User:Ylee/All the President's Men (film)

All the President's Men is a 1976 film based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. The film adaptation starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, respectively; it was produced by Walter Coblenz, written by William Goldman and directed by Alan J. Pakula.

Plot
In June 1972, a security guard (Frank Wills, playing himself) at the Watergate complex finds a door kept unlocked with tape. The Washington DC Police arrest five burglars with bugging equipment in the Democratic National Committee headquarters within the complex. The Washington Post assigns reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) to the story.

Woodward learns that the five men&mdash;four Cuban Americans from Miami and James W. McCord, Jr.&mdash;have their own "country club" attorney, who arrived unprompted and refuses to comment. McCord identifies himself in court as having recently retired from the Central Intelligence Agency, and the others also have CIA ties. Wooward connects the burglars to E. Howard Hunt, formerly of the CIA, and President Richard Nixon's Special Counsel Charles Colson.

Woodward and Carl Bernstein, also assigned to the story, are reluctant partners but work well together. Managing editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) believes their work is incomplete, however, and encourages them to continue to gather information.

Woodward contacts "Deep Throat" (Hal Holbrook), a senior government official and anonymous source he has used before. Communicating through copies of the Times and a balcony flower pot, they meet in a parking garage. Deep Throat speaks in riddles and metaphors, but advises Woodward to "follow the money".

Woodward and Bernstein connect burglar Bernard Barker to thousands of dollars in donations to Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP). Their story appears on the Post's front page, but still below the fold. Bradlee and others at the paper remain skeptical of the two young reporters who are dependent on unnamed sources like Deep Throat, and ask why the Nixon administration would break the law when the president is likely to easily win reelection.

Through former CREEP treasurer Hugh W. Sloan, Jr. (Stephen Collins), Woodward and Bernstein connect a CREEP slush fund of hundreds of thousands of dollars, used by the Watergate burglars, to White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman&mdash;"the second most important man in this country"&mdash;and former Nixon Attorney General John N. Mitchell. They learn that CREEP used the fund to begin a "ratfucking" campaign to sabotage Democratic presidential candidates a year before the Watergate burglary, when Nixon was behind Edmund Muskie in the polls; Deep Throat implies that Muskie's loss in the primaries to George McGovern, in part due to the Canuck letter, was what the White House wanted.

Bradlee's demand for thoroughness forces the reporters to obtain other sources to confirm the Haldeman connection; when the White House issues a non-denial denial of the story Bradlee continues to support them. Deep Throat claims that the coverup was not to hide the burglaries but "covert operations" involving "the entire U.S. intelligence community", and warns that Woodward, Bernstein, and others' lives are in danger. Bradlee urges the reporters to continue despite the risk.

The film ends with a montage of Watergate-related teletype headlines from the following years, ending with Nixon's resignation and the inauguration of Gerald Ford in August 1974.

Production
Robert Redford bought the rights to Woodward and Bernstein's book in 1974 for $450,000 with the notion to adapt it into a film with a budget of $5 million. Ben Bradlee realized that the film was going to be made regardless of whether he approved of it or not and felt that it made "more sense to try to influence it factually". The executive editor of the Washington Post hoped that the film would have an important impact on people who harbored a negative stereotype of newspapers.

Director Alan J. Pakula and Redford were not happy with screenwriter William Goldman's first draft. Woodward and Bernstein also read it and did not like it. Redford asked for their suggestions but Bernstein and writer Nora Ephron wrote their own draft. Redford read and did not like it, saying, "a lot of it was sophomoric and way off the beat". He and Pakula held all-day sessions working on the script. The director also spent hours interviewing editors and reporters, taking notes of their comments.

Dustin Hoffman and Redford visited the Post offices for months, sitting in on news conferences and conducting research for their roles. The Post denied the production permission to shoot in its newsroom and so set designers took measurements of the newspaper's offices, photographed everything, and boxes of trash were gathered and transported to sets recreating the newsroom on two soundstages in Hollywood's Burbank Studios at a cost of $200,000. The filmmakers went to great lengths for accuracy and authenticity, including making replicas of phone books that were no longer in existence. Nearly 200 desks at $500 apiece were purchased from the same firm that sold desks to the Post in 1971. The desks were also colored the same precise shade of paint. The production was supplied with a brick from the main lobby of the Post so that it could be duplicated in fiberglass for the set. Principal photography began on May 12, 1975 in Washington, D.C.

The billing followed the formula of James Stewart and John Wayne in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), with Redford billed over Hoffman in the posters and trailers and Hoffman billed above Redford in the film itself.

Differences from the book
Unlike the book, the film itself only covers the first seven months of the Watergate scandal, from the time of the break-in to Nixon's inauguration on January 20, 1973. A series of teletype headlines finishes the film, revealing the snowball results of Woodward and Bernstein's efforts to break the story, ending with the announcement of Nixon's resignation in August 1974.

Awards and nominations
According to Box Office Mojo.com, the film earned a "Domestic Total Gross" of $70,600,000.

In 2007, it was added to the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list at #77. AFI also named it #34 on its America's Most Inspiring Movies list and #57 of the Top 100 Thrilling Movies. The characters of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein shared the rank of #27 Hero on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list. Entertainment Weekly ranked All the President's Men as one of the 25 "Powerful Political Thrillers".