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Best of Enemies

7.2 87 mins Documentary   History   2015
Tremolo Productions   Media Ranch   Motto Pictures   Magnolia Pictures   Participant   ITVS   JustFilms / Ford Foundation  
Director(s): Robert Gordon Morgan Neville

Release Date: 31 Fri, Jul 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?"

Casts of Best of Enemies

Gore Vidal

as Self

Kelsey Grammer

as Voice of William F. Buckley

John Lithgow

as Voice of Gore Vidal

Dick Cavett

as Self

Noam Chomsky

as Self (archival)

Reid Buckley

as Self

Andrew Sullivan

as Self

Todd Gitlin

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

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)

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