Frost/Nixon
Or, a load of old dick
When Frost/Nixon first appeared at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London back in 2006 I wondered why on earth anyone would want to stage, to recreate, what was, essentially, a non-event. Why indeed? One can imagine mere actors relishing the opportunity to ‘interpret’ Frost and Nixon but who else would be interested? This does rather tend to underscore Gore Vidal’s observation that the only people who really enjoy themselves in the theatre are those on the stage. Perhaps theatre is just for the benefit of the actors and directors? It certainly seemed like it with this one.
Now let’s jump cut three years to 2009. Frost/Nixon has become a movie(1) and it’s getting more plaudits and praise than the last Big Thing (whatever that was). Here’s what the film’s website has to say:
‘More than 45 million viewers hungry for a glimpse into the mind of their disgraced former commander in chief, and anxious for him to acknowledge the abuses of power that led to his resignation, sat transfixed as Nixon and Frost sparred in a riveting verbal boxing match over the course of four evenings. Two men with everything to prove knew only one could come out a winner.
Their legendary confrontation would revolutionize the art of the confessional interview, change the face of politics and capture an admission from the former president that startled people all over the world, possibly even including Nixon himself.’(2)
Huh? This is not how I remember the original television broadcast back in 1977 and it was widely regarded as an over-hyped waste of time that delivered little or nothing (as can be seen in many contemporary reviews). Where were the big questions on Nixon’s McCarthy years? Alger Hiss? The campaign against Adlai Stevenson? Bugging the DNC? The 18 minute gap on the tapes? None of these questions were put by Frost.
What actually did Frost get from the disgraced president? Nixon recognised ‘errors’ but denied any crimes, obfuscated or rationalised anything inconvenient, only ‘admitted’ to what had already been established, and capped it all with a bid for sympathy. This orchestration was ladled with Tricky Dick’s Hallmark-style phraseology, things like his mistakes ‘were mistakes of the heart rather than the head’ and so on.
The movie’s tag line is: 400 million people were waiting for the truth. Well, they didn’t get it then and they’re not getting it now.
Frost and Nixon had, essentially, entered into a business partnership. Nixon got $600,000 up front with 20% of the subsequent sales to television stations around the world, a pretty unusual arrangement. The film mentions the $600,000 but not the 20%. Nixon hoped to re-establish his reputation with the interviews (and make a fast buck or two in the process), while Frost primarily was out to rescue his career from the skids (he was then hosting a raree-style show on Australian TV!). (3) And thus it was. The idea, promoted by the film, that this was some sort of clash of the Titans where there could be only one winner is nonsense. Here were two guys on the make, show-biz style. The claim that Frost ‘nailed’ Nixon is a lie also and Peter Morgan, the writer of the stage play and the film adaptation, bears the responsibility for this. The film has Nixon admitting that he ‘was involved in a “cover-up” as you call it.’ Nixon’s actual words were, ‘You’re wanting me to say that I participated in an illegal cover-up. No!’ Does the truth matter to this writer? Apparently not. I guess he’s got a dramaturge’s ‘Get out of jail free’ card.
The film is quite watchable if you approach it as some throw-away fictional entertainment which, I suspect, may be hard to do (not for Philip French however, see below). Frank Langella is a fine actor but his Nixon sometimes displays a humour and cuddliness that the original certainly didn’t have. Mind you, it’s head and shoulders above the ever emollient Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s film who plays Nixon like a paedophile on heavy medication. The only screen portrayal of Nixon that has ever come near to capturing that strange combination of resentment, bitterness, loneliness and, yes, vulnerability, was Jason Robards’ in Washington Behind Closed Doors.(4)
How did Nixon view himself film-wise? In his more palmy days when he envisaged Hollywood making The Richard Nixon Story he thought only one actor could do himself justice – Jack Lemon (!)(5)
Langella’s performance throws into relief Michael Sheen’s as Frost. Sheen’s reliance on perkiness and breeziness as a substitute for more mature stagecraft is irritating and superficial, but then Frost himself was always rather superficial. In fact, Frost himself, come to think of it, is a bad actor. Whenever he got animated and showed some emotion you always felt he was acting that emotion. That it wasn’t the real thing.
Matthew Macfadyen does a wonderful burlesque of the unctuous John Birt, (6) and there are good performances too from Kevin Bacon and Sam Rockwall.
The movie is quite enlightening on the comings and goings of the negotiations that lead up to the interviews, yet we have to take its veracity on trust and the ‘Special Thanks’ given to Sir (no less) David Frost in the film’s end credits make one wonder whether a little reality massaging didn’t go on. I guess we’ll never know. Not that we care.
Putting together the script for this wouldn’t have strained even the most mediocre of writers. A real challenge for a real writer who really wanted to try and understand Nixon would have been to have invented one of those imaginary conversations that were so popular at one time.(7) How about H L Mencken confronting Nixon?
This is certainly a movie you can afford to miss. It’s for the rubes who don’t know their history and think they’re getting some inside track.
The danger with this film is that younger audiences might actually believe the hype, that this was an important political event, something on a level with say, the Army-McCarthy hearings.(8) It wasn’t.
One would also hope that the more responsible film critics would draw attention to just what is wrong with a film like this. But do they? None that I’ve read. Take the esteemed Philip French (born 1933), the film critic of the London Observer.(9) His review runs to a little under 800 words. The first paragraph is a once-over of Nixon’s career (HUAC, the Checkers speech, debates with Kennedy) and then we get this:
‘In 1977 he [Nixon] was finally sunk when David Frost…. led him into saying on Watergate that ‘when the President does it, that means it is not illegal’….’
