The April Issue: The 50th Anniversary of 'All the President’s Men' With Sean Fennessey

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Hello media consumers.

Welcome to the April issue of the press box.

Brian Curtis here, along with producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin.

Today we come to celebrate the birthday of a movie.

The movie is all the presidents men, which turns 50 years old this week.

And since I've been in journalism, I've met reporters that think of all the

presidents men as their hype song that were inspired to get into reporting by

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstainer, maybe Robert Redford Dustin Hoffman.

I've also met reporters who think of all the presidents men as a slick

exercise in myth making that say the movie makes it seem like woodwood and

Bernstein alone brought down Richard Nixon.

Now what I'd like to do on the movie's 50th birthday is look at how this inspirational

mythic thing came together because it turns out that all the presidents men has

a lot of bylines.

As we'll see, Robert Redford's impact on Woodward and Bernstain's book was profound

and Woodward and Bernstein and their colleagues of the now embattled Washington

Post had a big impact on the movie they got made.

Now there's nobody I'd rather knock on doors with at night than

Sean Finnecy who knows the thing or two about journalism and how great movies get made.

Welcome to the April issue, the men behind all the presidents men.

Sean Finnecy, the editor who famously said that people lie during the day and tell the truth at night.

I'm happy to be here.

Glad you're here.

There's no one I want to share a byline on this with rather than you.

That's a nice way of thinking of a podcast.

I'm not sure if I ever thought about it that way.

We don't use old terms like that anymore doing.

Author ship can one be the author of a podcast?

Well, I got a lot of notes down here.

Let's give it a whirl.

So many things to say about all the presidents men on its 50th birthday.

But I thought we'd start here.

How does this movie play in the age of Trump and the age of the downsized Washington post?

Well, it certainly makes it seem like a much bigger and more powerful institution in 1976 than

it is in 2026. And I guess there's something a little bit depressing about that.

But by the same token, a lot of the tension of the movie is this idea that

getting the story wrong would somehow imperil the future.

And that there's something delicate in the balance between Washington and its strongest

local newspaper that doesn't really seem to operate in the same way.

And I think because a lot of newspapers have become much more consumed by

nationalizing their audiences and then ultimately becoming

imperil by that, there's just no way to imagine the post being a character in a movie in the way

that it is in this movie. But I think there's also something kind of absurd about Trump's Teflon

existence that there's not really anything or anyone that could possibly take him down in the

way that Nixon is taken down in this movie. So it's an artifact of a time and it makes us nostalgic

for something I didn't even live through and it feels very impossible right now.

Nixon resigned. Trump will never resign. Well, I probably not.

Probably. I'm working on something. I've got a scoop. Oh my goodness. I can't wait to see

what that is. But it was funny is how that reflects in the journalist because we just read this

giant slab of journalism from Maggie Heyberman and Jonathan Swan about all the war planning

before Iran. And I think about that with journalists because if you write the great

muck-breaking piece about the CEO of the company and the CEO resigns versus you write the great

muck-breaking piece in the CEO doesn't resign. That's a lesser achievement weirdly within the business.

It shouldn't be. It's the same piece. It's the same facts. But somehow we can deny it all we want.

Yeah. But it is it is a lesser merit bad. So it's funny when we have all these stories about

Donald Trump. Trump's not going anywhere. Donald Trump's not hurt in a material way by those

stories. And I do think that plays differently within the business. I think that that point of

view that we understand that Trump learned from Roy Cohn of the sort of never relent, never given,

never apologized has poured it over to a lot of different modes of life. So the modern

condition is much more sort of like posting through it, like never acknowledging that you are

amidst a scandal. And if you do, you just deny, deny, deny. And that didn't doesn't seem possible

in the world that this movie creates. You know, it is very possible in the actual execution of

the story in the way that Nixon moved through the story and that sort of like extended efforts over

a long period of time for this story to play out. It's something that's I think a little bit forgotten

is just how long it took these reporters to unpack this story. Other reporters participating in

the work on this story over time. And just how sort of like slow moving car crash, the watergate

fall felt. And there was a lot of denying. Yes. And so, but the dam did break, right? Eventually it

did work. And Nixon did resign and disappeared into a kind of fit of drunken anonymity. And so

that feels impossible now. Like I said, but I do feel that other companies, other people,

other organizations have kind of picked up on a lot of Trump's moves and strategies over the

last 10 years. And so that this level of journalism actually just feels more difficult than it did

50 years ago. I was smile when Karl Bernstein these days goes on CNN and says, this is quote,

worse than watergate. And he's not wrong. Yeah. But there's a lot of worse than watergate in the

universe, as you say, without many consequences. The post is also interesting to me, because this is

more in the background of the movie than the foreground. But the post was always number two.

It was if I may venture a metaphor, the meds. Now it's more like the A's. But in the day,

it was like the meds. And so, you know, you know, this paper that's always chasing the times.

They get them, right? They win the Pulitzer for their watergate coverage because they stay on

the story where other papers were kind of intermittently in and out of the story. And now with the

downgraded post, it's this glorious history that kind of hangs over the whole place. You know,

Shoemaker and I talk about all the time about these old media organizations almost haunted by

their past. When there's, you know, when his Walter Cronkite coming back to rescue a Barry

Weiss's CBS, this works like that a little bit with the post. Yeah. I think if you wanted to

extrapolate that out, I think you could say that that is the case for almost any legacy media

institution. You know, we're at the this critical moment where Paramount and Warner Bros. are going

to merge. We've seen the kind of desecration of CBS news over time. I think ESPN is going through

like a really difficult period of transition right now. And a lot of people ourselves included

are a little hung up on our own nostalgic feelings about that network and what it represents and what

it has become. There's not really anything in terms of legacy structures that is operating in

exactly the same hallowed way that it did. And you know, like technology is a factor in that

respect, I do think that the political climate of the last 10 years is a pretty significant factor

because it doesn't feel like anything nothing moves the needle anymore. Like there's not, and that's

related to a larger monocultural conversation too about how everyone's kind of in their own little

pods, their own little universes of interest. So you put all those things together and a movie like

this, which seem to communicate so many big things about the way the power operates and can be

upended, the way that journalism can and should work. And also it really gratifies a lot of

mythology of Hollywood, like a stardom and creativity and articulating the craftsmanship behind

making movies like it's such a rich text in that way that it's just kind of become this

museum piece because it all feels so difficult to understand in our modern context.

Remember the line in Tinker Taylor soldiers spy where they're talking about the British

service during World War II and it's like, Englishmen could be proud then. I look at this movie

and they're like, posties could be proud then. Yeah. We had an MO. We knew what to do.

But it's such an interesting point about the movie too though because the way that these guys are

framed, and this is mostly true, is that their upstarts who don't know what they don't know and that

most of the institutionalists who have been living and working in Washington newspapers for 30 or 40

years are like, these guys are fuck ups. Like this isn't going to work out. Like, and there's a

great moment late in the film where after a budget meeting, kind of three chief editors are

sitting around the table and the one editor is like, I just don't believe this story. Period.

And I think that indicates something about how this is like a flashpoint moment in time. The

Washington Post did amazing, has done amazing work over decades, but that this is kind of a once

in a lifetime moment. The other thing too is that in the 70s in America, there was this sense that

a younger generation of people were maybe changing the world, right? In kind of the aftermath of

68 in the summer of love. And this convulsive moment after all these 60s icons are killed,

like there's this big down moment in the 70s. And this story and the kind of like

expansion of this story, I think like revived a potential for a kind of like, maybe we can change

the world. And maybe the people who have been sitting in power in the aftermath of all this

sadness in the late 60s, maybe we can grab it back. No, it turns out that that was not the case at

all. In fact, the second half of the 70s like really undermines that feeling, but there's

something very aspirational about this. And I don't think we think of reporters as rock stars

in the same way that we used to. I think there I actually don't know what the identity of

the crusading reporter is to most Americans now because it seems like most Americans have such a

fraught relationship to the media. Yeah, and it's not just a straight conservative liberal thing either

to mention Maggie Haberman one more time. Who's madder at Maggie Haberman right now? Is it the left

or is it the right? Yeah. Is it is it is it Donald Trump or is it you know the the died in the

wool Democrat liberal Democrats who subscribed to the newspaper? But guy on blue sky. Yeah. Who's

really, really angry. I thought what we could do today is go through all the presents men and

look at the various creators of this movie one by one. Sure. Let's start with Robert Redford.

