brian: and i'll ask the same to your partner in crime over here. morgan: robert called me and said he had come across a bootleg tape of some of these debate between william buckley and gore vidal. did i want to see them? absolutely, i wanted to see them. [laughter] my first job out of college was working for gore vidal as his back checker. -- fact checker. i was very interested in him as a character. buckley was someone we all knew from being such a tv presence, but when i saw the debates i saw something that was really speaking to today as much as it was to 1968. and then, we got excited and decided to make a film about it. brian: when did they start to -- to gather? -- together?

and what was the point of your documentary? robert: they had their first confrontation in print in 1960 or 1962. bill on the right, gore on the left. three columns, i think it was associated press that they did. a stunt. but, it really became more personal when gore went on the david suskind show and dismissed bill buckley as kind of a -- characters. he sort of made the rirght a

-- the right a respectable place to be. gore dismissed it and demanded equal time. brian: you knew gore vidal, did you know bill buckley at all? morgan: i did not. he was the revelation to me, i was familiar with gore, but i -- buckley the man, and buckley the tv personality. buckley told one of his editors, upon moving to new york, don't hang out with the conservatives, hang out with the liberals. the conservatives are boring. buckley's apartment in new york with his wife patricia was full of liberal writers and some of her gay friends and people in the art world. not what i would've thought of. he really had kind of a going salon in new york.

robert: one of the things we learned was that he had this --he was very interested in political debates on television. but off tv, he was much more interested in arch, literature -- the arts, literature, he played the harpsichord and painted. he found it kind of boring to pursue that in his off-time. brian: we have a bit of video from the trailer which talks about your documentary. let's watch. >> so buckley was the devil. >> i am a happy warrior. i am enjoying it. >> he represented everything that was going to moral hell. >> these were two visions of america, clashing. >> each thought the other was quite dangerous. >> all of the security makes me nervous. but it is necessary, apparently. >> if buckley were not taken out, his ideas would take down the nation.

>> it's almost as if they were matter and antimatter. >> say that again. >> freedom breeds and equality. i will say it a third time. >> know, twice was enough. >> he's always to the right, and almost always in the wrong. >> they really do this rise one another. >> stop calling me a crypto-nazi, or i will pop you in the face. >> you will stay plastered. >> this is william f buckley junior from new york. perfect. brian: how big a deal was that confrontation back when it happened?

morgan: i think it was a big deal at the time. it was certainly something that people wrote about. there were riots in the streets in chicago. it was not the headline, but it was the way the rest of america was taking this in, sitting around the television watching. it was this flash moments that people could not believe happened, and then it disappeared. this was before youtube. you could not go rewatch it. you know, it just became this thing of lore almost inter--- instantly. this thing that people remembered. robert: columnists wrote about it. this did not happen on tv. now, you go to college and you columnists wrote about it. can major in queer studies. but the word queer at the time was a real heavy weapon. it brought ire upon the network. from angry viewers you could not

, talk like that on tv then. that was part of it, to digress for a second, one of the things we have to do was if that's the big moment, we have to contextualize it. we have to make someone who is majoring in queer studies now realize the weight the word carried at the time. brian: how do you split your responsibilities on a documentary? morgan: it is such a labor of love, it is sort of who can grab what first. you know, just in terms of the massive amount of research that had to go into this film. it took us five years to make it. there was no clear delineation of tasks, can you do this? can i do this? robert: codirect, coproduce, commiserate. brian: where do you two live?

robert: i'm in memphis tennessee. morgan: i'm in los angeles. brian: i want to run a little longer clip of that exchange in your documentary. it's about a minute and 12 seconds. we refer to it as the crypto-nazi clip. this is about one minute and 12 seconds. before i show it though, how many debates did they have? robert: about 10. one of the amazing things about the series is, these were 10 debates that occurred during the conventions of 1968. the republican and democratic conventions. so, they met in miami, and then a few weeks later they met again in chicago. they were there to comment on what had gone on in the course of the day. color commentary because abc was not covering the conventions. not gavel-to-gavel. as we got into the flow of this thing, it was as if it had been screwed did in the sense that in the penultimate debate, is this huge explosion.