Oh, so it wasn’t until then that Nixon was finally sunk, and by this plucky little Britisher, Dave Frost, no less. And he hadn’t been ‘sunk’ before then? I guess resigning as the President in 1974, three years earlier, was merely some administrative detail of little or no consequence?
Further on we have this gem of a paragraph:
‘Frost/Nixon is a riveting film, sharper, more intense than the play. It brings to mind such forensic triumphs of dramatic literature as Portia bringing down Shylock with guile and subtlety in The Merchant of Venice, Barney Greenwald reducing Commander Queeg to a gibbering mess in The Caine Mutiny and the gentle liberal Henry Fonda destroying Lee J Cobb to get his “not-guilty” vote in 12 Angry Men.’
I doubt if the publicity machine behind Frost/Nixon could have put it better. Here we have the interviews elevated to these ‘forensic triumphs of dramatic literature’! As my late good friend David Seabrook would have said with some irony, ‘No mere entertainment this!’ Unfortunately a lot of French’s readership won’t know any better and will swallow this guff.
The remaining five prolix paragraphs amble between outlining the story and comments on the actors and so on, without ever once confronting the accuracy or legitimacy of the movie. Prolix? Yes. Take this:
‘Nixon, full of confidence, seeks to undermine Frost, using what Zelnick refers to as “mind games”, though I doubt if the term was used in those prelaptop and cellphone, long-hair and sideburns, broad-lapel, bell-bottom days.’
He could have just said ‘I doubt if the term was used in 1977’, which would have been simpler, and dispensed with the inventory (the ‘pre’ applies to the laptop and cellphone and all the other items. What he meant to say was ‘in those long-hair and side-burns, broad lapel, bell-bottom, pre-laptop and cellphone days.’ Wasn’t there a sub to pick this up?) But why mention this at all? Just to let us know he was paying attention to everything? (‘Boy, that French guy! Nothing escapes him!’)
Now let’s get to why I actually quoted this sentence. Forget about prolixity. Here’s the real reason: French cannot be bothered to investigate and discuss the truth or accuracy of the movie, its basic premise that is, but here he is drawing our attention to a suspected anachronism in the dialogue! Is this what matters? Apparently so. And from this jive he makes a living (to paraphrase a line of dialogue in Stardust Memories)?
Let’s take a detour while we’re here. The term ‘mind games’ was a very popular term in the 1960s as anyone who can remember that decade will recall. I think it grew out of the drug culture in the States. The Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary gives a first occurrence in 1963,(10) and in 1970 it was the title of a best-selling popular psychology book by Robert Masters and Jean Houston.(11)
French couldn’t even be bothered to get off his ass and check it out.
Finally, it should be noted that The Observer, not content with French’s piece, produced an eight-page ‘advertorial’ supplement on the movie. The small print on page two gives the game away: ‘Produced by the Observer, to a brief agreed with Universal Pictures. Paid for by Universal Pictures.’ Let’s just hope if Jason Statham ever gets around to Hamlet the advertising budget extends this far.
The much mourned Peter Cook said that the one big regret he had in life was saving David Frost from drowning back in the 1960s. Had he left Frostie in the swimming pool we wouldn’t have to put up with this travesty of history. Sic transit!
Anthony Frewin was an assistant to Stanley Kubrick for over twenty-five years and is the author of several books. He recently wrote the screenplay for the John Malkovich film, Colour Me Kubrick.
Notes
- Frost/Nixon: directed by Ron Howard, screenplay by Peter Morgan based upon his stage play. Cinematography by Salvatore Totino. Music by Hans Zimmer. With Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Toby Jones. Running time: 122 minutes.
- <http://frostnixon.net/>
- Frost was wittily and famously described by Kitty Muggeridge as ‘the man who rose without trace.’
- A TV mini-series from 1977 directed by Gary Nelson. Robards’ character is actually named President Richard Monckton, but it’s Nixon all right. The series was based on the roman-à-clef by ex-Nixon White House staffer John Ehrlichman, The Company (1976). Surprisingly, a series never released on video or DVD.
- In line with this is Mort Sahl’s joke about a typical evening at home with the Nixons: ‘Pat is knitting a flag while Dick is on the sofa reading the Constitution.’
- Or Lord Birt as he now is, the famous Armani-clad ‘blue skies thinking’ ex-head of the BBC renowned for his unfathomable managerial gobbledygook (regularly reproduced in the pages of Private Eye). His ennoblement by the Revd. Blair is widely seen as a result of his friendship with Peter Mandelson, a former colleague at London Weekend Television.Here’s a bit of Birt biog that may be overlooked by future writers. I was ambling through the British Film & Television Year Book 1972-3 when I came across a full-page ad for Ernst Finster, ‘The Finnish Pole Vaulter’, huh? At the bottom it says, ‘All enquiries c/o John Birt, London Weekend Television.’
- It didn’t end with Walter Savage Landor. Try Robert Baldick’s Dinner at Magny’s (London: Gollancz, 1971). Imaginary conversations between Flaubert, Turgenev, the Goncourt brothers, Sainte-Beuve, etc. Riveting.
- Captured in Emile de Antonio’s famous documentary film, Point of Order! (1964).
- The review appeared in the 25 January 2009 issue and is available on-line at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/25/frost-nixon-review> complete with a photo of said critic in oracular mode. The Observer, a once-great liberal newspaper, is now in terminal decline with news being elbowed out by lifestyle and entertainment featurettes and some pretty ropey columnists, though I’d except Nick Cohn and Henry Porter from this description.
- <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mind+game>
- Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space (New York: Dell, 1970).