Agreed that he is the most important creative force behind the movie. The producer of the star

and one of this clearly one of the shadow authors of the whole story. The first person to see that

there was a movie in Woodward and Bernstein's story. He got interested in them in 1972. This is an

amazing period for Robert Redford. 73 he would release the sting and the way we were.

He pretty much at the top of Hollywood at that point. So if he had his pick of projects,

what kind of projects would you say Redford was interested in? You know we did a hall of fame

episode about him last year on the big picture and it was I rewatched almost everything that he made

and there are a lot of recurring themes in terms of what fascinates him. I would say a kind of

swaggering nobility is probably the thing he's most interested in and that evolves as he gets

into the 80s and 90s and starts to recognize his own age. But there's something about flawed but not

unlikable men who have strong chins and have a moral and ethical core that kind of dominates that

period of time. And he there's gradations inside of that role. You know the way we were is also a

movie about social change in a lot of ways. It's a romance but it's about the kind of like

warring ideals of these two strong-minded people. Three days of the condor is about a guy who's not

really a political thinker who finds himself ensnared in a much more ornate political spy-laden world.

And so he's always kind of playing someone who's like this doesn't seem right. Why is this not right?

Let me see if I can change the not-rightness of this world that I find myself in. And that extends to

his activism, his interest in ecology and the environment, his interest in independent

filmmaking and like breaking systems as a public person. Really fascinating guy. I mean, you know,

the candidate is another movie he made around this time which we've talked about before on the show,

which is this really circumspect look at what motivates people to get into public life.

And he's a person who you see William Golden writing about this and his relationship to Redford

over the years because they worked together in the late 60s and then he re-encounters him in the

early 70s when his star has fully risen. And he's a very shrewd guy, Redford. And he kind of like,

you can see he kind of closes down all the opportunities to get inside of his world. And so

the only real way that he communicates about what he believes about the world is his public activism,

which is fairly straightforward in terms of what interests him. And then the movie characters,

the people that he picks to play. And this is probably one of the least controversial most iconic

and most definitional, I think, for the kind of movie Star of the Wars.

You and I were looking through some old magazines. Did you read the story? He tells about how he got

interested in Woodward and Bernstein? Remind me what was it. So Watergate has happened. He is

promoting the candidate and he's around a group of reporters. This is how he tells the story. And he

says, you know, he's asking them, hey, what is it about this Watergate? And he finds these reporters

to be very cynical. And almost to have this attitude of, it doesn't matter. Nixon's going to win

in a romp as Nixon does in 1972. Nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to come of this. And he

finds that almost disturbing because he's waiting a second. You know, if they broke the law, if they

were, you know, up to these dirty tricks, why isn't that something that should have consequences?

So then he reads a story about Woodward and Bernstein. A red one account where this was actually in

a Utah newspaper since he's living in Utah. And he gets interested. He's, oh, these are the guys.

That are actually thinking about the story in the way that I prefer. And he gets interested in

them. So he calls Woodward. By many accounts, Woodward blows them off. Woodward is kind of busy.

He keeps calling. He calls Woodward back in October 1972. That's how they've screwed up the Bob

Haldeman story. She's a big scene in the movie. Yes. And says, hey, still interested in you guys.

I don't understand the blowing off Robert Redford part of this story.

Because he's not. Is that possible? Like we are four years after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance

Kid at this point. I mean, we are like deep into Robert Redford is a very famous person. And what,

if, if, if who's it, who's a, you know, let's just say Austin Butler called you and was like,

hey, Brian, I'm really interested in the world of journalism and stories that you've been telling.

Do you have any time for me in what universe would you be like, I'm not busy? I'm more

more gonna. Because I don't Austin. Hello. Yeah, he's not interested in making a movie about a

media podcast. But we can never. Never know. Now, did that happen? Maybe not. Woodward and Bernstein

were very, very skeptical about people's interest in the story because they were trying to be

newspaper guys. Sure. They were being accused of being anti-Nixon, right? Here's Redford who

has some activism, as you say, in his life. You know, are they trying to keep that at a distance?

So they try and just concentrate on what's before them. What's just this huge unfolding story? Is

they're making their careers? It's a good question. What we do know happens is in the spring of 1973,

and I think I was actually able to pinpoint this date, Redford meets Woodward. Now, at this point,

Woodward and Bernstein have signed a contract to write the book that becomes all the presidents met.

Problem is they are struggling to write it because they are writing a very straightforward book about

all the presidents met. They're writing a Nixon book and about Nixon's henchman. And Redford

meets Woodward at a screening of the candidate. I believe this happened in April 1973. I believe

that Ted Kennedy was present for the screening of the candidates, so just, you know, a symbol of the

scene in your eyes. Sure. It's like a Robert Altman movie. And at this meeting, Redford tells Woodward,

you're writing the wrong book. The book is not about Nixon. The book is about you and Bernstein

reporting on Nixon. Yeah. Spoken like a movie star. Spoken like a movie star. And in this point,

he was thinking about a movie. And Woodward said he had scenes in the movie and his head already.

But this is amazing to me. And this is an undercovered part of the story because Robert Redford is not

just doing a movie about Woodward and Bernstein. He is performing what we call in the business a top

edit. Oh, yeah. Well, he's actually on his book. He's actually like a producer of the book.

You know, and that's really what a producer of a movie does is he looks at a script and he says

the aperture is not wide enough here. Or it's too wide. And I think there's something really

interesting about that. And I will say this is one of the very first examples of what we now call

parasociality that shifting the perspective from the kind of ink stained-wrench hard-bitten

news copy that could have defined the book to be coming a kind of like ride along a personal

exploration of how we did something and making ourselves characters, which is something that

meet the media is defined by now. That actually if you don't do that now, it's very difficult to

be successful. And unless you got in in the Maggie Haberman generation, you don't find a lot of

rising reporters like you've had like folks like A-Stead like on the show who just like know that

branding is a part of the work now. Public Tory was the first name of the community. That's absolutely

there is how I reported the story about Bill Bellachick in Jordan Hudson. And this you can say is

kind of a signal event in using that strategy to you know not just make yourself more famous,

though I do believe that what are in Bernstein were very conscious about their own personas and

fame throughout this process even in the 70s. But that it actually aided the story, it aided the

book, it aided the reportage like it all kind of worked together because this underdog story which

everybody loves the underdog story is part of what makes this so compelling that these two guys

relatively inexperienced kind of annoying honestly like when you really even when you look at how

they're characterized in the movie, they represent kind of the best of reporters which is like a kind

of an active annoyance. They're very the least likely people to have pulled the government down

from the outside in and it makes it work so well. And the fact that Redford nudged it into that

direction is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. But as you say it makes the movie about David

rather than about Goliath. It also solves a problem which is how do you portray Richard Nixon in the

70s on the screen? We saw this in the 90s Anthony Hopkins Oliver Stewart it's a good movie.

But when you watch it you're like is that Richard Nixon? Do I believe this man is Richard Nixon? Now

try and imagine trying to do that 1976 when Nixon is fresh in everybody's mind. Yeah.

You keep him off screen right it's about these reporters nobody knows what they look like nobody

knows what they sound like and you keep all Nixon and all the henchmen in archival footage essentially.

Yeah I think not to take us too far field here but you invoked Altman before and I think the best

representation of Nixon in movie history is Secret Honor which is a very small brilliant movie like a

play adaptation starting Philip Baker Hall about the aftermath of these events effectively like what

happened to him when he moved to San Clementine was you know trapped in his own office muttering into

a microphone about his own broken legacy and incredible performance in that movie but that is almost

like a ghost story and it tells you a little bit about how hard it is to capture the like living

political cartoon that Nixon is when we go back and look at him now and all of his gestures and

his turns of phrase and the fact that we've kind of lost sight a little bit of like what a gifted

statesman he was but what an evil kind of I don't know kind of like ugly person he was deep down to

and his psychology and the movie is makes this brilliant choice to just dispense with all of that

to just be like you'll see him a couple times on screen in newsreels and that's it that's the only

time he's he's a meaningful part of the movie. A couple of bits of amazing trivia here.

