“Bless Gore Vidal for having exposed liars and hypocrites and monsters, and having made their lives just a bit more awkward or painful. Yes!” — tweeted around 10:40 pm, or about an hour after hearing of the death of Gore Vidal following a screening of Hope Springs.
Vidal worked as a Ben-Hur screenwriter for a long period — post-Karl Tunberg, pre-Christopher Fry. Here’s that famous story about Vidal having suggested to Ben-Hur director William Wyler that Messala’s fierce rage toward Ben-Hur might have been driven by a “lover’s quarrel gone wrong.”
