All the President's Men - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of All the President's Men or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to All the President's Men

[jeffrey]

Donald Segretti served four months of a six month sentence for his crimes and was disbarred in 1976. Some years later, having demonstrated his remorse, Segretti was reinstated as a member in good standing of the California bar.

[carla]

The only Best Picture Oscar nominee that year to be also nominated for Best Art Direction.

[bessie]

The film is Lindsay Crouse's theatrical film debut.

[camila]

Alan J. Pakula initially had little interest in making this movie, thinking that it would turn out like a political version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

[chris]

When Bradlee looks at the first Woodward Bernstein article, Rosenfeld tells him that this is something that the New York Times doesn't have. This is a reference to the events of the previous year in which the Times received the Pentagon Papers - thousands of pages of documentation about the government's mishandling of and cover-ups regarding the Vietnam War. They received the documents before the Post and beat the Post in breaking the story, which was the second greatest political scandal of the century. The greatest such scandal was the Watergate affair.

[toni]

When Woodward meets Deep Throat in the underground car park, Deep Throat tells him about Liddy putting his hand over a flame and claiming that the trick is not to mind. This was the same one that T.E. Lawrence reputedly did as seen in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). It is also repeated in Prometheus (2012).

[bernice]

The executive editor of the Washington Post hoped that the film would show newspapers "strive very hard for responsibility".

[victoria]

Woodward says to Deep Throat that Godon Liddy has, "come in from the cold." This is an espionage expression referring to a field agent who has stopped doing field work, the implication being that it was too murky, too stressful, and too dangerous. Liddy was no longer in intelligence but was working for the Administration instead. This is a reference to a 1963 book about a cold war spy with an extremely dark tone by British author John le Carré. It was later turned in to a film named after the book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965).

[francisco]

Robert Redford was in contact with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein before their book had been written, and encouraged them to write more about how they conducted their investigation and less about the events they were reporting. (Vanity Fair article, 04/2011.)

[kim]

Jason Robards won an Oscar for playing Benjamin C. Bradlee, making him one of 17 actors (as of 2015) to win an Academy Award for playing a real person who was still alive the evening of the Award ceremony. Spencer Tracy played Father Edward Flanagan in Boys Town (1938). Gary Cooper played Alvin C. York in Sergeant York (1941). Patty Duke played Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962). Robert De Niro played Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980). Sissy Spacek played Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). Jeremy Irons played Claus Von Bullow in Reversal of Fortune (1990). Susan Sarandon played Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking (1995). Geoffrey Rush played David Helfgott in Shine (1996). Julia Roberts played Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich (2000). Jim Broadbent played John Bayley in Iris (2001). Helen Mirren played Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006). Sandra Bullock played Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side (2009). Melissa Leo played Alice Eklund-Ward in The Fighter (2010). Christian Bale played Dickie Eklund in The Fighter (2010). Meryl Streep played Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011). Eddie Redmayne played Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014).

[riley]

The furious volley of typewriter hammers striking paper in the opening scenes was created by layering the sounds of gunshots and whiplashes over the actual sounds of a typewriter, accentuating the film's theme of words as weapons. This is also why the closing scene has a teletypewriter printing headlines with the sound of cannon fire from a 21-gun salute in the background.

[chris]

Lauren Bacall and Patricia Neal were considered for the role of Katharine Graham.

[kim]

Hal Holbrook was the first and only choice to play the informant Deep Throat. During the casting process, Bob Woodward, while looking at various actors' head shots and resumes, but not revealing Deep Throat's true identity, insisted to director Alan J. Pakula that Holbrook was the best choice to play Deep Throat. Holbrook bears a strong resemblance to Mark Felt.

[liam]

The newsroom set took up two soundstages and 33,000 square feet, and cost $500,000 to assemble.

[nina]

Robert Redford's performance as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman's performance as Carl Bernstein are tied for 27th place on the American Film Institute (AFI)'s top "100 Heroes & Villains" list.

[caroline]

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #77 Greatest Movie of All Time. It was the first inclusion of this film on the list.

[sylvia]

In 2005, during television news coverage of the true identity of "Deep Throat"/Mark Felt, Robert Redford said that they tried to film in the actual Washington Post newsroom, but many Post employees were too aware of the camera, and some even tried to "act". Some employees would disappear into restrooms and apply make-up. The production team re-created the facility at a Burbank studio in Los Angeles for a reported $450,000. The Post cooperated with the production's quest for authenticity by shipping several crates of actual newsroom refuse, including unopened mail, government directories, Washington telephone directories, wire service copy, calendars, and even stickers from Benjamin C. Bradlee's secretary's desk.

[richard]

This movie was released two years after its source non-fiction book was published.

[christina]

Nearly 200 desks, costing $500 each, were purchased from the same firm that sold desks to the Washington Post in 1971.