From the Archives: 'Our Nixon' producer Brian Frye recalls discovery of White House 'home movies'

'Our Nixon' producer Brian Frye recalls discovery of White House 'home movies'
November 17, 2013 7:16 PM MST

Forty years ago today, on November 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon declared “I am not a crook” before a nationwide television audience. Less than a year later, he had resigned in disgrace rather than face impeachment as a result of a cluster of scandals remembered as “the Watergate affair.”

Earlier this month at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, film maker Brian L. Frye spoke about his new documentary, Our Nixon (co-produced by Penny Lane, who also directed). Frye participated in a panel discussion after a screening of the film with former Virginia Governor Gerald Baliles and Miller Center scholar Ken Hughes.

Our Nixon, which has been aired by CNN in addition to having a limited theatrical and film-festival release, is built upon a treasure-trove of Super-8mm “home movies” shot by top Nixon aides H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dwight Chapin.

The films – which include footage of Nixon's historic trip to China and visits to the White House by foreign dignitaries, as well as more quotidian events – were preserved by the National Archives as part of a cache of potential evidence in the Watergate investigation but did not come to light until about ten years ago, when Frye learned of their existence.

After the screening, Frye – who teaches law at the University of Kentucky in addition to writing film criticism and producing movies – spoke with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about how he came into possession of home movies from the Nixon White House and the process of turning that material into a cohesive documentary film.

In the public domain
“Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Chapin,” he explained, “were receiving free Super-8 film from the Naval Photographic Center and also free processing and printing. I'm pretty sure that what was happening was Haldeman was distributing the films and after they were shot, he was collecting them, dropping them off at the Naval Photographic Center and then providing prints to all of his friends, so he probably got three prints of everything, more or less.”

When Ehrlichman, the president's domestic policy advisor, resigned as a result of the Watergate investigation, “he left in his office prints of the Super-8 films -- second- and third-generation prints,” said Frye. “Those were confiscated and ultimately became part of the Watergate investigation collection that went to the National Archives, so they were placed into the public domain in that way.”

The movies remained far from public view, however, because “they don't really relate to the abuse of power issues that people are most interested in. They were relatively low priority on the preservation ladder” for archivists.

Frye learned of the films' existence shortly from the film preservationist who “told me about his preservation work and showed me one of the reels, which I thought was fascinating but I didn't have the resources to make a transfer at the time. These were preserved but there weren't access copies available.”

After writing an article about the newly discovered movie reels for the film journal, Cineaste, Frye met his eventual producing partner, Penny Lane, in 2008.

They decided to collaborate on a documentary based on the movies but they did not know what the entire content was. Taking a risk, they invested $20,000 to have the films transferred to video so they could examine them in detail.

Novel and compelling
Once they had a chance to look at all 25 hours of film, “we realized right away that the movie that we saw in those home movies was the story of the Nixon presidency as experienced by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Chapin,” Frye said. “That just struck us as a kind of an interesting, novel, potentially compelling way to look at the nature of a president.”

He analogized his film to how “people say you can learn a lot about a person by the way they talk to the waiter. Maybe you can learn something about the president from the way that he talks to his staff members.”

Of the three principal characters in the film, only Dwight Chapin is still alive. He has seen Our Nixon and appeared on a panel with Penny Lane after a screening at the AFI Docs festival in Washington earlier this year.

“As you might expect,” Frye recalled, Chapin is “critical of some aspects of the film. He feels like it focuses too much on Watergate and negative things about the president” and that it “doesn't reflect enough of Nixon's good qualities.”

At the same time, he added, “I hope he recognizes that we intended this to be a human, empathetic portrait of him and his friends, the people he worked for and with in the White House, and so, hopefully he can see that the film is a balanced and considered portrait of the administration.”

Goat testicles
Frye and Lane have intriguing projects that they are working on to follow up Our Nixon.

