''18½'' is a 2021 American comedy thriller film directed by

Dan Mirvish Dan Mirvish is an American filmmaker and author, best known as the co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival and co-creator of the Martin Eisenstadt hoax during the 2008 Presidential election. Early life and education Mirvish was born to a Jewis ...

and written by Daniel Moya, based on a story by both. The film stars

Willa Fitzgerald Willa Fitzgerald (born January 17, 1991) is an American actress. She is known for her starring role as Emma Duval in MTV's '' Scream''. She has played cheer coach Colette French in the USA Network's television drama series '' Dare Me'' and offi ...

John Magaro John Robert Magaro (born February 16, 1983) is an American actor. He has acted in the films '' Not Fade Away'' (2012), '' The Big Short'' (2015), '' Carol'' (2015), ''Overlord'' (2018), '' First Cow'' (2019), '' Showing Up'' (2022), ''The Mistre ...

Vondie Curtis-Hall Vondie Curtis-Hall (born September 30, 1950) is an American actor, film director, and television director. As an actor, he is known for his role as Dr. Dennis Hancock on the CBS medical drama '' Chicago Hope'' created by David E. Kelley and as ...

Catherine Curtin Catherine Curtin is an American actress. She is best known for her role as correctional officer Wanda Bell in the Netflix comedy-drama series ''Orange Is the New Black'' (2013–2019). Other notable recurring roles include '' Insecure'', ''Str ...

Richard Kind Richard Bruce Kind (born November 22, 1956) is an American actor and comedian. His television roles include '' Carol & Company'' (1990–1991), Dr. Mark Devanow in '' Mad About You'' (1992–1999, 2019), Paul Lassiter in '' Spin City'' (1996–20 ...

, Sullivan Jones and the voices of

Jon Cryer Jonathan Niven Cryer (born April 16, 1965) is an American actor. Born into a show business family, he made his film debut with a lead role in ''No Small Affair'' (1984); his breakout role was as Duckie in the John Hughes (filmmaker), John Hughe ...

H. R. Haldeman Harry Robbins "Bob" Haldeman (October 27, 1926 – November 12, 1993) was an American political aide and businessman, best known for his service as White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon and his consequent involvement in the Water ...

Ted Raimi Theodore Raimi (born December 14, 1965) is an American character actor, director and writer. He is known for his roles in the works of his brother Sam Raimi, including a fake Shemp in ''The Evil Dead'', possessed Henrietta in ''Evil Dead II'', ...

Alexander Haig Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. (; 2 December 192420 February 2010) was United States Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House chief of staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Prior to and in between these cabine ...

and

Bruce Campbell Bruce Lorne Campbell (born June 22, 1958) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known best for his role as Ash Williams in Sam Raimi's ''Evil Dead'' horror series, beginning with the short movie '' Within the Woods'' (1978). He has also f ...

as President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

Plot

At the height of

Watergate The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. The scandal began in 1972 and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in 1974, in August of that year. It revol ...

, a White House transcriber tries to leak the 18½-minute gap in the

Nixon White House tapes Audio recordings of conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Nixon administration officials, Nixon family members, and White House staff surfaced during the Watergate scandal in 1973 and 1974, leading to Nixon's resignation. In ...

to a reporter, but they run afoul of swingers, hippies and nefarious forces.

Cast

Production

The film started shooting March 3, 2020, at the Silver Sands Motel and Cottages in

Greenport, Suffolk County, New York Greenport is a village in New York's Suffolk County, on the North Fork of Long Island. It is located within the Town of Southold and is the only incorporated community in the town. The population was 2,197 at the 2010 census. Greenport was ...

. Production was halted after 11 days due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. For the next six months, Mirvish edited the footage they had, composer Luis Guerra worked on the music, and the production team recorded voice sessions for the fictional 18½-minute gap in the

with

and

over

Zoom Zoom may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film * ''Zoom'' (2006 film), starring Tim Allen * ''Zoom'' (2015 film), a Canada-Brazil film by Pedro Morelli * ''Zoom'' (2016 Kannada film), a Kannada film * ''Zoom'' (2016 Sinhala film), a Sr ...

. Filming resumed in September 2020, for the final four days once COVID protocols were in place with the

Directors Guild of America The Directors Guild of America (DGA) is an entertainment guild that represents the interests of Film director, film and Television director, television directors in the United States motion picture industry and abroad. Founded as the Screen Dir ...

and

Screen Actors Guild The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was an American labor union which represented over 100,000 film and television principal and background performers worldwide. On March 30, 2012, the union leadership announced that the SAG membership voted to m ...

Release

Adventure Entertainment released the film theatrically in the United States starting on May 27, 2022. The film came out in the UK on July 11, 2022. The film was released on airlines

JetBlue JetBlue Airways Corporation, stylized as jetBlue, is an American major airline headquartered in Long Island City, in Queens, New York City. Primarily a point-to-point carrier, JetBlue's network features six focus cities including its main hub ...

Virgin Atlantic Virgin Atlantic, a trading name of Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited and Virgin Atlantic International Limited, is a British airline with its head office in Crawley, West Sussex, England. The airline was established in 1984 as British Atlantic A ...

Emirates Emirates may refer to: * United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective ...

Qatar Airways Qatar Airways Company Q.C.S.C. (, ''al-Qaṭariyya''), operating as Qatar Airways, is the flag carrier of Qatar. Headquartered in the Qatar Airways Tower in Doha, the airline operates a hub-and-spoke network, flying to over 170 internatio ...

