Word: woodwarding
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...certain amount of inevitable idealization taking place, both of the models and their trade. But, as Ben Bradlee has observed, "the irony of Watergate is that Richard Nixon made us all famous?the people he most despised. He made us mini-household words, and in the case of Woodward and Bernstein, real folk heroes." (Well, sort of.) The moviemakers were particularly on guard against showing the "Woodstein team," as they came to be known in Washington, as anything other than what they were?hungry reporters desperately eager for a break. But the film will augment what they have since become...
...plot is necessarily familiar. Routinely assigned to a minor crime story, a break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate complex one night in June 1972, Woodward and Bernstein soon find they have landed the assignment of the century. Cross-checking lists of G.O.P. contributors, rosters of election staffers, knocking on doors, endlessly working the phones, getting sepulchral guidance from Woodward's source "Deep Throat" or open aid from a repentant official like Hugh Sloan Jr., the pair begin to run the chain of criminal responsibility for Watergate higher and higher into the Nixon organization. The film...
Redford saw in Watergate the possibilities of a film while Woodward and Bernstein were still churning out daily stories. He introduced himself to the pair and got to know them before they were well into their book; Woodward credits him with influencing their work. Redford chose the basic elements that compose the movie package and is therefore responsible not only for most of the problems the movie encountered in production, but for the solutions that had to be devised for them; it is Redford's sensibility?not deep, but interestingly complex in its blend of coolness and caring?that...
...Watergate case slowly built, Redford noted two particularly interesting reporters among those plugging away at the story. When he read brief biographies of Woodward and Bernstein he was fascinated by the odd-couple quality of their pairing?a Wasp and a Jew, one cool and controlled, the other more voluble and volatile. Characteristically?he is a man much more interested in people than in ideas?"that was the first time I saw the potential film." He adds: "I remember thinking, 'This is very interesting, a study in opposing characters and how they work together.' I'm really fascinated...
...with them. The Post had claimed that H.R. Haldeman had been named in grand jury testimony as one of the controllers of the Watergate dirty-tricks fund. He had not been named before the grand jury, thus allowing the White House to cast doubt on the accuracy of everything Woodward and Bernstein had reported. "I wanted to see them when they had bottomed out," says Redford. "People who take wild shots and miss interest...