Morgan Neville says he wants to start a conversation. That’s why he and his partner, Robert Gordon, made Best Of Enemies, the Hot Docs entry about the famous TV debates between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal recorded live during the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions.
“We don’t have those conversations any more,” says the Oscar-winning director of 20 Feet From Stardom, in Toronto for the screening. “On Fox TV, they’ll pull together three panelists, and if one of them gives something close to a 60-second answer, someone starts yelling in their ear to get off that topic.
He says Google isn’t helping by keeping track of online users’ interests and tastes.
“If you’re looking for information, they’ll only give something that agrees with whatever you want to hear.”
Neville, whose filmography is heavily weighted towards music docs, says making a movie about media and politics wound up being not that much different from making a movie about musicians.
Best Of Enemies includes interview with the debaters’ biographers and with media historians, who discuss the rise of televisionthe rise of television, but Neville says it’s structured as a musical.
“We just thought of the debates as songs.”
Best Of Enemies screens tonight, 7 pm, at TIFF1, and Sunday (April 26), 3:15, at Isabel Bader
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
