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The White House Plumbers - General Discussion

formerlyfreedom

By formerlyfreedom
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formerlyfreedom

formerlyfreedom

From Deadline:

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HBO has greenlighted The White House Plumbers, a five-part limited series starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux, which revisits one of the biggest political scandals in American history. The project hails from Veep executive producers Alex Gregory, Peter Huyck, David Mandel and Frank Rich, and Ruben Fleischer and David Bernad’s The District. The limited series is a co-production between HBO and wiip.

Written by Gregory and Huyck and directed by Mandel, The White House Plumbers is based part on public records and the book Integrity by Egil “Bud” Krogh and Matthew Krogh. The series tells the true story of how Nixon’s own political saboteurs and Watergate masterminds, E. Howard Hunt, played by Harrelson, and G. Gordon Liddy, played by Theroux, accidentally toppled the Presidency they were zealously trying to protect.

Hunt and Liddy were CIA officers and members of the Nixon administration’s “plumbers”, a team of operatives charged with identifying government sources of national security information “leaks” to outside parties. Hunt and Liddy were the masterminds behind the Watergate burglaries and other clandestine operations for the Nixon administration. Hunt served 33 months in prison following convictions on burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping. Liddy was convicted of burglary, conspiracy and refusing to testify to the Senate committee investigating Watergate, and served nearly 52 months in federal prisons.

Coming to HBO as a five part limited series.

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meep.meep

meep.meep

This has a supporting cast for the ages!  And at last they can show Deep Throat in the middle of the action since he's been identified.

It did drag, and I couldn't figure out what was going on at the Liddy's house with the Hitler and the hand gun.

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iMonrey

iMonrey

I watched the first one, it was odd. The characters are drawn so broadly they almost come off as parody, especially the two leads played by Woody and Justin. They are chewing the scenery for all it's worth. Yet, it's mostly played as a drama? A drama about two absurdly delusional idiots? It's hard to believe they were really that weird and stupid in real life.

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lurkerbee

lurkerbee

3 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I watched the first one, it was odd. The characters are drawn so broadly they almost come off as parody, especially the two leads played by Woody and Justin. They are chewing the scenery for all it's worth. Yet, it's mostly played as a drama? A drama about two absurdly delusional idiots? It's hard to believe they were really that weird and stupid in real life.

It has some people from Veep behind it. It's defiitely satire.

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Kemper

Kemper

14 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I watched the first one, it was odd. The characters are drawn so broadly they almost come off as parody, especially the two leads played by Woody and Justin. They are chewing the scenery for all it's worth. Yet, it's mostly played as a drama? A drama about two absurdly delusional idiots? It's hard to believe they were really that weird and stupid in real life.

We were living in the DC area as it all bizarrely unfolded. A few of them were Mad as Hatters. 

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pasdetrois

pasdetrois

(edited)
15 hours ago, iMonrey said:

It's hard to believe they were really that weird and stupid in real life.

In the early 90s, one of the plumbers carried on a (probably brief) flirtation with my colleague's teenage daughter. I don't remember how they were acquainted, but the daughter ended up in our office one day and amused herself by photocopying and then faxing images of body parts to him. He responded in kind. My colleague just kind of laughed it off.

Edited by pasdetrois
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TheLastKidPicked

TheLastKidPicked

On 5/11/2023 at 7:56 PM, kay1864 said:

I’m really enjoying this show! Surprised it’s not getting more attention here.

As near as I can determine, they really were that buffoonish.

 

We started watching at our house and I had to warn people:

"There have already been several serious documentaries about Watergate.  This is a different viewpoint.  It's a viewpoint of the comedy of errors surrounding the whole thing.  It's somebody saying,  'I can't believe they thought they could get away with this!'"

 

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DoctorAtomic

DoctorAtomic

I'm watching the first episode and literally every actor is in this. I'm going "is that so and so?" I mean, Lena Hedley and Judy Greer right off the bat

Then in episode 2, there's even more! Ike Barenholtz. So your wife is a hooker? 

I also thought this was going to be a straight dramatization. This is a better take imo because it really happened, and they really were that stupid. 

JT is doing a great job as Liddy playing it totally straight and letting the nonsense he's spewing be the comedy. Almost like Airplane. 

