'The White House Plumbers,' 'I Am Not,' 'Unsilenced': New on Israeli TV

The new HBO series, The White House Plumbers, currently running on HOT, yes and Cellcom TV, features G. Gordon Liddy as one of its characters, as did the series Gaslit last year. Like Gaslit, it fails to convey the true strangeness of one of the most twisted and fascinating characters ever to emerge in American politics.

Liddy was a lawyer who ran the squad that was behind the Watergate break-in that brought down the Nixon presidency, as well as many other covert operations. The only person among many of those arrested during the scandal who refused to name names to get himself a plea deal, Liddy was sentenced to 20 years in a federal prison. Although in the end he only served four years, it was a far harsher sentence than anyone else received, because he was in prison with violent criminals, not a so-called “Club Fed” minimum security facility.

To really understand him, you can read his autobiography, Will, or just watch one scene from All the President’s Men (1976), a movie that didn’t even include him as a character, but in which reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), speaks to his informant, Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), about Liddy. As they stand in a dark garage in the middle of the night, Deep Throat says, “I was at a party once, and Liddy put his hand over a candle, and he kept it there. He kept it right in the flame until his flesh was burned. Somebody said, ‘What’s the trick?’ And Liddy said, ‘The trick is not minding.’”

“The trick is not minding” was one of the key quotes to emerge from the Watergate story, right after the iconic phrase, “Follow the money,” which is also a line from this scene. After telling the anecdote about Liddy, Deep Throat has another insight for Woodward, which seems to have inspired the creation of The White House Plumbers series: “Forget the myths the media has created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys. And things got out of hand.”

The White House Plumbers tells the story of Nixon’s dirty tricks squad, led by Liddy (Justin Theroux of The Leftovers) and E. Howard Hunt (a characteristically unhinged Woody Harrelson), and just how things got out of hand.

Probably not wanting to repeat the All the President’s Men line, the series shows Liddy thrusting his hand into a flame to convince two prostitutes to take part in a scheme to blackmail lawmakers at the Democratic National Convention in 1972. But Theroux is just too charming and handsome to truly convey fully how bizarre and outright creepy Liddy could be and, at least in the early episodes released to the press, he doesn’t say, “The trick is not minding,” the line that is the key to his essence. In one scene, the Liddys invite the Hunts to dinner and Liddy plays a record of a Hitler speech, but somehow it doesn’t convey the method behind Liddy’s madness.

THE STORY is told more from Hunt’s point of view, and Harrelson does a credible job of presenting Hunt as a kind of Mad Men character, if Mad Men had been set in the CIA rather than an advertising agency. The series is at its best when it focuses on the squad’s activities other than Watergate, which have been the subject of less recent press attention, such as their bribing Dita Beard of ITT to change her testimony in an antitrust lawsuit involving bribes to politicians. Let’s hope it gets more fun as it goes along.

I Am Not, a new movie from the Heymann brothers, Israel’s leading documentary filmmakers, directed by Tomer Heymann and produced by him and his brother, Barak, is now showing on HOT 8 and HOT VOD. I Am Not, which drew more audiences to theaters than many feature films in the past year, tells the story of Oren, a young man born in Guatemala and adopted as a young child by an Israeli family, who has trouble fitting in. Diagnosed with all kinds of conditions and syndromes, the troubled Oren begins to find a way to heal himself by visiting his biological family in Guatemala. It’s a complex and sometimes troubling story, told with masterful technique and compassion by the Heymanns.

New TV shows hit the Israeli market

There is a lot to look forward to from the Israeli market, since a number of new Israeli shows will premiere in the next few weeks, all of which sound intriguing. The series, Six Zeros, was promoted heavily on Kan 11 during the Eurovision broadcasts and looks quite funny. It tells the story of several ordinary people whose lives are ruined, or at least deeply disrupted by winning huge lottery prizes. It features many well-known actors, including Shani Klein (Zero Motivation), Elisha Banai (Image of Victory), Liora Rivlin (Stockholm) and many others. It will be released in June.

Red Skies, a series from Reshet that took part in the Series Mania television competition in France, will begin running in mid-June. It tells a dramatic story of a Palestinian and an Israeli, who met as children in a peace camp and find themselves on opposite sides in the Second Intifada. It stars Amir Khoury (Image of Victory) and Maor Schwitzer (Line in the Sand).

The series, Unsilenced, which was created by yes Studios and which will be shown on Yes VOD starting on May 18 stars, Yaakov Zada-Daniel (Fauda) as an Israeli president accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. The series is based on the story of president Moshe Katsav, who eventually served prison time for rape.