One is that Dustin Hoffman whose brother was a Washington economist also tried to buy the rights

to Woodward and Bernstein's story. Oh wow. And was told that Redford had beaten him to it.

So imagine if Dustin Hoffman had been the driving creative force to this movie I don't know the movie

actually would have even gotten made if that had happened. Well he had a lot of juice at that time.

It would have been a very different ride on the merry go round if Hoffman had been calling the shots

rather than Redford. Yeah and I think you can make the case that the lasting kind of power rankings

of Woodward and Bernstein might shift. In fact it is Dustin Hoffman's movie because he can only play

Bernstein you know Bernstein's back maybe. I never would have the list. The other interesting fact

I found I did not know this at all. So I spent a wonderful afternoon in the motion picture

academy archives because Alan Pekula's papers are in there. They were kind enough to have me in

and I was able to look through all these. Was it a heroic library? Exactly right and it was

wonderful these memos and he went to Washington all this stuff. We'll get into some of this later.

There's a note in there, unconfirmed but a note that Bob Woodward when he was considering whether

his book should become a movie called Pauline Kale for advice. I want you to wrap your mind

around that conversation between Bob Woodward and Pauline Kale. People would be surprised to learn

how common occurrence that was where stars and producers reached out to Pauline Kale to get

her perspective because she wrote so assiduously about films. So Warren Beatty doing it. I can

believe Bob Woodward calling Pauline Kale. Are there any more different journalistic beings on

this earth? They're both journalists right? They're both journalists. I don't you know

I don't know. I think there I do think there is some common cause and she's got some years on him too

and she knows this business really well. So that's an interesting thing that I'd like to hear

that conversation. So that's Redford. Let's talk about Woodward and Bernstein themselves.

When they start working on the Watergate story in summer 72 they have a lot in common. Woodward's 29,

Bernstein is 28, Woodward is divorced, Bernstein is very nearly divorced. Redford though sees this

as a story of two opposites. It's almost a buddy comedy. And I couple. These are the basic

differences. Woodward wasn't a good writer. Bernstein was or could be certain instances.

Woodward knew how to handle his bosses. Bernstein drove his bosses nuts. Woodward was Mr.

nuts and bolts. Here's what we know. Bernstein was the big picture concept guy.

So what you have at least in Redford's mind is these are two very very different people

that are coming together. They have totally different strengths. And that's why they were able to

achieve what they achieved in Watergate. Yeah. I mean I think that's useful archetype for

for a movie and book writing strategy like how actually true it was maybe maybe

100% maybe 50% true. I think it's useful to create differentiation for characterization.

If they weren't, if they were more the same, the movie doesn't work as well. You need them to have

these conflicting things. Even the type of star and type of performer that Redford and Hoffman are.

One is anxious, always moving around, touching something a little shorter, always searching for

something kind of like an emotional cluster. And another performer is very still.

His posture is very stiff and upright. He's always, he's on the move, but that move is very

graceful. And so there's something in the archetyping that I think benefits a lot of this stuff.

But don't I mean look at the books they've written or haven't written in Bernstein's case since then.

It's true. I mean they are very different creatures. Yeah. Yeah. How many books has Bernstein

written? You know, single digits. Interesting. Yeah. Whereas Woodward is like working on another book

right now. Yeah. There's this great moment when the post laughs happened and somebody reached out

and Woodward did not provide a statement for like two days. And then said, I cannot say anymore

because I am finishing a book. Wow. Which is a great body would be to say no just about something else.

Do you see yourself as an organized, uber productive Woodward or a freewheeling occasionally

brilliant Bernstein? I think you know the answer to that. Your Woodward. I'm way more Woodward and

in many ways. I don't have Robert Redford's looks. But I do I do. Do Bob Woodward's looks?

Probably. I think I probably share something in common with it. I don't what are you?

I think I project as a Woodward, but I see myself as a Bernstein. Yeah. Yeah. A lady's man.

I've had my moments. Nora Eferne also had a really interesting thing. She was interviewed by

Alonpa Cullo while he was putting together this film too. And she said that when you look at their

differences, that they recognized the thing, the other one had the thing needed. Woodward needed

Bernstein to be this kind of nudge to be pushy. Whereas Bernstein needed Woodward to be the guy

who could actually talk to the bosses and keep them in good stead of the post. And Eferne's Eferne,

who we should know, became Carl Bernstein's second wife, said they hated each other because

it was one of those interesting psychological things where it's like, I know I need that

quality that I do not possess. But the fact that I don't have that quality that you have it,

that I need it almost makes me hate you a little bit, which is a fascinating tension between them.

Another thing that I think is completely manifest in modern media, that most times when you have

pairings in debate culture on television, their opposites, they're very rarely the same temperamentally,

ideologically, that you're looking for that differentiation so that you can create friction and

create energy, which makes something really exciting. In this case, it's a much more focused

act that they're doing, trying to gather information, accumulate all of it, and then make it coherent

in a, like fit the puzzle pieces together. But I think even just them spending time together,

how many years did they actively report together? I would say about 72, 76 is when their second

final book comes out, so about four years together. Because that's the thing, it's like these things

can't last if there is a real tension and aggravation, and why does this person get to do this, and I

don't get to do this, feeling around everything. And also just, I think success makes people feel

like they need to, let me show the world that I can do this on my own, I think is a component that

comes into it, sure. But yeah, it's interesting that they helped each other. I mean, I don't know if

it's my favorite scene in the movie, but one of my favorite scenes in the movie is when

Bernstein snatches Woodward's copy and he rewrites it, and he shows it to Woodward,

and he tells him what's the mistake about, you know, not having the dominant information

at the top of the story, and not putting it in the lead, but keep bearing it in the third graph,

the key name in the story that they're reporting. And the way that Redford

looks at it, reads it, comes back into the frame, Stairs write a Bernstein and says,

yours is better. But he says it in a very knowing way, like, I see that we have something together,

that like this can be something meaningful for me. It's like a breakthrough, and it's very,

it's not subtle per se, but it's unspoken. And I think it's a really nice summation of kind of

what happens, I guess, in that four-year period between them. The book, all the presentsman, comes out

in June 1974. It is, you'll notice the bylines, Bernstein and Woodward. Interesting, the only time

that that happened in their book writing career. And alphabetical, you think that'd be the way it would

go. You would think so. Comes out in June 74, Nixon resigns less than two months later.

So that is another fascinating part of the whole Woodward and Bernstein story. W. Joseph Campbell

has written about this because he writes about media myths all the time. The book arrives.

It's on the bestseller list, and suddenly Nixon is gone. So we think Woodward and Bernstein,

and Woodward and Bernstein alone, are the people that nudged Richard Nixon out of office.

Do you want to know how much Woodward and Bernstein made from the book? I certainly do.

For the paperback rights, they got an amodest advance for the hardcover. For the paperback rights

which sold even before the hardback came out, they got $1 million in 1974. It's about $6.7 million

million today. They didn't get all of that, probably about half of that, but they got a lot of

money. That's a lot. Redford during this period paid them $450,000 for the movie rights,

about $3 million today. Again, they didn't get all of that, but they became rich people in 1974.

And that rights fee turned out to be very important because once Redford had paid $450,000

for the rights, the studio was like, actually, you wanted to make a smaller film.

Redford had talked about making like a black and white, almost documentary style film about

these reporters. And they're like, the films in color, and you have to be one of the reporters.

So that changes the whole nature of all the presidents, man. From like a small, passion project

that Redford might have been thinking about to, no, no, no, this is a big story vehicle for us.

Yeah, it's unusual too because you think of Redford as this gifted understanding of how this

sort of thing is supposed to work, but I mean, a black, I mean, it's a bestseller, like a black and

white documentary style approach on this movie would have made no sense. And he probably thought

that before it was a bestseller. Remember, he's talking to them. They don't have a book. He's

in early. He hasn't come in with the top edit yet. Yeah. So they don't have a book yet.

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Let's talk about William Goldman, the screenwriter. I know a favorite of yours.

Yes. This was his fourth time working with Redford. They'd made Butch Cassidy in the Sundance kid.