Air New Zealand Air New Zealand Limited () is the flag carrier of New Zealand. Based in Auckland, the airline operates scheduled passenger flights to 20 domestic and 28 international destinations in 18 countries, primarily within the Pacific Rim. The airline h ...

and

Singapore Airlines Singapore Airlines (abbreviation: SIA or SQ) is the flag carrier of Singapore with its Airline hub, hub located at Changi Airport. Considered to be one of the world's best carriers, the airline is ranked as a 5-star airline as well as ranked ...

, through distributor Gate23. The

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

special edition of the film was released on April 9, 2024, from

MVD Entertainment Group MVD Entertainment Group, (previously Music Video Distributors, Inc.) is an American independent production company and film distributor based in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, consisting of three main departments: MVD Visual, MVD Audio, and MVD Distr ...

. The DVD includes a feature length behind-the-scenes documentary called "Covid 18½: The Making of a Film in a Global Pandemic," as well as a commentary track from director

and screenwriter Daniel Moya, audio of full

tape with

and

, and a live audience track from film's world premiere at

Woodstock Film Festival The Woodstock Film Festival is an American film festival launched in 2000 by filmmakers Meira Blaustein and Laurent Rejto in the Hudson Valley region of New York. The festival takes place each fall in the towns of Woodstock, Rosendale and Saug ...

. Over 830 DVDs were sold to public libraries in at least 500 cities in 46 states and 5 provinces in North America. The film became available on library streaming site Kanopy at the end of 2024 and is also available on

public library A public library is a library, most often a lending library, that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also Civil servic ...

streaming site

Hoopla_(digital_media_service) Hoopla (stylized as hoopla) is a web and mobile ( Android/iOS) library media streaming platform launched in 2010 for audio books, comics, e-books, movies, music, and TV. Patrons of a library that supports Hoopla have access to its collection ...

Festivals

''18½'' was selected to screen at the following film festivals: *2021

*2021 Sao Paulo International Film Festival *2021

Gijón International Film Festival The Gijón International Film Festival ( or ''FICXixón'') is an annual film festival held in Gijón, a city in northwest Spain. The festival is mainly concentrated on independent and auteur cinema. Gijón's International Short Film Competition ...

*2021

Whistler Film Festival The Whistler Film Festival (WFF) is an annual film festival held in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. Established in 2001, the festival is held the first weekend of December and includes juried competitive sections, the Borsos Awards, and the Pand ...

. *2021 St. Louis Film Festival *2021 Tallgrass Film Festival *2021

Rome International Film Festival International Rome Film Fest is a film festival that takes place in Rome during the month of October. The name in Italian is Festa del Cinema di Roma. From 2022, the festival was officially recognized as a competitive festival by the Internation ...

*2021

Anchorage International Film Festival The Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF) is the largest film festival in Alaska. It is held annually in Anchorage. Its slogan is "Films Worth Freezing For." AIFF has twice been named on lists in MovieMaker Magazine: in 2022 AIFF was name ...

. *2022 Manchester International Film Festival *2022

Cinequest Film Festival The Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival is an annual independent film festival held each March in San Jose, California and Redwood City, California. The international festival combines the cinematic arts with Silicon Valley’s innovation. It ...

*2022

RiverRun International Film Festival The RiverRun International Film Festival is an annual Oscar-qualifying film festival held each spring in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States. The festival is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and presents a variety of feature-length and ...

*2022 Oxford Film Festival

Reception

The

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

gave the film a 78% approval rating, based on 45 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Some tonal inconsistency makes ''18 1/2'' more of a 7/10, but this well-acted period piece mines the Watergate scandal for fresh, insightful dramedy."

Richard Roeper Richard E. Roeper (born October 17, 1959) is an American writer. He is a former columnist and film critic for the '' Chicago Sun-Times'', where he wrote for 39 years dating back to 1986 until his departure in 2025. He co-hosted the television s ...

of the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...

'' wrote, "Just when you thought we might have covered this dark chapter in American history from all angles, along comes the slyly subversive, occasionally loony and thoroughly entertaining ''18 ½'', which is fictional and yet contains essential truths and clever insights throughout."

Matt Zoller Seitz Matt Zoller Seitz (born December 26, 1968) is an American film and television critic, author and filmmaker. Career Matt Zoller Seitz is editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com, and the television critic for ''New York'' magazine and Vulture.com, as w ...

of ''

RogerEbert.com ''RogerEbert.com'' is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the ''Chicago Sun-Times ...

'' wrote, "it's a film that sticks in the mind after you've watched it. Every choice is made with confidence, but from an intuitive place, like decisions made by a lucid dreamer." Noel Murray of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' wrote, "Mirvish's excellent cast approaches this sequence like a one-act play, swinging at every curveball their fellow actors throw. Nothing they're saying matters much, but they say it with such verve and passion that they pull the audience right into the free-floating anxiety of a fraught time in American history, a half-century ago." The film was one of 301 features qualified as eligible for the

95th Academy Awards The 95th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 12, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. During the gala, the AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonl ...

. The original songs "Brasília Bella", "Wonder Bread" and "Deadly Butterfly" from the film were 3 out of the 82 songs qualified for the 2023 Academy Awards Best Original Song category. "Brasília Bella" was considered an "Oscar Contender" by ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...

'', IndieWire and GoldDerby.

References

External links

* * * * {{Dan Mirvish 2021 comedy films 2021 thriller films 2020s American films 2020s comedy thriller films 2020s English-language films 2020s political comedy films 2020s political thriller films American comedy thriller films American political comedy films American political thriller films English-language comedy thriller films English-language political comedy films English-language political thriller films Film productions suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic Films directed by Dan Mirvish Films set in 1974 Films shot in New York (state) Watergate scandal in film