BEST OF ENEMIES – The Review

By Cate Marquis

Once upon a time, there was a news media covered that politics in a calm, pointedly-neutrally way. Then the televised debate between conservative William F. Buckley Jr. and liberal Gore Vidal happened. Nielsen numbers went through the roof and TV political coverage was never the same. Television news discovered political coverage as blood sport and traded dispassionate reporting for the entertaining fireworks of shouted confrontation and punditry.

In the highly entertaining, engrossing documentary BEST OF ENEMIES, directors Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon make a credible case for the Buckley-Vidal debates, a political face-off between, intellectual giants with opposing  views, as a turning point in how the American media covers politics. The film takes us back to 1968 and the TV broadcasts of the Republican and Democratic political conventions, when these two prominent cultural and intellectual figures debated the direction of the nation.

In 1968, before cable and the internet, television was king. There were only three national networks, NBC, CBS and ABC. While news leaders NBC and CBS presented gavel-to-gavel coverage of the conventions, third-place (and much poorer) ABC hit on the idea of only presenting a nightly recap of the events at the conventions, and then supplementing that with a debate between pubic figures on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Choosing these two men for a broadcast political debate was akin to a debate between, say, Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart – with no rules and nothing off the table. Who wouldn’t want to see that? Yet Rush and Stewart are entertainers while Buckley and Vidal were widely acknowledged brilliant minds. It seems very foreign now but at that time these two intellectuals were famous cultural figures, appearing on TV talk shows and other popular programs. Audiences of the time found them entertaining, with their sharp-witted verbal barbs and exaggerated upper-class mannerisms.

As BEST OF ENEMIES points out, the Buckley-Vidal debates were both a high point and low point for media coverage of politics. On the one hand, Buckley and Vidal were true intellectual heavyweights with the brains and verbal skills to demolish to each other’s arguments. On the other hand, they harbored a mutual hatred, which meant a fair amount of time went to pointed, clever, funny but personal attacks. As Neville writes the film’s notes, “This is not a film about who wins the argument. It’s a film about how we argue.”

Directors Neville and Gordon present the debates a bit like rounds of a boxing match, a good metaphor given the go-for-blood verbal sparring. The directors do a good job of putting these matches in a historical context and painting a brief picture of each man. Then there was the backdrop of the conventions. The Republican convention in Miami, with the Reagan forces revving in the wings, was relatively peaceful, in stark comparison to the later and famously disastrous Democratic convention in Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley’s police brutalized anti-war protesters who were outside in the streets and clamoring to participate in the convention.

On the surface, Buckley and Vidal seemed to have much in common – both intellectuals and writers with elite upbringing and education, speaking with an upper-class East Coast accent and with an effete, aristocratic manner. Both were men had sharp wits and even sharper tongues, and used words as weapons.

As similar as they seemed, Vidal and Buckley stood on either side of the evolving cultural divide. Buckley was a Republican organizer and advocate of Ronald Reagan-Barry Goldwater’s “new conservative” movement, a staunch Catholic who rejected modernization, founder/editor of the conservative “National Review” magazine, and the host of the “Firing Line” TV talk show. Vidal was a liberal who was considered a literary giant, ranked with figures such as Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. He was a playwright and author whose works included the acclaimed “Burr” and other bestselling historical novels, as well as the scandal-sparking gender-bending satire “Myra Breckenridge.” Vidal, who had links to cultural figures ranging from Oscar Wilde, Jack Kerouac and Amelia Earhart, advocated sexual freedom and rejected conventional labels. He was a political outsider who favored the Democratic Party and had family ties to Jackie Kennedy.

Each believed the other’s ideas would destroy the country. What’s more – they hated each other personally.

BEST OF ENEMIES present the Buckley-Vidal debates in the context of their times, and follow-up on the aftermath of the debates and their lingering impact on both men. Besides the archival footage of the debates, the film has interviews with an array of journalists and academics including Todd Gitlin, Eric Alterman, and the late Christopher Hitchens. Speakers include people who knew them, like former talk show host Dick Cavett, Vidal biographer Fred Caplan and Buckley’s brother Reid. The film also features readings of both men’s writings, with Buckley’s words read by Kelsey Grammar and Vidal’s by John Lithgow, and archival interviews with the late Buckley and Vidal.

Setting the stage for the culture wars that still dog us, Buckley and Vidal debated the direction of the country from opposite ends of the political spectrum, discussing race, gender and class, war and American imperialism, civil unrest and personal freedom. While there were plenty of thoughtful discussions, the archival clips chosen for the film often focus on the zingers – the funny, pithy jabs and sparkling, venomous barbs. Watching these brainy people needle each other is entertaining but for a fuller, meatier view of the scope of their discussions, one would have to view the debates footage itself.

In the years following theses debates, Buckley’s “new conservatism” came to dominate the American political landscape since Reagan, yet Vidal’s call for gender, racial and personal freedoms seems to have won the social debate, with gay marriage and progress on gender and racial equality.

Both men are gone now although the debate still lingers. Since then, Buckley remains well-known, thanks to the way the Republicans made him an icon after Reagan’s election. Vidal’s public fame has faded, sadly, although writers and academics still hail him as the last literary giant of his era. Maybe this fascinating, entertaining film will spark renewed interest in his writings.

4 out of 5 stars

BEST OF ENEMIES opens Friday, August 21, at the Plaza Frontenac Cinema.