The Best of Enemies

“This might have been both the most entertaining and the saddest film of this year’s Sundance: a riveting gabfest that slowly becomes a lament for the Republic.”—Vulture.com

In the summer of 1968 television news changed forever. Dead last in the ratings, ABC hired two towering public intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. William F. Buckley Jr. was a leading light of the new conservative movement and Gore Vidal, a Democrat and cousin to Jackie Onassis, was a leftist novelist and polemicist. Believing that each other’s political ideologies were dangerous for America, their explosive exchanges ranged from policy debates to vitriolic name-calling with a level of wit that any stand-up comedian would envy. Ratings skyrocketed and a new era in public discourse was born. The wickedly entertaining The Best of Enemies has skilled directors Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville (Twenty Feet from Stardom) unleash a highbrow blood sport that marked the dawn of pundit television as we know it. (88 mins., DCP)