And what was the point of your documentary . Robert they had their first confrontation in print in 1960 or 1962. Bill on the right, gore on the left. Three columns, i think it was Associated Press that they did. A stunt. But, it really became more personal when gore went on the David Suskind show and dismissed bill buckley as kind of a characters. He sort of made the rirght a the right a respectable place to be. Gore dismissed it and demanded equal time. Brian you knew gore vidal, did you know bill buckley at all . Morgan i did not. He was the revelation to me, i was familiar with gore, but i buckley the man, and buckley the tv personality. Buckley told one of his editors, upon moving to new york, dont hang out with the conservatives, hang out with the liberals. The conservatives are boring. Buckleys apartment in new york with his wife patricia was full of liberal writers and some of her gay friends and people in the art world. Not what i wouldve thought of. He really had kind of a going salon in new york. Robert one of the things we learned was that he had this he was very interested in political debates on television. But off tv, he was much more interested in arch, literature the arts, literature, he played the harpsichord and painted. He found it kind of boring to pursue that in his offtime. Brian we have a bit of video from the trailer which talks about your documentary. Lets watch. So buckley was the devil. I am a happy warrior. I am enjoying it. He represented everything that was going to moral hell. These were two visions of america, clashing. Each thought the other was quite dangerous. All of the security makes me nervous. But it is necessary, apparently. If buckley were not taken out, his ideas would take down the nation. Its almost as if they were matter and antimatter. Say that again. Freedom breeds and equality. I will say it a third time. Know, twice was enough. Hes always to the right, and almost always in the wrong. They really do this rise one another. Stop calling me a cryptonazi, or i will pop you in the face. You will stay plastered. This is William F Buckley junior from new york. Perfect. Brian how big a deal was that confrontation back when it happened . Morgan i think it was a big deal at the time. It was certainly something that people wrote about. There were riots in the streets in chicago. It was not the headline, but it was the way the rest of america was taking this in, sitting around the television watching. It was this flash moments that people could not believe happened, and then it disappeared. This was before youtube. You could not go rewatch it. You know, it just became this thing of lore almost inter instantly. This thing that people remembered. Robert columnists wrote about it. This did not happen on tv. Now, you go to college and you columnists wrote about it. Can major in queer studies. But the word queer at the time was a real heavy weapon. It brought ire upon the network. From angry viewers you could not , talk like that on tv then. That was part of it, to digress for a second, one of the things we have to do was if thats the big moment, we have to contextualize it. We have to make someone who is majoring in queer studies now realize the weight the word carried at the time. Brian how do you split your responsibilities on a documentary . Morgan it is such a labor of love, it is sort of who can grab what first. You know, just in terms of the massive amount of research that had to go into this film. It took us five years to make it. There was no clear delineation of tasks, can you do this . Can i do this . Robert codirect, coproduce, commiserate. Brian where do you two live . Robert im in memphis tennessee. Morgan im in los angeles. Brian i want to run a little longer clip of that exchange in your documentary. Its about a minute and 12 seconds. We refer to it as the cryptonazi clip. This is about one minute and 12 seconds. Before i show it though, how many debates did they have . Robert about 10. One of the Amazing Things about the series is, these were 10 debates that occurred during the conventions of 1968. The republican and democratic conventions. So, they met in miami, and then a few weeks later they met again in chicago. They were there to comment on what had gone on in the course of the day. Color commentary because abc was not covering the conventions. Not gaveltogavel. As we got into the flow of this thing, it was as if it had been screwed did in the sense that in the penultimate debate, is this huge explosion. This, you know, groundbreaking moment on tv, and then we have to come back for a tenth. It was like it was as if someone had narratively set it up. Morgan let me say one thing to contextualize it. This one night when they have the big debate, this is the night of the rioting in the streets. They had just watched News Coverage of cops beating kids over the head in the streets. The third night in chicago. And then, they cut back to gore and buckley. And this is the exchange that happened. Brian here it is. You must realize what some of the political issues are here. People in the United States happen to believe that the United States policy is wrong in vietnam and the viet cong are correct. Correct in wanting to organize their own country in their own way politically. This happens to be the opinion of western europe. And the rest of the world. If it is a novelty in chicago that is too bad. That is the point of american democracy. You can express any point of view you want. Shut up a minute. No, i wont. The only cryptonazi i can think of is yourself. Stop calling me that. Listen to you queer, stop calling me a ccryptonazi. I will punch you in the god damn face and it will stay plastered. [indiscernible] gentlemen, lets inference tree the last war. [indiscernible] you were reporting your own military record. Brian so the, shut up a minute. Did he really mean that . You worked for him, so did it did he really dislike buckley personally . Morgan he did. They absolutely were coming from political opposites. But, personally, they saw the other person as a bete noir. A person who could recognize their own insecurities and expose them to the outside