But most of all, my thanks and love and gratitude to my incredible dad, without whom The Rewind Files would never have existed. It is not every father who shows his love for his daughter by giving her a 900-page book about Watergate for Christmas when she is 22 years old, which is why Ken Willett is the best. He drove me to and from college every year, and we spent many of those road trips between Portland and Walla Walla talking about Watergate. His memories of the way the scandal unfolded, of Grammy Lydia’s conviction that this wasn’t just a small-time botched robbery, of the way it changed American politics, were endlessly fascinating to me. He has also been my biggest champion as a writer; in eight years of writing plays he has never missed a single one of my opening nights. All the good men in this book have pieces of him – Leo, the fantastic cook who is always taking care of people; Carter, the empathetic listener who gently but relentlessly pushes Reggie to be her best self; and Carstairs, the selfless father with a fierce dedication to justice.
And last but not least, this book is dedicated to my teenage heroes, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and to all the men and women at the Washington Post who made their work possible. The fact that an unfinished NaNoWriMo piece of All the President’s Men fanfic is now a real book you are holding in your hands (or on your screen) is the kind of thing that makes you believe dreams do actually come true.
Recommended Reading & Viewing
I have been a passionate, some might say “obsessive,” Watergate junkie since I pulled All the President’s Men, entirely at random, off a shelf in the reading nook of the Menucha Retreat Center in Corbett, Oregon, when I was a junior in college on retreat with my Confirmation class. I didn’t feel like going outside to shoot hoops with the other kids during free time, but the only book I had on me was a Bible, so I pulled the first paperback with an interesting title off the shelf of faded paperbacks in the upper mezzanine reading nook, and that was it. I was hooked from page one. I read it during every retreat break, I read it on my bunk while everyone else was getting ready for bed, I read it at meals until I was asked to put it away and participate with the rest of the class, I read it when I was supposed to be preparing for Confession (none of which I subsequently confessed), and then when I had to put it back on Sunday afternoon before I got on the bus, without having finished it, I went straight to Powell’s Books the next day and bought it so I could find out what happened next.
There would be no Rewind Files if there were no All the President’s Men, far and away my favorite work of nonfiction and easily one of my all-time top three favorite books. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s account of their role in unraveling the Watergate scandal is a magnificent piece of writing and is the perfect entry point for somebody who wants to learn more about these events. It’s a crackling, tense thriller, rich in detail and dry humor, and it does a better job than any other book I’ve read of taking the reader through the journey of Watergate as it unfolded to the public.
Since I fell in love with Woodward and Bernstein fifteen years ago, I have amassed an entire shelf on my bookcase of Watergate-related books. By far my most-used source for historical information was Stanley Kutler’s mighty tome The Wars of Watergate, which I got for Christmas from my dad one year when I was in college. Do not be intimidated by its vast size; Kutler’s prose is sharp and snappy and intensely readable. My copy is full of orange highlighter and scribbled margin notes and post-it flags and folded-down pages and this book would not be what it is without it, particularly the chapters about John Dean and Reggie’s job in the White House.
Some of these are books and films I revisited for research, while others were absorbed into my brain years prior and floated around in my head, informing the story. For purposes of giving credit where credit is due, I am sharing all of them here.
Books & Magazines
All the President’s Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1974, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster)
The White House Transcripts, Richard M. Nixon (Viking Press, 1974)
The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon, Stanley J. Kutler (Norton, 1990)
“I’m the Guy They Called Deep Throat,” John O’Connor (Vanity Fair, July 2005)
A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, Being “Deep Throat,” and the Struggle for Honor in Washington, Mark Felt and John O’Connor (Public Affairs Books, 2006)
Film
All the President’s Men (dir. Alan Pakula, 1976); I can’t help it, the Woodward and Bernstein in my head are absolutely Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman
Nixon (dir. Oliver Stone, 1995); the John Dean in my head is David Hyde Pierce because of this movie
Frost/Nixon (dir. Ron Howard, 2008), a filmed adaptation of Peter Morgan’s marvelous 2006 stage play of the same name; the Richard Nixon in my head is Frank Langella because of this movie (I’m basically fantasy-drafting a Watergate movie at this point)
Our Nixon, a documentary created from Super-8 home movies by three of Nixon’s senior staff members (dir. Penny Lane, 2013)
Internet
My online sources were many, and the “Watergate” folder of bookmarks in my Firefox browser goes on forever, but I’ll highlight a few standouts here:
First of all, Watergate.info is a treasure trove of information, from audio files of the White House tapes to link roundups sorted by incredibly useful subheadings like “Burglars,” “Deep Throat,” “Impeachment,” etc. It was here that I found the first-person account of Watergate burglar Eugenio Martinez describing the events of that night, a gold mine of useful details. I also learned, with great delight, that the Washington Post has helpfully archived Woodward and Bernstein’s original Watergate coverage in a special online section, allowing me to read through their early articles in order, as they were first written.
Time Magazine, BBC News, and South African History Online were my sources for details about the very real Sharpeville Massacre.
I am indebted to the website of the Spy and Private Eye Museum, for photos of what the actual Watergate bugging devices looked like, and to the remarkably detailed and thorough Watergate section of author Michael Dobson’s blog for a great deal of helpful information, including the best and most detailed breakdown I ever found of Operation Gemstone and its various components, none of which I made up.
Some very lucky, very fancy writers have research assistants to ensure their historical accuracy. I, however, do not. I spent hours digging around Wikipedia for answers to weirdly specific questions like what year Diane von Furstenburg first showed wrap dresses on the runway and what the subbasements of the White House looked like in the 1970’s. If you happen to spot massive historical inaccuracies in this book, let’s all just say they’re Chronomalies, shall we?
About the Author
Claire Willett is an award-winning playwright from Portland, Oregon. The Rewind Files is her first novel. Her plays include Dear Galileo, which will receive its world premiere in Portland in August 2015; “One of Everything,” a dance/spoken-word collaboration with choreographer Briley Neugebauer; The Demons Down Under the Sea, an adaptation of “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe; the Scottish folk musical Carter Hall (with Grammy-nominated Nashville songwriter Sarah Hart); the chamber opera The Witch of the Iron Wood (with Portland composer Evan Lewis); How the Light Gets In; Frankie and Clara; That Was the River, This Is the Sea (with Gilberto Martin del Campo); and Upon Waking. She was named the 2011 Oregon Literary Fellow for Drama and has received awards from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and the Oregon Arts Commission. Claire is a proud company member of the Oregon writers’ collective Playwrights West and one of the founding artists of Portland’s annual citywide Fertile Ground Festival of New Work. She holds a B.A. in Theatre from Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA) and is a graduate of the Paul A. Kaplan Theatre Management Program at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City. She currently lives in her hometown of Portland where she collects Liberace memorabilia, spends way too much money at Powell’s Books, freelances as a marketing and development consu
ltant for arts nonprofits and spent eight years as a Catholic youth minister.
Find Claire Online…
@clairewillett
@clairewillettwrites
www.clairewillettwrites.com
About Retrofit Films
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