Stephen Arnell

A cinematic guide to Watergate

  • From Spectator Life
Julia Roberts and Sean Penn star in Gaslit (Image: Starz)

This June will mark half a century since police arrested five of Richard Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington DC’s Watergate complex.

This anniversary appears to have given TV executives the impetus to commission a wave of shows about the break in and its world-changing (if not an overstatement) after-effects.

Both upcoming drama Gaslit (STARZ, from April 24th) and Netflix’s documentary The Martha Mitchell Effect concern the outspoken spouse of Nixon’s loyal Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who (to her husband’s ire) helped blow the whistle on Watergate.

For her efforts, Mitchell was hounded and vilified as a drunk by Nixon’s cronies, with the former President declaring to David Frost that ‘if it hadn’t been for Martha Mitchell, there’d have been no Watergate’.

Julia Roberts takes the role of Martha Mitchell in Gaslit whilst Sean Penn is her corrupted husband.

Also on the horizon is the HBO Mini-series The White House Plumbers, which takes a more comedic look at the antics of the bungling burglars.

A star cast includes Woody Harrelson, Justin Theroux, Judy Greer, Kiernan Shipka, and Lena Headey.

Back in the 1970s, two TV mini-series made about the Nixon era are still worth a look.

Blind Ambition (CBS, 1979) starred Martin Sheen as Nixon White House counsel John Dean, with Rip Torn (Larry Sanders) as #37.

I found the earlier, fictionalised Washington: Behind Closed Doors (ABC, 1977) the superior of the two shows, due to the performances of Jason Robards as paranoid President Richard Monckton (Nixon) and Andy Griffiths as his folksy but sly predecessor Esker Scott Anderson (Lyndon Johnson).

More recently, US political scandals came under the mini-series microscope in The Comey Rule (2020 – Trump) and Impeachment: American Crime Story (2021 – Clinton).

A look at Watergate in the movies:

Dick (1999) Amazon Rent/Buy

Watergate is seen through a humorous lens in Andrew Fleming’s enjoyable satire.

DC teens Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene (Michelle Williams) inadvertently become the legendary informer ‘Deep Throat’ after learning about the President’s misdeeds when appointed Nixon’s ‘official dog-walkers’.

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