Best of Enemies
31/07/2015
A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"
Movie Information
Gore Vidal
as Self
William F. Buckley Jr.
as Self
Kelsey Grammer
as Voice of William F. Buckley
John Lithgow
as Voice of Gore Vidal
Dick Cavett
as Self
Christopher Hitchens
as Self
Noam Chomsky
as Self (archival)
Reid Buckley
as Self
Andrew Sullivan
as Self
Todd Gitlin
as Self
Brooke Gladstone
as Self
Paul Newman
as Self (archival)
Arthur Miller
as Self (archival)
Muhammad Ali
as Self (archival)
Sam Donaldson
as Self (archival)
Norman Mailer
as Self (archival)
Matt Tyrnauer
as Self
Godfrey Cambridge
as Self (archival)
John McWhorter
as Self
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
as Self
James J. Kilpatrick
as Self (archival)
Richard J. Daley
as Self (archival)
Everett Dirksen
as Self (archival)
James Wolcott
as Self
Woody Allen
as Self (archival)
