Ostensibly,
they both came to debate, but they had very different agendas. William F.
Buckley, Jr. was there to present a cogent world view, while Gore Vidal came to
engage in character assassination. Nearly as many sparks flew on the makeshift
ABC News set as on the streets of Chicago when the conservative and leftist
commentators occasionally discussed the 1968 party conventions. Morgan Neville
& Robert Gordon chronicle the blow-by-blow in Best of Enemies (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.
The
media loves to remind us Buckley lost his cool with Vidal, calling him a “queer”
and offering him a punch in the face. They usually neglect to mention Vidal was
goading him, calling him a “crypto-nazi,” as if Buckley would have anything to
do with National Socialism. To their credit, Neville & Gordon give viewers
the full context, including the fact that Vidal agreed to his ten debates with
Buckley with the explicit intention of getting personal, in the nastiest, most
destructive way possible. It is also rather eye-opening to hear how Vidal pre-tested
his “ad libs” with a sympathetic press corps.
Logically,
a good deal of Enemies is devoted to
the verbal blood sport of their convention debates. However, there is a fair
degree of media analysis, arguing Buckley v. Vidal was the watershed moment that
unleashed a tidal wave of full throated punditry. Perhaps, but what is most
striking is how cut-rate the ABC News operation was in 1968, a time when the
networks did not have a heck of a lot of competition. The ABC convention
operation was so cheap, their prefab convention soundstage literally collapsed,
forcing them to use a makeshift replacement many considered an improvement.
In
addition to generous archival clips of the combatants, Kelsey Grammer and John
Lithgow also read from the assorted writings of Buckley and Vidal, respectively,
with all the appropriate feeling and attitude they demand. Neville, Gordon, and
their editor Aaron Wickenden keep it snappy and never get bogged down with
talking head analysis. Most importantly, they do not play favorites in the way
they present the controversies.