They've made a movie called The Hot Rock, which I have never seen. An exceptionally fun

bank-hised comedy, or thevery comedy with Redford and George Segal. I highly recommend people

track it down. And they made the Great Waldo Pepper. Yes. Also interesting movie, not as successful.

What are the hallmarks of a Bill Goldman script? I think

unusually gifted at characterization and relationships. His movies have a kind of breezy fun to them.

There is a metatextual quality where he's very interested in genre and unpacking and rebuilding

genre. This is the western with Butch Cassidy. Princess Bride. I just recently watched this with my

five-year-old and she and I were kind of talking about the ways in which it kind of scratched her

interest as a young princess girl, but also the ways that kind of like breaks a lot of those ideas

up at the same time. He does this in a lot of his novels as well. He did it later in a lot of his

writing about how Hollywood works, where he's a kind of a demathologizer, I would say, as a storyteller.

But never at the expense of fun. And almost all of his movies are just like kind of a blast to roll

through. They've got great pace. They always have great dialogue. One of the interesting things about

this movie in particular is that his script was reportedly a little too funny, like too many jokes.

You wrote a lot of jokes if you read his columns over the years in New York magazine or you read his

many books. He's got a zinger every page. And it's interesting that he's associated with this

hallowed period of very serious Hollywood cinema because he's a fun writer. Yeah, and maybe

pairing him with the whole paranoia that Alan Bakula was interested in, right? It's a good

combination. Totally. Because you have paranoia, you have dark streets in Washington DC, and then you

have funny dialogues, the kind of things that people that work at newspapers say to each other.

The robots and Carl Maldon and Jack Warden can kind of like roll off the tongue.

He has two great contributions to all the presents men. Bill Goldman does. One is, and he wrote

about this in his book, Cracking the Structure. This is a hard book to adapt. People know how the book ends.

So what he does is he starts with the watergate break in, and he ends when Woodward and Bernstein

screw up. Yep. And then he has this great sort of ending right where they're typing away on the

typewriter. They're trying to get back in the game. And then we see the Teletex spelling out all

these stories. Nixon resigns being the last one. And of course, if you want to talk about media

myths, right? Oh, okay. So they went back to work and then they got rid of Richard Nixon themselves.

You know, not with the judiciary, not with everybody else. They did it themselves. You mentioned

the script being too funny. The people that thought it was too funny were the people that worked

at the Washington Post. They all read the script when Bernstein read it and they were like, hey,

that kind of trivializes our business a little bit. So a very funny thing happened. Goldman

wrote about this too. Robert Refford allowed Carl Bernstein and his girlfriend,

nor Efron, to take another stab at it. How common is that in Hollywood?

Well, it's very common. However, I would say the way in which this plays out is less common

because scripts are rewritten all the time. Goldman writes about this ad nauseam in his books.

This kind of paranoia that he lives with as a writer for hire where he always thinks that the draft

he submitted is not good enough or disliked and is going to be torn to shreds or he's going to be

immediately fired off the piece and rewritten. It's going to be rewritten by somebody else.

He does pour a lot of time into adapting this very ordinate and complicated story. And as you

say, he cracked it. So once he cracks it and Efron and Bernstein come in to rewrite it,

he learns of this because Redford calls him over to his house and shares the screenplay with him

at that moment and says, you know, Nora and Carl are here and look what they did for us. Isn't

this great? Which is obviously, I mean, imagine that. Imagine if you wrote a piece and I called you

over to my office in 2017. And I was like, I'd like to introduce you to Brian Phillips. I've had

him rewrite your copy. Weirdly, that was the name that came right to mine. You wouldn't love that.

And so there's obviously something very, I would say downright offensive about it. And Redford would

occasionally play mind games like this. I don't know how much he particularly transgressed here.

It clearly broke the relationship in a way between Redford and Golden. They'd made several

movies together at this point. The thing is, it sounds like the Efron and Bernstein version

was not very good. Golden didn't ultimately get to it until sometime because he knew well enough

not to read it until after basically he had been signed off by a lawyer because the notions

of authorship in Hollywood and the arbitration that can sometimes play out through writer's guild

is very complicated. And so he eventually reads it and obviously like they don't use very much

of what Bernstein and Efron needed or felt was necessary inside of the story. And it seemed like

there was a lot of romantic swash buckling for Bernstein that was added. There was some romantic

swash buckling. They also apparently added that very funny scene with Ned Bady in the movie. Yes.

Where Bernstein tricks as Martin Dargis is right is secretary. So he can get into the office and

get this key piece of information, which is a great scene, but it didn't happen. So it's weird.

You put the you put the screen in the hands of the journalist and they invented a scene. Yeah,

which is very fun. Does that make you nervous at all about the veracity of all the president's men?

Maybe just a little. And to your point, what Goldman said to about this was it's not like I got

replaced by Robert Towne. Yeah. Another A list screenwriter. I got replaced by a couple of journalists.

Because Nora Efron would Nora Efron at this point. She was Nora Efron the star journalist,

but she was not the maker of one Harry Metzali, right? Or you know, you got mail on the kind of

stuff. So he's you know, he's very, very turned off. Offended. Yeah, he's clearly offended by this.

And it the thing is most movies. I'll put it this way in the 90s when I started really getting into

movies and started really getting into movie culture. I did what a lot of people do, which is I went

out and I bought screenplays and I valorized the great screenwriters. And so I bought books that had

Robert Towne screenplays in them. I bought books that I goldman screenplays. I was really into

Quentin Tarantino. I remember vividly buying the screenplay for swingers because it had this great

mythology of John Favreau writing himself into stardom. You know, he couldn't get jobs as a leading man in

Hollywood. And so I would read these screenplays and they were interesting to understand the mechanics

of how movies are made. But the words that were on the page, the dialogue that was on the page,

to me, that was the thing that was so crackling and profound. And then the more you go through

learning about how films work and there's a lot of material about this. A lot of it is made up on

the day where a lot of it is made up a month beforehand. And it's not pulled from this blueprint.

And they're blueprints. They're not sacred texts. This movie in particular, you can see, but

cool on the day is just like, let's do it totally differently. A lot of filmmakers work this way.

I had this fascinating experience talking on Paul Thomas Anderson a couple times about one battle

after another last year where he just very loosely is just like, yeah, I had this whole idea and then

we just threw it out. And Benicio Del Toro came in and we just completely rebuilt the whole movie

around something that he thought would be a cool idea. So I think this a lot of the texts around

this movie do a really nice jobs also of demathologizing our expectations around what a screenwriter does.

And Goldman to his credit is comfortable kind of underlining this despite the fact that these are academy award winning texts.

Yes. And it's it would be fascinating for me to know how much of the original Goldman text survived.

Not just because the process you outlined, but in the specific case screenplay kind of gets taken away from him,

then he comes in and does a bunch of rewrites of Bakula. Yeah. Bakula and Redford add lots of information

that they learn from the real woodward and Bernstein from the post. Yep. They just sort of throw all

these things in and then you get this malgamation, which you should say is not unusual in Hollywood,

but in this case has some some beats to it. Or at least we know the beats. And then a funny thing happens.

Bill Goldman wins the Academy Award for the screenplay for all the presents men.

You want to hear his acceptance speech? Sure. I had all kinds of cute humble things to say. And they're all

gone. Somebody ought to mention Gordon Willis who did an extraordinary job as cinematographer.

I really do believe the acting level of the movie all the way through for a large cast was

remarkable. And that's the work of Alan Bakula. And finally this movie has been from the very

beginning the obsession of Robert Redford. Thank you. Is it weird to win an adapted screenplay Oscar

and not mention the authors of the book that you adapted? How many times does that happen in

Oscar's history? That would be really interesting question. I wonder for example,

PTA who won last year did mention Thomas Pinchon. We learned that the pronunciation is Pinchon,

by the way, from from Paul who I presume knows Thomas Pinchon. But the year before was conclave.

And I wonder if Peter Straun did he utter the name of the author of conclave? I'm not so sure.

I you might be surprised to learn that it's not as routine as it seems. Speaking of authorship,

another funny thing is Norman Mailer handed the Oscar to Bill Goldman there. Different time and

Hollywood. It's just completely strange. Another author of this movie, maybe an unlikely one, deep throat.