Lane, he said, “is working on a new film called Nuts, which is the story of [John R. Brinkley,] a quack doctor from the 1920s who claimed to cure impotence by transplanting goat testicles into men's scrotums” who also “went on to invent border radio [and] win the governorship of Kansas only to have it stolen away from him by the Kansas attorney general.” Brinkley “ultimately died penniless after being crushed by the predecessor of the FCC.”

Frye is working on two different projects on his own, a “documentary history of the representation of the gay rights movement” and a narrative film about the relationship of Andy Warhol and his mother.

Our Nixon will soon be available on DVD and is still being screened on the film festival circuit.




Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on November 17, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Woodward and Bernstein agree Ford's Nixon pardon was 'right thing to do'

Woodward and Bernstein agree Ford's Nixon pardon was 'right thing to do'
November 3, 2012 12:20 AM MST

At a Virginia Film Festival screening of Alan J. Pakula's 1976 movie, All the President's Men on Friday, November 2, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose investigative journalism formed the basis for that film and wrote the book of the same name, discussed the Watergate scandal and the legacy it left for American politics and culture.

Woodward and Bernstein answered questions posed by former Virginia Governor Gerald Baliles, one of the founders of the Virginia Film Festival and now director and CEO of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, which describes itself as “a nonpartisan institute that seeks to expand understanding of the presidency, policy and political history.”

'Wrong answers'
Near the end of the wide-ranging discussion, Woodward pointed out that he and other journalists are not always correct in their judgments – “sometimes you get the wrong answers” – and thus need reassessment.

Woodward, who has remained at the Washington Post for more than 40 years as reporter and editor, recalled how he had learned about President Gerald R. Ford's pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon, one month after Nixon had resigned in disgrace in August 1974.

Ford, he said, chose to announce the pardon on TV early one Sunday morning. Woodward was awakened by his reporting partner, Bernstein, who asked if he had heard the news.

No, Woodward said, not knowing what the news was.

“The sonofabitch pardoned the sonofabitch!” Bernstein exclaimed, and Woodward needed no further explanation.

'Aroma of a deal'
“For a long time, we thought the pardon was dirty,” Woodward said. “Why does the guy at the top get off? There was an aroma of a deal, an exchange of the presidency for a pardon. There was a question of justice: why one guy gets a pardon, forty people go to jail, and so forth.”

Woodward asserted that Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter in 1976 “in large part” because of the pardon and suspicions about it among American voters.

About 25 years later, Woodward wrote a book about Watergate and the legacy it had on the presidencies of Ford through Clinton. He had never met Ford previously, but spent several hours with him, as part of his research, with a specific aim to learn about the Nixon pardon.

Ford told Woodward that Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig had, indeed, offered a deal, but that he had rejected it.

“I pardoned Nixon, not for Nixon, not for myself, not for the political system,” Ford said to Woodward, “I pardoned Nixon for the country,” because the United States had to get beyond Watergate. A criminal trial of Nixon would prolong the scandal by three or more years and would be “unacceptable.”

'Cold shower'
Years later the Kennedy family gave Ford a Profiles in Courage award for his pardoning of Nixon. This event, Woodward said, was “a very important cold shower to get, because we had it absolutely wrong.”

At this point, Bernstein interjected, with Woodward nodding his agreement, that “it was the right thing to do for the country. It cost this man the presidency, because he did the right thing.”

After the discussion, Woodward and Bernstein autographed copies of their various books, including All the President's Men, for festival attendees.


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on November 3, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Va. Film Festival to feature politicians from Goldwater & LBJ to Nixon & Bush

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on October 7, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Va. Film Festival to feature politicians from Goldwater & LBJ to Nixon & Bush

Actors Jenna Elfman, Jasmine Guy, Hal Holbrook, Frank Langella, Richard Roundtree, and Patrick Wilson; novelists David Baldacci and Adriana Trigiani; directors Victor Levin, Barry Levinson, and Scott Teems; producers Katie Couric, Julie Lynn, and Paul Junger Witt; and political figures Andrew Card, Marlin Fitzwater, Barry Goldwater, Jr., and Skip Humphrey – these are among the filmmakers and celebrities who will appear at the 2014 Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville to discuss their works and careers.

