A battle of wits. That’s how many described the “historic encounter” between Richard Nixon and David Frost.
But something is either witty or not depending on how you react to it, say, politically. If you agree with the point being made it is deemed profound, and if not it can be seen as anything but profound. Even, perhaps, as complete bullshit.
And that is presuming the discussion itself focuses in on the things that you feel are the most important aspects of the Nixon presidency.
Watergate? Many saw this “scandal” as but a trivial pursuit next to the real crimes of this administration. Instead, they focus in on the direct historical link between the “secret government” that Nixon installed [operation cointelpro, operation chaos etc.]…the Iran Contra scandal that enveloped the Reagan administration…the draconian post 9/11 agenda pursued by the Bush/Cheney administration…and all the way up to the sort of things now being exposed by folks like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
I watched this film looking for this particular narrative. In other words, the extent to which Nixon came to embody America being run as a “national security state”; and one deeply intertwined in the military industrial complex, the war economy and the corporate media.
Here though the focus is clearly less on that and more on the manner in which we get to explore Richard Nixon’s “psyche”. The beam is always focused on Nixon "the man". The so-called “drama” revolving around whether or not Frost is able to “nail” him. To expose him. A clash of “personalities”, as it were. That’s where the “drama” is said to be.
In other words, what Frost asked or how Nixon answered was almost incidental. What really counted was who had “won” each round. Who had managed to pin the other to the mat by outfoxing him. The idea then was to “rope the dope”. And at first it appeared that Nixon was all but thumping Frost. Could Frost come back? That was where the “drama” resided here: Would Frost finally “get” him?
Thus the most important factor here [by far] was in getting Tricky Dick Nixon to at last admit that, yes, he did know about the coverup right from the beginning. That he was a crook. That he did put the nation “through two years of needless agony”. That only then could he and the nation ever achieve, uh, closure.
IMDb
[b]Even while off-camera, all of the actors would remain in character and continue the Frost/Nixon rivalry by bickering and making fun of each other.
Both Frank Langella and Michael Sheen repeat the roles they created on stage. Ron Howard would only agree to direct if the studio would allow both actors to appear in the film version.
In an article called ‘Stopping the Rot’ in The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) on May 3, 2008, Ian Munro quoted James Reston Jr., Frost’s Watergate adviser: ‘I was in army intelligence … and the Mutt and Jeff, good cop-bad cop thing is usually two people, but Frost, he did both roles.’[/b]
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost/Nixon_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Ibxs_2nDXUc
FROST/NIXON [2008]
Directed by Ron Howard
[b]Jack Brennan: I remember his face. Staring out the window. Down below him, a liberal America cheered, gloated. Hippies, draft dodgers, dilettantes, the same people who’d spit on me when I got back from Vietnam. They’d gotten rid of Richard Nixon, their bogeyman.
…
Birt: So who is it?
Frost: Richard Nixon.
Birt [laughing]: Richard Nixon?!
Frost: Well, come on, don’t look like that.
Birt: Well, how would you expect me to look? I spent yesterday evening watching you interview the Bee Gees.
Frost: Weren’t they terrific?
…
Birt: So, okay, so what kind of interview?
Frost: A full, extensive look-back over his life, his presidency.
Birt: And?
Frost: And what?
Birt: Come on, David. Surely the only thing that would interest anyone about Richard Nixon would be a confession. A full, no-holds-barred confession.
Frost: Well, we’ll get that, too.
Birt: From Richard Nixon?
Frost: Come on, John. Just think of the numbers it would get. Do you know how many people watched his farewell speech in the White House? Four hundred million.[/b]
You know, just to put it all in perspective.
[b]Swifty Lazar: I got $500,000.
Nixon: Is that good?
Swifty Lazar: Mr. President, it’s a half a million dollars for a news interview. It’s unprecedented.
Nixon: Yeah? Well, what’s the catch?
Swifty Lazar: With Frost? None. It’ll be a big wet kiss. This guy’ll be so grateful to be getting it at all, he’ll pitch puffballs all night and pay a half a million dollars for the privilege.
Nixon: Well, you think you could get 550?
Swifty Lazar [to the camera] : I got 6.
…
Birt: David, how could you have done that? $600,000. That’s a fortune. My God. Most Americans think he belongs in jail. You’re making him a rich man. Plus, by outbidding them, you’ve already made enemies of the networks.
Frost: They’re just jealous.
Birt: They’re already sounding off about checkbook journalism. And if the networks are against you, syndication’s always going to be a struggle. No syndication, no advance sales. No advance sales, no commercials. No commercials, no revenue.[/b]
Again, just to put it all in perspective.
[b]Frost: You were never part of the show in New York, but it’s indescribable. Success in America is unlike success anywhere else. And the emptiness when it’s gone. And the sickening thought that it may never come back. You know, there’s a restaurant in New York called Sardi’s. Ordinary mortals can’t get a table. John, the place was my canteen! Birt: You know, I’d be happier if I heard some kind of vision that you had for this interview.
