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Robert Redford Reflects on Watergate Film

Three decades after it was made, the movie arrives Tuesday in a two-disc special edition DVD. It includes a commentary from Redford and a featurette on the recent revelation of the identity of Woodward's secret informant, Deep Throat: former FBI agent W. Mark Felt.


For the 69-year-old Redford, it's an unusual opportunity to look back on a film he remains proud of. Redford, who co-produced, was largely responsible for the movie getting made.

He spent four years on "President's Men," and first approached Woodward and Bernstein while they were still working on their book by the same name. It was even Redford's idea to tell the story from the journalists' perspective — which the reporters quickly adopted, refashioning their book to focus more on their experience.

Hal Holbrook, who plays the informant, was essentially the face of Deep Throat for 29 years. His dark, smokey figure in a trenchcoat urging Woodward to "follow the money" in a car garage basement will likely remain the enduring image of Felt, too.

More important than the unmasking of Deep Throat, Redford says, are the similarities of Nixon's cover-up to the secretive nature of the current Bush administration.

Watergate, he says, "is happening everyday. It's pretty transparent; it's not something you have to reach for or exaggerate. You can go right down the list ... of things like Watergate happening almost on a regular basis with this particular administration."

Today's instant news coverage and the wealth of information, he says, prevent a scandal like Watergate from keeping the spotlight.


Read entire article at Yahoo News