'All The President's Men'

This is a fantastic film. Ironically, I was a journalism major without ever having seen the film before this week. Still, I could imagine why a lot of individuals were prodded into entering the field after viewing it.

There's a ton of interesting production notes about this film. Robert Redford bought the rights to Woodward and Bernstein's book of the same name with the plans on a $5 million film.

The first script was disliked by everyone involved. Bernstein and his love, Nora Ephron, wrote another script but it was scrapped by Redford.

To prepare, Hoffman and Redford spent months in the Washington Post editorial offices. The Post, itself, shipped a massive amount of bric-a-brac to help make the office setting (the Post wouldn't let them film in the offices, so they set up soundstages in Hollywood) as realistic as possible. Trust me, no matter how much crap they sent over, it wouldn't reproduce the clutter and mess of a reporter's desk area.

To suffice both actors, Redford got main billing on promotion items, but Hoffman got top billing in the actual film.

What I like about the film is that it chronicles an extremely important time in the history of the United States when the media got it right. They fought through the bullshit that our country's leaders were feeding and got to the truth. Still not sure if we're entirely clear as to the importance of the stubborness of Woodward and Bernstein.