You might see a film about William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal’s ten televised debates during the 1968 presidential conventions as an opportunity to bask in eloquent, pointed repartee. You might also enjoy the spectacle of two of the foremost intellectuals of their time coming very close to physically beating the crap out of each other. You might not expect, however, to find yourself weeping — for the state of the republic and the poisoned media landscape, for the decay of the American social contract. Yet here we are. Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s masterful Best of Enemies leaves you with an overwhelming sense of despair. It’s not just a great documentary, it’s a vital one. The setup is simple, and beautiful — so simple and beautiful that I’m shocked nobody’s tried to make this movie until now. In 1968, the struggling ABC network, dead last behind CBS and NBC (“They’d be fourth, but there were only three,” quips one talking head), didn’t have the resources for the kind of convention coverage that their competitors did. So ABC decided to let the flamboyant, unapologetic Vidal and Buckley — one a dapper left-wing bomb-thrower, the other the very backbone of arch-conservatism — debate the issues of the day. Point-counterpoint. A novel idea at the time for television news.
"I was reading this snotty novel called ‘Burr,’ by Gore Vidal, and read how he mocked our Founding Fathers. And as a reasonable, decent, fair-minded person who happened to be a Democrat, I thought, ‘You know what? What he’s writing about, this mocking of people that I revere, and the country that I love, and that I would lay my life down to defend — just like every one of you in this room would, and as many of you in this room have when you wore the uniform of this great country — I knew that that was not representative of my country. And at that point I put the book down and I laughed. I was riding a train. I looked out the window and I said, ‘You know what? I think I must be a Republican. I don’t think I’m a Democrat.’" - Michele Bachmann, in a 2010 speech to Michigan Republicans.
Legendary and pioneering gay author, actor, atheist, playwright, screenwriter, failed Senate candidate, Tony nominee, and all-around badass Gore Vidal has died at the age of 86. Vidal was preceded in death by Howard Austen, his partner of 53 years, and will be buried next to him in Washington DC's Rock Creek Cemetery.
Vidal died Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills of complications of pneumonia, said nephew Burr Steers. Vidal was a literary juggernaut who wrote 25 novels, including historical works such as “Lincoln” and “Burr” and satires such as “Myra Breckinridge” and “Duluth.” He was also a prolific essayist whose pieces on politics, sexuality, religion and literature -- once described as “elegantly sustained demolition derbies” -- both delighted and inflamed and in 1993 earned him a National Book Award for his massive “United States Essays, 1952-1992.”
Threaded throughout his pieces are anecdotes about his famous friends and foes, who included Anais Nin, Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Eleanor Roosevelt and a variety of Kennedys. He counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Al Gore among his relatives. He also wrote Broadway hits, screenplays, television dramas and a trio of mysteries under a pseudonym that remain in print after 50 years.
With his famously unrepentant pomposity and his ever-present sneering smugness, it was sometimes quite hard to like Gore Vidal. But the man was never ever boring and he was open and unapologetic about his sexuality at a time when few others dared to do the same. That's a pretty great epitaph. Below I've cited a few of Vidal's most famous stage, screen, and television moments from the earlier times in his more than six decades in the spotlight.
Vidal Vs Buckley In 1968 douchebag columnist William F. Buckley called Vidal a "queer" and threatened to "sock you in your goddamn face" on national television. The next year Buckley and Vidal traded libel suits after exchanging a flurry of insults and accusations in the national press. Vidal's suit was dismissed, but Buckley won a large (for its time) settlement for his legal fees and a retraction from Esquire, who had published Vidal's claim that a youthful Buckley had burned a church in retaliation for its pastor selling a house to a Jewish family. Buckley successfully sued again in 2003 when Vidal republished the same essay in an anthology. Below is the clip from the above-mentioned talk show incident, which remains one of the most famous incidents in live television history.
Myra Beckenridge Of Gore Vidal's two dozen novels, none were as controversial as 1968's Myra Breckinridge, which was widely denounced as pornographic for its graphic S&M scenes, orgies, and its transsexual title character who rapes a man with a strap-on dildo. Later the character loses her breast implants in a car accident and unable to get female hormones, she returns to living as a man. Today Myra Breckinridge is considered to be an American satirical classic and is often referenced in queer studies courses. The 1970 X-rated movie version starring Raquel Welch was a colossal flop and usually lands near of top of Worst Films Ever Made lists. However it has become something of a camp classic among older gay men. Below is the movie's rape scene. The inserted bits of older films drew howls of outrage from Hollywood and from the Nixon White House, who unsuccessfully demanded that then U.S. Ambassador Shirley Temple be edited from the film before its general release.
The Best Man In 1960 Vidal was nominated for a Tony Award for his enduring smash The Best Man, which is a look at a presidential nomination battle during which one candidate threatens to falsely claim that his opponent had a gay affair, a theme which that era's Broadway audience found both shocking and irresistible. In 1964 The Best Man was made into a hit movie starring Henry Fonda. Just a few weeks ago the current Broadway revival of the stage version won the 2012 Tony and since there appear to be no available clips of the original, here are some scenes from this year's iteration of Gore Vidal's most lasting play.
"She is too stupid to deserve an answer." - Gore Vidal, responding to Michele Bachmann's claim that she became a Republican after being horrified by Vidal's "trashing" of the Founding Fathers in his 1973 novel, Burr.
"We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush. Don’t ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren’t any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I’m never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it." - Gore Vidal, speaking lengthily with the Times UK.
"Now, to Newsweek’s obituary of this late dishonorable American in which my editor-friend assures me that his brain-dead son Christopher had a hand: “Buckley bridled at bullies.” And who was the bully in context? Myself. He was also an expert at changing indefensible contexts. Buckley maintained that I supported revolutionaries who favored murdering U.S. Marines. Yet all the talk of Nazis etc. was started by Buckley. There was no lie he would not tell to get back at those who defeated him in debate.
"The current editors at Newsweek appear to have listened eagerly to his son Christopher, who is guiding them to a benign view of what had been a most hysterical queen (WFB), much admired by a media that takes everyone at his own evaluation of himself as they did with Capote, who told them that he was a great writer like Proust (pronounced Prowst) and the hacks ate it up.
"The correct assessment of any reputation today is so far from plausible reality that it might be a good thing if the hacks of a magazine like Newsweek steered clear of characterizing those disliked by the advertisers; hence his creepy son’s depiction of me as a “bully” when I was simply attending to one, and then—o, joy!—Buckley called me a “queer” and actually threatened me with physical violence, so great was his testosterone level. Next, the loyal son, suspecting that the pejorative use of “queer” is politically incorrect in mag-land, Christopher rambles into a story about his father’s kindness to a Mr. Bauman who had lost his seat in Congress after the congressman had been caught while soliciting Oral Sex from a 16-year-old male (note how prurient Newsweek’s prose is, in describing undesirable people). Chris weeps into his computer as he describes how Dad gave the poor sinner of the flesh an envelope containing $10,000 (I bet?) in cash adding, mysteriously, “He was a knightly man”: Who was—the cocksucker recipient of Buckley’s charity? Or his admirer, Mr. Buckley himself?—Bauman was very right wing, it is said. RIP WFB—in hell." - Gore Vidal, on Newsweek's lionization of William F. Buckley.