Ew. We now know deep throat was Mark Felt from a deputy director of the FBI.

But when you and I were growing up, his identity was a mystery. He was identity was a mystery for

30 plus years. I was just as memory as a kid of watching whenever there would be an anniversary,

Woodward and Bernstein would go on meet the press. Tim Rosser would say, right now let's clear it up.

Who was the mysterious deep throat and they would have to push him away? Yeah. But the fact that

we don't know deep throats identity is I'm just imagining Pablo doing that every 10 years with

Steve Balmer, you know, who is the CEO of aspiration? Don't give him any ideas because he might actually

take you up on it. The fact that we don't know his identity in this movie adds so much to this text.

Yeah. So much to this text. I mean, you and I grew up with JFK where we were the young investigators,

the young Jim Garrison's who were going to watch the movie and be like, now I will solve the JFK

mystery, which is not a mystery and has already been solved. Yeah. This was a genuine mystery.

Mm-hmm. People did not know who this was. And to me, you watch a movie. Oh my god,

there's Hal Holbrook. Who is that guy? Am I can I watch the movie and forget the book, forget the

actual reporter, Jarendra, who this might be? Can I watch the movie and learn something about this

gentleman's identity? Well, it's one of the only things in the movie that feels very movie-ish.

In general, I revisited the movie last night and I just saw it two months ago and I revisited it

again last night and I couldn't, it's so odd structurally and it's so remarkable to me that it was

an immediate success identified in its greatness publicly popular because it is such an odd duck.

But the one thing that feels like a paranoid conspiracy thriller from the 1970s is the deep throat

stuff, the way that Hal Holbrook has photographed, the way that his character has written the idea of

the man with the knowledge who hides in the shadows. That's a very, that's a sexy, spy novel concept.

It's something that, you know, dates back going to the crusades, going into a thousand of years.

There's always this one character behind the scenes who has all the information. So that part

of the movie being not only true but also shrouded in mystery obviously makes it a much sexier

story, a much more exciting story. Now that we know what we know about Mark Felt and that we're

20 years on from that information, you know, he was like a bureaucrat. Like he was just a guy with a

high ranking but anonymous job in Washington who had tremendous access to information and clearly

had some sort of moral core. Well, I don't know about that. Well, tell me. Well, this is, there's a

great book about him called Leak by Max Holland. And if you assemble all the information and you

think about his career, there's a great, great convincing case to be made that he just wanted to be

director of the FBI. So he is not leaking because he thinks Nixon has done anything wrong. He thinks

these leaks will unleash a series of events that will put him in the big job. And that did not turn

out to be the case. He did not turn out the be case. He never became director of the FBI. He was

one of the many who rights who was sort of fighting for that job under Nixon. But his whole idea is

if I do this, if I do that, it will discredit the leadership of the FBI and maybe I can sneak in.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And it was very, very funny. And you know, Nixon and those guys were aware

of him and also aware that he might be the leaker, which is fascinating. He was fingered as a possible

deep throat for a period of 30 years before he finally unmasked himself in Graydon Carter's Vanity Fair,

which is still a strange sentence to come out of my mouth. Yeah. I think that maybe that considering

that information, just the idea of that personal vanity is something that really powers a lot of

this story, you know, that obviously Nixon's own vanity and desire to triumph over all doubters,

the young hot shot reporters who really want to put themselves on the map, the old and grizzled

newspaper men who also know that this could vault their Washington paper into a kind of national

prominence, this bureaucrat who thinks he sees a glide path for himself to the highest ranking

position in all of, you know, federal crime-busting government. It's really interesting how it's like

that. It really drives a lot of people's motivations around things like this. If you had to pick one

CD, Hell, Holbrook performance, would you pick this one or the firm? Well, they're both wonderful.

I'll point listeners to a very little scene movie called Natural Enemies. It is a domestic drama

from the late 70s. It'll hard to track down. Fun City editions, a great physical media company

issued a version of this movie some years ago. That is a dark Hell, Holbrook. Okay. Okay, so that's

the answer then. Well, the firm is pretty dark. And they're sort of, they're kissing cousins,

right? The firm in this movie, they got something in common. Do you think the real Mark Felt was

standing cinematically in the shadows? We've taken so many pains to meet in this parking garage.

We have to be in the shadow in the parking garage. That's gorgeous. We've got to sort of

sit there, sort of lighting, lighting the way. I love that component of it because it is,

we don't want to even know too much what Hell, Holbrook looks like because then it would insinuate

that that is what Mark Felt looks like. There you go. Let's talk about the actors.

Robert Redford is Bob Woodward. We mentioned Redford Stardom. He's living on Fifth Avenue and at a

ski resort in Utah. Not about existence. There's a hilarious note in Goldman's book,

Adventures in the Screen Trade, that he was writing a script for Redford, but Redford would not

give him his phone number. Yes, because he did not want to be contacted. Yes. What do you make of

Redford's performance as Bob Woodward? It's unusually nervous for Redford. I think he is not

really an actor who is very good at vulnerability. Woodward is a little behind the ball at times

in this movie. I would say he does not have the general cadence that I see in most effective

reporters, which is that annoying quality that you have to have, that willingness to be

unliked. A pest. Most movie stars are actually quite the opposite. They want to be venerated.

They want to be celebrated. They want to be loved. That is a key part of it. It is one thing that

distinguishes this conversation between great actor and movie star. Movie star wants to be

the one to have a halo around them. Woodward is kind of annoying. He's asking people questions.

He's trying to work them psychologically and Bernstein. We can talk about this when we talk

about Hoffman. He's way more comfortable pulling all the tricks. Making all the moves. It actually puts

a little bit of an outlier in terms of the way that Redford performs in the film. I think he's

quite good. A little too beautiful. He's definitely a little too beautiful. I wondered if his performance

was constrained by him trying to do Bob Woodward. Bob Woodward is not a party animal. If you've

ever heard him on the with Tim Russell or on any television show. He kind of a kind of a curmit the

frog-esque vocal intonation. He does. When Redford was studying him, he said he found he had this

interesting quality. We be very polite to you in person. He was raised in Illinois and had to

an upright upbringing. But that he felt behind the veneer. He was just sizing you up and was

impatient with you. Woodward would never quite show. It just faced very, very stoic. I don't know.

It's a very effective performance. I know that's a great performance. It's more to me functional.

It certainly works within the context of the movie. But it's a weird fit with Redford in a lot of

ways. I mean, Redford just doesn't have a lot of ranges of performer in general. You know,

famously only nominated one time for an acting Academy Award. It was for the Stang, which is an

odd Academy Award nomination. That's not really what he did. That's not really what he brings to a

movie. I think he brings the veneer of seriousness. Which Woodward has? 100%. And so that's meaningful

in a match. I've not seen a reporter that looks like Redford in my life. I don't know. I'm trying

to think who's who's our handsomeist reporter right now? Patrick Rydon-Keefe. Not a bad looking

Sherman. He's a handsome man. I guess I don't think of him as a newspaper man. I'm like, that's a success.

Let's actually make this list. I already talked myself out of it. I will make it incendent you in private.

Dustin Hoffman is Crow Bernstein. Yeah. According to Rolling Stone, the producers looked at Al Pacino and

Robert De Niro for this role. Hoffman had made the graduate in Minnet, Kamui's Eupench and he's a

really big deal. Did a lot of very, you know, sort of I want to live in Bernstein's shoes moments.

He went to Passover at Bernstein's house. Bernstein's from the Washington DC area. He wore

Bernstein's watch while making the movie. Bernstein's actual watch. What do you make of this performance?

Stellar definitely among his best. I think that there is something. Hoffman's legacy is fast

dating, right? Because there's the last 10 years or so. There have been a lot of revelation about

things that he may or may not have done in the act of getting the performances that he wants that

sometimes reads a little ugly and complicated. He is an immersive actor, but not a method actor in the

way that we think of the Daniel Day Lewises of the world. He does try to really get deep into the

psychology of the figures that he's performing for. It sounds like he's very difficult to work with.

