Sunday, April 28, 2024

New HBO show 'White House Plumbers' revisits the Watergate scandal : NPR

white house plumbers

A new five-part HBO mini-series may offer answers to those questions. “White House Plumbers,” premiering Monday, recreates the events that riveted a nation and upended American politics, focusing not on the usual characters — no Nixon, Woodward or Bernstein on the screen here — but on the men behind the crime. Obviously, Veep is a pure comedy with very written jokes. You know, this show will make you laugh, but they're not jokes.

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Gordon Liddy, accidentally toppled the presidency they we... Read allA five-part series that tells the true story of how Nixon's own political saboteurs and Watergate masterminds, E. Gordon Liddy, accidentally toppled the presidency they were trying to protect.A five-part series that tells the true story of how Nixon's own political saboteurs and Watergate masterminds, E. Gordon Liddy, accidentally toppled the presidency they were trying to protect. With each episode directed by David Mandel (also a “Veep” alum, along with Gregory and Huyck), "White House Plumbers" initially gets considerable momentum from the weirdness of its two lead performances. Justin Theroux is about as pompous as he can be with the tar-black, openly fake-looking mustache of Liddy, paired neatly with the agent’s troubling love of Hitler’s speeches, guns, and propensity to keep his hand over a flame as a gesture of his trustworthiness.

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When he talks about his childhood, he depicts himself as this sort of scrawny Irish guy from Hoboken, a kid who got bullied a lot. And he would do these insane things to get over his fears. So he trapped a rat, killed it and then ate it. So he would strap himself to a tree during a thunder and lightning storm. And I had sympathy for him as this bullied kid.

white house plumbers

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This five-part limited series imagines the behind-the-scenes story of how Nixon’s political saboteurs, E. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), accidentally toppled the presidency they were zealously trying to protect… and their families along with it. Chronicling actions on the ground, this satirical drama begins in 1971 when the White House hires Hunt and Liddy, former CIA and FBI, respectively, to investigate the Pentagon Papers leak. After failing upward, the unlikely pair lands on the Committee to Re-Elect the President, plotting several unbelievable covert ops – including bugging the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex. Proving that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction, White House Plumbers sheds light on the lesser-known series of events that led to one of the greatest political scandals in American history. "White House Plumbers" is better before it gets to Watergate, with the first half depicting how Liddy and Hunt were bombastic but somehow good at their jobs, which helped them lead Nixon's corrupt Committee for the Re-election of the President.

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“White House Plumbers” grabs a few chuckles from how Hunt is only a layer away from Liddy's nuttiness or that he’s a dorky dad with a secret job. But Harrelson's veneers and gurgly voice do a lot of the heavy lifting for an otherwise bland comedic and dramatic performance. Hunt’s character has a tragic element that Harrelson doesn’t get to the bottom of, and it's a missed opportunity. So we come to “White House Plumbers,” a tale in five parts, premiering Monday on HBO. White House Plumbers gets clogged up by its overstuffed adherence to real history, but with actors this appealing and material that truly is stranger than fiction, it flushes down easy enough.

'White House Plumbers' Creators on Making the Watergate Scandal Funny - The Daily Beast

'White House Plumbers' Creators on Making the Watergate Scandal Funny.

Posted: Tue, 16 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

It's definitely worth seeing, and savoring. All the President's Men is one of my favorite movies of all time — and White House Plumbers is good enough to be shown as a very long, all-Watergate double feature. Start from the beginning of the series and watch the first episode of White House Plumbers for free. Get the Envelope newsletter for exclusive awards season coverage, behind-the-scenes stories from the Envelope podcast and columnist Glenn Whipp’s must-read analysis. LOS ANGELES — On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C.

A new HBO “slapstick tragedy” mostly avoids the Oval Office in favor of the men who actually executed the infamous burglary that brought down a president. Theroux and Mandel spoke to Morning Edition about what drew them to the series and how characters like Liddy paved the way for today's right-wing extremism. "White House Plumbers" premieres on HBO on May 1st. A podcast, a chat with his boss and a missing piece of the puzzle put Robbie Pickering on the set of the Watergate drama.

It's character and real world things that you just find so shocking and horrible. This mix of, "oh my God, they were breaking in to try and basically undermine the will of the American people." These are guys that just are so desperate to be one step closer to power. And I think that's something that unfortunately infects just D.C. A still from the HBO miniseries White House Plumbers, in which G. Gordon Liddy orchestrates the failed Watergate break-in. Liddy wrote a book called Will, which was his sort of autobiography, which sometimes reads like a tall tale, Paul Bunyan type.

However, it’s all about Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux. Harrelson is the former CIA agent Hunt, who was “un-hireable when the agency dumped you”. He begins the series in a depressed state, reduced to churning out soul-sapping copy for a public-relations firm, and is someone who has strong opinions that he expresses with gusto. He rants about how Time magazine is “propaganda”, while his family falls apart around him. Lena Headey is his wife, Dorothy, an active CIA asset, who asks him to “try not to be such an asshole” while pleading with him to take some responsibility for his chaotic children. As Liddy, Theroux wears a grand moustache and kipper tie, or they wear him.

Forget Succession — White House Plumbers is the Max series you really need to binge - Tom's Guide

Forget Succession — White House Plumbers is the Max series you really need to binge.

Posted: Tue, 30 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

At one point, Kathleen Turner takes centre stage, as the notorious lobbyist Dita Beard, shipped off to hospital to keep her away from the White House. Judy Greer is Liddy’s wife, Domhnall Gleeson is White House counsel John Dean, and Mad Men’s Rich Sommer and Kiernan Shipka dust off the period costumes once again. The Veep showrunner David Mandel directs, which should give some idea of the acerbic tone it aims for. The obligatory “based on a true story” note that opens the show cheekily points out that “no names have been changed to protect the innocent, because nearly everyone was found guilty”. Over five episodes, it follows the inept misadventures (and that’s putting it lightly, although, surprisingly, the series does occasionally allow space for an interpretation of the pair as quirky goofs) of the Nixon operatives E Howard Hunt and G Gordon Liddy. White House Plumbers is an A-list, star-stuffed, prestige retelling of the Watergate scandal, which might sound familiar to viewers of last year’s Gaslit, another A-list, star-stuffed, prestige retelling of the Watergate scandal.

Shea Whigham previously played this larger-than-life figure in Starz’s Watergate and Martha Mitchell series “Gaslit” with even more feverish intensity, at one point stealing the show from Julia Roberts by battling a rat in prison. But Theroux’s self-amusement with the character is infectious enough; it's in the way his Liddy speaks regally as if he were already the star of a mini-series in his head. Mandel often embraces wide-angle lenses to make his characters appear even larger than life in the frame (also seen this week with a similar effect in David Lowery's "Peter Pan & Wendy"), and it's a particularly fitting way to capture Theroux's irascible work.

However, if they go out of their way to help or spend more time than expected, a tip is appreciated. Ultimately, the writers and director relied on their protagonists. Hunt and Liddy didn’t see themselves as absurd. When they looked in the mirror, they saw the ultimate patriots, and they were willing to do whatever it took to prove themselves. They were, in a sense, the straight men in their own comedy.

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