Best of Enemies

[projekktor id=’20215′]

Best of Enemies is a documentary directed by Robert Gordon and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom). The film, which premiered at Sundance last year, chronicles a series of debates between conservative William F. Buckley Jr. and Democrat Gore Vidal during the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1968.

In the summer of 1968 television news changed forever. Dead last in the ratings, ABC hired two towering public intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. William F. Buckley Jr. was a leading light of the new conservative movement. A Democrat and cousin to Jackie Onassis, Gore Vidal was a leftist novelist and polemicist. Armed with deep-seated distrust and enmity, Vidal and Buckley believed each other’s political ideologies were dangerous for America. Like rounds in a heavyweight battle, they pummeled out policy and personal insult—their explosive exchanges devolving into vitriolic name-calling. Live and unscripted, they kept viewers riveted. Ratings for ABC News skyrocketed. And a new era in public discourse was born.

“Although I am known for making documentaries about music and other cultural subjects,” Neville says, “I love politics. In fact, my first job was working at The Nation Magazine, where I ended up doing fact checking for Gore Vidal on the essays he was writing for the magazine. I would call him on the phone in his home in Ravello, Italy (this was before the internet), and tell him that he’s gotten certain very small details wrong. It was not fun.”

Best of Enemies is rated 14A.