Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013)

Touches You

Just what I expected

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Gore Vidal was always good value for money. Writer, polemicist, raconteur, wit and intellectual.Vidal died in 2012, he lived to a good age and this film released a year later is a documentary of his personal and professional life with contributions from those who knew him.Gore was a patrician who came from a political family but had complex relationships with his parents. In a roundabout way he was related to the Kennedys through Jackie Onassis and experienced the Camelot years.Yet he was critical of both Democrats and Republicans as they served the same people, the moneyed and liked to paint himself as an outsider. For many years he lived in Italy.Gore could be charming and also abrasive and was willing to take on all comers. Gore engaged in debated with the right wing author William Buckley Jr, got in a scrape with Norman Mailer and even turned his back to former acolyte Christopher Hitchens when he got too close to the American right and for his support of the Iraq War.This was an enjoyable documentary, I always find it stimulating to listen to Vidal even if he might be exaggerating his stories or embellishing his own importance but I would had liked to see more focus on his writing as well.

Gore Vidal, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 86, in my opinion, possessed one of the greatest minds ever. Clearly physical aging as this documentary was being filmed, but losing none of his incredible wit, sarcastic humor, and brutal honesty, Vidal gives his version of his most remarkable life.The movie, directed by Nicholas Wrathall, appears to be meticulously researched and is extremely well presented, utilizing vintage film clips and interviews, as it recounts the most fascinating journey of Vidal's life and career.Overall, I don't agree with everything Vidal espouses but his anti-establishment writings and spoken words are so vital, as I see it, for any society to have. In my opinion, his genius will live on in perpetuity, and hopefully serve as lessons for the future generations to come.

Vidal was born into privilege but this didn't stop him from having a disastrous relationship with his mother, Nina. He seemed to have a better one with his father but his parents divorced when he was young and his mother burned through several marriages. He attended a New England boys, Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire and had an affair with another boy, who died at Iwo Jima.Vidal in the movie commented on the futility of war and the horrible waste of lives it incurs. He served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater for several years and claimed he never heard one serviceman utter a patriotic comment. To Vidal patriotism was just a cover-up for justifying war.Even as a youth Vidal knew he wanted to write and after he graduated from Exeter he skipped college and set off on a writing career. His third book, The City and the Pillar, became very controversial because of its explicit use of homosexual situations. It is worthy to note that Vidal did not like the terms homosexual/heterosexual and claimed that a person being either one was likened to having blue eyes or brown. This is pretty much the medical position taken today.However, in the 1950s and 1960s (before the Cultural Revolution of the late '60s) writing openly about sex of any type was a taboo. Vidal found his works banned by the New York Times and he had to go to Hollywood to write screenplays to make money. He did quite well monetarily there and with the money he made bought a grand estate in New York. Nevertheless, his frank and overt language in The City and the Pillar caused many critics to smear his name for years.Vidal was a great writer and his historical novels were first-rate. I read both Julian and Lincoln, and both capture the era perfectly that Vidal is describing. The first the mid-4th century Roman Empire and the second when Abraham Lincoln takes the helm of guiding the Union to ultimate victory in the Civil War (1861-1865). He was also a great debater and the movie captured some of his infamous run-ins with that great bastion of American conservatism, William F. Buckley. The movie also took up the relationship between Vidal and Christopher Hitchens, who before the latter endorsed the Second Iraq War (2003-2011), appeared to be the anointed heir-apparent of Vidal's legacy. Regarding the Second Iraq War Vidal clearly called it right.The movie covers Vidal's life from 1925 to 2012. His prime time was the 1950s to the 1980s. It could have been more incisive of Vidal's life but still I had to marvel how prescient he was. He saw clearly the drift that overtook the United States in the second half of the 20th-century and the now current political impasse at which we have now arrived.8/10

I've not read Gore Vidal and have only seen two farcical movies based on his writing (Visit to a Small Planet and Myra Breckinridge) so I was not at all prepared for seeing an hour and a half of someone who is probably one of the most informed, most thoughtful political thinkers of our time. Prepare to get a fast education in the last 65 years of cold-war and post-cold-war politics. Every word rang true to me. Anyone who can trash William F. Buckley, Jr. live, on TV, on the fly and reduce him to a street fighter stance is AOK in my book.This documentary combines historical footage of Vidal appearing on television in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with new footage shot over the last ten years or so of Vidal's life. (He passed on in 2012.) All that's left now is for me to get his historical novels so I can see earlier American history through his eyes.Seen 8-18-13 at the San Jose Camera Cinema Club. The movie is currently making the rounds at international film festivals and there's a distribution deal in the making.