Festival director Jody Kielbasa announced this year's program at an October 7 press conference held at the historic Jefferson Theater. After the formal announcement, he spoke with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about documentaries and other films that will be screened during the weekend of November 6-9 at a variety of venues in downtown Charlottesville and on the grounds of the University of Virginia.

Holbrook/Twain
Among the documentaries, Kielbasa singled out “Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey, which I think is an incredible documentary.” Hal Holbrook, who has been performing as Mark Twain for 60 years, will offer a special performance of his award-winning one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight, and also offer comments about the documentary film.

Kielbasa also mentioned that “41 on 41 is coming in as part of the Berlin Wall series in association with the Miller Center.” That film, he said, looks at “41 different people who comment on our 41st president, George H.W. Bush. Obviously,” he added, “some of that discussion will wrap around the Berlin Wall, as well.”

The Berlin Wall series – marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Empire – includes five films, a mix of fiction and non-fiction. The five are Dr. Strangelove, a 1964 Academy Award nominee directed by Stanley Kubrick; Red Army, a documentary about Soviet ice hockey players; Walesa: Man of Hope, Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s biopic about Nobel laureate Lech Wałęsa; German director Wim Wenders' fanciful Wings of Desire; as well as 41 on 41.

“For people out there who are not aware,” Kielbasa explained, “this year the University of Virginia was loaned four original panels of the Berlin Wall. They're encased in glass in front of the Alderman Library. I'm also responsible for a series of programs over an eight-day period leading up to the 25th anniversary” of the wall's destruction, “which actually happens on November 9, the last day of the Virginia Film Festival.”

Presidents and Elections
In conjunction with the UVA Center for Politics, the festival will present the premiere of Bombs Away: LBJ, Goldwater and the 1964 Campaign That Changed It All, followed by a panel discussion featuring former California Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr., and former Minnesota Attorney General Skip Humphrey. The film, Kielbasa said, takes “a fascinating look at Goldwater and LBJ and that incredible election and everything that was going on leading up to 1964.”

The Miller Center for Public Affairs is sponsoring a screening of Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard's film of the award-winning play about the interviews of Richard Nixon conducted by British TV host David Frost. Afterward, Frank Langella, who played Nixon in the film, will talk about his experience with historian Ken Hughes.

Kielbasa, now in his sixth year as festival director, also pointed to two major films made in Virginia that will be shown at the festival.

Big Stone Gap
“Our world premiere, the opening night film,” he said, is “Big Stone Gap, which was filmed entirely on location in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and is about that community.” That screening will include a panel discussion with writer/director Adriana Trigiani as well as several of the stars of the film.

The other high-profile made-in-Virginia film, he added, “is Wish You Well, based on the novel by David Baldacci.” Baldacci will be on hand to discuss the film, which is a coming-of-age story set in 1940s Virginia.

Kielbasa is also excited that director Barry Levinson will be at the Festival to discuss his latest film, The Humbling (starring Al Pacino) as well as his 1989 film, The Natural (starring Robert Redford).

“I know that film gets played a lot,” he explained, “but to able to listen to Barry Levinson talk about the making of that film should be extraordinary and, quite frankly, people consider it one of the best sports movies ever made.”

The 27th annual Virginia Film Festival will also screen a number of likely Oscar contenders, including The Imitation Game, Foxcatcher, Wild, and Mr. Turner.

“These are incredibly high-profile films,” Kielbasa said, “and in most cases we'll be screening them anywhere from two weeks to two months in advance of their general release.”