this, you know, groundbreaking moment on tv, and then we have to come back for a tenth. it was like -- it was as if someone had narratively set it up. morgan: let me say one thing to contextualize it. this one night when they have the big debate, this is the night of the rioting in the streets. they had just watched news coverage of cops beating kids over the head in the streets. the third night in chicago. and then, they cut back to gore and buckley. and this is the exchange that happened. brian: here it is. >> you must realize what some of the political issues are here. people in the united states happen to believe that the united states policy is wrong in vietnam and the viet cong are correct. correct in wanting to organize their own country in their own way politically. this happens to be the opinion of western europe.

and the rest of the world. if it is a novelty in chicago that is too bad. that is the point of american democracy. >> you can express any point of view you want. >> shut up a minute. >> no, i won't. >> the only cryptonazi i can think of is yourself. >> stop calling me that. listen to you queer, stop calling me a ccrypto-nazi. i will punch you in the god damn face and it will stay plastered. [indiscernible] >> gentlemen, let's -- >> inference tree the last war. [indiscernible] >> you were reporting your own military record. brian: so the, shut up a minute. did he really mean that? you worked for him, so did it --

did he really dislike buckley personally? morgan: he did. they absolutely were coming from political opposites. but, personally, they saw the other person as a bete noir. a person who could recognize their own insecurities and expose them to the outside world. so, in a way, they were so similar it seems almost by accident that they became such polar opposites. and in that way they were like , matter and the anti-matter. in a way, it was deeply personal as much as it was political. brian: howard k smith moderated those debates. we did not see the moderator but you can hear have a little bit. he did not seem very happy with this. did you talk to anyone at abc that was there at the time? and get with their reaction was at this time? robert: we did. we talked to people who were there, and i think the people who were in the control room were shocked. i mean, no one expected this.

and they, you know, i think we have in the film, one of the guys in the control room says, can they say that? and, it had already gone out. it had already been said. actually it was so shocking that , they withheld from the west coast, they delayed the west coast broadcast. brian: did it ever show on the west coast? morgan: no. no. brian: here's some more of your documentary. this is a clip of bill buckley and gore vidal when vidal was wanting to expose buckley for something. >> buckley expected this to be an opportunity to debate the issues. to have some fun, he was not prepared mr. vidal. >> weren't told me he hired a researcher. he wanted to paint the national review as being racist if he could. anti-semitic.

>> i don't think he was really interested in conducting a debate about the issues, or about the parties, or about the policies. or about the plant forms. -- platforms. what he wanted to do was expose bill buckley. >> their confrontation is about lifestyle. what kind of people should we be? their real argument in front of the public is, who is the better person? brian: did you find out whether or not when they were getting their makeup in those black-and-white shots? did they talk? morgan: i think they try to not speak to one another as much as possible. and, i mean one of the many , things we came across when we were doing this film was, we went through gore's papers at harvard. where they are, and found all of

his files that he prepared for these debates, including the pages he had on his lap. that included pages of pre-scripted insults. he had scripted it will stop he had statistics. he had done a lot of research on buckley. he came in to try and eviscerate him on tv, and buckley was not prepared. he did not see this coming. he had, for the most part, gotten by on his substantive wit on his tv show. as a debater, he could get away with almost anything. he did not see that gore was from the beginning going for the jugular. brian: abc back in those days did not have a full day of television. as you said, they did not cover the conventions gavel-two-gavel. what impact did this have? robert: it was a shocked to everybody. as someone in the film says, abc was third of three networks. if there were four, it would have been forth. they had begun later as a network. they were less capitalized than

the other two. they needed the income from and sothey needed the income from, "batman" and "the flying nun" to run during prime time. so that they could continue their -- they had what they called unconventional convention coverage. so instead of gavel to gavel coverage and they would come on during the day and given our -- give an hour and a half summation of the highlights. the other networks ridiculed them. they accuse them of forsaking their journalistic responsibility. however, the idea of putting these two heavyweights on to go head-to-head and give them 15 uninterrupted minutes on

