The Final Days | |
---|---|
Genre | Drama |
Based on | The Final Days by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein |
Teleplay by | Hugh Whitemore |
Directed by | Richard Pearce |
Starring | Lane Smith Richard Kiley |
Music by | Cliff Eidelman |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producer | Stuart Samuels |
Producer | Richard L. O'Connor |
Cinematography | Fred Murphy |
Editor | Bill Yahraus |
Running time | 144 minutes |
Production companies | Poochie Productions The Samuels Film Co. |
Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | October 29, 1989 |
The Final Days is a 1989 television movie adaptation of the 1976 book written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The movie is directed by Richard Pearce and follows the events in the Nixon White House after the Washington Post's Watergate revelations.
J. Fred Buzhardt inadvertently reveals the existence of a taping system to the Watergate Committee minority counsel. After the committee's majority counsel discovers the information, Alexander Butterfield is interviewed and confirms the taping system's existence.
Four days after the Yom Kippur War, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns. Nixon turns over the tapes after the resignations of Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus.
Later at his Key Biscayne home, Nixon holds his "I'm not a crook" press conference. James D. St. Clair is hired as Nixon's defense lawyer.
As the walls close in on Nixon, he becomes increasingly erratic. Despite his family's pleas to fight on, he accepts the advice of his advisors and resigns the presidency.
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon which ultimately led to Nixon's resignation. It revolved around members of a fundraising organization associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972, and Nixon's subsequent attempts to conceal his administration's involvement.
All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists who investigated the June 1972 break-in at the Watergate Office Building and the resultant political scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial report on the Watergate break-in through the resignations of Nixon Administration officials H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman in April 1973, and the revelation of the Oval Office Watergate tapes by Alexander Butterfield three months later. It relates the events behind the major stories the duo wrote for the Post, naming some sources who had previously refused to be identified for their initial articles, notably Hugh Sloan. It also gives detailed accounts of Woodward's secret meetings with his source Deep Throat, whose identity was kept hidden for over 30 years. Gene Roberts, the former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and former managing editor of The New York Times, has called the work of Woodward and Bernstein "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time."
Daniel Mayer Cherkoss, known by his pen name Dan Curtis, was an American television and film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was best known as the creator of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1966–71), and for directing the epic World War II miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988).
John Joseph Sirica was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where he became famous for his role in the trials stemming from the Watergate scandal.
The "Saturday Night Massacre" was a series of resignations over the dismissal of special prosecutor Archibald Cox that took place in the United States Department of Justice during the Watergate scandal in 1973. The events followed the refusal by Cox to drop a subpoena for the Nixon White House tapes at President Richard Nixon's request.
Louis Patrick Gray III was acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from May 3, 1972, to April 27, 1973. During this time, the FBI was in charge of the initial investigation into the burglaries that sparked the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Nixon. Gray was nominated as permanent Director by Nixon on February 15, 1973, but failed to win Senate confirmation. He resigned as Acting FBI director on April 27, 1973, after he admitted to destroying documents that had come from convicted Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt's safe—documents received on June 28, 1972, 11 days after the Watergate burglary, and given to Gray by White House counsel John Dean.
Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information in 1972 to Bob Woodward, who shared it with Carl Bernstein. Woodward and Bernstein were reporters for The Washington Post, and Deep Throat provided key details about the involvement of U.S. president Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal. In 2005, 31 years after Nixon's resignation and 11 years after Nixon's death, a family attorney stated that former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Associate Director Mark Felt was Deep Throat. By then, Felt was suffering from dementia and had previously denied being Deep Throat, but Woodward and Bernstein then confirmed the attorney's claim.
John Wesley Dean III is a disbarred American attorney who served as White House Counsel for U.S. President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. Dean is known for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and his subsequent testimony to Congress as a witness. His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution ultimately resulted in a reduced sentence, which he served at Fort Holabird outside Baltimore, Maryland. After his plea, he was disbarred.
Alexander Porter Butterfield is a retired United States Air Force officer, public official, and businessman. He served as the deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973. He revealed the White House taping system's existence on July 13, 1973, during the Watergate investigation but had no other involvement in the scandal. From 1973 to 1975, he served as administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.
The Senate Watergate Committee, known officially as the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, was a special committee established by the United States Senate, S.Res. 60, in 1973, to investigate the Watergate scandal, with the power to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and any subsequent cover-up of criminal activity, as well as "all other illegal, improper, or unethical conduct occurring during the controversial 1972 presidential election, including political espionage and campaign finance practices".
The Watergate scandal refers to the burglary and illegal wiretapping of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, in the Watergate complex by members of President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign, and the subsequent cover-up of the break-in resulting in Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974, as well as other abuses of power by the Nixon White House that were discovered during the course of the scandal.
Audio recordings of conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Nixon administration officials, Nixon family members, and White House staff surfaced during the Watergate scandal in 1973 and 1974, leading to Nixon's resignation.
All the President's Men is a 1976 American biographical political thriller film about the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, with a screenplay by William Goldman, it is based on the 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists investigating the scandal for The Washington Post.
Joseph Sargent was an American film director. Though he directed many television movies, his best known feature-length works were arguably the action movie White Lightning starring Burt Reynolds, the biopic MacArthur starring Gregory Peck, and the horror anthology Nightmares. His most popular feature film was the subway thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Sargent won four Emmy Awards over his career.
Watergate is a documentary series co-produced by the BBC and Discovery, broadcast in 1994. It was based on the book Watergate: The Corruption and Fall of Richard Nixon, by Fred Emery. The series was directed by Mick Gold and produced by Paul Mitchell and Norma Percy.
Washington: Behind Closed Doors is a 1977 American television miniseries produced by Paramount Television, that was broadcast in six parts, airing across six consecutive nights on ABC, between September 6 to September 11, 1977.
Joseph Fred Buzhardt Jr was an American attorney and public servant. He is best known for serving as special White House Counsel to Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Previously he had served as General Counsel of the Department of Defense and as a legislative aide to Senator Strom Thurmond.
The impeachment process against Richard Nixon was initiated by the United States House of Representatives on October 30, 1973, during the course of the Watergate scandal, when multiple resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon were introduced immediately following the series of high-level resignations and firings widely called the "Saturday Night Massacre". The House Committee on the Judiciary soon began an official investigation of the president's role in Watergate, and, in May 1974, commenced formal hearings on whether sufficient grounds existed to impeach Nixon of high crimes and misdemeanors under Article II, Section 4, of the United States Constitution. This investigation was undertaken one year after the United States Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex during the 1972 presidential election, and the Republican Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement; during those hearings the scope of the scandal became apparent and the existence of the Nixon White House tapes was revealed.
Judith Hoback Miller acted as an investigative source in the Watergate scandal in 1972 during the presidency of Richard Nixon. She served as the bookkeeper for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President.
Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, has inspired or been portrayed in numerous cultural works.