SUGGESTED LINKS

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Filmmaker Stanley Nelson on ‘Freedom Riders,’ the news media, and civil rights
Virginia Film Festival to include documentaries on Kennedy, Nixon, Santorum
Jody Kielbasa previews political movies in 2012's Virginia Film Festival

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/va-film-festival-to-feature-politicians-from-goldwater-lbj-to-nixon-bush

Washington Post reporter gets several historical facts wrong

An article in the print edition of the Washington Post on Sunday, July 27 (p. C5), includes three glaring errors that would have resulted in a failing grade on an elementary school history test, yet only one of them has been subsequently corrected on the newspaper's web site.

The article, written by Ileana Najarro with a print-edition headline "Wolf is making his last push for holiday," explains how retiring U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA10) is advancing legislation that would make Washington's Birthday a federal holiday celebrated on the actual date of his birth, February 22, rather than floating each year on the third Monday in February.

One of Najarro's errors relates to how the holiday came to be celebrated on a date other than February 22:

President Rutherford B. Hayes established Washington’s birthday in 1879 as a holiday for the District’s federal workers, Wolf said. The holiday was extended to all federal workers six years later, but it wasn’t until 1971 that it was moved to the third Monday of February as part of President Gerald Ford’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

Gerald Ford did not become President until August 1974. The law was passed when Lyndon Johnson was President. Johnson signed it on June 28, 1968, and it took effect January 1, 1971, when Richard Nixon was President. Ford did sign a bill in 1975 that amended the Uniform Monday Holiday Act to restore Veterans' Day commemorations to November 11, regardless of its day of the week.

A second error, also not corrected, misplaces the origins of George Washington:

Sitting in his office, [Wolf] spoke of his geographical connection to the first president: Both were originally from Philadelphia, and both have held office in Winchester.

It used to be said that "every schoolboy knows" some fact about U.S. history. One such fact is that George Washington came from Virginia. He was born in the Northern Neck, in Westmoreland County near Fredericksburg. In later years, Washington made his home at Mount Vernon, just down the Potomac River from the city that bears his name. As a military officer, Washington did maintain an office in Winchester during the 1750s in a building that still stands near Cork and Braddock Streets.

Washington also served his country in Philadelphia, presiding over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and moving there from New York as President before the capital was established in its present location.

The sole error that was corrected reads, in the print edition, like this:

Although the holiday is still recognized as Washington's Birthday, it's come to be known as Presidents' Day, with several states honoring all presidents at once. Wolf said he abhors this "hijacking" because Washington's birthday is honored equally with that of President Richard M. Nixon, who was impeached.

Andrew Johnson was impeached. Bill Clinton was impeached. Richard Nixon resigned before articles of impeachment could be brought before the House of Representatives for a vote.  If any newspaper's editors should know this, it would be those of The Washington Post.

The Post's correction of this error appears at the top of the page on its web site:

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that President Nixon was impeached. He resigned before he could be impeached. This version has been corrected.

The "corrected" paragraph says that Nixon "resigned in disgrace."

So... Where were the copy editors?  How did sloppiness like this make it through the Metro section's editorial process?  Will the other errors also merit corrections in print or on the Post's web site?

Note:  The web headline for Najarro's article is: "Rep. Frank Wolf’s final acts include restoring Washington’s Birthday."

(Cross-posted from Where Are the Copy Editors?)

Kennedy and Nixon at the 2013 Virginia Film Festival

Wesley Buell Frazier (left) and Larry Sabato

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Television, radio, and newspapers are full of remembrances, with witnesses, historians, conspiracy theorists, and political commentators weighing in on that momentous event.

Earlier this month at the Virginia Film Festival, there was a screening of a new documentary film about JFK's legacy from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, called The Kennedy Half-Century, which is tied to a book by the same name by UVA political scientist Larry Sabato (The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy).

There was also a screening of a new documentary film about Kennedy's 1960 presidential election campaign rival, Richard M. Nixon.

That film, called Our Nixon, features never-before-seen behind-the-scenes "home movies" from the first four years of the Nixon administration.

Gerald Baliles (left) and Brian L. Frye

The amateur movies were made with Super-8mm cameras by White House aides H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dwight Chapin.

