Scene from All The President's Men, © Warner Bros.
(ASBURY PARK, NJ) -- Shock and scandal in headlines and halls of power are time-honored American traditions. This February, The ShowRoom Cinema in downtown Asbury Park invites you back 50 years to 1974, when two such scandals rocked the nation. The movie theater will be revisiting Patty Hearst's abduction as well as President Richard Nixon's resignation in the wake of the Watergate investigation with special event screenings of two must-see films.
On Sunday, February 4, on the anniversary of her kidnapping, they are screening Patty Hearst (1988), and on Monday, February 19 — yes, President's Day — they will present All The President's Men (1976) hosted by journalist Alex Biese. Both screenings begin at 7:30pm.
On Feb. 4, 1974, 19-year-old newspaper heiress Patricia Campbell Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army from her apartment near the University of California at Berkeley. For the next six weeks she was held captive in a closet, blindfolded, and subjected to non-stop indoctrination by her captors. She was bullied, ranted at, lied to and threatened with execution. Miss Hearst lost all sense of direction and identity, eventually going so far as to join the S.L.A. in the infamous April 15 Hibernia Bank robbery.
Fourteen years later, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull writer Paul Scrader attempted to peel the petals off of the surrounding media circus in his 1988 biopic, Patty Hearst. Based on Miss Hearst's own searing memoir Every Secret Thing, the film was made on a comparatively modest budget. Despite this, it is a beautifully produced movie, seen entirely from Patty's limited point of view. It is stylized at times, utterly direct and both shocking and grimly funny. It stars Natasha Richardson and Ving Rhames.
A second scandal began cooking two years prior and was coming to a boiling point by 1974, this one stemming from the Nixon administration's attempts to cover up its involvement in the June 17, 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. It would ultimately culminate, 50 years ago, in the first and only resignation of a sitting American President on Aug. 8, 1974.
Alan J. Pakula's All The President's Men follows two green reporters working for the Washington Post, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), as they research the botched 1972 burglary of the Democratic Party Headquarters. With the help of a mysterious source, code-named Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), the two reporters make a connection between the burglars and a White House staffer. Despite dire warnings about their safety, the duo follows the money all the way to the top.
All The President's Men will be introduced by national award-winning journalist and member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, Alex Biese, who has covered the arts, culture, medicine, news and government at a local, regional, and national level for nearly 20 years.
The ShowRoom, Asbury Park's home of movies and more, is located at 707 Cookman Ave., Asbury Park, New Jersey.
