Daniel Moya – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

18 1/2 – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

December 19, 2022December 19, 2022 Valerie Kalfrin 18 1/2, Catherine Curtin, Dan Mirvish, Daniel Moya, john magaro, Vondie Curtis-Hall, watergate scandal, Willa Fitzgerald

The Watergate scandal revolved around a 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s Washington, DC, headquarters and eventually led to the 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon. One ongoing mystery of those days is what happened to eighteen and a half minutes of presumably damning conversation recorded at the White House. Nixon’s longtime personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed to have erased that tape accidentally. Enter 18 1/2, where a young government transcriber, Connie (Willa Fitzgerald, Reacher), stumbles across a duplicate recording with the deleted portion intact.

Reviews

18½ – Review by April Neale

May 20, 2022May 22, 2022 April Neale 18½, Catherine Curtin, Dan Mirvish, Daniel Moya, Elle Schneider, john magaro, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Watergate tapes, Willa Fitzgerald

Looking backward and rewriting actual historical events are the order for director Dan Mirvish’s 18½. This film is a thriller laced with enough comedy to keep it off-kilter, as the premise toys with what might have happened back in 1974 when a White House transcriber named Connie (Willa Fitzgerald) with a GS2 clearance finds herself in the middle of the Watergate scandal. She has access to the “missing tape,” an 18½ minute gap in Nixon’s recorded tapes, but it conveniently disappeared. Co-writers Daniel Moya and Mirvish’s rendering of Watergate events manages to be both a fun watch, food for thought, and subtly comedically brilliant effort in its alt-historical premise.