 All three men were later convicted of crimes connected to the Watergate Affair, which also brought down Nixon himself, when he became the first (and, so far, only) U.S. President to resign his office.

Each screening featured a three-person panel discussion.

The panel discussion that followed The Kennedy Half-Century focused on the Kennedy assassination itself, which is only briefly covered in the movie, because the film's focus is largely on how Kennedy's legacy has been treated by the presidents who followed him into the White House, from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama.

Larry Sabato moderated a discussion with two witnesses to the JFK assassination: Tina Towner Pender, who at the time of the murder was the youngest person who photographed the event; and Wesley Buell Frazier, a co-worker of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository, who drove the assassin to work the morning of November 22.

After the panel discussion, I interviewed both Pender -- who has written a memoir called Tina Towner: My Story as the Youngest Photographer at the Kennedy Assassination -- and Frazier, who was manhandled by the Dallas Police and accused of being an accomplice of Lee Harvey Oswald or co-conspirator in the assassination.

Here is video of that panel discussion, which took place in the Culbreth Theater on Saturday, November 9:

The next day, November 10, Our Nixon was shown at the Newcomb Hall Theater. The screening was followed by a panel discussion moderated by former Virginia Governor Gerald Baliles, now director and CEO of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, and featuring Brian L. Frye, co-producer of Our Nixon and a law professor at the University of Kentucky, and Miller Center scholar Ken Hughes.

After the panel, I spoke to Frye and asked him about how he found the long-lost Super-8mm footage that makes up the bulk of his film, how it was preserved, and what his next film projects are.

Here is the video of the Our Nixon panel with Baliles, Frye, and Hughes:

Our Nixon has been aired by CNN and shown at several film festivals (in addition to the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville) and it will also be available on DVD in January 2014.

Spiro Agnew Resigned as Vice President 40 Years Ago Today

Another piece from the archives, marking the 40th anniversary of Spiro T. Agnew's resignation as vice president on October 10, 1973. Agnew left office under a cloud in the midst of the unfolding Watergate scandal, leading to the first use of the 26th Amendment procedures for selection of a vice president by Congress to fill a vacancy in that office. (Previous vacancies had gone unfilled throughout the rest of the presidential term.)

This article appeared in The Metro Herald in September 1996 as "Spiro Agnew: Up from the Memory Hole?" It was written on the occasion of Agnew's death on September 17, 1996.

- - -

Early in 1973, a Sunday "Doonesbury" comic strip by Garry Trudeau showed eight panels of the south portico of the White House. Phones are ringing; suddenly a recording answers: "Good morning! This is the White House. We are sorry but all our lines are busy right now. Please hold on. A service representative will be with you in a moment." There is a beep and a pause, followed by: "Good morning. Thank you for calling the White House. May I help you?" "... Ah ... yes," says the caller. "I'm trying to reach Mr. Agnew." Comes the reply: "Speaking."

To many people, this is the predominant image of former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who died late Tuesday evening [September 17, 1996] at the age of 77. In the swirl of controversy that defined the Nixon White House -- Vietnam, Watergate, the Energy Crisis -- Agnew was a but a blur, a minor player relegated to the lower levels of the administration; indeed, he was little more than a messenger or telephone operator.

Plucked from obscurity on [August] 8, 1968, by Republican presidential nominee Richard M. Nixon to be his running mate, Spiro Agnew had served as Baltimore County Executive and Maryland's Governor. Though some may claim he remained obscure throughout his truncated tenure as Vice President, the fact is that President Nixon assigned him major duties in both the domestic and foreign policy realms. Those who do remember him recall his lurid turns-of-phrase in his role as the administration's political attack dog.

"Nattering nabobs of negativism" was how Agnew characterized the press in one memorable speech in 1969. Spoken by Agnew, that phrase is ascribed to speechwriter Patrick Buchanan. (Is it necessary to ask, "Whatever happened to him?")

Spiro T. Agnew as Maryland governor

A year later, during the midterm election campaign, Agnew spewed forth against the administration's liberal opponents, saying that "ultraliberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order."

