Blu Ray Review: BEST OF ENEMIES

Out today on Blu ray & DVD:

BEST OF ENEMIES

(Dirs. Robert Gordon & Morgan Neville, 2015)

A documentary about a series of debates between two rival intellectuals largely made up of grainy archival footage from nearly half a century ago may sound like a snore, but Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville's BEST OF ENEMIES, a thorough breakdown of the televised feud between the conservative William F. Buckley and the liberal Gore Vidal in the late ‘60s is really intriguing, incendiary stuff.

Directors Morgan Neville (whose excellent 2013 doc 20 FEET FROM STARDOM won the Best Documentary Oscar) and Robert Gordon succinctly set the scene: in 1968, ABC, being the lowest rated of the three networks, decides to spice up what they were calling their “Unconventional Convention Coverage” of the Republican and Democratic national conventions by hiring Buckley and Vidal to do live commentary.

The background of both men was remarkedly similar as both had come from privileged upbringings, went to posh New England boarding schools, became acclaimed authors but failed politicians, had powerful political connections, and both spoke in haughty upper class accents, but their ideologies clashed like crazy.

Imagine two Frasier Cranes, one right-wing; one left-wing, pitted against each other, which shouldn’t be too hard as the filmmakers have Frasier himself, the conservative actor Kelsey Grammer, reading selected writings of Buckley’s (left-wing actor John Lithgow reads for Vidal) to fill in gaps in the presentation.

The debates themselves, which commence at the Republican National Convention in Miami in August ’68, are juicy, edgy affairs in which Buckley and Vidal viciously argue about the candidates, Vietnam, crime, poverty, and the civil rights movement among other incendiary issues.

Buckley several times deridingly indentifies Vidal as the “author of ‘Myra Breckinridge’,” referring to Vidal’s controversial sexually satirical novel that many conservative critics, including Buckley, considered pornographic.

For his part, Vidal gets in some quips such as that Buckley is “always to the right, I think, and almost always in the wrong,” and that he’s the “Mary Antoinette of the right wing.”

But it was the ninth debate in Chicago in which the two really came to a head.

In a heated discussion of the climate of the Democratic convention in which Buckley’s defense of the strong-arm tactics deployed by Mayor Richard Daley's police against anti-Vietnam War protestors causes Vidal to call him “crypto-Nazi.”

Buckley loses it: “Listen to me you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered!”

This shocking moment - these things were simply not said on TV at the time - was dissected in pieces written by both men for Esquire about the episode, which resulted in lawsuits (Buckley sued Vidal for his insinuation in his response article that Buckley was a closeted homosexual; Vidal countersued) that went on for years before being settled.

Buckley biographer, and interview subject, Sam Tanenhaus claims that Buckley “couldn’t let this thing go,” while Vidal’s close friend and editor Matt Tyrnauer talks about watching a VHS copy of the debates several times with Vidal until Tyrnauer felt like they were “edging into SUNSET BOULEVARD/Norma Desmond territory.”

Gordon and Neville convincingly posit that the Buckley/Vidal debates were the dawn of the era of pundit TV, in which corporate media entities like FOX News and MSNBC have taken those original commentators’ techniques to the bank, while no argument comes anywhere close to be resolved.

To further make their case, clips of talking heads shouting at each other conclude the film, including the now famous clip in which The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart goes on Fox News’ Crossfire knockoff Hannity & Colmes in 2003 and tells them that they’re “doing theater when you should be doing debate.”

It’s a great capper to this must see poli-doc that takes us back to when a couple of incredibly articulate men who as one of their debate moderator, ABC anchor Howard K. Smith, puts it “demonstrate how the English language ought to be used” - that is, before their intense hatred for one another got out of control.

That’s when it became the theater that Stewart bemoaned, but unfortunately that’s also when it was decided by the powers that be that it was good TV. The real takeaway here is that the Buckley/Vidal debates was the last and only time that that sort of theater was good TV.

Special Features: Interview with Directors Neville & Gordon, over an hour of Bonus Interviews with Commentators including Christopher Hitchens, Dick Cavett, James Wolcott, and Andrew Sullivan; and Theatrical Trailer.

