Four More Years is a 1972 documentary covering the 1972 Republican National Convention produced by Top Value Television. The title of the film refers to Richard Nixon's re-election slogan. The convention named Nixon as the Presidential nominee and Spiro Agnew as the nominee for Vice President. All filming takes place on the site of the convention center in Miami Beach, Florida. It was TVTV's second production, after The World's Largest TV Studio (1972), which covered the Democratic Convention one month prior.
Four More Years was part of the guerrilla television movement. [1] While the filmmakers do not hide their leftist sympathies, neither do they try to ridicule and instead allow all parties to express themselves. [2] In general, the documentary avoids coverage of staged events such as performances and speeches. Instead, the camera offers a behind-the-scenes look at the staging of the event. The film utilizes shots of the convention hotel and the convention floor in both filled and empty states. Interviews are conducted in an informal, spontaneous style by Skip Blumberg and Maureen Orth. Interviews are also punctuated by irreverent moments like Blumberg playing the harmonica on the convention floor. [3]
The film avoids voice-over commentary or added music. Instead, still shots of official campaign buttons or other political buttons are used to provide context for the interviews. Campaign buttons include "Get to know a Nixonette", "Nixon's the One!", and "One of 250,000". Buttons from protesters of the event include “Vietnam Veterans Against the War”, "Acid Amnesty Appeasement Vote McGovern", and "McGovern for President of North Vietnam".
Politicians and their family members are interviewed throughout. Interviews were conducted with Nixon's daughters Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon Cox, as well as Tricia Cox's husband, Edward Cox. The camera does not follow the cues of the interviewee and instead tries to extend the interview as long as possible, following Cox as he retreats into a private section of the convention floor. For the most part the film chooses to show politicians in transitional or unofficial moments rather than on stage of the official event program. For example, as Henry Kissinger gets into a vehicle, Maureen Orth asks him, "How are the girls?" to which he replies, "They're very pleasant". One exception is an extended scene of Ronald Reagan giving a speech to the Young Republicans with a young woman hollering in the front of the audience. Members of the Young Republicans are interviewed and express indignation about media reports that their participation in the event is arranged by the Republican Party rather than being self-organized.
Unlike typical convention coverage, the TVTV crew sought opinions from news teams as well as politicians. TVTV asked questions relating not only about the event but about news coverage in general. On the convention floor the crew interviews Cassie Mackin, Tom Pettit, and Douglas Kiker from NBC, Herb Kaplow from ABC, and Mike Wallace and Roger Mudd from CBS. Of these personalities, only Roger Mudd refuses to answer TVTV's questions. There is also a longer interview with CBS anchor Walter Cronkite in an editing room in which he defends his decision, which Reagan had criticized, to not stand for the national anthem due to his journalistic duties. Cronkite also recommends that viewers glean their news from multiple sources and critically examine these sources for a functional democracy. [4]
The last major group featured in the film is protesters outside the convention, which includes both student protesters and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The location of the convention was moved from San Diego to Miami in response to concerns about Vietnam protests in California. Among the crowd of anti-war veterans in the film is the activist Ron Kovic. The atmosphere outside the hotel is much different than within: the national guard is present, tear gas is used, and the film shows a congressman having trouble getting into the Convention Center due to the heightened security. [5] Republican bystanders criticize the protesting veterans. The film concludes by juxtaposing Kovic shouting, "Stop the bombing! Stop killing! Stop the war!" with Republican delegates popping the balloons falling from the ceiling after the announcement of Nixon's confirmed candidacy.
Michael Shamberg founded TVTV for the purpose of filming the 1972 Democratic National Convention [6] and released The World's Largest TV Studio, a film with a similar sensibility. A positive New York Times review of The World's Largest TV Studio encouraged TVTV to continue the project and cover the Republican convention as well. The production of Four More Years was a collaboration with other technical and artistic groups, including videofreex. [7]
The production crew was composed of Wendy Appel, Skip Blumberg, Nancy Cain, Steve Christiansen, Michael Couzens, Bart Friedman, Chuck Kennedy, Chip Lord, Anda Korsts, Maureen Orth, Hudson Marquez, Martha Miller, T.L. Morey, Allen Rucker, Ira Schneider, Michael Shamberg, Jodi Sibert, Tom Weinberg, and Megan Williams. [8]
Throughout September and October 1972, Four More Years was broadcast by Group W, New York's WOR-TV, San Francisco's KQED, as well as stations in Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. [8] The documentary was well received by critics and pundits across party lines. [2] One critic lauded TVTV's ability to produce a successful and compelling portrait "for the money CBS spent on coffee." [9]
Four More Years was the first independently produced feature shown in its entirety on national television. Some people in the movie claimed that they did not know that the camera was wide-angled and therefore did not know they were in the shot. [9] Additionally, the use of the Portapak, a much smaller device than typical news cameras, likely helped the crew film inconspicuously.
The film has been the topic of media and art historical studies for its role in the history of counterculture media. [10]
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.
The 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former vice president Richard Nixon, defeated both the Democratic nominee, incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey, and the American Independent Party nominee, former Alabama governor George Wallace. This was the last election until 1988 in which the incumbent president was not on the ballot. This was also the last election where a third-party candidate received an electoral vote.
Ronald Lawrence Kovic is an American anti-war activist, writer, and United States Marine Corps sergeant who was wounded and paralyzed in the Vietnam War. His 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July was made into the film of the same name which starred actor Tom Cruise as Kovic, and was co-written by Kovic and directed by Oliver Stone.