Agnew did not limit his criticism to Democrats, either. During that year's campaign season, he turned his sights on New York Senator Charles Goodell, who as a "Rockefeller Republican" was fairly liberal in his voting record. Goodell was in a tight three-way race that included Conservative candidate James Buckley. Nixon was upset by Goodell's attitude toward the administration's Vietnam policy, and wanted to undercut his re-election efforts in an attempt to favor Buckley.

So Agnew was sent out on the attack. At a meeting of newspaper editors in New Orleans, Agnew suggested that Goodell's most recent statements about Vietnam were wildly inconsistent with the statements and votes he had made as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. By comparing his earlier and later statements, Agnew said, "you will find Goodell is truly the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party." (Jorgensen, in the 1950s, became the first person to have a successful sex-change operation.) Ms. Jorgensen, by the way, was not pleased at the comparison and objected to being used by Agnew as a "political pawn." (Goodell, by the way, lost his race to Buckley, who lost in turn to Daniel Patrick Moynihan six years later.)

Nonetheless, Agnew's role in the Nixon administration was more than just fodder for the media. Behind the scenes he performed important tasks. Henry Kissinger notes in his memoirs, for instance, that Agnew was one of the administration's point-men in the negotiations to end the Vietnam War, and during the drawn-out bargaining of late 1972 was always on stand-by, ready to fly to Paris to sign a peace treaty on the President's behalf.

Agnew's downfall, of course, was petty political corruption. I remember clearly the night of October 10, 1973, when Agnew resigned the vice presidency. My high school classmates and I learned a new Latin phrase: "nolo contendere" (no contest), the plea entered by Agnew that was short of an admission of guilt but still earned him punishment for accepting bribes (and failing to pay taxes on his bribery income) while he served, not only as Governor of Maryland, but as Vice President.

Strangely enough, Agnew treated his graft practices with an eerie sort of lightheartedness. One of the contractors who had delivered thousands of dollars in bribes to Agnew was being pressured to give money to the Nixon re-election campaign in 1972. After hearing his complaint, Agnew said to the man: "Tell them you gave at the office."

Agnew resigned; Nixon appointed Gerald R. Ford to succeed him. When Nixon himself resigned just 10 months later, Ford became "the accidental president." Had Agnew forestalled his own troubles for less than a year, he too could have been president -- and perhaps the second U.S. chief executive to resign in disgrace. What an ironic twist to history that would have been.

Panel Discussions at the 2012 Virginia Film Festival

Carl Bernstein

Although a presidential election has intervened, absorbing much of our attention, since the last popcorn was popped and the last screening went dark, I think it's worthwhile to visit the 2012 Virginia Film Festival and look at a few of the stimulating panel discussions that followed some of the features.

The headliners on Friday night were former Virginia Governor Gerald Baliles, who was one of the founders of the Virginia Film Festival, along with authors Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Baliles led a conversation with Woodward and Bernstein about the 1976 movie based on their book, All the President's Men, which chronicled their investigation of the Watergate break-in and cover-up as young reporters with the Washington Post.

Bob Woodward

All the President's Men won four Academy Awards (supporting actor, sound, art direction-set decoration, and adapted screenplay) and was nominated for four others, including Best Picture. (By odd coincidence for me, the screenplay was by William Goldman, who also wrote The Lion in Winter, a play I saw last night at the American Shakespeare Center's Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton last night.)

Woodward and Bernstein discussed many aspects of their investigative work, the making of the movie, and the legacy of the Watergate scandal. One nugget that I excerpted from the longer discussion focused on President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon just one month after Nixon resigned the presidency.

Woodward explained that he interviewed Ford about the pardon some 25 years after it occurred, and that Ford said he did it to spare the country of further pain over Watergate. Although he and Bernstein had been appalled by the pardon at the time it happened, they now agree that Ford "did the right thing."

