American South, including It Came From Memphis and The Elvis Treasures. He produced William Eggleston’s landmark Stranded in Canton (2005), directed numerous music documentaries, such as Muddy Waters: Can’t Be Satisfied (2003) and Johnny Cash’s America (2008), and won a Grammy for writing the liner notes to the Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky in 2010.
Morgan Neville (right) is an award-winning documentarian who’s covered subjects ranging from the country-music supergroup The Highwaymen (American Revolutions) to LA’s modern-art movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s (The Cool School) and Sidney Poitier (The Defiant One). He won an Oscar in 2014 for his critically praised portrait of back-up singers, Twenty Feet From Stardom (SFIFF 2013).
Trailer
//player.vimeo.com/video/124867224?autoplay=1Film Details
Language English
Year 2015
Runtime 87
Country USA
Director Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon
Producer Robert Gordon, Morgan Neville
Editor Eileen Meyer, Aaron Wickenden
Cinematographer David Leonard, Graham Willoughby, Mark Schwartzbard
Music Jonathan Kirkscey