…
Nixon: You know, it’s a funny thing that I’ve never been challenged to a duel before. I guess that’s what this is.
Frost: Yeah, well, not really.
Nixon: Of course it is. And I like that. No holds barred, eh? No holds barred.
…
Nixon: I bet you it did.
Brennan: What?
Nixon: Come out of his own pocket. You know, he couldn’t look me in the eye.
Brennan: Well, I hear the networks aren’t biting. Without the networks, the ad agencies don’t want to know. So if you ask me, there’s a good chance this whole thing may never happen.
Nixon: Really? So that meeting we just had might have cost him $200,000?
Brennan: Correct.
Nixon: Had I known that, I would have offered him a cup of tea.
…
James Reston Jr.: You know right now, I submit it’s impossible to feel anything close to sympathy for Richard Nixon. He devalued the presidency, and he left the country that elected him in trauma. The American people need a conviction, pure and simple. The integrity of our political system, of democracy as an idea, entirely depends on it.[/b]
This is the classic “love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal” approach to Watergate. Barely scratching the surface in terms of exposing the nature of “the sytem” Nixon embodied in the White House.
[b]Brennan: We start taping at the end of March.
Nixon: Really? Now, that’s terrific. How much time is devoted to Watergate?
Brennan: 25%. Just one of four 90-minute shows.
Nixon: What are the other three divided into?
Brennan: Domestic Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Nixon the Man.
Nixon: “Nixon the Man”? As opposed to what? Nixon the horse?
…
Zelnick [impersonating Nixon, discussing Jack Kennedy]: That man, he screwed anything that moved, fixed elections, and took us into Vietnam. And the American people, they loved him for it! Whereas I, Richard Milhous Nixon, worked around the clock in their service, and they hated me! Look. Look. Now I’m sweating. Damn it! Damn it! And Kennedy’s so goddamn handsome and blue-eyed! Had women all over him! He screwed anything that moved, and everything. Had a go at Checkers once. The poor little bitch was never the same!
…
[Reston has swore to Zelnick earlier he would never shake Nixon’s hand]
Nixon [extending his hand to Reston]: Pleasure to meet you.
Reston [after a pause, he shakily extends his own hand]: Mr. President…
Zelnick [after Nixon leaves]: Oh that was devastating, withering. I don’t think he’s ever going to get over that.
Reston: Fuck off.
…
Brennan [voiceover]: Well, in boxing, you know, there’s always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger’s face. It’s that moment that he feels the impact from the champ’s first jab. It’s kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along. You could see it in Frost’s face. If he didn’t know the caliber of the man that he was up against before the interview started, he certainly knew it halfway through the President’s first answer.
…
Zelnick[ after the disasterous first segment]: David, we have some fundamental problems in our approach that I think…
Frost: Don’t worry, Bob. I’m on it. We can use some of the Kissinger stuff.
Zelnick: Yeah, but we need to discuss it sooner rather than later…
Frost: Look, I’m disappointed, too. But I wonder, could we possibly spare the post-mortem for now? I don’t mean to minimize it. It’s just I’ve got to get back to LA to meet some people from Weed Eater. Thanks, everyone! Great work! I’ll see you soon. God bless!
Zelnick: What the hell is Weed Eater?
Birt: It’s a horticultural mechanism. One of our sponsors.
Reston: What happened to Xerox? What about General Motors or IBM?
Birt: I gather that not all of the blue-chip accounts came through. We do have Alpo.
Reston: Dog food?
…
Zelnick: Are we close, John?
Birt: I believe we’re at 30%.
Reston: To go? Or 30% sold?
Birt: Sold, 30% sold.
Reston: Jesus…
Zelnick: I thought we were practically fully financed.
Birt: We were. But the financing was always conditional on advertising sales, and no one predicted that they’d fall apart like this.
Zelnick: Well, why have they fallen apart? Based on what?
Reston: Credibility of the project. What else are advertising sales based on?
…
Birt: Listen, I understand your concern. But could I ask you to go a little easier on David over the next couple of days, bearing in mind the extraordinary pressure that he’s under? 'Cause at the moment, he’s effectively paying for all this himself. So he’s in it for a lot more than just his reputation.
Zelnick: And we’re not?
…
Birt [to Frost]: Look, I’m serious. You have got to make it more uncomfortable for him. You can start by sitting forward. You’ve gotta attack more. If he starts tailing off, bang, jump in with another question. Don’t trade generalizations. Be specific. And above all, don’t let him give these self-serving, 23-minute homilies. Right. And keep your distance before the tape starts running. He was toying with you yesterday. All that shit about Ben-Hur and struggling to raise the money. Those are mind games. Don’t engage. Never forget, you are in there with a major operator.
…
Frost: But one of the principal justifications you gave for the incursion was the supposed existence of the “headquarters of the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam,” a sort of “bamboo Pentagon” which proved not to exist at all.