Here's the clip:

The longer, more wide-ranging, conversation is also worth a look. Considering that Watergate happened 40 years ago, it is fascinating to hear the stories directly from some of the principal players in the investigation that brought down a president and proved that our Constitution can endure even the worst crisis that threatens its integrity.

Here's the complete panel discussion with Baliles, Bernstein, and Woodward:

For the record, here is Governor Baliles' introduction of the film and the participants:

Another political movie was also featured at this month's film festival. A screening of John Frankenheimer's 1962 psycho-political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate (starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, and a cast of distinguished character actors of the 1950s and 1960s), was followed by a discussion among the hosts of the public radio program, BackStory with the American History Guys.

The American History Guys are two University of Virginia historians, Brian Balogh (20th century history) and Peter Onuf (18th century), and the president of the University of Richmond, Ed Ayers (19th century).

The screening and panelists were introduced by Jody Kielbasa, director of the Virginia Film Festival, who notes that The Manchurian Candidate has been added to the Library of Congress's National Film Registry.

Here's the full discussion, including questions and comments from the audience:

In a non-political category, on Saturday afternoon, actor and Oscar-winning songwriter Keith Carradine discussed his role in Ridley Scott's 1978 film, The Duellists (costarring Harvey Keitel). The conversation was moderated by New York University film scholar Harry Chotiner and included questions from the audience about Carradine's career and the art/craft of acting.

Here's the post-screening discussion, which lasts just over one-half hour:

Finally, a new movie, based on a popular young adult (YA) novel, from a first-time director was one of the closing-night screenings in a newly refurbished Newcomb Hall Theatre on the grounds of the University of Virginia.

Director Matthew Lillard (better known as an actor for such films as Scream and Scooby-Doo) discussed his new film, Fat Kid Rules the World, along with actor Billy Campbell, who has a major role in it. The conversation was moderated by Sandy Hausman of WVTF-FM.

Fat Kid Rules the World is based on the novel of the same name by K.L. Going and stars Jacob Wysocki, Matt O'Leary, and Dylan Arnold, as well as Campbell (who attended Western Albemarle High School).

The conversation took some interesting turns. As Lisa Provence reported in The Hook, for instance,

Billy Campbell's shocking confession about what really went on at Fork Union Military Academy: The star of The Killing says his six years at FUMA provided the military experience for playing a former-Marine dad in Fat Kid. "What were you doing there?" asks Hausman. "A lot of masturbating," replies Campbell.

Here's the whole rollicking thing:

For more of my coverage of this year's Virginia Film Festival, see this Examiner.com article about Woodward & Bernstein and this pre-festival interview with Jody Kielbasa.

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A Glimpse of Richard Nixon and Ted Kennedy

Courtesy of the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, a glimpse into how the Nixon White House approached Senator Edward M. Kennedy (who died Tuesday night) comes from the Nixon Oval Office tapes -- the same tapes that later led to Nixon's August 1974 resignation in disgrace as a result of the Watergate affair.

In this excerpt from September 8, 1971, Nixon is talking with his top domestic policy aide, John Ehrlichman, about investigating Ted Kennedy's IRS files, because Kennedy is a potential candidate for President in 1972 and they want to find incriminating information that could derail Kennedy's ambitions. The conversation turns to Chappaquiddick, and the divorces of Republican governors Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan are raised as a point of comparison.

President Nixon: [274c|36:30] I don't know--what the hell are we doing?

John Ehrlichman: I don't know.

President Nixon: You see, we have a new man over there. I know the other guy didn't do anything, but--

Ehrlichman: Oh, you mean at IRS?

President Nixon: Yeah!

Ehrlichman: Yeah.

President Nixon: Why are--are we going after their tax returns? I--you know what I mean? There's a lot of gold in them thar hills.

Ehrlichman: It worries people, [unclear]--

President Nixon: You remember in 1962, do you remember what they did to me in California? Now that was a crock. Those sons of bitches came out [unclear] and I find out they owe me more money, in fact, my returns had been so circumspect. I was furious. I don't know.

