About six decades ago, Otto Preminger’s film adaptation of Advise and Consent, Allen Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, hit theaters. Drury was a reporter in Washington, D.C., and his novel centers on the political battle to discredit a liberal nominated to become Secretary of State. Allegations of communism, along with allegations of other supposed moral failings, are the right’s ammunition of choice in this drama. As James Kirchick, an AIR MAIL Writer at Large and the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, wrote in AIR MAIL last September, the film features a scandalous gay subplot that Preminger had to fight for. This Saturday, the film will play on 35 mm at AFI Silver Theatre, in Maryland. Following the screening, Kirchick will do a Q&A with veteran journalist Michael Isikoff. —Jensen Davis