Nixon: No, no. Wait a minute there. No, I was…
Frost: And by sending… And by sending B-52s to carpet bomb a country, wiping out whole civilian areas, you end up radicalizing a once moderate people, uniting them in anti-American sentiment and creating a monster in the Khmer Rouge that would lead to civil war…
…
Nixon: Whenever I have had my doubts I remembered the construction worker in Philadelphia because he came up to me and he said ‘Sir I got only one criticism of that Cambodia thing; if you’d gone in earlier you might’ve captured the gun that killed my boy three months ago’. So you’re asking me do I regret going into Cambodia?.. No, I don’t. You know what, I wish I’d gone in sooner. And harder![/b]
Workers of the world unite!
[b]Frost: What’s next?
Birt: Foreign policy.
[Frost leaves the room…but hears their reaction]
Zelnick: Great. Russia, China, the big power stuff.
Birt: Yeah, so?
Zelnick: So if Nixon beats him up like that on Vietnam, imagine what he’s gonna do with his real achievements.
Reston: It ain’t going to be pretty.
…
Zelnick: What “revolution,” David? You just let Richard Nixon claim the country was in a state of revolution? What, with protestors “bombing” and “assaulting” police officers? That’s not how I remember it. What I remember is people protesting peacefully and legitimately against the Vietnam War! That’s what I remember.
Reston: By the end, wiretapping students and breaking into journalists’ homes was beginning to sound like a rational response.
…
Nixon [on the phone]: That’s our tragedy, you and I Mr. Frost. No matter how high we get, they still look down at us.
Frost: I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Nixon: Yes you do. Now come on. No matter how many awards or column inches are written about you, or how high the elected office is, it’s still not enough. We still feel like the little man. The loser. They told us we were a hundred times, the smart asses in college, the high ups. The well-born. The people who’s respect we really wanted. Really craved. And isn’t that why we work so hard now, why we fight for every inch? Scrambling our way up in undignified fashion. If we’re honest for a minute, if we reflect privately, just for a moment, if we allow ourselves a glimpse into that shadowy place we call our soul, isn’t that why we’re here? Now? The two of us. Looking for a way back into the sun. Into the limelight. Back onto the winner’s podium. Because we can feel it slipping away. We were headed, both of us, for the dirt. The place the snobs always told us that we’d end up. Face in the dust, humiliated all the more for having tried. So pitifully hard. Well, to hell with that! We’re not going to let that happen, either of us. We’re going to show those bums, we’re going to make 'em choke on our continued success. Our continued headlines! Our continued awards! And power! And glory! We are gonna make those motherfuckers choke! Am I right?
Frost: You are. Except only one of us can win.
Nixon: Yes. And I shall be your fiercest adversary. I shall come at you with everything I got, because the limelight can only shine on one of us. And for the other, it’ll be the wilderness, with nothing and no one for company but those voices ringing in our head. You can probably tell I’ve had a drink. It’s not too many. Just one or two. But you believe me, when the time comes, I’m gonna be focused and ready for battle. Good night, Mr. Frost.
Frost: Good night, Mr. President.
…
Nixon: These men, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, I knew their families, I knew them since they were just kids. But you now, politically the pressure on me to let them go, that became overwhelming. So, I did it. I cut off one arm then I cut the other and I’m not a good butcher. And I have always mantained what they were doing, what we’re all doing was not criminal. Look, when you’re in office you gotta do a lot of things sometimes that are not always in the strictest sense of the law, legal, but you do them because they’re in the greater interest of the nation.
Frost: Alright wait, wait just so I understand correctly, are you really saying that in certain situations the President can decide whether it’s in the best interest of the nation and then do something illegal…
Nixon: I’m saying that when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal!
Frost: I’m sorry?
…
Frost: And the American people?
Nixon: I let them down. I let down my friends, I let down my country, and worst of all I let down our system of government, and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but now they think; ‘Oh it’s all too corrupt and the rest’. Yeah…I let the American people down. And I’m gonna have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life. My political life is over. [/b]
There really are people [millions of them] who still believe this is indeed what we needed to hear. That this reflected the heart and the soul of “corruption” in his adminstration. And that the “secret government” narrative of the left was just [is still just] a fantasy dreamed up by deluded conspiracy theorists.
Reston [in interview]: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, stretches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn’t understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon’s face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.
But in no real substantive manner does this typical, liberal narrative overlap with my own.
[b]Birt [to the camera]: The Nixonl/Frost interviews were wildly successful. I think they attracted the largest audience for a news program in the history of American television. David was on the cover of Time magazine and Newsweek magazine. And even the political press corps, the hard-bitten political press corps, called David up with messages of contrition and congratulation.
…
Nixon[to Frost at their last meeting]: Can I get something for somebody? Yes. Would you like some tea or champagne? Hey, you know, we got that caviar the Shah of Iran sent me.[/b]
Think about that for a while.