The Presidents' Gatekeepers
CCWHIP PRODUCTIONS specializes in documentary films. Teaming with filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet (Goldfish Pictures) and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and producer David Hume Kennerly, CCWHIP produced The Presidents’ Gatekeepers, a critically-acclaimed look at the role of the White House chiefs of staff.
WATCH 'THE PRESIDENTS' GATEKEEPERS'
—The Hollywood Reporter
“The behind-the-scenes brilliant ideas and terrible mistakes that have secretly shaped the country’s course”
—The Daily Beast
“Riveting….. Revelatory”
—Bipartisan Policy Center
"The cinematic equivalent of Hilary Mantel’s piercing novel, Wolf Hall"
CAST OF THE PRESIDENTS' GATEKEEPERS
1977-1981
1977-1981
2013-
2012-2013
2011-2012
2009-2010
2006-2009
2001-2006
1998-2001
1997-1998
1994-1997
THOMAS F. “MACK” MCLARTY
1993 –1994
1991 – 1992
1989-1991
1988-1989
1987-1988
1981-1985
1980 –1981
1975-1977
1974-1975
Trailer
EXCERPTS
White House Screening
Reviews
The Hollywood Report
The two-part political special features Rahm Emanuel, Leon Panetta, Dick Cheney and others, as well as former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush
Anyone who has watched fictionalized accounts of White House operations knows, from The West Wing to Scandal, that the President’s Chief of Staff is one of the most important positions one can hold. But it’s also true in real life: Former Chief and Vice President Dick Cheney once said it was a position of more power than the Vice Presidency. There have been over 20 Chiefs over the last nine presidencies (the average turnover rate is one-and-a-half years, with a record being five), and all of those still living have gathered together for Discovery’s The Presidents’ Gatekeepers, a four-hour event that focuses on their job.
The Presidents’ Gatekeepers: Review of a New Film about the Chiefs of Staff
A new documentary highlighting the men “catching the javelins meant for the old man” goes inside the second-toughest job in Washington: White House chief of staff. By Eleanor Clift
You’d think with a four-hour documentary, there wouldn’t be much on the cutting room floor. But the producers of The Presidents’ Gatekeepers had 90 hours of footage to cull, and they likened the editing process to using a meat cleaver. In a way it shows — the opening scenes of this ambitious documentary jump around among the 20 living chiefs of staff interviewed irrespective of when they served and without a narrative timeline that seems to make sense.
The Presidents’ Gatekeepers – A Fascinating Look Inside the Oval Office.
It’s been called “the toughest job I ever had,” “a heat shield for the president,” “the biggest honor of my life,” and like “walking a high-wire rope with no net below you.” Yet every man, without question, said he would do it again—to serve his country and “be at the center of history.”
For the first time, all 20 living White House chiefs of staff sat for exclusive interviews in The Presidents’ Gatekeepers, a four-hour documentary that premiered last week on Discovery Channel. The series offered a masterful look at the men who have served as the president’s closest advisers and most powerful consiglieres over 50 years and nine administrations.
On the Set
Rahm Emanuel
Donald Rumsfeld
James A. Baker, III
President Jimmy Carter
Jack Watson
John Podesta
President George H.W. Bush
Dick Cheney
Bill Daley
Andy Card
Erskine Bowles
Howard Baker, Jr.
Ken Duberstein
Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty
Photographs by David Hume Kennerly