Best of Enemies
2015Buckley vs. Vidal. 2 Men. 10 Debates. Television Would Never Be the Same.
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?"
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Gore Vidal
Self
William F. Buckley Jr.
Self
Kelsey Grammer
Voice of William F. Buckley
John Lithgow
Voice of Gore Vidal
Dick Cavett
Self
Christopher Hitchens
Self
Noam Chomsky
(archival)
Reid Buckley
Self
Andrew Sullivan
Self
Todd Gitlin
Self
Brooke Gladstone
Self
Paul Newman
(archival)
Arthur Miller
(archival)
Muhammad Ali
(archival)
Sam Donaldson
(archival)
Norman Mailer
(archival)
Matt Tyrnauer
Self
Godfrey Cambridge
(archival)
John McWhorter
Self
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Self
James J. Kilpatrick
(archival)
Richard J. Daley
(archival)
Everett Dirksen
(archival)
James Wolcott
Self
Woody Allen
(archival)
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