Watergate

From reading interviews and listening to the DVD commentary for The Conversation, one thing comes up fairly often: Watergate.

Watergate was a political scandal in the U.S in 1972 that culminated in Nixon’s resignation from office two years later. Burglars, attempting to plant or retrieve bugging devices, broke into the Watergate complex, which housed the Democratic party’s offices, were connected to President Nixon. An attempt to cover up this connection had been made by the President, and conversations between himself and others about the cover-up had also been recorded. On the surface this would seem like the perfect inspiration for The Conversation but in fact the film was over halfway through production at the time of the break-in and, while it would seem like they parallel each other almost perfectly, they have nothing to do with each other at all.

The script for The Conversation was finished before the seventies even began, though it is easy to see why people think the film was inspired by the Watergate scandal – having been released two years after the initial break-in and dealing with subject matter incredibly close to the scandal.

Pages taken from Francis Ford Coppola by Robert K. Johnson, published in 1977 by Twayne Publishers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/part1.html – Accessed on 07/11/10