national network was -- it became captivating. people loved to see this dance this ballet, this tango. these two guys trying to go when. you know, it was a boxing match essentially. we took to calling it verbal sport. they were after each other's jugular. the weaponry was words. that developed an audience. commentators were covering it, by the end there was a headline that said -- at the 1972 convention, cbs is going to imitate abc? everybody changed. no one after that ever did gavel to gavel coverage again. and of course, the idea of two heavyweights going back and forth and precipitating fights on tv became increasingly the norm. brian: when did you start with documentaries? morgan: 22 years ago. i was a journalist, were both

journalists. we're both big believers in the power of media. that is one thing, i think, that attracted us to this story. it is a cautionary tale and an absurdist comedy at the same time. but i love journalism, and end to me, documentaries are journalism. brian: where were you as a journalist? morgan: i started my career at the national magazine. that's where worked for gore. i worked in the bay area for a number of places. i worked for a weekly newspaper. i worked as a freelancer. robert has been a writer. he has written six books. i found documentary early on. i fell in love with it. i love telling stories. brian: where did you start as a journalist? robert: i started as a freelance writer after college in philadelphia. i got on a weekly and began to

string at the philadelphia inquirer. and i had always dabbled in film , and tv. i had made a documentary, i cannot honestly recall if it was an hour or half an hour, in 1989. brian: what was it about? robert: it was about bb king and rufus thomas and their start from the streets in memphis called beale street. sort of how they became national players. it was picked up by national pbs. that brought me back to memphis to work on it. when i was there, i began to get magazine assignments which led to my first book. and all of a sudden, i was back into print and was making music videos, but it kind of put

documentary aside, and a friend of ours came to town and were making a documentary about sam phillips, the founder of sun records. we were out to dinner and i was working on a book about muddy waters. and i said at dinner, i have been trying to make -- i was as part of the research trying to find as much film and video of muddy as i could to get to know the character better. i told them i was try to make a documentary, but i think i'm about to throw it in the towel. and morgan said, a documentary on muddy waters? and about, not too much longer later, we were in the car driving through the back roads of mississippi making a film. robert: my first documentary is called "shotgun freeway." drives through lost l.a. it was kind of the a mondo l.a. history.

i am from los angeles. people always laughed at the idea of having los angeles and history in the same sentence. an oxymoron. i set out to prove that l.a. did have a history. now people acknowledge it, but at the time, it was interesting. we had people in the film talking about it. james ryan, joan didion. it was a success and i kind of never looked back. brian: more from one of the debates. this was debate number one. when they first started. that would have been at which convention? >> miami. july. brian: let's watch this. and then we will continue talking about vidal and mr. buckley. >> you get these crocodile tears for the poor people. every four years because they , need to vote. i don't think they are going to vote for any of your candidates unless by some terrible accident the democrats get split in

chicago. which could well happen. and eugene mccarthy's people not vote. in which case, i think richard nixon might very well become the next president. and i shall make my occasional trips to europe longer. >> yes, i think a lot of people hope you will. in fact, mr. arthur reminds you of your promise to renounce your american citizenship unless you get a satisfactory outcome in november. >> that is not what i said. bill, i said it would be the morally correct thing to do. if the world did not end. but, i can behave as him morally as the republicans. >> yes, i suppose you can. brian: how much of this was spiked by a producer saying we need a audience, go for each other? morgan: i think abc wanted something that was going to have a little spark. something that was a little bit of a stunt.

they got buckley onboard first to be a conservative commentator in 1968. they said who do you want to debate. he said, anybody except gore vidal or a communist. abc hired him, neither of them wanted to go on with the other but the allure of the national spotlight on tv was too great. and they were well paid.

