As quaint as it may now seem, there was a time when the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees were unknown until the conventions. The “big three” TV networks offered gavel-to-gavel coverage, and the parties’ eventual contenders emerged slowly and methodically as ballots were cast.
For the 1968 conventions, with the American public turning against the Vietnam War and amid arrests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, last-place ABC took a gamble on something different: pitting conservative William F. Buckley with liberal firebrand Gore Vidal for a series of point-counterpoint conversations.
The strategy worked. Viewers tuned in by the millions to watch the founder of National Review go toe-to-toe with the effete writer of “Myra Breckenridge” in a series of increasingly heated exchanges.
“I loved the idea of two titans of thought and language going head to head. It all felt like a story that needed to be told now,” said Robert Gordon, co-director of “Best of Enemies,” a documentary about the infamous debates that recently showed at the District’s AFI Docs film festival and which will open in the area Friday.
Mr. Gordon and his collaborator, Morgan Neville, not only parsed the footage of the Buckley-Vidal debates but also interviewed, over the course of a half-decade, Dick Cavett, Christopher Hitchens and Buckley’s own brother to gain insight into how the fierce tet-a-tet defined both men for the remainder of their lives.
“The whole ABC media story was something we didn’t know,” said Mr. Neville. “We knew a bit about it, but we didn’t know how big a part of the story that was going to become until we really started talking to newspeople who were there at the time.”
In addition to highlights of a unique moment in American political theater, “Best of Enemies” also makes the case that the Buckley-Vidal debates were at least partly responsible for the ascendancy of the 24-hour news cycle — far more populated with talking heads and “analysts” than actual reporting. Mr. Gordon said that when he saw the footage of Buckley and Vidal, “it spoke immediately to me of the present and the culture wars. It was as if a forecast were being made in 1968, and it turned out to be very accurate.”
“I wouldn’t say it was ’the’ moment, but I would say this was one of the moments that accelerated the direction that things went,” concurred Mr. Neville. “I think ABC needed something to happen. They were looking for sparks, and they got a fire.”
In the final debate, on Aug. 28, 1968, the dialectic went off the rails, devolving into ad hominen attacks from both sides. As the shouting escalated, Vidal called Buckley a “cryto-Nazi”; the National Review editor, rather out of character, lost his temper and hurled the world “queer” at his opponent, much to the shock and consternation of the ABC brass and the censors.
The bottom line, however, told a different story.
“I think initially ABC was embarrassed about what happened, but everyone else looked at the ratings and realized that people wanted to watch this,” Mr. Neville said. “And what I think is tragic, in a way, is that Buckley and Vidal were both very smart men who, for the most part, were not this petty and personal on television. I think it was not their finest moment, but I think what the networks got from it is that you don’t need people of intelligence to create sparks; you just need the sparks.”
Less than a decade later, Sidney Lumet’s film “Network” satirized a near-future where news is effectively replaced by shock and bloviation, with the ranting Howard Beale (Peter Finch, in his Oscar-winning — and final — film performance) exhorting the public to get “mad as hell” and not take it anymore.
Life imitated art, with CNN going on the air in 1980, soon enough filling its round-the-clock roster with commentators in addition to coverage. Fox News and the rest weren’t far behind. Arguably, Howard Beale is the fictional grandfather of figureheads like Glenn Beck.
“Commentary is cheap,” Mr. Neville said of the 24-hour news outlets. “You don’t have to send camera people to foreign countries. You can just have people come into the studio and talk.”
The filmmakers maintain that their aim in realizing “Best of Enemies” was not to “side” with one man or “get caught up in the left and right of it,” but rather to elucidate the ways in which people argue.
Mr. Neville hopes that substantive debate can be had on television, especially during next year’s elections, rather than the theatrics of the “straw men” of cable news, which he said would “be something that would actually be good for our country.”
Mr. Gordon adds that what is needed in the 21st century is a “failing network” to rejigger the cable news model to be a more civilized bastion of debate rather than the home of polemics it is now.
“Let us try this insane idea of giving smart people room to have real dialogue, and let’s see if we can develop an audience,” he said.
Mr. Gordon believes one reason that Buckley, still held up as a bastion of conservative thought, could not flourish in the contemporary media culture is that there is “no place to grow.”
“Instead, it’s plastic window dressing,” Mr. Gordon said of the current media environment. “It’s about how commentary on TV has become, instead of about the comment, about appearance. That’s why there are no Buckleys, there are no more Vidals, because where will they make themselves known?”
“At a certain point, it’s not about the substance,” said Mr. Neville. “It’s just about the conflict.”
While the National Review sponsored one of the screenings of “Best of Enemies” at AFI Docs, Buckley’s son, Christopher, refused to be interviewed by the filmmakers.
Buckley died in 2008; Vidal followed him in 2012. In addition to archival footage of the two men, Mr. Neville and Mr. Gordon brought in Hollywood heavyweights Kelsey Grammer and John Lithgow to read the words of Buckley and Vidal, respectively, off-camera.
“I take it as a high compliment that both sides, fans of each man, are fans of the movie,” said Mr. Gordon. “Because I think that indicates we achieved the goal of not making it about the argument but about how we argue — not making it about one side or the other but about how the sides come together and have fallen apart.”
Although acolytes of both Buckley and Vidal praise the film, the rift between the men never healed. Each wrote scathing attack pieces about the other — which led to libel suits and countersuits — long after the ’68 election was settled and Richard Nixon became president. Upon Buckley’s 2008 passing, Vidal wrote a “nonobituary” on TruthDig in which he cheerily decreed of his old adversary: “RIP WFB — in hell.”
“To [Vidal], having him and Buckley’s name in the same sentence only works if the words ’conquered Buckley’ was in there,” said Mr. Neville. “He didn’t like being treated on an equal playing field.”
• Eric Althoff can be reached at twt@washingtontimes.com.
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