From The New York Times article, "Buckley vs. Vidal: When Debate Became Bloodsport," a review by Michael M. Grynbaum of the new documentary, Best of Enemies:
Literary aristocrats and ideological foes, [Gore] Vidal and [William F.] Buckley attracted millions of viewers to what, at the time, was a highly irregular experiment: the spectacle of two brilliant minds slugging it out — once, almost literally — on live television. It was witty, erudite and ultimately vicious, an early intrusion of full-contact punditry into the staid pastures of the evening news.
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[The documentary's] directors, Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon, present their ideas with a wide scope.... “They don’t make people like Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley anymore,” Mr. Neville said in a recent interview. “Their lives are the kind of American lives that people don’t have anymore. To me, just on a theatrical level, it seemed operatic: this kind of grand battle.”
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