Best of Enemies

Robert Gordon & Morgan Neville – 2015 – USA

I couldn’t suppress a grin when I first learned that this film existed; not just because it’s about such a seemingly minor incident in 60s history, but because that incident is one of my favorites.  Conservative ideologue William F. Buckley, Jr. and iconoclastic author Gore Vidal were invited to provide commentary on the 1968 Democratic and Republican conventions.  Rarely were specifics about the proceedings discussed during the resulting broadcasts, though, as the overwhelming social upheaval of the day took center stage; race riots, war protests, assassinations, police brutality, etc.  Buckley and Vidal couldn’t stand each other even before the conventions, and the open hostility between them turned into major episodes in both of their biographies, and certainly set the stage for the fast-paced debate format of TV shows like The McLaughlin Group, Crossfire and Hardball, where pundits are only heard to the extent that they can shout down their opponents.  Unlike the participants in such shows, however, Buckley and Vidal were not snarky hacks but intellectuals and renegades in the political establishment.  Exactly the same age, born in the fall of 1925, they each grew up aspiring to be men-of-letters, cultivating transatlantic accents and patrician personae while becoming accomplished debaters.  They both ran for political office in the 60s, and lost; cementing their positions as outsiders and commentators rather than players.  What’s remarkable about their televised encounters is how evenly matched they were and how thoroughly they got under each other’s skin.  No mutual respect seemed to evolve through the end of their lives either; only cold silence punctuated occasionally by barbs in the press and even lawsuits.  I liked Gordon and Neville’s organization of the material in this documentary.  It’s not strictly chronological, but pauses throughout the story to give background and insight about Buckley’s and Vidal’s motivations.  What the film really drives home, additionally, is the beginning of the decline of the intellectual in American discourse.  A mere few decades later, the thought of people with unique ideas and such a remarkable command of the language and a respect for history getting so much airtime is almost alien.