Daily Dialogue — December 31, 2018
Deep Throat: You’ll have to figure that on your own.
Bob Woodward: Look, I’m tired of your chickenshit games! I don’t want hints! I need to know what you know!
A thick silence.
Deep Throat: It was a Haldeman operation. The whole business was run by Haldeman, the money, everything. It won’t be easy getting at him, he was insulated, you’ll have to find out how. Mitchell started doing covert stuff before anyone else, the list is longer than anyone can imagine… it involves the entire U.S. Intelligence Community. FBI… CIA… Justice… it’s incredible. Cover-up had little to do with Watergate, it was mainly to protect the covert operations. It leads everywhere. Get out your notebook, there’s more. Your lives are in danger.
— All the President’s Men (1976), screenplay by William Goldman, book by Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Politics.
Trivia: Screenwriter William Goldman was called to an impromptu meeting with Redford (the film’s producer) along with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. At that time, Goldman’s draft of the screenplay had been accepted and they were waiting on hearing from Woodward and Bernstein. At the meeting, they presented Goldman with a new screenplay, written by Bernstein, and then girlfriend Nora Ephron. Goldman refused to read the screenplay (for legal reasons) and walked out of the meeting. Only one scene from that screenplay ends up in the final version of the film: a scene where Bernstein outsmarts a secretary to get in to see someone. This scene was pure fiction, it did not happen in real-life. (Woodward was allegedly unhappy with Bernstein’s script as well, because it depicted Woodward as a naive novice reporter and worshipper of Bernstein’s superior talent. Woodward later called Goldman to apologize for the incident, telling him, “I don’t know what the six worst things I’ve ever done in my life are, but letting that happen, letting them write that, is one of them.”)
Dialogue On Dialogue: The Deep Throat scenes in All the President’s Men are each riveting in their own right, this one in particular due to his last line: “Your lives are in danger.” This is the dark side of dirty politics.