robert: about a grand a night. morgan: in 1968 dollars. brian: today that would be a great deal. morgan: i don't think the producers had to do any prodding. once it was established, they brought more heat than they expected. robert: it's very clear from watching that, there is not someone in their ear. someone today talking about --hot topics, hot salacious topic number two. i don't think that was the norm in tv at the time, and i don't think these guys needed it. as morgan said -- morgan: and the moderator was a distinguished news man who i think was really kind of embarrassed by this. i mean, he was moderating, but he disappears for sometimes five or more minutes at a time. i mean today, you would not have a moderator not jumping in every 30 seconds. i think everybody at the abc just sat back and let the fire burn. brian: they talk about vietnam. we were right in the middle of vietnam back then. here is a minute clip from debate number two. back in 1968.

>> now we're going to win in vietnam. now i assume that you -- >> i said we could win. >> could we, or should we? >> oh, obviously we should. >> that's all we needed to know. here he said take a good look at the leading warmonger in the united states. don't point your tongue at me now. keep it in your cheek where it belongs. >> if i am the leading warmonger in the united states, then i am to be with you in the sense that a majority of the people of the including the leadership of both parties, while you go to rome -- and expatriate yourself. >> i think we should straighten this out now. i don't expatriate myself, i have an apartment in rome and i go there for two to three months every year. i go to the vatican to contemplate william buckley and his mad at committee's back

year. -- his mad activities back here. brian: did either one of these men serve in any military service in the united states? morgan: neither of them saw action in world war ii, but they both served during world war ii. robert: funny story. we went to go interview gore. he was alive when we began this. this was a five-year process. gore had written his first novel about his experiences in the military on a ship. he had served in the aleutian islands. so, we were interviewing gore about a year and a half before he passed away. he was in a lot of back pain and uncomfortable. he was -- word had gotten out that he was not at his prime and kind of paranoid and conspiracy minded. so, he is wheeled into the room,

he's is in a wheelchair and he's brought in and he is not making eye contact with anyone on the crew. i mean, very forcibly looking down. one of the guys on the crew said, my uncle served in the aleutian islands at the same time you did. he said he could never get warm. gore raised his eyes and these machine guns came out and he said, i had my rage to keep me warm. [laughter] brian: how would you define each individual, politically, personally? from what you have learned during the time putting this documentary together. morgan: they are both complex characters. one thing that is so refreshing about these characters is though they were the left and the right, they were such individualistic thinkers, you could never quite predict what they would say on any one topic. it was refreshing. because you do not know in any one moment what they are going

to say. i mean gore was very much an , intellectual revolutionary. he was out of the left, but he never belonged. he was never a joiner. he did not want to lead a party. even though he ran for office, it was never realistic. that he was ever going to be able to represent people. he did not have the common touch that way. i think he was more, you know, he was more of a classical figure. i think gore would have been very happy in ancient rome. i think that is where he thought he belonged, as a senator in rome. buckley, it's interesting because he had started as an insurgent from the right. starting the national review starting firing line. leading a far right movement that brought the republican party to him. i mean, with goldwater in 1964

i think bill really successfully purged the fringe element of the far right and brought the republican party into his way of thinking. that beached his ascendancy in the reagan years. buckley and reagan were very much in lockstep. i think that is interesting because buckley was somebody who was interested in being at the center of things. being a joiner and bringing people together. brian: we have a clip of christopher hitchens appearing on bill buckley's public television show, "firing line here co--- -- "firing line." ♪ >> i don't doubt mr. hitchens that you do not like the american system. you despise it. i don't think you say conveniently that that which you dislike is exclusively with the republicans.

