Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545019
All the President's Men H A P PY A N N I V E R S A RY PHOTO: DGA ARCH IVES » FOLLOWING THE MONEY: Alan J. Pakula (right) directs Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Robert Redford as Bob Woodward in All the President's Men (1976). 2026 saw the 50th anniversary of the release of Alan J. Pakula's DGA Award-nominated feature, All the President's Men. Based on the 1974 non-fi ction book by Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, it starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, as they investigate the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Few fi lms have affected the way Americans think about the presidency as profoundly as Pakula's and in a 1976 article in the DGA publication Action magazine he spoke about its making. Pakula spent weeks in the Washington Post newsroom, as did Redford and co-star Dustin Hoffman, to prepare for the fi lm. "All three of us wanted to be thoroughly immersed in that world," said Pakula. "But once Dustin and Bob got the feeling for it, they had to create a world of their own. We couldn't just do an imitation of the fi gures of Watergate. Otherwise we would have ended up with waxworks." "The three of us shared a sense of obsession. Bob and Dustin are the kind of Actors I like to work with most. Both of them leave room for the other Actor. Some Actors come to the set ready to do their parts a certain way, no matter how the other Actor plays the scene. Bob and Dustin listen to each other and react accordingly. If Bob changed a reading, Dustin altered his delivery to fi t the change, and vice versa. That's how life comes into a scene." In addition to Pakula's DGA Award nomination, All the President's Men garnered critical acclaim upon its release and was nominated in multiple Academy Award categories including "Best Director" and "Best Picture" with Jason Robards winning an Oscar for "Best Supporting Actor" for his portrayal of Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee and William Goldman winning for "Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium." In 2010, All the President's Men was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically signifi cant."