Sunday, June 05, 2005

Deep Who?

So, after all these years the identity of "Woodstein's" anonymous source, the infamous "Deep Throat", is finally revealed. And it turns out to be someone that almost no one has ever heard of. I suppose it had to be or else we probably would have known long before now. It's kind of disappointing, though, that it turned out to be an obscure bureaucrat at the FBI rather than someone well known inside the Nixon White House like Al Haig or John Dean.
One thing that did strike me while watching former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee on myriad news and interview programs discussing the revelation is what a great job the producers of the movie version of Woodward and Bernstein's book All The President's Men did in casting Jason Robards as Bradlee. Robards looked and sounded uncannily like the Post editor--almost as if he had been born to play that role.
And the slight, but noticeable, resemblance of Hal Holbrook ("Deep Throat" in the film) to W. Mark Felt (the real life "Deep Throat") is remarkable given that the movie's producers supposedly had no idea what "Deep Throat" looked like.
On the other hand, Bob Woodward is no Robert Redford--or vice versa, though Dustin Hoffman was a good physical match for Carl Bernstein.
Y'know--as someone just barely old enough to know where the name came from (though I've never seen the film) there's a certain naughty glee I'm taking in typing "Deep Throat" repeatedly.

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