Maureen Orth is an American journalist, author, and a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine. She is the founder of Marina Orth Foundation, which has established a model education program in Colombia emphasizing technology, English, and leadership. She is the widow of TV journalist Tim Russert.
The 1972 Republican National Convention was held from August 21 to August 23, 1972, at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach, Florida. It nominated President Richard M. Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew for reelection. The convention was chaired by House minority leader and future Nixon successor Gerald Ford of Michigan. It was the fifth time that Nixon had been nominated on the Republican ticket for vice president or president. Nixon's five appearances on his party's ticket matched the major-party American standard of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat who had been nominated for vice president once and president four times.
Born on the Fourth of July is a 1989 American epic biographical anti-war film that is based on the 1976 autobiography of Ron Kovic. Directed by Oliver Stone, and written by Stone and Kovic, it stars Tom Cruise, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley, and Willem Dafoe. The film depicts the life of Kovic (Cruise) over a 20-year period, detailing his childhood, his military service and paralysis during the Vietnam War, and his transition to anti-war activism. It is the second installment in Stone's trilogy of films about the Vietnam War, following Platoon (1986) and preceding Heaven & Earth (1993).
Michael Shamberg is an American film producer and former Time–Life correspondent.
The U.S. vs. John Lennon is a 2006 American documentary film about John Lennon's transformation from member of the Beatles to anti-war activist opposing the reelection of Richard Nixon as president in 1972. The film also details the attempts by the Nixon administration to deport Lennon from the US to end his anti-war and anti-Nixon campaigns. The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was released in New York City and Los Angeles, California on 15 September 2006, and had a nationwide release on 29 September. A soundtrack composed of John Lennon tracks was released by Capitol Records and EMI on 26 September 2006.
Guerrilla television is a term coined in 1971 by Michael Shamberg, one of the founders of the Raindance Foundation; the Raindance Foundation has been one of the counter-culture video collectives that in the 1960s and 1970s extended the role of the underground press to new communication technologies.
Lord of the Universe is a 1974 American documentary film about Prem Rawat at an event in November 1973 at the Houston Astrodome called "Millennium '73". Lord of the Universe was first broadcast on PBS on February 2, 1974, and released in VHS format on November 1, 1991. The documentary chronicles Maharaj Ji, his followers and anti-Vietnam War activist Rennie Davis who was a spokesperson of the Divine Light Mission at the time. A counterpoint is presented by Davis' Chicago Seven co-defendant Abbie Hoffman, who appears as a commentator. It includes interviews with several individuals, including followers, ex-followers, a mahatma, a born-again Christian, and a follower of Hare Krishna.
TVTV was a San Francisco-based video collective that produced documentary video works using guerrilla art techniques.
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Richard Nixon's tenure as the 37th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1969, and ended when he resigned on August 9, 1974, in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office, the only U.S. president ever to do so. He was succeeded by Gerald Ford, whom he had appointed vice president after Spiro Agnew became embroiled in a separate corruption scandal and was forced to resign. Nixon, a prominent member of the Republican Party from California who previously served as vice president for two terms under president Dwight D. Eisenhower, took office following his narrow victory over Democrat incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey and American Independent Party nominee George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election. Four years later, in the 1972 presidential election, he defeated Democrat nominee George McGovern, to win re-election in a landslide. Although he had built his reputation as a very active Republican campaigner, Nixon downplayed partisanship in his 1972 landslide re-election.
Skip Blumberg is an American filmmaker. He is one of the original camcorder-for-broadcast TV producers, and among the first wave of video artists in the 1970s. His early work reflects the era's emphasis on guerrilla tactics and medium-specific graphics, but his more recent work takes on more global issues. His work has screened widely on television and at museums. His video Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show (1981) is considered a classic documentary video and was included in the Museum of Television and Radio's exhibition TV Critics' All-time Favorite Shows. His cultural documentaries and performance videos have been broadcast on PBS, National Geographic TV, Showtime, Bravo, Nickelodeon, among others.
The Videofreex were a pioneering video collective who used the Sony Portapak for countercultural video projects from 1969 to 1978. They were founded in 1969 by David Cort, Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Parry Teasdale, after Cort and Teasdale met each other at the Woodstock Music Festival. Other early members include Skip Blumberg, Chuck Kennedy, Davidson Gigliotti, Bart Friedman, Carol Vontobel, Nancy Cain, and Ann Woodward, with dozens of additional collaborators participating in the group's cooperative projects.
Paul Louis Ryan (1943–2013) was an American video artist and communications theorist. His video art encompassed water studies and demonstrations of what Ryan called “a yoga of relationships” or Threeing, culminating in his theoretical development of the Peircean relational circuit and Earthscore notational system.
Sean Christopher Stone is an American actor, filmmaker, and television host. Stone hosted a show on the Russian state-funded network RT America until the network was shut down in 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Parry Teasdale is an American video artist and a founding member of the early video collective Videofreex. He was also involved with Lanesville TV, one of the first unlicensed TV stations, throughout the 1970s.
Tom Weinberg is a Chicago native filmmaker, independent documentary producer, and television producer. From an early age, he held an interest in television and media. He founded the independent video archive Media Burn in 2003, and currently sits on the board of directors as president. As a producer, he focused on guerrilla television and revolutionizing ways in which the public could have access to news other than what was displayed within the mainstream media. Some of his notable works include The 90s, the Emmy Award-winning Image Union, and the TVTV video collective.
Anda Korsts was a Chicago-based video artist and journalist. She was the founder of Videopolis, Chicago's first alternative video space, and worked with TVTV, a national video collective. She was one of the first of many new artists to use the portable camcorder as a tool for art making and radical journalism.
