Robert Gordon
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Sundance 2015, Dispatch 1: Best of Enemies and Eden
Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s documentary Best of Enemies, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, details the particulars of the eight televised debates between William Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal held on ABC in 1968 — four during the Republican convention in Miami, another four during the infamous Democratic one in Chicago. A very prototypically Sundance-y doc (destined for TV and classrooms, “audience-friendly”), this is a consideration of an Important Topic fleshed out with contextual talking heads and zipped up into a brief, digestible package. Given sufficient interest in the subject, it’s the kind of thing I’d generally watch on […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 24, 2015 -
“We Brought the Fear, He Brought the Loathing”: Best of Enemies | Directors Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? It’s heady air in the worlds of William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, two esteemed public intellectuals of, mostly, the latter 20th century. Buckley died before we began this film but Gore was alive, if in his declining years. Cantankerous and mean in his prime, he’d commented on his own persona saying, “Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.” Gore not only didn’t […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2015