world. So, in a way, they were so similar it seems almost by accident that they became such polar opposites. And in that way they were like , matter and the antimatter. In a way, it was deeply personal as much as it was political. Brian Howard K Smith moderated those debates. We did not see the moderator but you can hear have a little bit. He did not seem very happy with this. Did you talk to anyone at abc that was there at the time . And get with their reaction was at this time . Robert we did. We talked to people who were there, and i think the people who were in the control room were shocked. I mean, no one expected this. And they, you know, i think we have in the film, one of the guys in the control room says, can they say that . And, it had already gone out. It had already been said. Actually it was so shocking that , they withheld from the west coast, they delayed the west coast broadcast. Brian did it ever show on the west coast . Morgan no. No. Brian heres some more of your documentary. This is a clip of bill buckley and gore vidal when vidal was wanting to expose buckley for something. Buckley expected this to be an opportunity to debate the issues. To have some fun, he was not prepared mr. Vidal. Werent told me he hired a researcher. He wanted to paint the National Review as being racist if he could. Antisemitic. I dont think he was really interested in conducting a debate about the issues, or about the parties, or about the policies. Or about the plant forms. Platforms. What he wanted to do was expose bill buckley. Their confrontation is about lifestyle. What kind of people should we be . Their real argument in front of the public is, who is the better person . Brian did you find out whether or not when they were getting their makeup in those blackandwhite shots . Did they talk . Morgan i think they try to not speak to one another as much as possible. And, i mean one of the many , things we came across when we were doing this film was, we went through gores papers at harvard. Where they are, and found all of his files that he prepared for these debates, including the pages he had on his lap. That included pages of prescripted insults. He had scripted it will stop he had statistics. He had done a lot of research on buckley. He came in to try and eviscerate him on tv, and buckley was not prepared. He did not see this coming. He had, for the most part, gotten by on his substantive wit on his tv show. As a debater, he could get away with almost anything. He did not see that gore was from the beginning going for the jugular. Brian abc back in those days did not have a full day of television. As you said, they did not cover the conventions gaveltwogavel. What impact did this have . Robert it was a shocked to everybody. As someone in the film says, abc was third of three networks. If there were four, it would have been forth. They had begun later as a network. They were less capitalized than the other two. They needed the income from and sothey needed the income from, batman and the flying nun to run during prime time. So that they could continue their they had what they called Unconventional Convention coverage. So instead of gavel to gavel coverage and they would come on during the day and given our give an hour and a half summation of the highlights. The other networks ridiculed them. They accuse them of forsaking their journalistic responsibility. However, the idea of putting these two heavyweights on to go headtohead and give them 15 uninterrupted minutes on National Network was it became captivating. People loved to see this dance this ballet, this tango. These two guys trying to go when. You know, it was a boxing match essentially. We took to calling it verbal sport. They were after each others jugular. The weaponry was words. That developed an audience. Commentators were covering it, by the end there was a headline that said at the 1972 convention, cbs is going to imitate abc . Everybody changed. No one after that ever did gavel to gavel coverage again. And of course, the idea of two heavyweights going back and forth and precipitating fights on tv became increasingly the norm. Brian when did you start with documentaries . Morgan 22 years ago. I was a journalist, were both journalists. Were both big believers in the power of media. That is one thing, i think, that attracted us to this story. It is a cautionary tale and an absurdist comedy at the same time. But i love journalism, and end to me, documentaries are journalism. Brian where were you as a journalist . Morgan i started my career at the national magazine. Thats where worked for gore. I worked in the bay area for a number of places. I worked for a weekly newspaper. I worked as a freelancer. Robert has been a writer. He has written six books. I found documentary early on. I fell in love with it. I love telling stories. Brian where did you start as a journalist . Robert i started as a freelance writer after college in philadelphia. I got on a weekly and began to string at the philadelphia inquirer. And i had always dabbled in film , and tv. I had made a documentary, i cannot honestly recall if it was an hour or half an hour, in 1989. Brian what was it about . Robert it was about bb king and rufus thomas and their start from the streets in memphis called beale street. Sort of how they became national players. It was picked up by national pbs. That brought me back to memphis to work on it. When i was there, i began to get magazine assignments which led to my first book. And all of a sudden, i was back into print and was making music videos, but it kind of put documentary aside, and a friend of ours came to town and were making a documentary about sam phillips, the founder of sun records. We were out to dinner and i was working on a book about muddy waters. And i said at dinner, i have been trying to make i was as part of the research trying to find as much film and video of muddy as i could to get to know the character better. I told them i was try to make a documentary, but i think im about to throw it in the towel. And morgan said, a documentary on muddy waters . And about, not too much longer later, we were in the car driving through