But that is kind of a character trait of Bernstein in the movie. It's a perfect match for what he

needs to do. He has that extraordinary scene with Jane Alexander. He barges his way into her home and

convinces her sister to get him a cup of coffee. He's finding the right way to ask her questions

that will get her talking, even though she knows she should not be talking. You feel like it's

coercive, but not wrong. Very well said. That's such a unique and difficult place to get to.

And you need an actor who has this unusual balance between intelligence and a kind of like,

there's a little swarm going on with Bernstein, but he is like, he is pushing in the right direction.

We know he's going in the right place, so we're willing to forgive some of the things that you

have to do to get information from people who feel uncomfortable. There's another scene later in

the film where he's trying to get information of Lindsey Kraus's character in the newsroom.

And you can see that he is pushing too hard and that woodward identifies it and that

woodward very shrewdly pulls him back, which allows woodward to get information later in the film.

The movie is very good about showing that there's no perfect way to pursue these things, but

Hoffman is very precise as an actor and makes a lot of choices as an actor. Whereas Redford,

you don't really feel him making a lot of choices. He lands on what he's doing in every scene. He

just goes towards it and Hoffman's kind of busyness, I think, really helps psychological Bernstein.

It's such a good point. And Bernstein told this great story in Rolling Stone where he said,

they would, they would do often is when they were shooting the movie, they would call their

real life counterparts and say, we're doing something. Is this right? Would you say it this way?

It's the right terminology. And he said, one time he called Carl Bernstein, and Bernstein

remembers on the East Coast, they're shooting this movie in Los Angeles. And he says,

and Bernstein's like a sleep or something like that. And he's like, I just got one question for you.

One question. You just thought, okay, okay, that's one question. He answers the question.

And then he asked a follow up question. And Bernstein's line was, you fucker, you're finally learning.

You're a journalist. Just five minutes, five minutes. If I could just get five minutes,

I just love that so much. Yeah. You just internalized exactly what you're talking about.

How do you pry information? How do you do that? How do you keep going when other journalists would

walk out the door and given up? It's such a weird job. You know, there's really nothing like it.

It's not because it's a public act. Whatever you're doing is meant to be shared ultimately.

It's not like working in spycraft where you're trying to do the same thing. You're trying to extract

information from someone who doesn't want to give it to you or determine where it exists and steal it.

But there's like, there will always be consequences to your actions as a reporter.

There is, you will always have to reckon with the public

like acceptance of what you have put out into the world. And so some people thrive on that.

I think some people are very comfortable not being liked and some people really want to be liked and accepted.

And you can look at every reporter and the way that they were raised and what they were like in school

and how their parents treated them. All these things go into this stew of whether or not you're good at this job.

I've worked in journalism for a long time. I'm not one of these people. I don't think I would be comfortable

doing what the Karl Bernstein character in the movie does. I don't, it doesn't mean that it's wrong.

It actually might have saved democracy not to put too fine a point on it. But you have to have a

certain psychology to be able to get to that place of people. The movie does, maybe the best job ever

of examining how you do that. Other actors Jason Robards is Washington Post executive editor Ben

Bradley. Do you ever work for a scenery chewing editor in your career?

I worked for some big personalities and some really strong-minded people.

You know, I worked for Daniel Smith at Vibe who was like a very very big and powerful thinker

and someone who really had a high standards in terms of copy.

My editor at Vibe was John Caramonica who's now pop critic at the time. He's got a big personality.

He's got a big personality as well. And John was very exacting about the quality of writing when

he was working as an editor. I've worked for Bill Simmons for 14 years. He's a swaggering guy.

Yeah. I would say not as in the weeds as Ben Bradley is historically. I love that scene. I'm

not sure if I love any scene more in movie history than when he takes a look at their copy,

the first piece that they, he pulls the red pen out of his coat jacket. Oh my god. Is that like every

journalist you just feel for them in the moment? I mean, it's just, it's just so real. Like, I have

absolutely turned a story in and sat there and had that done to me. And you know, it creates

this incredible like frustration and resentment and insecurity, but it is, it's a lesson. Like,

you literally learn from it. And that's a little lost, I think, in journalism now we don't,

we just don't live the same way because nobody is writing anything down with their hands anymore.

It's a Google Doc. Yeah. Yeah. But I've worked for a few tough editors not like this. So because

I was never a newspaper person. And newspaper is different because that the deadline.

It's happening very quickly. It's happening. So the news around your neck, it feels like

sometimes with these guys get some hotter information next time. What about you?

Well, you know, one is, I mean, Simmons, of course, but, you know, Jack Schaefer over at Slate was

a big one of my life. And I was 22 or 23 and he was smart as hell and funny as hell. And also,

just a gigantic personality in the office. And I remember, I don't know if it was the first day I

worked for him or the first week I worked for him. I just peeked into his office. And I said,

Hey, coach, and he looked at me and he goes, what are you calling me? Coach? Yeah. And I was like,

I don't really remind me of Vince Lombardi. I still call him coach for this day, but he definitely

filled that role in my life. I don't know if I've ever talked to you about this, but I worked at GQ

for about a year and a half before I came to work for Bill at Grantland. And my favorite thing about

working there was the ideas meetings and the budget meetings because it was a roomful of the

smartest people that I'd ever come across. And Jim Nelson was the editor at that time. And Jim was

an exceptional story editor, like really the 1% of the 1% of story editors. And to watch them

reject something, like this isn't good enough for us was a site to behold. Oh, God, in those

meetings are so performative too. Yes. There's there's the great like let's figure out a story. Let's

break it down as you say. But then there's also the I'm here, right? I'm showing off to everybody.

Yeah, it was sort of like a private podcast in a lot of ways where everybody got to kind of be like,

here's my take on this. Just like a podcast. You're trying to tell people how smart you are.

Yeah, exactly. But it did always kind of it would all filter back to Jim because you could have a

really strong take. And if he disagreed, good take, but who cares? We're doing the story or we're not

doing the story. The story's dead. Yeah. And so that is also something that I think is a little,

it's hard to cultivate a culture that can do that now and like the time of Zoom meetings and,

you know, not get digging into the copy the same way that we do in this idea of like you're competing

with AI to get your peace out into the world. Like it's just a totally different environment. And

this this movie shows us the way that someone like Bradley could do that. And then you know, Bradley

has that great scene later where he tells the story about being the emissary for Lyndon B. Johnson's

news about trying to get Hoover out in the FBI. And it's like a small anecdote that tells the

entire arc of a person's career. Some other great performances. Jack Warden Martin Balsam is

post editors Harry Emrose and Philden Howard Simon's fantastic amazing. I don't know anybody could

tell you after watching the movie with those people who they are or what they do. But the short sleeve

button down with a tie. Yes, such a fantastic 70s newspaper look. Yeah, I actually thought about

this with the movie and you know, maybe we can like do this experiment with Jack Sanders or some

young in here at the ringer. But watch this movie for the first time if somebody has never seen this.

Watch it for the first time. Watch it once and then tell me what was the Watergate scandal about?

What news did Woodward and Bernstein break? What did Nixon and his henchmen do?

I'm not sure that all that is especially clear in this movie. Well, it also feels to your earlier

questions about Trump. So small. So modest in terms of this was the thing that tore this apart.

It wasn't the continued existence in Vietnam for years that that tore that ripped to this

president to the ground. Like it's this like peddling break in with the expectation of like

burglary trying to win an election that you're going to win in a landslide anyway. Like the whole

thing is so obtuse and you can you can certainly feel the psychology of Nixon and his highest level

cronies at work in the like the smallness of the enterprise that they're so paranoid about every

little stupid thing that they would pursue something this stupid. But the movie I think because

it's existing in its time and we knew like we just knew what it was dramatizing. So it didn't have

to over explain and I think if you compare it to any number of HBO made for TV movies from the late

90s all the way through the 2015's those movies like recount they they they dramatically over

explained the circumstances you always had a character come in and this is kind of the

sorkenization I think of movie screenwriting. They just just over explained both the the events

and the stakes where you would say like this is the most important moment in the history of democracy

in this movie when bed Brad then Bradley does it it's a sarcastic comment like it's not really

meant to you know lift your your your spirits in any meaningful way. Some amazing cameos in here we

mentioned Ned Bady you mentioned Jane Alexander. Mary has her nominated for her two scenes. Amazing

Meredith Baxter is in his movie Lindsay Krause you mentioned F. Murray Abraham is briefly in this

movie just really mind blowing. I want to talk to you about the filmmakers Alan Pacula is the director.

