Best of Enemies

Buckley 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?"

Documentary History

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

(Self (archival))

Reid Buckley

(Self)

Andrew Sullivan

(Self)

Todd Gitlin

(Self)

Brooke Gladstone

(Self)

Paul Newman

(Self (archival))

Arthur Miller

(Self (archival))

Muhammad Ali

(Self (archival))

Sam Donaldson

(Self (archival))

Norman Mailer

(Self (archival))

Matt Tyrnauer

(Self)

Godfrey Cambridge

(Self (archival))

John McWhorter

(Self)

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

(Self)

James J. Kilpatrick

(Self (archival))

Richard J. Daley

(Self (archival))

Everett Dirksen

(Self (archival))

James Wolcott

(Self)

Woody Allen

(Self (archival))