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Former Employee Anthony Rhodes Shares Some Colony Theater Stories

Earlier this month I posted about The Colony Theater’s closing and asked for folks to send in their stories about their experiences at the venue. I’ve only posted one so far – Brian Hill’s amusing story about seeing PULP FICTION at the Colony back in ’94 – but for this installment I’ve got several that were sent in by Anthony Rhodes, a friend who I used to work with at the theater several years ago.

Anthony, who is the front man for the Raleigh band Army of Dog (pictured above), worked at the Colony from December 2006 - March 2011. 

First up, Anthony recalls how he got his job at the theater:

“I’m a musician. I used to be an aspiring writer. I never got anything published. I wasn't terribly good at writing. I'm better at music, I guess - I've had some marginal success in that world, at least. But some friends and I put out a literary journal back in 2006. It was mostly local writers, and we were proud of it. We even managed to get Quail Ridge Books to put our journal on their shelves.

Shortly after that, we created a MySpace page. And the very first friend request we got from from The Colony Theater. We of course accepted it.

A couple weeks before that, I'd fallen on hard times and I was looking for a second job. And because of that MySpace request, I messaged the theater through the literary journal page on MySpace. I asked if they had any openings.

The Colony Theater MySpace account messaged me back, and offered me a job. It was from the general manager - he was the one who'd bought our literary journal, and he’d liked it enough to send us a friend request. And that's how I came to work at The Colony.”

This story Anthony calls “I Guess You Didn’t Realize”:

“The register wasn't a register - it was a cash drawer, and we all had to do the math in our heads. Us employees - we had just about every price of every possible combination of everything, and the resulting change you were owed, memorized in our heads.

Unless you paid with a $50 dollar bill. Because nobody ever did that. But sometimes, people did.

People are used to handing you money and immediately getting their tickets or concessions, without pause. If as a patron, you hand us a $50 dollar bill, we didn't have that memorized, and we had to think for a moment.

One night, such a patron handed me a $50 dollar bill when his total was going to be $16. So I took a moment to think about what his change would be, instead of immediately knowing it, had he handed me a $20 dollar bill.

He became impatient, very quickly. And he started yelling numbers at me - a counterproductive thing to do when someone is doing math in their head.

And he totally messed up my internal math, and I got it wrong. He yelled at me for it, but I quickly corrected the error, and I gave him correct change. He told me I was a fucking moron, and gave me the finger.

Now the thing about working at The Colony was, at one moment you might be at the ticket window, and the next, you might be selling concessions. Your duties ebbed and flowed with the crowd and the line (or lack thereof at the ticket window).

And so as he came inside, I found myself also taking his concession order. He seemed surprised.

‘Yeah, you didn't know I'd be making your food too, did you?’ I said.

He looked a bit sheepish and ordered his concessions. He later came out of the movie and apologized to me, got a refill on his popcorn, and left a generous $5 in the tip jar.”

Anthony’s next recollection concerns when Godfrey Cheshire’s MOVING MIDWAY premiered at the Colony in 2007:

“In 2007 the theater hosted the premiere of the award winning documentary, MOVING MIDWAY.

The cinematographer/co-producer was present, and he was a very nice guy. We’re used to premieres like this, and often, the people behind the movie acted very entitled and aloof and treated us employees like shit. Not this guy.

He told us about his movie and answered our questions, and we talked about other movies, and other things in general.

A few months later, my Uncle Charlie died. At the graveside service, I stood a ways back, just taking it all in. A man walked up to me. He said ‘you look familiar.’ I told him he did too. I asked him his name. He said ‘I’m Jay Spain.’

I told him it didn't ring a bell. He said he was in movies, and I asked him to name a couple as I worked at a theater - maybe our paths had crossed.

He said he produced MOVING MIDWAY. But he didn't want to make that a thing. He was just there to pay his respects to his Uncle Charlie. My Uncle Charlie.

Jay Spain and I are cousins, and we're still in touch now all these years later. Because of The Colony Theater and our Uncle Charlie.”

Finally, Anthony has a anecdote that he dubbs “My Dark Passenger”:

“For my five year run at the Colony, my shifts were Wednesday nights, Friday nights and Sunday afternoon. I loved working there, and I never took a shift off.