that is all. >> i never made such allegations. >> we are discussing liberalism. i mentioned george mcgovern. it seems to me that by saying george mcgovern, he is not lyndon johnson. you say -- to say lyndon johnson is a liberal is stretching it. >> anybody who voted for henry wallace and refuses to apologize for it is saying that he was perfectly comfortable with his stalinist policies and with his affiliation with stalinism. george mcgovern was a friend of mine who simply declined to apologize for the equivalent of voting for hitler. in 1932. [laughter] brian: that was 1984. robert: young christopher hitchens. probably around 30-years-old at the time. ryan: you had him in your

documentary. why? did you interview him? robert: he was one of the earliest calls we made because he had switched sides in a way. after 9/11, he veered much more to the right. and, so we knew he would be we -- knew he knew each guy personally. in fact, when we were beginning this movie, you embark on the things and you are never quite sure if it is a good idea. is what we are seeing in it what other people are seeing? when christopher hitchens answer was yes, come soon, come quick. that was great. and then especially after the interview when he waxed poetically and philosophically about so many of these things, he's a great character in the film. we left that interview saying there is definitely a movie to

make here. morgan: the one thing i will say is part of what the film is is a lamentation for the loss of a public space on television where people can come together and talk. christopher hitchens said c-span is what's left of that. i will give c-span its props. he pointed at data and said, this is exactly what people should be doing. brian: i have to say it does not look a whole lot different from what we are doing right now. robert: firing line was on tv for 33 years. i think that to it brought people from across the political spectrum and from the arts into a discussion with time, like you do, to allow people to develop ideas. that does not happen anymore. it happens between commercials and you have to hit the salacious stuff.

even saying that though, i'm reminded of bills technique which is to hammer here and if the opponent begins to give an answer that he doesn't like, hammer over there. it is tough. i do like a more open dialogue. morgan: bill was a master debater. i think that was his first love. he did not want to spend his free time talking about politics. i think he loves the sport. brian: his first guest on to firing line was norman thomas. a socialist. i'm going to make an abrupt change here. you have been involved and other documentaries that have had some social impact on the country. we will come back to this. at first, you did a documentary called johnny cash's and

america. what was johnny cash to the country? morgan: it -- occupies one of these unique positions. he is somebody everybody on the right and left revered. he was deeply religious, a family man. at the same time he was an outlaw and an addict. he was so many different things and everybody could see in him some element of what they wanted to see. that was fascinating. in a way, he was one of those public figures that we can all come around together. and i think those are the kind of stories that really interest us. brian: you are in memphis, where you involved in this one? robert: yes. we made this one together. and i think this new film is an outgrowth of that one. initially, i was a little

dubious of the cash one. i mean there have been a lot of movies made about johnny cash. led, as we got into it, it was a revelation to me that such an icon, there were so many layers to this icon. i began to reach into the dimensions of the icons and america. so when we came upon the the dell-buckley footage, i knew the depth was there. brian: i think almost everything can be purchased on amazon. among other places. let's watch a little bit of johnny cash's america. >> hello, i'm johnny cash. ♪

>> ♪ i hear the train a-coming. it's rolling around the bend. i'm stuck in full some prison. in time keeps rolling on. ♪ >> his america was not red white, or blue. it was black. >> he appeal to everyone. he went across all the lines. liberal, conservative, republican, independent. >> i look at the footage of him performing for the president for the prison. and how the inmates did not want to kill him. he showed love and compassion. ♪ >> you could almost project onto that big black frame whatever you wanted to. maybe that is why so many different people were comfortable with johnny cash. >> cash navigated some of the

most contentious issues of our time without losing his audience. what did he reflect on to the country. how can one speak his mind without losing his voice? ♪ brian: why did you ask chris cooper to do the narration? morgan: great actor. had the great southern voice. had the kind of gravitas we wanted. just watching that clip and being reminded, you have al gore and lamar alexander throwing -- throw in snoop dogg. numeral haggard and everybody else. -- merle haggard nad everybody else. robert: that was one of the

great things about that show. everyone could see themselves reflected in johnny cash. brian: when did he die? 2003? robert: not that early i don't think. brian: did you get to talk to him? morgan: never did. robert: we talked to his best friend. brian: what's the background on getting lamar alexander and al gore together? morgan: they both have personal connections. tennessee. and al gore, when he first ran for congress, johnny did a campaign event for him. johnny was friends with al's father. they all had connections to johnny. brian: there's another documentary. a couple more here. this one goes back to 2003. the muddy waters. this is a clip, it's not from your documentary. but what is the impact of muddy , waters on the country? and on the society? robert: i think in his story you see the entire, or a slice of the 20th century. here's a guy, a black man born

