Paranoid Much? Olivia Nuzzi Opens The Book On Her Favorite ’70s Thrillers

Journalist and author Olivia Nuzzi, currently in the crosshairs of controversy surrounding her relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other politicians, has spoken publicly for the first time since the scandal began.

Coming as her book, American Canto, is published today by Simon & Schuster, Nuzzi gave an interview with Emily Sundberg’s digital publication Feed Me where she opened up about a variety of topics including how she has weathered the storm.

But it was her list of favorite movies that caught the eye of Deadline.

In the interview, Nuzzi revealed that she loves Alan J. Pakula-directed 1970s paranoia thrillers such as The Parallax View, Klute and All the President’s Men.

The Parallax View, starring Warren Beatty, follows a reporter investigating a secretive organization that is engaged in political assassination; Klute, starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, follows a small-town detective searching for a missing man with only one lead: a connection with a New York prostitute, and Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman-led All the President’s Men obviously concerns the Watergate investigation.

The embattled West Coast Editor of Vanity Fair also highlighted other political movies including Primary Colors, Wag the Dog, The Candidate and The Frontrunner.

However, it was the film that she called “best film about Washington ever made” that was possibly the biggest surprise: Burn After Reading. The black comedy, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, tells the story of how two dimwitted gym employees, played by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt, mistake the misplaced memoir of a former CIA analyst for classified government documents. In the film, the analyst, played by John Malkovich, tells his wife and she files for divorce and continues having an affair with a married U.S. Marshall with paranoid tendencies.

It’s certainly on the nose.

In Feed Me, Nuzzi also wrote an amusing list: Signs Your Book Rollout Has Gone Awry. In that, she jokes that her agent texted her “I love you”, without prompt or elaboration and that one of her other agents told her that she’s “lost three clients ‘over this’.” But, in true Hollywood fashion, Nuzzi added that multiple people have suggested that she “pivots to screenwriting”.

Talking of screenwriting, Nuzzi, who said that conversations about television and movie rights for American Canto, are a “question for CAA”, has previously had some success in the television world.

Nuzzi, when she was Washington correspondent for New York magazine, developed A Message From the State, a pitch-black satirical drama set in Washington, DC that was sold to AMC in 2022.

The project, which did not make it past the development stage at the Breaking Bad broadcaster, follows a young reporter in DC who defects from the mainstream media, and was set to be written by Nuzzi alongside Killing Eve exec producer Gina Mingacci.