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No movie springs perfectly formed from page to screen. But to read Woodward’s marked-up draft of Goldman’s screenplay is to realize that the “All the President’s Men” we know — the lean, flawlessly calibrated thriller that made millions at the box office when it came out in 1976, earned four Oscars and turned Woodward and Bernstein into legends; the movie that’s worshiped by reporters, political junkies and filmmakers alike; the movie that from the moment it opened seemed to fuse seamlessly with private memory and collective myth — that movie came perilously close to being forgettable, along, quite possibly, with Watergate itself.
The journey of “All the President’s Men” from mediocrity to triumph tells an alternately sobering and inspiring truth about movies: The great ones are a function of the countless mistakes that didn’t get made — the myriad bad calls, lapses in taste and bouts of bad luck that encase every production like a block of heavy, unyielding stone.
This is the story of how Redford and Pakula, and the cast and crew they assembled, bullied Goldman’s flawed but structurally brilliant script into art.
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Long and really interesting article about the drama behind the breaking news story and how it became an unforgettable movie. I rewatch the movie at least once a year, and if you haven’t seen it recently (or at all) this article may make you seek it out.
But Sussman, the leader of the Watergate Three, wasn’t portrayed inaccurately — he just wasn’t portrayed at all. He’d been written out of the movie entirely.1 Filmmakers said they were worried that having three middle-aged white-guy editors on screen was already confusing for the audience, and four would’ve been too much.
But that it was Sussman they chose to cut — the editor most involved in the story from Day 1 — was galling to many, both in and out of the Post. When director Alan Pakula was doing his initial research for the film, both Simons and Rosenfeld had told him that, “if any one individual at the Post was deserving of a Pulitzer for the newspaper’s Watergate coverage…it was Barry Sussman.”
I always wondered if Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein flipped a coin to decide who got played by Robert Redford. One of hottest actors in Hollywood at that time.
Redford has been involved in the camera side of moviemaking since at least Jeremiah Johnson and The Candidate (excellent and non-partisan film about the dehumanizing and corrupting aspects of politics, and still quite relevant despite being fifty years old) . He’s a guy with leading man looks and a player’s charisma who was born to be a producer and director.
Redford showed such patience and humbleness reaching out to Woodward and Bernstein. Only for them to brush him off. Redford kept trying. That says a lot about him. A lot of people would have been offended and lost interest.
I just don’t understand the adulation that “All The President’s Men” gets. It’s an interesting story, but there’s not really much to see other than Redford and Hoffman (and a few side characters) talking.
I’d much rather listen to a podcast about Watergate than ever watch the movie again.
“Not really much to see”… I see plenty when I watch the movie. I see the minute-by-minute portrayal of old-fashioned journalism in action-- research before the internet, pounding the pavement, relentlessly pursuing people who don’t want to talk to you, phone books, for crap’s sake! And then Bradlee insisting on validation from multiple sources before he would print anything. All of that stuff is ancient history. Now anyone can post, write, upload anything, and most people are too stupid and careless to seek out reliable sources (and there are still a few, WaPo being one of them).
I was 25 when Watergate broke and I watched all the hearings on TV every day. It’s a real story to me, not history.
I knew the guy who moved into John Dean’s office after Gerald Ford became President. He told me that one day these two scruffy-looking guys came in and were asking him about where the furniture had been when Dean worked there. You see, they were writing a book and wanted to get those details right…
But I am capable of understanding and interpreting what I see in a way that makes the events meaningful. I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. More’s the pity.
I agree with @ThelmaLou . I like rewatching All the President’s Men. Re-watches don’t have the same tension I felt (even though I knew how it all turned out) the first time I watched it. This is the kind of movie I really love. A real story told with nuance and brains. Although I do also love Dick…quoting Michelle Williams.