in extreme poverty in the mississippi delta, one of the most impoverished parts of the nation. and he goes from a house with no he electricity to -- makes the great migration from the south to chicago. there he picks up an electric guitar and creates a new sounds. a blend of these southern feel and the electric potential, and creates with his band the template for a rock 'n roll band and becomes soon revered by the british explosion people and becomes an icon to the world. so i think that we get a whole , sense of the possibility of america. brian: i love his real name.

mckinley morganfield. how did he get muddy waters? morgan: his grandmother. robert: the delta is a very muddy area. literally, there is a levee. he was born in a place called juggs corner. it was a very wet place, and he would play in the mud, and his mom just called him "muddy." brian: let's watch a little this is from 2003. ♪ >> ♪ got my mojo. ♪ ♪ i want to love you so bad. ♪ ♪ got my mojo. ♪ ♪ i want to love you so bad

i don't know what to do. i got my mojo i got my mojo i am going to have all you women got my mojo got my mojo got my mojo got my mojo working got my mojo working ♪

>> well. wow. brian: what i want to ask is one of the obvious things, you had whites and blacks in that band. didn't he die in 1970? robert: 1983. brian: i got that date wrong. when he started out, what was the relationship to him from the white society and from the black society? robert: across the south at that time, they were more than denigrated, the african-americans. they were more than denigrated -- they were actually almost totally ignored.

no birth records, no death records, no marriage records. very few of those kind of things because these people were considered of a culture not worth recording. and that's part of the power of the blues and rock 'n roll. that this voice of the disenfranchised became the voice of america. brian: when you look back on that documentary, what year did you do it? morgan: 2003. brian: what was the hardest part about doing that documentary? morgan: they're all hard in their own ways. that was such a great experience. i mean part of what you just , asked about, the white and the black audiences finding him. it's really that, muddy being recorded for the world. recording for a black blues

label and in places like england. bands like the rolling stone s discovering this. and finally, elevating people like muddy waters who were forgotten in their home countries. and then spotting a whole generation of blues fans. right there, you see muddy integrating his band and kind of broadening the whole exposure to the blues. it was just a pleasure. robert: i remember the good things. we were in a field in mississippi shooting stuff and ingress about chest high. about a week later, morgan was in a lady, and he said, there is something more than mosquitoes. it was morgan's introduction to chiggars which are a deeply penetrating bug that itches. like mad. brian: what is the impact of documentaries on the political system?

morgan: they do have an impact. you know sometimes they have a , very concrete impact. you look at films like the invisible war about rape in the military. i think that film pretty directly led to some changes in policy. they can have a a very specific effects, or they can have a general effect. hopefully, "best of enemies" will have a broader cultural impact of talking about how we argue. i think documentary is 3-d journalism. it has never been more revered and watched them right now. it is kind of the golden age of documentary. there is so much great work being done. people are seeing it more than before. robert: it's exciting because documentaries have gone into -- have liberated themselves from what the, you know the dry a

, format that they held for so long with the voiceover telling you what to think. and very kind of plotting. -- plodding. really much more dramatic and better storytelling. brian: how would you describe where documentaries are seen? besides the movie theater, television. morgan: i think the big revolution is netflix. netflix has had a huge impact on documentary because they had such a wide array of documentaries and everybody has netflix, it seems. brian: what do you know about viewership? morgan: they don't disclose this but i know anecdotally that when they are streaming on netflix, the kind of feedback you get shows up exponentially. -- goes up exponentially. people who never knew where to find documentaries suddenly find themselves watching them on places like netflix.

