All the President's Men

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🎙️ EPISODE 648: 02.20.23 I don't really have any real interest in Watergate, or politics in general (LOL), but I figure with a hell not. Being that today is "President's Day" and all and this has "President's" right there in the flipping title and it seems like the type of movie 'I should see' (for some reason). But honestly, this might be the film that ends my whole holiday gimmick thing completely. Everything about this movie is fine (the acting, directing, the look and feel, etc. etc.) except, well, the movie itself. It's a snooze! I can't replace the 46-year gap (lack of immediacy to the historical relevance?) or my general lack of interest (that is what it is, and on some level I was never gonna really like this), but the plain fact remains that I was straight bored out of my mind the entire time watching this. In fact, I'll admit it... I didn't make it. I bailed with about 45 minutes to go. Can you make one of these journalism/MSM fetishist sagas WITHOUT being boring? That seems to be the real question. I can't think of one in the sub-genre that has resonated with me.

So much of this thing is basically them talking to people on the phone who aren't very good actors. Take this sequence where Robert Redford fields four (4!) consecutive phone calls without a cut...


SIX STRAIGHT MINUTES OF ONE-SIDED TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS! Who is this for? Who wants this? Just because the camera zooms, it doesn't automatically equate to engaging drama. This shit is boring. I swear, the first hour of this is 40-50% of just phone calls.

And look: All of this seems so quaint in retrospect, right? Watching this is pining for a past I never experienced and never cared about. The scandal itself seems so slight and stupid in 2023. Not denying the significance of forcing a president to resign but that doesn't mean the story itself is all that intriguing, at least if you're not political junkie, which is just a mode/mindset I'll never fully understand.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 647B - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 649 ⫸

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All the President's Men is a 1976 American biographical political drama-thriller film about the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Directed by Alan J. Pakula with a screenplay by William Goldman, it is based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. It was released on April 4, 1976.