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All the President's ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN By Mike Canning Introduction: Based on the Pulitzer Prize- winning 1974 book, the film version of All the President’s Men focuses firmly on the first five months of the Watergate scandal, starting with a re-enactment of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972 and leading up to The Washington Post’s revelations about the Nixon Administration's campaign of sabotage against its political rivals and the resulting cover-up. Beginning with the first, tentative coverage by Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin © Warner Brothers Pictures/Courtesy Hoffman), obscure writers on the Metro Everett Collection beat, the film chronicles both their dogged reporting work as well as the development of a personal and professional rapport between two very different individuals. No one was satisfied with the original script, and Goldman recounts in his memoir how, A parade of Post journalists and a host of after working on it for six months, he was Nixon Administration sources are called by Redford to the latter’s New York incorporated into a narrative that also apartment to consider a new script by highlights Woodward's secret meetings with Bernstein and his then girl friend Nora his crucial source "Deep Throat” (Hal Ephron. The incident infuriated Goldman Holbrook), an administration insider who who called the move a “gutless betrayal” by guided the reporters on their investigation. Redford, who ultimately rejected that The tension rises with the reporters under version, only one scene of which ever made threat and editor Ben Bradlee (Jason it into the film. Finally, Redford and his Robards, Jr.) willing to take a chance on director, Alan J. Pakula, took a crack at the them. script, booking rooms at the Madison Hotel Background: This landmark Washington across from The Post offices for a month to film was initiated by the politically minded finalize it. Redford, who was gripped by the Watergate Although some of Goldman’s script was story. He bought the rights to the book in jettisoned by the end, he would go on to win 1974 for $450,000 and got financing from the Academy Award for Best Adapted Warner Brothers Studios with a budget of Screenplay. The prize came at some cost $5 million. Hollywood veteran William for Goldman, however, who concluded, Goldman was hired as the screenwriter. In because of the 15 months of agony he his autobiography Adventures in the Screen suffered working on the project, that if there Trade, Goldman said he “hacked away at were anything to change in his movie life, “I the morass of material” until he reached one wouldn’t have come near ‘All the President’s conclusion: “Throw away the last half of the Men.’” book” to concentrate the drama. All the President’s Men had a splashy DC premiere on April 4, 1976 at the Kennedy Center in Washington before its general researches). That drove Woodward mad, release. The director and the principal because he knew what was true, he was actors hobnobbed with political leaders and there.” other dignitaries in what was a benefit for Coblenz also reported that the filmmakers the Fund for Investigative Journalism. thought they had approval from Ron Production Notes: The Washington Post Nessen, President Ford’s press secretary, itself covered the filmmakers’ invasion of its to stage a briefing scene in the White premises in a long article written in April House, and even scripted it in. “Of course, 1975, one year before the film’s release. It we were naïve,” Coblenz added: “There was noted that Hoffman and Redford “hung out no way (President) Ford would allow in The Post offices for months, sitting in on Redford to come to the White House to diss news conferences and conducting research the previous president. We were suddenly for their roles,” with Redford often a told it was all off; the administration didn’t distraction to employees when he roamed approve. It felt hugely ironic.” the floor. There was an argument over All the Redford, in a biography, stated that President’s Men’s ending. Director Pakula “contrary to what’s been written,” Katherine wanted the iconic footage of Nixon’s defiant Graham “did not block us filming at The wave from the Presidential helicopter, but Post. We filmed for two weeks, but it went Redford demurred, saying “This isn’t about haywire.” The reason, said Redford, was Nixon. It’s about journalism. I want to end that “the journalists and secretaries went with the guys just working away.” A crazy when Hollywood came in their midst. compromise was reached which closes the It was all giggling women and people doing film—the clattering image of a teletype their makeup and a general feeling of announcing Nixon’s resignation. disorder...we knew we had to get out of Comments: Rare for a serious political there.” drama, the film proved a considerable Before fleeing the paper’s fabled newsroom, financial success, earning Warner Brothers however, set designers took precise Pictures over $30 million in the US in its first measurements of the newspaper's offices release. The film was also a great critical and photographed everything. Even boxes success, winning four Oscars (for adapted of authentic period Post “trash” were screenplay, sound, art direction, and gathered and transported to sets recreating Robards’ supporting performance as the newsroom on two soundstages in Bradlee) and being nominated for four Warners’ Burbank studios at a cost of others, including Best Picture of the Year (it $200,000. The filmmakers went to great lost to Rocky). lengths to achieve accuracy and The film was universally lauded, The New authenticity, including making replicas of York Times’ rave review by critic Vincent phone books of the period, the Post article Canby being fairly typical: noted. Newspapers and newspapermen have long According to the film’s producer. Walter been favorite subjects for Coblenz, the shoot in DC was difficult: moviemakers,...yet not until All the “They just didn’t want us in Washington, so President’s Men, the riveting screen every permission was a stranglehold,” he adaptation of the Watergate book..., has said. “We shot at the Library of Congress, any film come remotely close to being an for example, and they just didn’t want us. accurate picture of American journalism at There was anger and denial all around. We its best. were told that the incident portrayed in the book was inaccurate, that the library had The notoriously hard-to-please movie critic never been involved (in the reporters’ John Simon, extolled the film’s acting: From Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman sequence when Woodward and Bernstein down to the least bit player there is such visit the Jefferson Building of the Library of perfection of acting as one scarcely Congress to gain access to some White associates with Hollywood filmmaking. And House records. The most effective part of not only do the performances act and look the sequence is shot inside the Library’s convincing, they are even splendid famed Main Reading Room, where, as the likenesses, as far as I can judge.... It is well reporter’s rifle through library check-out worth seeing All the President’s Men twice; cards, the camera slowly backs straight up once for everything about it, and once more to the very top of the Library’s grand dome, just for the acting. with a view down on the now puny protagonists. According to one source, the It has since become the gold standard for production “devoted three weeks to pulling films on investigative journalism. apparatus up 600 stairs to achieve a DC/Hill Notes: Outside of its singular set for dramatic upward pull-away shot.” The Post’s newsroom, All the President’s That dramatic shot almost never happened. Men uses DC locations as fully and According to a contemporary report in a consistently as any Washington-based local business journal, the company, after movie ever made by a Hollywood studio. spending two weeks building a platform Not only are many locations used, but they from which a camera could obtain a bird’s are used appropriately, and in a few cases, eye view of the Reading Room, hit a snag. strikingly. Then: -- Scenes take place at the Kennedy Forty-eight hours before the shoot, Center, in Lafayette Park, at the Hoover FBI permission to film was suddenly revoked by Building, in an actual District courtroom, at an official who was horrified to see the the exterior of The Washington Post platform hanging from pulleys attached to building, at the White House’s north gate, at the Library dome. After hours of desperate the Justice Department (FBI), and, most telephoning, the producers finally appropriately, at the Watergate complex reached...Jack Valenti (then head of the and at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge MPAA). Valenti put them in touch with across the street (where the infamous Congressman John Brademas, who sits on “plumbers” had their base). The apartment the Library committee of the House of where Woodward lives, and signals Deep Representatives. Thanks to Brademas’ Throat with a potted plant, is located at a intercession, the scene was shot. building on the 1700 block of P Street NW. The Library shoot was also the scene of an -- One significant location—the ominous unfortunate incident that affected future parking garage where Woodward meets access to the building. Stuart Neumann, Deep Throat—did not use a DC site. Those long a DC location manager and a sequences were shot in the garage of the production assistant during this filming, ABC Entertainment Center building in recalled the event in an interview.
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