that and now expanding into itunes and hulu and on and on . robert: you also have festivals that focus on documentary. this gives people a place to see how the stories are being told. the true false festival. what innovations are being done. brian: back to some of the buckley-vidal thing. this was 1989. an interview in the united kingdom. with the fellow you worked for gore vidal. they are talking about a lot of other things and ronald reagan. >> reagan is fascinating. he comes out of hollywood. he is an actor.

he was hired by the various wealthy entities that control the united states. much of the defense business. he was elected to impersonate a president. he was hired to cut the taxes of the rich and keep the money going to the defense department and every now and then to say the russians are coming. now, we all have been around hollywood, not as long as reagan. 10 years less. and i have been around about 40 years. he was always a very charming guy, but he was chester chatterbox, we called him. he just could not stop talking. he was one of the most boring men that ever lived. he got very good at reading cue cards. and everybody flipped for him including your mrs. thatcher. brian: and you worked for him?

morgan: right at that time. brian: what did you see? morgan: that the charming gore. i think that was very much his public persona. i know he had many very close friends. he had an open door for many people. at his house in italy. but working for him i saw a very different side of gore. just because i think he only wanted to showed that phase two people he considered equals. brian: what was he like working for? morgan: incredibly difficult. mainly because my job as a fact-checker, was to tell him he had gotten all facts slightly wrong. my job was to question him and his authority, and he hated anything, it was to be questioned. brian: how would he react? morgan: and credibly disagreeably.

i would hold the phone away from my ear. he was known to be tough on fact checkers and people like that. i would not recommend working for him, but i think being a dinner party guests at his house would've been different. brian: what did you learn about buckley behind-the-scenes? robert: that he was very interested in a wide range of the arts, and he liked to hang around with liberals off-camera. i think he was all about sharpening his own weight. he liked to be around people who thought differently they and how he thought. it was a way for him to keep sharp. this is the guy who founded the mainstream right-wing.

you would think you would be very interested in hanging around with those kind of people, but he was not. brian: here's a clip from the second debate. from back in the subject matter 1968. is something very similar to what we are hearing today area -- hearing today. federal spending. i would love to see the american virtue saying this alone can >> virtue saying this alone can help us in the ghettos with the negroes. they are there to make money. >> the making of money is a way of helping people because it is a way of making good available to people. because it is a way of making good money at available to people. he made a lot of money, but he also reduce the price of the car. from $5,000 to $500. got it? >> i would say offhand, i'll do it in one line. >> i will say in one line, it

has been a great pleasure to observe. don't stick your tongue out bill. once again, that was a long line. >> we must break it off there. brian: that was not from your documentary. that particular one. >> no. brian: how much of either one of them, was their speech so affect did on purpose -- so affected on purpose? morgan: the roots of their mid-atlantic attrition accents are interesting. most of buckley's siblings did not have an accident. buckley did attend school in england for a time as the young boy. robert: he spoke spanish is his first language. morgan: it's not an accent to be found in nature. brian: what about gore?

morgan: i think he founded at exeter where he went to high school. there's footage of him at age 10 speaking and he does not have that accent. by this time he emerges as an author in his late teens, he does have it. i think it was those years at exeter where he honed his accent. brian: in 1982, there was a program -- i'm going to run a clip of this because it's one of the messages you get in watching your documentary. which, by the way is how long? , robert: hour and a half. brian: this was the beginning of television that was confrontational. here is 1982, john maclachlan. in the maclachlan group, another big change in television. >> don't you think we have to break the bonds policy establishment which came in to be because of world war i, world war ii and the korean war? so shrink the whole bit. >> what we ought to do is knock these internationalist

institution. going to go if the soviet union it is threat diminishes. it's going to go naturally. the united states will compete internationally, we will be more competitive with the germans and the japanese get up and defend their own country. here's what you do, pat. you lower the defense budget and you spend it on a r&d and infrastructure and all of that to make us more competitive. but, you can use some of it to help other countries so they can trade with us. it would make us all richer. >> the best way to help poor country is to cut off foreign aid so the socialist governments will collapse. >> it you sound like a georgia wallace talking about the stripes. brian: that was a 1990 clip, but it started in 1982. how much influence to the 68 -- how much influence, from what you saw, did the 1968 debates

have on the change in television? robert: prior to the debates there was martin a grunt ski. five men sitting around the table would not have had an interchange like that. one spoke, the other one spoke this one answered. much less confrontational. much more sedate. kind of boring. here, you know, i am not sure we did not see enough to really gaze the content. there's a lot of back-and-forth sort of like they do in the wwf when they throw everybody in the ring. it was the last person standing. kind of like that. on the road to that.