They looked at John Sleshinger who did midnight cowboy and Costa Gavras did Z they both

would have done interesting versions of the movie. This is the third leg in the paranoid stool of

of Pacula after clut in the parallax view. He did something interesting which is as soon as he gets

hired he sets up shop in Washington at the Madison Hotel and he just interviews everybody. Yes.

Woodward Bernstein Nora Efron Bob Woodward's second wife I mean just all these people

he takes Robert Redford took seem or herch out to breakfast. They just talk to everybody they

possibly could to get documentary style information. Yeah you use an interesting word.

We were talking about doing this conversation earlier this week which is you said they re-reported

the story to do the movie and they did you can tell that they spoke to as many people as they could

who were proximate to the execution of this story which is just not something you could

I'm sure there are instances of it happening now but that level of commitment to getting things

not right in the factual accuracy department but in the field. You can see that a lot of what they're

interested in is like capturing the environments the tonality that people had at that time

and the way in which people moved like a lot of these apartments that they find themselves in

late at night these townhouses they feel like real places and you can feel the work that they did

going into it when you watch the movie and I think it's feel and facts too. I think this is an

interesting combination of both of course there is some fudging like there isn't any movie but I

think they were where him Dan we'll talk about that a little bit in a moment. But Kula I did not know

was kind of a Kubrick character in terms of constantly asking for rewrites from Goldman constantly

asking for takes of the movie which Hoffman apparently loved and kind of drove redford nuts while

they were making the movie. How would you describe Kula style in all the presents man? Extremely

exacting and specific I think he has an interesting match with his cinematographer Gordon Willis because Willis

is a very dramatic stager of scenes you know the way that he lights in darkness the way that he's

using split diopter shots often in bold fluorescent light in the office spaces the way that he has to

serve both movie stars who are demanding of center frame action you know somebody like rapper redford

is like I need a moment here or Hoffman is like I need a moment here big ego actors but the movie and

you heard this in in what go in Goldman's remarks he gets these great performances out of all of these

people you've never seen before this is Lindsey Krauss's first movie performance J.

Now Sanders may be done three movies up until this point and they're so memorable and there's they

feel so essential you know Stephen Collins you know has admitted some terrible things and so we no

longer talk about him in the public sphere but this is a very early performance for him and he's very

very good in this difficult part of he's slow and so you have all these incredible performances and

he gets this in all of his other films the previous movie he directed Clute he Jane fond of one

and Oscar for for playing a call girl who becomes enstared in a murder mystery I the parallax view I

think is probably if not my favorite of his movies the one that I find to be the most interesting

structurally and also better reporter also about a reporter who's lost inside of a conspiracy but he

does a couple of things in this movie that you can see him really expanding upon in the next movie

which is he does sometimes shoot like it is a nature documentary where the sort of like the slow zoom

but especially the big pullaway to show the massive there's that overhead shot when they're in

the library and researching so good it's already looks like it's at 10,000 feet and then he pulls back

again and he shows you this vast world of information that these men are trapped inside of like ants

and he's just a very intellectual filmmaker who had a nose for commercial stuff

which is pretty much my favorite thing in the world I mean he's just a filmmaker that means a lot to

me even when he was working in I think much more tired material in the 90s I still have time for

the devil zone and the pelican brief and consenting adults and that stuff is like a little bit

junkier than the high tone stuff that he did in the 70s and 80s but just a fascinating figure and

the other thing I think to remember that is useful for him and this is part of why I think Redford got

excited about him is that he was a producer before he was a director which is something that was a lot

more common back in the day where you had people he produced movies for Robert Mulligan who directed

um to Killamockingbird and was Academy Award nominated for that so he learned how making a movie

works not what I have to know to envision what the movie should be but actually the those nuts and

bolts that we were talking about as a reporter are also important to him as a filmmaker which is how

he knows he can kind of push buttons and say like we need more time here this scene isn't working I

don't like how this looks what if you know Goldman tells this great story and adventures in the

screen trade of just how creative cool it was that he actually just came up with a scene in real time

on set and just that Goldman acted as a stenographer to the scene that he created now you know I don't

know if that's like ego or or inspiration or what's happening there but um that's rare to be able

to sit with like the hallowed screenwriter of his era writing a scene for the movie star of the

moment and just being like we're gonna do it this way and that's I think from having 15 years of

experience at that point in making movies you mentioned Gordon Willis the cinematographer uh this

quote from Robert Redford to Gene Siskel uh peak my interest in the morning Washington is possibly

the most secure city in the world the buildings are very impressive and solid looking but at night

everything changes you feel very insecure the streets are deserted there's this overwhelming

feeling something's terribly wrong yeah I think it's because we have an inherent distrust of

politics and politicians and so that that is the that's the base for all the mischief that's being

rendered upon us um and so I think Willis is super smart about the way that when he's shooting in light

everything feels monumental and like it is like crushing down upon us I mean he's shooting

in dark it's like a series of unknowable hallways and corridors and and quiet spaces there's that one

moment when um deep throat and woodward are having a conversation in the garage might be the third

meeting that they have and there's a we hear a siren or a whistle and they just stop talking

and it's not for five seconds it's for 25 seconds there's no dialogue it's just holding on their

faces in shadow until this sound just goes away for a patient movie for a patient people making

this movie very comfortable letting you sit in discomfort the last character and I think creator

of this movie I have for you is the Washington Post itself so most strikingly Warner Brothers

creates the Washington Post in Los Angeles the newsroom this is shocking I think the very first time

I saw this movie I just assumed they shot in the post newsroom which the post by the way did not allow

Warner Brothers and George Jenkins won an Oscar he's the production designer came to LA and spent

$200,000 to recreate the newsroom out here they did some amazing things like taking trash from the

actual Washington Post and putting it in their LA or Temkin Washington Post newsroom they actually

put the books that are in Bryn Bradley's real office in his office in Los Angeles which is crazy

apparently I read something they had the daily papers from the days the events were happening

so that people would understand like this is you know October whatever 1972 let's have that

days paper sitting around in our recreated post newsroom it's amazing for sure it just looks

incredible yeah it feels like a newsroom too doesn't it it does and it makes you wonder why they

feel the need to do that you mean we know why because it worked for the movie right we bought into

what this was but this is a situation where I think anybody with less actual interest in the story

who was working on the movie would have said what why are we spending all this money doing this like

a thing that actually literally feels like it would not happen today is spending $200,000 on the set

just to make it look like a newsroom well there's something redford said throughout the process

which was we want to make a movie about the news and about newspapers that feels like it's really

about what happens we're coming out of this era of the front page if we want to go back further

deadline USA these big dramatic Hollywood movies which are many of which are good I'm not going to

keep for the front page sure about everything else really good movies because like that's just

all Hollywood stuff we want to make this as documentary and as real as humanly possible yeah I think

it's interestingly compared to Spielberg's the post which is also about the Washington Post and

also about many of these people and is a movie that because of the particular style that Spielberg

has as a filmmaker and the way that his cinematographer works Yannish Kaminsky it feels more

fantastical in a way the way that the camera moves the way that the light works in the way that color

operates with the design of the production it doesn't feel real it feels almost like a fable

yes and so and so and there's nothing wrong with that it's a different way to tell that story

well there's kind of something wrong with it well it's just not very good it's to me it's because

it's a period piece that is so far gone and this is the opposite this is an attempt to recreate

something that just happened so there I think there's like a there's a rose tinted glasses almost

literally feeling while watching the post it's a commenced cinematography exactly and so and that kind

of cloudiness that he has as a filmmaker this is the exact opposite this isn't it's not just that

the garbage is the real garbage from the Washington Post it's that you know the color of every wall

feels like the right color you know the clock seems to be at the right time on the wall that it

would be in the sequence there's all of these very specific choices that are made very few movies try

to do this like accuracy is something you hear a lot about in movie productions but actually

physically replicating the place is extremely rare and they were really in town getting that right

I mentioned all the lunches they had all the interviews they did when I was looking at the

Bakula archives I found a memo that Redford had solicited from wait for it Mike Barnacle of the