But one Christmas, after I'd been there about three years, my wife wanted to visit her family in Georgia, so I asked for the weekend off, and I was granted that.

My wife and I ended up coming back a day early, and I could have worked my normal Sunday shift. But I'd already gotten it off, and it was already covered, and not only that, I'd bought her the first season of Dexter for Christmas, so we decided I'd just stay home, and we'd watch that, instead.

Meanwhile at the theater, the first day I'd ever taken off, Michael C. Hall and his wife at the time (his sister Deborah on the show) - they came to the theater. While I was two minutes away at my house, watching the first season at home with my wife.

Son of a bitch.”

Be like Anthony! Send in your stories about the Colony to boopbloop7@gmail.com or message them to me on Facebook.

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STEVE JOBS: An Intensely Talky Character Study In 3 Acts

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

STEVE JOBS (Dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)

As screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and director Danny Boyle have stressed repeatedly, this highly anticipated portrait of the late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs isn’t a biopic - it’s an intensely talky character study told in three acts, each set backstage at crucial product launches in Jobs’ career.

The first third is set in 1984, at the launch for the original Macintosh at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in Cupertino, California. We meet Jobs (Michael Fassbender in his sharpest performance yet and with a flawless American accent to boot) fretting over making the computer say “hello” to introduce itself when turned on for the presentation.

In snappy, witty dialogue largely delivered within walks and talks – a very familiar Sorkin device – Jobs argues with key Mac engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), and his trusted marketing chief Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) over the issue.

Hertzfeld protests: ““We're not a pit-crew at Daytona, this can’t be fixed in seconds.”

“You don’t have seconds – you had three weeks. The universe was created in a third of that time,” Jobs responds.

“Well, someday, you’ll have to tell us how you did it,” Hertzfeld replies through a smirk.

Yep, there’s that Sorkin snap!

Floating in and out of Jobs’ orbit are Jeff Daniels as Apple CEO John Sculley, who needles Jobs about how they used real skin-heads in the famous “1984” Apple television commercial; Seth Rogen as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, who wants Jobs to give credit to the Apple II computer team in his speech; and most importantly Katherine Waterson as Jobs’ ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan, and her five-year-old daughter Lisa (Makenzie Moss), whose paternity Jobs denies.

These interactions take us up until Jobs is introduced onstage, then the film transitions to the man and his team preparing for the launch of the NeXT computer system at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco. This time our genius is worried that the dimensions are off on what’s supposed to be a perfect cube of a computer.

As he makes the rounds through the facility, Jobs argues with the same folks - Sculley, Woz, Brennan - but he’s beginning to bond with his daughter, played at age 9 by Ripley Sobo, so there’s some significant development there.

The concluding third of the film concerns the launch event for the iMac in 1998 at the same venue as the ’84 Macintosh, and yet again we see Jobs go through the tangled motions with his minions (no, not those Minions!). Perla Haney-Jardine fills the shoes of his daughter at 19, who, of course, gets to finally connect with her father.

There’s some patented Sorkin character cutesiness present in such moments as Jobs telling his Walkman carrying daughter that he’s going to put “a thousand songs in your pocket” (the iPod, duh!), and when Wozniak and Jobs bicker over a Beatles analogy (“I’m tired of being Ringo when I know I was John,” Woz complains), but overall it’s a meticulously sculpted screenplay that’s a shoo-in for a Oscar nomination. I prefer Sorkin's script for THE SOCIAL NETWORK, but this is in the same lofty class.

As some scenes are strained and some beats are repetitive, STEVE JOBS falls just short of greatness, much like the man himself as these three spotlighted products were financial failures, but its strengths which lie in the delightfully punchy performances by Fassbender and everyone in the cast (seriously, there is no weak link in this ensemble), the volumes of perfectly on point one-liners, and Boyle’s inspired stylistic choices like using different film formats for each era (’84 in 16mm, ’88 in 35mm, and ’98 in digital) elevate it into a series of speculated conversations well worth cinematically eavesdropping on.

Jobs was a visionary, but, yeah, he could also be bit of a dick. Boyle, Sorkin, and Fassbender’s take on the man is that he was well aware of that, but it couldn’t be helped because “there is no off position on the genius switch,” as David Letterman would say.

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