Best of Enemies

Turn back the clocks fifty years and we find the birthplace of today's angry, confrontational news programming. In the late sixties, standard operating procedure for network television reporting was straight, impartial, monotone and almost entirely fact-driven. ABC, at the time a very distant third to perennial front-runners NBC and CBS, gambled on rowdy, opinion-driven segments during their convention coverage and won... or did we all lose?

At the heart of it all we find the conservative intellectual, William F. Buckley, and his opponent / counterpoint, the liberal author Gore Vidal, who embark upon a series of fiery debates: one for each night of their respective parties' conventions. In retrospect, their early arguments seem downright civilized - both are eloquent, engaging, brilliant conversationalists and they make for a fascinating contrast - but as the routine bears on and the speakers' attacks grow more personal, the cordiality of their discourse deteriorates. Finally, after slyly baiting his hooks for several such confrontations, one speaker elicits a jolting moment of unguarded, contemptuous rage from his opponent and, knowing his battle won, smugly settles in to enjoy the moment.

It's difficult to get completely behind either man, really. Each spins a mesmerizing oral web, but they also fall into the trap of continually one-upping each other, and that betrays the spirit of the debate. Personally, I'd love to spend a dinner party with either, but wouldn't want to make a habit of it. Deeply interesting historical material that answers many questions about how we arrived at this era of brash 24-hour opinions and endlessly question-dodging presidential debates.

"Best of Enemies" is incredibly effective at achieving multiple thematic ends without coming off as dense. Here's a few of things it managed to touch on.

It's a sound, but passive, attack on the current state of our discourse, giving us a history lesson on the genesis moment of television punditry.

It's a fascinating look inside network news in the time of American political convention "gavel- to-gavel" coverage. The last time that ever happened.

It's an exploration of how TV changes us, or at the very least, reveals us to ourselves, both as people who long to sit in front of its cameras, and as a nation who watches its images.

It's about how the two sides of the late 60's culture war found their primetime voices.

It's about class, and how where we come, or how we where we wish we had come from, affects how and what we think.

It's about the personal journeys of the intellectuals at the center of it - gay-left leaning best selling counter-culture author Vidal and establishment defending policy-affecting conservative Buckley - and how their confrontation never really left the center stage of their own minds.

But most spectacularly, it's about how the issues of a turbulent period (our republic caught in an ongoing war of attrition, race riots in the streets, the all too familiar rhetoric of income and racial inequality at the center of the political debate) never really ended.

And it does all of those things with a sense of real legitimacy, never once feeling like it's assigning more importance to the story than it deserves. A perennial fault in the doc genre. But it's not just a good story. It's a good story told well.

The whole thing is brilliantly structured, wonderfully cut together, incredibly funny and tragic, and far-reaching in its ambition. It's political positioning is measured, either because of or in spite of it's co-director being affiliated with the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation.

It features great talking heads, including political historian Sam Tanenhaus (who I sorely miss as the New York Times Book Review editor) and avowed socialist/Marxist/anti-leftist/cultural contrarian Christopher Hitchens, who manages to bloviate even from beyond the grave.

This is one of my favorite documentaries of the year. A perfect double feature with last year's excellent, "Last Days in Vietnam". Catch it if it interests you. It didn't do as well at the box office as it should've.

Best of Enemies is a fascinating documentary film about a series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. If that doesn't sound very interesting you couldn't be more wrong. This is a film about two men who absolutely hated each other. Two extremely clever men who fought each other live on television by debating with each that eventually led to personal insults being thrown at each other and it's mesmerising viewing. I have to admit I had never heard of these men before and that's probably because these debates happened a couple of months before I was born but I do know now and I feel much better off for it.

"Best of Enemies" (2015 release; 88 min.) is a documentary about the infamous 10 televised debates that took place during the 1968 Republican and Democratic Presidential Conventions (in Miami and Chicago, respectively), between conservative William Buckley Jr. and liberal Gore Vidal. As the documentary opens, Vidal is commentating about old pictures hanging up in his house and one of them is showing Buckley and Vidal at one of those debates. We then get some background as to who these 2 guys are, and why ABC veered away to bring the "unconventional Convention" coverage. And then we get to the first debate... To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this documentary is co-directed by Morgan "20 Feet From Stardom" Neville and Robert Gordon, who is affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. If you think that means the documentary is kinder to Buckley that to Vidal, think again. The two men are pitted against each other, and vehemently disdain each other, even before these debates, and much more so afterwards. "It was a confrontation of life styles", as someone comments. Yes, it was, but as it turns out, these debates had another unexpected consequence: ABC's ratings went through the roof, and the other mainstream networks quickly realized they had to have their own versions of these "point-counterpoint" programs. In other words, the Buckley-Vidal debates set into motion what would eventually become the Fox's and MSNBC's news channels. Apart from the historical legacy created by these debates, the documentary also examines the long shadows cast be the debates over the personal lives of both Vidal and (even more so) Buckley. If you have any interest in politics and/or in TV history, you will not want to miss this documentary. It makes for completing viewing, period.

"Best of Enemies" made quite a splash at the Sundance film festival earlier this year. The movie's been out for months and I didn't think it would reach theaters here in Cincinnati, but then out of the blue t showed up this weekend at my local art-house theater here. I figured this would not be playing very long and went to see it right away, The matinée screening where I saw this at turned into a private screening, as in: I literally was the only person in the theater. A shame, as this is a riveting documentary. If you get the chance to see this, be it in the theater, on VOD or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, do not mist it! "BEst of Enemies" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

"You have to have a mind of winter to see nothing that is not there and nothing that is"

• Wallace Stevens 'The Snowman'

When debates becomes diatribe, mudslinging .... Two men: one was the first modern conservative intellectual who saw the ideological debates as cultural debates. And the other was an iconoclast, liberal, an apostate, writer against the grain.. An intellectual thinker and an intellectual writer..Year 1968, the Vietcong, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, struggling ABC network, the hippi era, the counterculture age and more.. It was not about right fighting the far left but it was about right fighting the one who is not quite far enough right... the most infamous political debate aired live on ABC ...during the concluding debate,Gore Vidal labeled Bill Buckley as a crypto-Nazi and in response Buckley called Vidal, "You queer,"!!!! This resulted into further antipathy that continued with denigrating personal polemic attacks in a patrician, languid style and heralded the future discourse.. it is scintillating, unsettling balderdash that would put you off the strokes.. a great watch ..