{"id":11271,"date":"2011-03-22T19:18:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T19:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=11271"},"modified":"2011-03-22T20:37:20","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T20:37:20","slug":"vanity-fair-on-all-the-presidents-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/03\/22\/vanity-fair-on-all-the-presidents-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanity Fair on All The President&#8217;s Men"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11272\" title=\"Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in All The President's Men\" src=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Dustin-Hoffman-and-Robert-Redford-in-All-The-Presidents-Men.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"280\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Vanity Fair&#8217;s recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/hollywood\/features\/2011\/04\/robert-redford-201104?currentPage=all\">in-depth piece<\/a> on the making of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/All_the_President's_Men_(film)\">All The President&#8217;s Men<\/a><\/strong> (1976) has some fascinating pieces of information about the classic political drama.<\/p>\n<p>Written by Michael Feeney Callan, the author of a forthcoming\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Redford\">Robert Redford<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/associates\/network\/build-links\/individual\/get-html.html?ie=UTF8&amp;subflow=sp_&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;asin=1847377521&amp;quicklinks=1\">biography<\/a>, it reveals the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When Robert Redford first met Bob Woodward in Washington, D.C., he also bumped into <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_F._Kennedy\">Bobby Kennedy<\/a>&#8216;s widow <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ethel_Kennedy\">Ethel Kennedy<\/a> (<em>&#8220;She had seen <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0068334\/\">The Candidate<\/a> and, responding to the Bill McKay role\u2014a fictional Senate candidate from California\u2014told Redford she was no fan of it&#8221;<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bob_Woodward\">Bob Woodward<\/a> admitted Redford&#8217;s involvement in a film project influenced his book with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Carl_Bernstein\">Carl Bernstein<\/a> (<em>\u201c&#8230;we\u2019d been influenced by Redford in the way we compiled it. It was he who suggested we make it about the investigation, and not about the dirty-tricks campaign&#8221;<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Screenwriter <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Goldman\">William Goldman<\/a> only got involved in the project by accident after a social meeting with Redford and a mix up at publisher Simon and Schuster (<em>&#8220;I didn\u2019t mean to involve him in the project, and I wasn\u2019t commissioning him as the screenwriter.\u201d<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Redford reveals that Goldman&#8217;s script &#8211; for which he won an Oscar &#8211; was heavily rewritten by himself and Pakula as they only ended up using one-tenth of his work (<em>\u201cAlan hated the script, and we immediately made arrangements to re-write it ourselves, since we learned Bill was tied up already, writing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0074860\/\">Marathon Man<\/a> for John Schlesinger. I was furious, but to what purpose?&#8221;<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Redford turned down roles in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barry_Lyndon\">Barry Lyndon<\/a> (1975) and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Superman_(film)\">Superman<\/a> (1978) so he could make the film.<\/li>\n<li>Warner Bros chairman <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ted_Ashley\">Ted Ashley<\/a> had to dissuade Redford from his initial plan not to star in the film and shoot it in black and white (<em>\u201cTed didn\u2019t beat around the bush,\u201d Redford recalls. \u201cHe told us he needed to sell my name on the marquee, so the movie he was funding must have me in it.\u201d<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Al Pacino was Redford&#8217;s first choice for the Bernstein role (<em>&#8220;But then I chewed it over,\u201d Redford adds, \u201cand for some reason Dustin Hoffman seemed more like Carl in my mind\u2019s eye, so I called Dustin and asked him if he was interested. That was a very short phone call.\u201d<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jason_Robards\">Jason Robards<\/a> was offered the role of Washington Post executive editor <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ben_Bradlee\">Ben Bradlee<\/a>, even though he had recently suffered terrible facial injuries in a car crash.<\/li>\n<li>Director Pakula and DP <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gordon_Willis\">Gordon Willis<\/a> were careful in creating the visual design of the film (<em>\u201cGordon had a very novel approach to his lenses based on the notion that a good cinematographer always surprises the eye, and we were all of one mind that, since the information to be related was often complex, even tedious, we needed a very stylized look and, of course, dynamic performances.\u201d<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Redford felt there was a harder side to Woodward than he let on (<em>&#8220;Carl was the fuzzy, warm guy who tap-danced with his ego, while Bob was the hard man who went for the throat. &#8230;He has this thing about fires. He\u2019s always poking at fires, always burning stuff&#8221;<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Redford felt Hoffman and Bernstein were very similar (<em>&#8220;Carl and Dustin had a lot in common. Both were radicals, uptight and loose at the same time.  And, like Carl, Dustin had a very, very healthy ego&#8221;<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Pakula was influenced by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elia_Kazan\">Elia Kazan<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alfred_Hitchcock\">Alfred Hitchcock<\/a> (<em>&#8220;I grew up on [Elia] Kazan, really loved him. On the Waterfront was the most impressive movie from a performance point of view that I\u2019d ever seen. Later I learned visual style from Hitchcock. For All the President\u2019s Men I wanted to blend both&#8221;<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Redford reveals that The Washington Post set was recreated on a Hollywood sound stage because filming in the actual newsroom was chaotic (<em>&#8220;the journalists and secretaries went crazy when Hollywood came in their midst. It was all giggling women and people doing their makeup and a general feeling of disorder. It was as bad for them as for us, and we knew we had to get out of there.\u201d<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>A scene was tentatively scheduled to be shot at the White House but was vetoed by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gerald_Ford\">President Ford<\/a> (<em>&#8220;There was no way Ford would allow Redford to come to the White House to diss the previous president&#8221;<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Redford had to help out Pakula in post-production because of the director&#8217;s chronic indecision and reluctance to work beyond 6pm.<\/li>\n<li>Warner Bros believed didn&#8217;t think it would make any money because people were sick of Watergate, but it eventually grossed a highly respectable $51 million.<\/li>\n<li>Redford and Pakula argued about the finale but settled on a compromise of the image of the Teletype announcing Nixon\u2019s resignation.<\/li>\n<li>The huge success of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jaws_(film)\">Jaws<\/a> (1975) and its <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jaws_(film)#Reception\">pioneering release strategy<\/a> influenced the opening, as it was rolled out to major cities in quick succession.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Make sure <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/hollywood\/features\/2011\/04\/robert-redford-201104?currentPage=all\">you read the full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&gt; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0074119\/\">All The President&#8217;s Men<\/a> at the IMDb<br \/>\n&gt; <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Watergate_scandal\">Find out more about the Watergate scandal<\/a> at Wikipedia<br \/>\n&gt; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/B000CDINU4\">Buy All the President&#8217;s Men on DVD<\/a> from Amazon UK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vanity Fair&#8217;s recent in-depth piece on the making of All The President&#8217;s Men (1976) reveals some fascinating pieces of information about the classic political drama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1936,700,1935,1934,305],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}