Boston World he had written to him and said please read the screenplay and tell me what you think

is this accurate so why is this so important is a really interesting question because is it

a metatextual ode to the work of reportage that you would then try to accurately

report this entire experience in movie form and was that Redford's big idea or the way idea that

he landed on with Woodard Inveron scene is it something different he was interested in that I

think he wanted to demystify reporting a little bit which we could certainly use now probably

more than a 70s I know but I don't think it does that I don't think it I mean it shows you the

specifics yes but it makes it seem more powerful well I just think if you go back to his top

edit it's like how did you guys do this this this is the idea I mean I look we could we could pick up

this first edition again look at look at the inside thing here all America knows about Watergate

here for the first time as a story of how we know right like the whole thing is explaining you know

you understand the scandal you understand Nixon going down what did reporters do to advance this

story even if they didn't bring him down by themselves I think that's the interest I mean this is

a lot of work honestly and there is it is funny because I also found this memo that Redford wrote

to Pekula at some point 1974 right when they're about to make the movie and said hey by the way we

are now I'm kind of feeling hemmed in here by the truth we're trying to please the Washington Post

we're trying to please Woodward and Bernstein we're trying to make this as accurate and use real things

and real incidents and we are forgetting the cinema of this so we need to also now like

tack the other way and make sure we're making a movie sure yeah and not just rewriting all the

presidents men the book yeah satisfying the Washington Post feels like a fool's Aaron generally dude

but like they're were in Bernstein submitted script notes they submitted notes about the rough cut it's

you to me I think them participating is different from the newspaper the new working in service of

an institution like that which has all of its own biases and can't really see itself clearly I

think is very dangerous what a emergency and they're being made to be movie superheroes I'm sure

they had a lot of notes and they've got to approve the way they were perceived but it was their

thing right they broke the story they wrote the book they had the book had to be option from them

the newspaper I don't know do what you want you're the movies but this is what's so funny and

Bradley had a great line about this to Redford in time because Ben Bradley's like whatever I do in my

career people are only going to remember the diversion of me that's in the movies they will not

remember real me right they will remember movie me and he says as to Redford said just remember

pal that you go off and write a horse or jump in the sack with some good looking woman in your next

film but I am forever an asshole true right that's the power of the movie it is and yet it worked out

for him tremendously well movie comes out in April 1976 it is hard to describe how much publicity

there was for this movie cover of time magazine cover of people magazine cover of Rolling Stone

the late great gene syskull went to Washington and he did this Sean he wrote a feature about the film

and then separate features about Woodward and Bernstein and Bradley and K gram wow that's how much

copy was extracted for this movie the filmmakers have been worried that the press would receive this

badly because they would screw it up right they would make a Hollywood version of a media movie in

fact the press loved it and covered it crazily filmmakers were also worried this movie would not

make money because it was too political as you mentioned it made a ton of money it's one of the

highest grossing movies of 1976 Hoffman said this I thought this was funny the real reason for the

success of the pictures that Hoffman's back and Redford's got him it's what the public always wanted

that beautiful was finally wound up with a nice Jewish boy Dustin Hoffman in People magazine

Hoffman also told people this about the finished product here's a different day of journalism

when you could make a movie and actually confess to a reporter that you weren't totally happy with it

I'm not as ecstatic as the critics are about all the president's men it could have been a lot

better they cut some of the best scenes I told Bob he was drawing the picture out I said he should

add a scene where Woodward and Bernstein were really having it out but he didn't I would have fought

more but by the time I saw the film it was too late to make radical changes I wanted in my opinion

the film is a little too smooth I would have left a few hairs on the lens that's so fascinating

because I feel the exact opposite about it it's incredible how many seemingly disconnected incidents

there are in the movie the this feeling of like it's not there's not narrative momentum in the movie

like even as they are getting the story you're still like who are they talking about right now you

know like there it's it is a somewhat confusing it's not confusing to understand where they're headed

right but it's meant to be this it's meant to be seen from a great distance because it is about

all of these little tiny pieces that have to come together and so it never feels like there's a

moment where the two reporters look at each other and say aha we have done it and that great choice

that you talked about the Goldman makes at the end of the film is another sign of kind of like

the comfort in 70's cinema of not spelling everything out for you of being able to and also being

comfortable in failure being seen a success you know the film ends on a failure but we know that

success is really there and it's so funny to take a shot like that at the movie in people magazine

yeah uh Alicia Shepherd who wrote a great book about Woodward and Bernstein noted that Bernstein

was played in the movies by two men Dustin Hoffman and they don't know Jack Nicholson and Hartburn

oh of course not a bad duo of course uh the first it does not come off very well in that one

first one was a little more more of a positive portrayal you say it's funny you're right you're

right there is not a moment in the movie where it's like aha we did it I think the closest is when

Bernstein is chasing the car Woodward's car down the street mm-hmm Woodward out of the blue yeah

yeah yeah they have plenty of fun phone calls where you know where they're like

dolberg I just talked to him you know like we get a couple of those but it's like who the fuck is

dolberg yeah no I know and he's never heard some friends like he's been in a Minnesota you know

when he has this great little scene on the phone and we never hear from him again uh Woodward and

Bernstein wrote the final days they published that in 1976 Alicia Shepherd notes that in

76 they had the number one movie at the box office they had the number one bestselling paperback

all the presents men and the number one bestselling hardback the final days and then they didn't

work together anymore and that was it that was in again that was 50 years ago and we consider

them a duo we will always consider them a duo but they did not share by lines after that

what did we lose you know I it's an interesting thing to think about because they both went on

to obviously have amazing careers and are still very well known to this day but um did they ever

reach this mountain top again Woodward you could argue he had big scoops he had big scoops

he remained a figure he remained a superstar journalist yeah and a guy who's selling a ton of books

yeah did he ever reach this mountain top again I think probably not yeah I think there's

something really complicated about this world to where when you can when you become bigger than the

story it sometimes becomes difficult to get stories um and you become now you get you get tapped

on the shoulder as the person who gets to break a star I feel that Woodward has had this or because

of his long deep connections in Washington over the years you can see moments when someone decides

you know in a kind of Adam Schefter style way where it's like you will be the one who will share

with the world xyz and that's how a lot of the stuff works obviously but this feels like a case

of them starting with nothing yes they started they you know they they got a phone call in the middle

of the night and they went down to a court hearing and that's where this starts like it is it is a

ground level building from the bottom because nobody knew who the fuck they were this is about what

they didn't know this is about it you know how how naive they were and they're just trying to

to go for these little kernels yeah whereas Woodward's other books are about I know everything and

everyone yes colon Powell is is burning up my phone I'm getting the inside story doesn't I feel

like I'm doesn't that feel older than all the presidents been that history do you know what I

mean the goal for yeah just like that that era of leadership it just feels so small and so

significantly less iconographic you know there's like that just feels like stuff that happened and

this feels like stuff that matters why is that I don't know I mean maybe because it was a more

frivolous time in journalism or in political leadership or I don't know we just don't have the

right movies about it could possibly be we don't have a we don't have a movie like that specifically

like this or that pick the right heroes or pick the right storytellers could possibly be it could

be that filmmakers of on the order of Robert Redford were less interested in it you know George

Clooney I think as an actor who feels very in concert with the Redford model the Redford approach

um and he made one of these but it was good night and good luck which was went way into the past

you know yeah and not quite as yeah not quite as successful as this one all right Sean

fantasy you're gonna go back to the big picture and rewatchable so I'm gonna go back to exposing

ratchet and restaurants this might be here at the ringer thank you so much for joining me he is

Sean fantasy I'm Brian Curtis by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin Friday on the press box

Mel Kuiper Jr is gonna join me and Joel Mel Kuiper Jr. Wow talking about his career covering the

draft we're actually gonna have him list off legendary jets draft bus thanks for doing that

in the corner appreciate you doing that can you just can you just actually will win the different studio

but yeah I'll sit in the booth wait so but let's just before you wrap you know the jets do own

the the the better of the two cowboy's picks in 2027 and I'm feeling great about that I just

want you to know and I hope everything's fine how dare how dare you sir how dare you sir you can

check out David Shoemaker's excellent cover for the April issue on our Instagram page at press

box ringer back on Friday with more of the more