American Masters on PBS

Gore Vidal, America's contrarian literary lion, “nags” (Vidal's own word) his way through this lively profile, which features readings by Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Eli Wallach. Poet-novelist Jay Parini calls Vidal a “nasty, witty, shrewd contemptuous fellow,” and filmmaker Deborah Dickson captures it all (and shows his personable side) in a recent interview and in TV clips dating back to 1964, when a BBC interviewer called him “a rather un-American American.”