Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal 2015

"Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal, 2015) is a gripping documentary about the legendary 1968 televised debates between two brilliant intellectuals and irreconcilable political opponents conservative William F. Buckley Jr. and liberal Gore Vidal.

In the summer of 1968, ABC, a network on the brink of bankruptcy and at the bottom of the ratings, decided to host a series of live debates during the Republican and Democratic conventions. They invited as panelists people who genuinely hated each other and everything their opponent stood for. These debates quickly turned into a fierce war of words, full of mutual insults, sarcasm, and intellectual duels, culminating in a massive scandal on live television.

The film shows how this confrontation not only forever changed the format of television news, ushering in the era of modern political talk shows, but also laid the groundwork for the deep political divide we see in the media today.