Ehrlichman: That's something I better talk to [John] Mitchell about. That fellow is Mitchell's guy.

President Nixon: Yeah.

Ehrlichman: And when I see Mitchell tomorrow or the next day, I'll take it up with him.

President Nixon: I can only hope that we are, frankly, doing a little persecuting. Right? We ought to persecute them [unclear] we can.

Ehrlichman: That's right.

President Nixon: And on the IRS, if you could—are we looking into [Senator Edmund] Muskie’s [D-Maine] returns? Does he have any? [Senator] Hubert's [Humphrey, D-Minnesota] been in a lot of funny deals.

Ehrlichman: Yes, he has.

President Nixon: [Senator Edward] Teddy [Kennedy]? Who knows about the Kennedys? Shouldn’t they be investigated?

Ehrlichman: [Unclear] personally. But IRS-wise, I don’t know the answer. Teddy, we are covering--

President Nixon: Are you?

Ehrlichman: --personally.

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: When he goes on holidays. When he stopped in Hawaii on his way back from Pakistan [unclear].1

President Nixon: Did he do anything?

Ehrlichman: No. No, he’s very clean. Very clean.

President Nixon: He's being careful now.

Ehrlichman: Exactly. And he was in Hawaii on his own. He was staying at some guy’s villa. And we had a guy on him every night [unclear interjection by Nixon]. And he was just as nice as he could be the whole time.

President Nixon: The thing to do is just watch him, because what happens to fellows like that, who have that kind of problem, is that they go for quite a while and then they go [unclear].

Ehrlichman: Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I’m hoping for.

President Nixon: I don’t think he would break really while he was, you know, trying for the big thing. Generally, they don’t. Although Jack [Kennedy] was damn careless.

Ehrlichman: This time between now and convention time may be the time to get him.

President Nixon: You mean that he would be under great pressure?

Ehrlichman: He would be under pressure, but he will also be out of the limelight somewhat. Now, he was in Hawaii very much incognito. Very little staff. And played tennis, moved around, visited with people and socialized and so on. So you would expect that at a time like that you might catch him. And then he went up to Hyannis. And we've got an arrangement--

President Nixon: How about Muskie? [Unclear.] What kind of a life is he living?

Ehrlichman: Very cloistered. Very monkish.

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: Yeah, big time. He's got six kids. And very ordinary [unclear]. Teddy . . . I-we were over on Martha's Vineyard last week.

President Nixon: Yeah--

Ehrlichman: I had never seen that site before, that Chappaquiddick-Edgartown ferry. That is a very short swim. Having seen it now, I would bet he swam it that night. It's--I don't see why--you know, they could build a bridge across there. It's a very short distance.

President Nixon: Hmm.

Ehrlichman: And it's no farther than from here to the West Wing. And not a bad tide, the time we were there. So it was quite interesting. I took some pictures of it because it amazed me how short a distance it really was. But we do cover him when he goes to Hyannis.

President Nixon: He will never live that down.

Ehrlichman: No. I don't think he will.

President Nixon: Not that one.

Ehrlichman: I think that will be around his neck forever.

President Nixon: He'll never--it isn't like [Nelson] Rockefeller's divorce. A divorce, you can get over.2

Ehrlichman: Yeah.

President Nixon: [Unclear] Rockefeller [unclear] most people will forget it. They say [unclear] maybe there's something wrong with his wife [unclear] and they've forgotten it.

Ehrlichman: Yeah. Yeah, nobody knew he had a first wife.

President Nixon: [Ronald] Reagan [unclear] unhappy marriage.

Ehrlichman: But this thing has a geographic identity that's interesting. And they tell me that the business on that ferry has tripled since this accident, with people going over to look at the bridge [unclear].

Tape whip.

Ehrlichman: --is getting into the folklore.

An MP3 recording of this conversation can be downloaded here. The Miller Center has numerous excerpts available of recordings that feature President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Nixon, either talking about or talking with the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

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