Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck (‘White House Plumbers’) on creating ‘a cautionary tale about the price of fanaticism’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“I would say ‘Veep’ absolutely put us on a path toward this project,” reflects Peter Huyck on how the Emmy-winning HBO political satire starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus led him and his creative partner Alex Gregory to their subsequent project, the HBO limited series “White House Plumbers.” Together, the duo created, executive produced, and wrote all five episodes of this retelling of Watergate, which was brought to them by David Bernad. He thought there was a “Coen brothers dark comedy” in the material and wanted the “Veep” writers to offer a “new take” on the infamous D.C. scandal. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Gregory points not only to “Veep,” but also to that show’s creator Armando Iannucci and his film “The Death of Stalin” as a major source of inspiration. “That was a horrific episode about a genocidal maniac, and it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen,” shares the creator, who saw in that example how he and Huyck could “take these forgotten chapter of history and bring them to life in a different way.” He notes how that movie also “hewed pretty close to history” while remaining “hilarious.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with David Mandel, ‘White House Plumbers’ director
“We always wanted this to be a cautionary tale about the price of fanaticism,” notes Gregory, who emphasizes that in order to do so, the series had to “start out fun.” He continues, “We wanted that journey to be hijinks, caper because that’s what they thought it was,” referring to E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, the two masterminds behind the Watergate break-in who had first partnered to handle the leak of the Pentagon Papers. What starts out lighthearted in the first two episodes quickly turns tragic, though, as the aftermath of the scandal leads to “family members dying in plane crashes and lengthy jail sentences… The human fallout was catastrophic for this family.”
“White House Plumbers” indeed strikes an incredibly unique tone over the course of its five episodes, something director and fellow “Veep” alumni David Mandel helped Gregory and Huyck navigate. The Emmy-winner had mentioned Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” as a potential benchmark in terms of a film that effortlessly transitions from light to dark material. Huyck also credits their mentor Garry Shandling, with whom they worked on “The Larry Sanders Show,” for his advice to always “just find the truth” of the story.
WATCH our exclusive video interview with Steven Meizler, ‘White House Plumbers’ cinematographer
Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux portray Hunt and Liddy, respectively, and Gregory and Huyck incorporated many of the most absurd details of the two criminals’ backgrounds in the limited series. Gregory was shocked to learn, for instance, that Liddy had successfully bugged his prison warden’s phone and blackmailed him in order to secure Kosher meals for a fellow inmate. He also cites Hunt’s idiotic decision to give one of the burglars an envelop with his name on it to mail before the break-in, which was found at the scene of the crime. Huyck surfaces one particular interview he came across that revealed that there were four break-in attempts at the Watergate, a detail that is often overlooked. All three examples made it into the five-part series.
Lest these two characters seem so outlandish that viewers would not believe that they had been tapped by the Nixon White House to attempt the risky venture of bugging the Democratic National Committee, Huyck stresses that the second episode of the season, titled “Please Destroy This, Huh?,” showcases the bumbling guys’ effectiveness. He observes, “Episode 2 was very important to show that the guys were actually capable and good at what they set out to do, sometimes… Their techniques were unusual and they wear wigs and do weird stuff, but they get results.”
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