Now here’s an altogether classier style of fisticuffs. In 1968, US network ABC booked opposing political pundits, arch-conservative William F Buckley Jr and his diametrical opposite Gore Vidal, to debate nightly on the Republican and Democratic party conventions; their confrontations, we’re told, made TV history. At first, you can’t see what the fuss could have been as you watch these two grandees languidly exchanging playground taunts, both oozing suave patrician disdain and each as loftily self-satisfied as the other. Then Vidal calls Buckley a “crypto-Nazi”, to which Buckley replies by calling Vidal “queer” and threatening to sock him in the face.
Made by two documentarists best known for music films (Neville made Twenty Feet From Stardom), Best of Enemies shows an America that now seems very distant, when the cult of TV rabble-rousing and shock-jockery was yet to emerge; indeed, it’s suggested that the duo’s ratings-boosting spat kickstarted those phenomena. Despite his obnoxious political opinions, it’s the twitchy, grinning Buckley who comes across as the more likably human of the pair, if only because he’s more vulnerable – his on-screen outburst seems to have caused him decades of sleepless nights. With John Lithgow (Vidal) and Kelsey Grammer (Buckley) voicing the two men’s writings, this is a fascinating, hugely enjoyable essay on media history – and on intellectual vanity.
