18½

About the movie

It's January, 1974. The Watergate scandal is at a boiling point. CONNIE LASHLEY, a low level government stenographer, obtains a tape of RICHARD NIXON listening to, and then erasing, the infamous 18 1/2 minute gap that would eventually force him to resign the Presidency. Connie takes the ferry to the isolated Chesapeake Bay town of St. Michaels to leak the tape to reporter PAUL MARROW. They meet at the Front Street Station diner and decide to listen to the tape discreetly at a motel which has private cabins along the shore. Connie and Paul pretend to be a married couple when they check in with JACK, the curious one-eyed desk clerk. Connie and Paul discover Paul's reel-to-reel tape player is broken, and they must hunt for a new player. They ask a group of hippies obsessed with a conspiracy about white bread. No player there. Jack doesn't have one either. Finally, they run into LENA and SAMUEL, a Bossa Nova- loving older couple who invite them to dance and dine with them. A Frenchwoman who met Samuel during WWII, Lena prepares a fabulous, but decidedly awkward, dinner for the four of them. Connie and Paul return to their own cabin with the new player and listed to the tape: It's Nixon speaking to aide AL HAIG, deciding what to delete from a tape of Nixon discussing Watergate with Chief of Staff H.R. "BOB" HALDEMAN. But it turns out Connie and Paul aren't the only ones looking for the tape. Nefarious forces are at work, but who, and just how far will they go to stop Connie and Paul from listening?—Official Synopsis