Now listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered!

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 1:29pm

I saw Best of Enemies this morning, the new documentary about the Buckley/Vidal debates on ABC during the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. I didn't really know what I was in for, but I'm a fan of Myra Breckenridge and The Best Man so I thought it could be interesting to learn a little more about the man behind them. Maybe to someone who lived through the debates this film won't offer much new information, but it was pretty juicy and entertaining for a newbie like me.

It's interesting to see how much these debates inspired the political formats of shows today, and decades later networks are still trying to emulate the success of what these two did. Vidal was so brilliant and funny; I really sort of fell in love with him. Buckley, despite not agreeing with much he had to say, at least came off as an intelligent and sharp man, unlike so many of the idiots today on Fox News. Vidal certainly seemed to be enjoying the theatrical drama he created on the debates, but it wasn't mindless Real Housewives table flipping. They actually were standing for something and when Buckley finally broke I really did think Vidal was going to take a beating.

Someone should really turn this into a play. Two juicy roles, and really there wouldn't need to be much heavy lifting in the script. Just let the debates play out on stage and you could have a hit!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 1:34pm

It would make a great 2-character play!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 1:55pm

NY MAGAZINE: CRYPTO-NAZI VS. G**DAMN QUEER: As a new documentary shows, they don’t make ’em like William Buckley and Gore Vidal anymore

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 2:28pm

PJ, I know you travel in literary circles. Did you ever meet Vidal? What was he like in person? 

I own his history books, but have long been too intimated to begin the series. Perhaps this film will give me the push to do so. 

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 3:38pm

My thought upon reading the thread title was "papalovesmambo is back!".  The preview for this played right after the preview for "Do I Sound Gay?" in my local art film.  

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 5:43pm

I never met him but spoke to him on the phone twice.

I was instructed to call him at his villa in Ravello, on the Amalfi coast--but before noon, Amalfi time. Apparently he started drinking at noon by mid-afternoon, he would be unable to answer questions. I phoned him, dutifully, at noon, and he was scintillating.

He quizzed me on my knowledge of his relationship to Al Gore (I said "seventh cousins" but he corrected me: they were seventh cousins once removed) and Jackie Kennedy (I knew that they shared a stepfather; he carefully pointed out that they were not, however, step-siblings).

I was able to charm him (somewhat) with my knowledge of an obscure Barbara Stanwyck movie, but I disappointed him when I was unable to supply him with "someone in New York outing circles" who would be able to act on a tip Vidal had about a rentboy who had spent some time "yachting with Bill Buckley."

Updated On: 8/3/15 at 05:43 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 6:07pm

It was nice of you to keep the confidence of your friends in the New York yacht scene.

[South Florida]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 6:11pm

William Buckley was gay?  Shocking!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 6:14pm

Vidal would insist their neither of them was gay. He didn't believe there were homosexuals; just homosexual acts.

[South Florida]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 6:17pm

The way he used to raise and flutter his eyes, and that creepy smile.  There was nothing about William F Buckley to like.

[Kad]

Posted: 8/1/15 at 7:48pm

Vidal's relationship with his sexuality (and homosexuality generally) was... interesting, if not troubling. I've mentioned before how I feel about The City & the Pillar, which is so obviously groundbreaking and at some points very hot to read, but so disdainful of so many types of homosexuals and, by extension, homosexuality.

But I love the Buckley/Vidal debates. Both of them were so affected and aristocratic on top of being extremely intellectual, though polar opposites. Seeing the cracks in their veneering wedged upon by their true mutual hatred is fascinating. No public figures exist like that anymore. 

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 8/2/15 at 3:24pm

My thought upon reading the thread title was "papalovesmambo is back!"

 

Mine too!  

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 8/2/15 at 5:23pm

I never spoke to Vidal, but I did get a thanks via his editor for correcting an error in his essay on the Oz books.

Not much of a story, but it was a moment of pride!

 

 

Updated On: 8/2/15 at 05:23 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/2/15 at 5:52pm

That was a mark of honor. He wasn't one to suffer editorial suggestions gladly.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 8/2/15 at 6:19pm

Yeah, I was actually nervous about it. But he had Munchkinland in the West, and I couldn't let that go.

[South Florida]

Posted: 8/2/15 at 6:22pm

^This is why I love this place.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/2/15 at 6:33pm

Amazing story, PJ! The documentary hinted that it became a lifelong mission of Vidal's to out Buckley as a man who committed closeted acts of homosexuality. 

After the debates, Buckley was so infuriated over his little outburst that he wrote a 12,000 word article for Esquire giving his side of the story. Vidal responded with an even longer piece in Esquire that posited, among other things, that Buckley had engaged in his fair share of gay sex. It would be like Esquire printing a DataLounge thread with all the "proof" that Bradley Cooper and Jake G are gay! 

Buckley sued both the magazine and Vidal and things carried on for over three years. Esquire settled the day before going to court and Buckley held a press conference to announce that he had "won," conveniently dropping the second suit against Vidal at the same time making it appear as if both parties had settled. Vidal was furious, and accordingly to friends never got over it. 

[Kad]

Posted: 8/3/15 at 9:29am

An interesting article about giving more context to Vidal's crypto-Nazi comment and why it shattered Buckley's cool facade. It brings up Buckley's own history with anti-Semitism, and his National Review's history with Nazism and fascism. 

National Review's Bad Conscience

Updated On: 8/3/15 at 09:29 AM

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 8/3/15 at 10:05am

This is all incredibly fascinating and it's taken up the better part of my morning just reading this thread and the various linked articles. I just brought tix for the 6:20 showing tonight at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. Thanks to Whizzer for starting this thread.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/3/15 at 10:14am

I forgot that Buckley wept because his siblings deemed him to young to participate in a cross-burning at a Jewish resort.

My grandparents owned a Jewish resort.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 8/3/15 at 10:23am

"Yeah, I was actually nervous about it. But he had Munchkinland in the West, and I couldn't let that go."

 To be fair, the first time the map of Oz was published Munchkinland and the Winkie Country were reversed for some reason, even though the books do indeed state that the Munchkins were in the East and the Winkies in the West. The reason I remember hearing was that when he copied the map from the glass slides he used for his traveling show he accidentally copied it from the wrong side, and rather than redrawing the whole map he just flipped the compass rose to reflect that directions in Oz do not follow the same rules as our world, but an editor noticed the compass rose was wrong and flipped it back prior to publication, even though it now meant that the map now placed the Winkies in the east and the Munchkins in the west.

The map as it appeared in Tik-Toc of Oz:

[javero]

Posted: 8/3/15 at 10:41am

"No public figures exist like that anymore."

These days, we're more likely to witness Bo Derek taking on Rosie O'Donnell about climate change.   

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 8/3/15 at 10:46am

AEA, yes, Vidal liked that I was able to explain all that to him (that, essentially, it wasn't his fault he'd gotten it wrong).

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 8/3/15 at 10:57am

You really are a bunch of smarties! LOL!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/3/15 at 11:01am

Woe would have betided you if you had to explain to him that it was his fault.