it feels kind of like that. morgan: i think the debates between buckley and vidal definitely open doors for those things. i don't want to put all the credit or blame at their doorstep. it was actually one of those moments that led to this landscape we have today. robert: it cannot be emphasized enough that when they were doing it, the fire that burns was rich old one. they brought a command of history and philosophy and politics and language to bear on the dialogue. i think the flames may reach the same height today, but it's flash paper. you know, you are not getting you don't learn the same thing. -- from the dialogue. you just get the fireworks. brian: i want to run one more clip. this is from " the best of enemies." before we do that, what surprised you about the coverage you got? morgan: it's one of the stories that we felt mattered and when we were making the film, the comment we got the most was does anyone care anymore? is this relevant? now the comment we get more than

any other comment is i can't believe how relevant this is. that's music to our ears. brian: what's the surprising reaction you got? from anybody that has seen your documentary? robert: the surprise was how long it took people to get on board. as we were trying to get it made. once it's been made, it's been very well received. morgan: by the left and the right. robert: we definitely tried to, not necessarily, but just strike a balance. brian: last clip. let's watch. [video clip] >> my brother bill, and he was a conservative right wing libertarian christian. that's what he was. but most of all, bill was a revolutionary. >> when the people at abc first approached bill, they asked him

would he be willing to be the conservative debater? he said yes he would. they asked him is there anyone you would not go on with and he said a communist and apart from that the only one i can think of is gore vidal. >> cameras rolling. >> men and women who are sexually repressed regard all sexual pleasure as dirty, evil the devil's work. yet we are all prostitutes in one sense or another, ethically if not sexually. >> for buckley, the doll with -- for buckley, vidal was the devil. he represented everything that was going to moral hell. brian: his brother is not nearly as well-known as jim buckley the senator. did you ask him to do this? morgan: we interviewed him. very knowledgeable and sweet man. but oddly, was very different

than bill. he and his other brother were very similar. they shared in the accent. james was almost from a different family, which is probably why he was a successful politician. [laughter] brian: before we run completely out of time, what's next? robert: might be next documentary, might be next book. i have got an option. someone is interested in my stacks record book. it might turn into something. i am kind of going there. and noodling on different books. brian: you did an oscar-winning 20 feet from stardom. what is next? morgan: i have a feature coming

out with yo-yo ma. we will premiere in the fall. brian: our guests have been morgan neville who lives in los angeles and has done a lot of documentaries with our other guests, robert gordon, who lives in memphis. we thank you for bringing us the best of enemies. gore vidal and bill buckley. ♪ >> for free transcripts, or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. >> if you like tonight's q&a, here are some others you might enjoy. journalist and author christopher hitchens discussing his life and work. a director on his documentary on

hubert humphrey called, "the art of the impossible." former speechwriter ray price talking about his time with the nixon administration. and his role in preparing nixon for a series of interviews with journalist david frost. you can find those online. >> washington journal is next. then the house devils then at 12:00 noon. and the u.s. house legislative business at 2:00 p.m. coming up on today's washington journal, the highway trust fund and congressional efforts to fund it. with bud wright, of the highway trust fund.

and mark rosenblum talks about the immigration policy and the debate over so-called sanctuary cities. and emily badger talks about housing and the efforts to provide to low-income families. ♪ good morning. the house returns at noon today before beginning legislative business at 12:00 noon. a sunday session yesterday notable for heated exchanges on the republican side of the aisle as ted cruz continued to criticize his own party leadership. mitch mcconnell