Movie Monday: All the President's Men

Movie Monday: All the President’s Men

Photo: IMPA Awards
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Typically, biographical films are produced years, sometimes decades after the person or significant event has long passed. Not so in the case of the 1976 film All the President’s Men, based on the 1974 book written by journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who investigated the Watergate scandal for “The Washington Post.”

While he was promoting his film, The Candidate, Robert Redford heard about the scandal (along with everyone else in the U.S.) and began asking questions. He delved into the newspaper articles, then contacted Bernstein and Woodward in late 1972. Two years later after having read their book, Redford bought the rights to the story for $450,000 with the intention to adapt it to a movie through his company Wildwood Enterprises.

Having worked with William Goldman on the Academy Award Winning Butch Cassidy and the

Sundance Kid, Robert hired him to pen the screenplay for All the President’s Men. His first draft secured funding from Warner Bros, but Redford wasn’t happy with the script. Bernstein and then-girlfriend Nora Ephron wrote their own draft which was presented to Goldman who didn’t like it and saw Redford’s action as “betrayal.” Ultimately, Alan J. Pakula was hired to direct the film, and he worked with Goldman to secure rewrites that everyone could accept.

Unlike the book, the movie only covers the first seven months of the scandal, from the break-in to President Nixon’s second inauguration on January 20, 1973, Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein were joined by an all-star cast including Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards, Stephen Collins, Ned Beatty, Meredith Baxter, F. Murray Abraham, and Richard Herd. Frank Wills, the actual security guard at the Watergate complex appeared in the movie as himself. Costing $8.5 million to produce, the movie would earn more than $70 million worldwide.

Nominated for eight Academy Awards and winning four, All the President’s Men would go on to win additional Golden Globe, BAFTA, and other awards, including Best Drama from the Writer’s Guild of America for William Goldman. In 2010, the Library of Congress selected the movie for preservation in the National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” See the official trailer.

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