Gore Vidal was an extremely clever, witty, insightful critic of American Imperialism and was never happier then when he was letting people know just how clever, witty and insightful he could be. Novelist turned screenwriter turned social critic turned celebrity intellectual, Vidal spent his life on the outside looking in and was never pleased with what he saw.
Raised by his grandparents, his grandfather a blind US Senator, he was running errands as a Senate page before he was a teen, perhaps immunising himself against the glamour of political power, although running for congress alongside pal John F Kennedy in 1960 would suggest otherwise. The biography documentary is at its best when examining Vidal in his controversialist guises, his television debates with William F Buckley and Normal Mailer, his love/hate relationship with one-time heir apparent Christopher Hitchens.
But it is these moments when the director portrays a most fawning and uncritical picture of Gore. “What a wit,” the movie screams without questioning his cruelty, like the quip about Hitchens, “he’ll be dead before me,” said with full knowledge of a man ravaged by cancer. By turns brilliant and a bully, Gore clearly only every said what he believed, which is more than most, a very interesting watch about a very clever man.