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ferjy

ferjy

On 5/11/2023 at 9:56 PM, kay1864 said:

I’m really enjoying this show! Surprised it’s not getting more attention here.

I’m loving it. It’s definitely tongue-in-cheek. 

Giddy nonchalantly telling his wife he might be arrested when she asked how his day was at work, and his line… “Now where are those little soaps I took from the Watergate? They may be used as evidence.” 

Or the scene where the lot of them are being booked and the lawyer pretends he doesn’t understand English (like the others did) and speaks Spanish, in a bad accent. 🤣

 

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Tim McD

Tim McD

I liked the subtle allusions to "All the President's Men"; casting F. Murray Abraham as Judge John Sirica (he played one of the plainclothes cops in the movie) and the Robert Redford soundalike voice on the phone when Woodward calls Hunt. I thought at first that they had just used Redford's audio from the film, but the dialogue is definitely different.

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lurkerbee

lurkerbee

8 hours ago, Tim McD said:

I liked the subtle allusions to "All the President's Men"; casting F. Murray Abraham as Judge John Sirica (he played one of the plainclothes cops in the movie) and the Robert Redford soundalike voice on the phone when Woodward calls Hunt. I thought at first that they had just used Redford's audio from the film, but the dialogue is definitely different.

That was no soundalike. On the HBO podcast for the show, they said Redford himself recorded those lines for them.

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DoctorAtomic

DoctorAtomic

(edited)

I find it ironic that if they didn't go back for the 4th time, we may never have known anything about Watergate. I knew Nixon won big, but I didn't know he won 496. Nixon would have won anyway but was consumed by paranoia. If you wrote this as a tragic play, no one would buy it.

Obviously I know this is somewhat dramaticized, but I swear Liddy is enjoying all the fallout about the break-in.  I mean, you look back, Liddy ended up basically ok by shutting up. Similarly, I wonder if the talk of the pardons really occurred or paralleled for modern times, but I could believe it. 

Lena Headey was perfect for Dot. She basically was just there for 3 episodes and then totally takes over. And she died in a plane crash?!

Anyone remember pay phones? Or that you let the phone ring a bunch of times before picking up? So much easier to do dirty deeds with pay phones. I saw a pay phone in Salt Lake in 2013 and freaked out. 

So the money drops were all coming from the White House? Who was Mr. River? 

On 5/23/2023 at 3:14 PM, kay1864 said:

Wow: (click this only if you’ve seen all of episode 4)

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhuntD.htm

How credible you think this is? I'm not a conspiracy guy. I'm having a hard time thinking Nixon would be involved, and then not run for president in 64? The problem with conspiracies is that you need 5000 moving parts to pull it off, and invariably one or two of those is just stupid, as was the case here. JFK banged a mob boss' moll, and got got. That's it. Same reason why we don't know what happened to Hoffa. 

I've flown first class, but modern flying is nothing like the 70s. Minus assassinations.

Edited by DoctorAtomic
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DoctorAtomic

DoctorAtomic

In reading the article about the plane crash; that happened - the FBI was there first. Clearly, that's odd. On the show, however, Liddy does bring up an important point. It's easier to arrange for Hunt to have an 'accident' than bring down an entire plane. The whole thing is just so bizarre. 

The whole aftermath was a huge mess. I only generally know of Watergate from high school. I know this is stretched for drama, but it's still true events. 

I am surprised that they didn't appeal the sentencings on the Eighth Amendment. 35 years seems a lot for a two bit break in. I don't want to say 'only', but they only bugged the office. There wasn't any classified information they stole or sold state secrets. 

I don't know if these guys thought they were so self-important that they could break the law with impunity, or actually thought they were being loyal and that would be rewarded. I can't see why Liddy is so staunch on keeping his mouth shut. Especially since Dean flipped. Unless he was just that nuts. I suppose they were trying to show when they were all clapping for him, he wanted to be somewhere people thought he was important. 

I don't agree with Liddy yelling at Hunt that the whole thing went sideways because of the hush money. They broke in 4 times! Hunt argued against the final break in. Liddy was all in. 

Like Dot said, all their efforts were effectively useless because Nixon won in a landslide. 

If this didn't happen irl, and someone wrote it, they'd throw the script in the garbage because it was so preposterous. 

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