Watergate Whammy:
This year marks the fiftieth year of the Watergate scandal, that rocked the American political establishment, overthrew a president, and became such a buzzword for corruption and crime in high places that almost every scandal since has ‘gate’ suffixed to it.
Adding to the mountains of material on Watergate—books, films, documentaries, memoirs—is the Starz series Gaslit (on Lionsgate Play), created by Robbie Pickering, based on the podcast, Slow Burn, by Leon Neyfakh, directed by Matt Ross, with a star cast led by Julia Roberts and Sean Penn. The most famous movie about that period remains All The President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976), about journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post, who uncovered details of the scandal.
The complicated conspiracy involved illegal surveillance of the political rivals of then President Richard Nixon, seeking re-election for another term. An alert security guard, Frank Wills (Patrick R. Walker), caught the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington. (He became collateral damage for just doing his job). The investigation of a relatively minor incident led to the uncovering of shocking abuses of power by men in the Nixon administration.
Gaslit tells the stories of these men who were as ambitious as they were unscrupulous. It begins with the scene of right-winger G. Gordon Liddy (Shea Whigham) declaring, “History isn’t written by the feeble masses, the pissants, the commies, the queers and the women. It is written and rewritten by soldiers carrying the banner of kings,” as he unflinchingly burns his palm over a candle to prove his machismo. Liddy would be comical if he weren’t so dangerous.
The series lines up all the President’s loyal aides– who were probably more sycophantic than there was any call to be– White House attorney John Dean (Dan Stevens), Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman (Nat Faxon), election aide Jeb Magruder (Hamish Linklater), political adviser Charles Colson (Patton Oswalt)– but shines a light on the forgotten woman, who was the first whistleblower – Martha Mitchell (a terrific Julia Roberts). She was the wife of the Attorney General, John Mitchell (Sean Penn buried under tons of prosthetics and quite unrecognizable), a publicity hound, dubbed “Mouth From The South” for her garrulousness. She courted the media, much to the exasperation of her husband, had no filter (to use current jargon) and said whatever she pleased, even words bordering on the risqué. She presented herself as a social rival to First Lady Pat Nixon, one of the reasons why she was banned from Air Force One, and bragged about it.
Men, like the political climber, John Dean, calls her “an idiot and a lush” but his liberal, flight attendant girlfriend and later wife, Maureen ‘Mo’ Kane (Betty Gilpin), admires Martha for her outspokenness at a time when women were kept out of reach of power, and were expected to doll up and stand by their husbands. Political correctness was unheard of, sexism and extramarital dalliances were overlooked; Dean is seen in bed with a call girl, who seems to know all the mighty movers and shakers of Washington.
Liddy, brought in by Dean, comes up with the idea of spying on Democrats opponents and activists, and Mitchell –who takes over as head of Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President, or CREEP as it came to be known–gives it the go-ahead. When their machinations are exposed, to prevent Martha from talking to the press, her husband locks her in a hotel room with a guard to prevent her from causing trouble. When she tries to call a reporter, the guard rips out the phone cord, and roughs her up. Later, she is forcibly sedated and discredited as mentally ill, so that her testimony can be disregarded.
Julia Roberts gets to play the whole gamut from vivacious, feisty, and glamorous to a pale shadow of herself and out-Streeps Meryl, who was reportedly approached to play the part in another project. The younger men have been cast for their uniformly sleek and wolfish looks, the kind of men who stalk the corridors of power in the US and anywhere else in the world, leaving layers of slime in their wake.
There are other series and films coming up later– White House Plumbers, The Last Witness: Watergate, The Martha Mitchell Effect—among others, to mark the Watergate years. By today’s standards, what Nixon’s cohorts did would be considered a minor misdemeanor, but back then, they had to pay for their misdeeds, and the media covered itself in glory. The Seventies with the big-hair, bright outfits fashion, the anti-War movements gathering steam, was an exciting decade, which Gaslit recreates, and also tells a grim story with a lot of panache, a dash of humour and some cautionary finger-wagging. When Nixon underwent an impeachment process, and was forced to resign, who even imagined the excesses of the Trump era and the return of the right wing lunacy, who imagined Putin’s sabre rattling? The eight-episode series does seem a bit overstuffed, but is always engaging and comes at the right time to remind viewers that fifty years ago, when so many people lost their spine, others also grew one.
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)
