Screenplay: All the President's Men

Overview
William Goldman's screenplay for All the President's Men adapts Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's account of the Watergate investigation into a taut, procedural drama that traces how two young Washington Post reporters helped expose a web of political corruption. The narrative keeps its focus narrow and procedural, privileging the accumulation of verifiable facts, witness interviews, and the often tedious legwork of investigative reporting over melodrama. The result is a study of how persistent, methodical journalism can pry open secrets that powerful institutions seek to bury.

Plot
The story begins with a seemingly minor break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and follows reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they follow fragmented leads from bail bondsmen to campaign operatives and shadowy ex-intelligence figures. Each discovery connects to another: anonymous tips, bank records, reluctant witnesses, and official denials that slowly crumble under corroboration. Scenes pivot on meetings, late-night phone calls, and painstaking verification, building a sense of escalating stakes as the trail points toward the highest levels of political power.
The screenplay's momentum grows as small details compound into a pattern of conspiracy and cover-up. Anonymous sources, most famously the clandestine informant known as "Deep Throat," provide critical nudges that steer lines of inquiry but never substitute for verification. The closing sequence makes clear that the reporters' work did more than expose wrongdoing: it sparked public scrutiny that ultimately compelled institutional consequences, depicting investigative reporting as a civic force.

Characters and Themes
Woodward and Bernstein are drawn as complementary figures: Woodward's methodical caution balances Bernstein's brashness and streetwise instinct, and their partnership becomes a portrait of journalistic craft under pressure. Ben Bradlee, the Post's editor, anchors the newsroom as a figure who understands both the risks and the public stakes, while peripheral characters, lawyers, clerks, disgruntled operatives, populate a world in which small human errors and evasions reveal systemic malfeasance. The anonymous informant looms as a moral and narrative pivot, embodying the tension between secrecy and accountability.
Core themes include the ethics of sourcing and corroboration, the perseverance required to translate rumor into proof, and the democratic necessity of a free press willing to confront power. The screenplay avoids easy heroics, instead insisting that truth emerges through discipline, skepticism, and the repetitive accumulation of documented facts. Power is depicted less as monolithic villainy than a network of individuals whose self-protective actions become collectively corrosive.

Style and Impact
Goldman's script is spare, precise, and insistently procedural, reflecting the rhythms of real newsroom work. Dialogue is functional and clipped, scenes often hinge on small behavioral cues or a line of questioning that exposes an inconsistency, and the filmic structure rewards attention to process rather than spectacle. The screenplay's craftsmanship lies in sustaining tension from minutiae: phone numbers, typed memos, ledger entries and confirmations become narrative engines that drive toward revelation.
Culturally, the screenplay helped popularize the image of investigative journalism as a vital democratic check, and its dramatic economy has been widely praised for realism and dramatic discipline. Its influence extends beyond film into how reporting itself is dramatized and understood, demonstrating that a focused, fact-driven narrative can be as suspenseful and consequential as any thriller.