the back roads of mississippi making a film. Robert my first documentary is called shotgun freeway. Drives through lost l. A. It was kind of the a mondo l. A. History. I am from los angeles. People always laughed at the idea of having los angeles and history in the same sentence. An oxymoron. I set out to prove that l. A. Did have a history. Now people acknowledge it, but at the time, it was interesting. We had people in the film talking about it. James ryan, joan didion. It was a success and i kind of never looked back. Brian more from one of the debates. This was debate number one. When they first started. That would have been at which convention . Miami. July. Brian lets watch this. And then we will continue talking about vidal and mr. Buckley. You get these crocodile tears for the poor people. Every four years because they , need to vote. I dont think they are going to vote for any of your candidates unless by some terrible accident the democrats get split in chicago. Which could well happen. And Eugene Mccarthys people not vote. In which case, i think Richard Nixon might very well become the next president. And i shall make my occasional trips to europe longer. Yes, i think a lot of people hope you will. In fact, mr. Arthur reminds you of your promise to renounce your american citizenship unless you get a satisfactory outcome in november. That is not what i said. Bill, i said it would be the morally correct thing to do. If the world did not end. But, i can behave as him morally as the republicans. Yes, i suppose you can. Brian how much of this was spiked by a producer saying we need a audience, go for each other . Morgan i think abc wanted something that was going to have a little spark. Something that was a little bit of a stunt. They got buckley onboard first to be a conservative commentator in 1968. They said who do you want to debate. He said, anybody except gore vidal or a communist. Abc hired him, neither of them wanted to go on with the other but the allure of the National Spotlight on tv was too great. And they were well paid. Robert about a grand a night. Morgan in 1968 dollars. Brian today that would be a great deal. Morgan i dont think the producers had to do any prodding. Once it was established, they brought more heat than they expected. Robert its very clear from watching that, there is not someone in their ear. Someone today talking about hot topics, hot salacious topic number two. I dont think that was the norm in tv at the time, and i dont think these guys needed it. As morgan said morgan and the moderator was a distinguished news man who i think was really kind of embarrassed by this. I mean, he was moderating, but he disappears for sometimes five or more minutes at a time. I mean today, you would not have a moderator not jumping in every 30 seconds. I think everybody at the abc just sat back and let the fire burn. Brian they talk about vietnam. We were right in the middle of vietnam back then. Here is a minute clip from debate number two. Back in 1968. Now were going to win in vietnam. Now i assume that you i said we could win. Could we, or should we . Oh, obviously we should. Thats all we needed to know. Here he said take a good look at the leading warmonger in the United States. Dont point your tongue at me now. Keep it in your cheek where it belongs. If i am the leading warmonger in the United States, then i am to be with you in the sense that a majority of the people of the including the leadership of both parties, while you go to rome and expatriate yourself. I think we should straighten this out now. I dont expatriate myself, i have an apartment in rome and i go there for two to three months every year. I go to the vatican to contemplate William Buckley and his mad at committees back year. His mad activities back here. Brian did either one of these men serve in any military service in the United States . Morgan neither of them saw action in world war ii, but they both served during world war ii. Robert funny story. We went to go interview gore. He was alive when we began this. This was a fiveyear process. Gore had written his first novel about his experiences in the military on a ship. He had served in the Aleutian Islands. So, we were interviewing gore about a year and a half before he passed away. He was in a lot of back pain and uncomfortable. He was word had gotten out that he was not at his prime and kind of paranoid and conspiracy minded. So, he is wheeled into the room, hes is in a wheelchair and hes brought in and he is not making eye contact with anyone on the crew. I mean, very forcibly looking down. One of the guys on the crew said, my uncle served in the Aleutian Islands at the same time you did. He said he could never get warm. Gore raised his eyes and these machine guns came out and he said, i had my rage to keep me warm. [laughter] brian how would you define each individual, politically, personally . From what you have learned during the time putting this documentary together. Morgan they are both complex characters. One thing that is so refreshing about these characters is though they were the left and the right, they were such individualistic thinkers, you could never quite predict what they would say on any one topic. It was refreshing. Because you do not know in any one moment what they are going to say. I mean gore was very much an , intellectual revolutionary. He was out of the left, but he never belonged. He was never a joiner. He did not want to lead a party. Even though he ran for office, it was never realistic. That he was ever going to be able to represent people. He did not have the common touch that way. I think he was more, you know, he was more of a classical figure. I think gore would have been very happy in ancient rome. I think that is where he thought he belonged, as a senator in rome. Buckley, its interesting because he had started as an insurgent from the right. Starting the National Review starting firing line. Leading a far right movement that brought the Republican Party to him. I mean, with goldwater in 1964 i think bill really successfully purged the fringe element of the far right and brought the Republican Party into his wa