frost/nixon writeup

After having the blu-ray disc from netflix sitting next to the TV for so long I’d started to imagine it glaring at me malevolently, sullen from neglect, I finally relented and popped in “Frost/Nixon” last night. I was expecting, from some dimly-recalled buzz around release time, a “My Dinner with Andre” style gabfest, with more or less stationary/minimal sets, the two green velour-uphoulstered chairs, Frost’s hair, Nixon’s nose, and some killer dialog.

Those things did appear, but the backstory and character development around David Frost were unexpected treats. We first see him cracking awful jokes on an awful Australian TV show contemporaneous with Nixon’s final days. Frost is clearly a TV Face, superficial even in moments of depth, such as when he reveals to his friend and producer John Birt the reason he needs a hit: he longs for the trappings of celebrity royalty that have vanished since his popularity has waned. This is honest, if not particularly noble, and Michael Sheen managed to make me like his character even as I shook my head at his cheesy pick-up lines and elaborately coiffed sideburns.

So it’s as Frost watches Nixon’s helicoptered departure from the White House than an idea takes hold of him. 400 million viewers — American viewers, which is a crucial distinction if big-time television is your bag — are also watching, and they could be his if he can harness his own star to Nixon’s and somehow transform the President’s downward trajectory into a boost back up into the celebrity stratosphere to which he longs to return. (A talk show version of science fiction’s “slingshot around the sun” trope, perhaps.)

The only flaw in the plan is, well, reality. This is the central tension for the middle section of the film: nobody wants to pay Frost to interview the deeply unpopular Richard M. Nixon. Frost cuts deals with Nixon’s agent, the odious and Dickensian-named “Swifty” Lazar, unsuccessfully cold-calls the studios, kites a check on his personal account, begs from friends and ultimately scrapes together enough to put the show on without network backing.

The producer Birt brings in two experts, Bob Zelnick and the passionately anti-Nixon author James Reston Jr, to help Frost prepare for the interviews — whom Frost proceeds directly to ignore, maginalize and shoot down almost to his ruin. He gads about with his lovely lady, attends movie premieres and generally behaves like a flyweight-intellectual face man, right up through the interviews themselves. Nixon wipes the floor with him by controlling the debate, pontificating endlessly on his wholesome family and personal circumstances, and barely letting Frost (supposedly a master interviewer) get a puffball question in, let alone the hard-hitting journalism Zelnick and Reston were hoping for. Thus comes a central point of contention for me: Frost had to know how much was riding on doing well in these interviews; he had the resources at hand to prepare himself; but yet he chose to blow them off in favour of the socialite high life? It just doesn’t compute.

A pause here to note Kevin Bacon’s deft turn as Jack Brennan, Nixon’s adoring chief of staff. He’s a hardcase both personally and in his business interactions with Frost, but his comment that Frost’s slip-on Italian loafers are “effeminate” provides a thread of comedy through the film. Brennan’s flashback voiceover about the first interview — ” It’s that moment that he feels the impact from the champ’s first jab…” is delivered so well, you can almost see the stars in Brennan’s eyes as he swoons over his hero the President. (Also now you can get there in two degrees: Lawrence Olivier - Langella - Bacon)

Just when all seems lost, a drunken Nixon calls up Frost late at night before their last interview session and rants about the common ground he imagines they share: laughed at and written off by snoot-nose elites, they are gonna show ‘em all! Make those mfkrs CHOKE! This is the Nixon portrayed by Hunter S Thompson in “F&L on the Campaign Trail ‘72” and it’s a powerful moment. I observed an interesting transformation in my perception of Frank Langella’s Nixon as the movie progressed: early on, from the television broadcasts and the partial-body camerawork, I thought “wow, he doesn’t look like Nixon at all!” But by the time this phone call occurs, Langella’s mannerisms of speech and movement seemed eerily close to my recollection of the real thing.

At any rate, Frost is shaken up by the call, but perhaps not in the way Nixon intended: pepped up and scared shitless, he finally cracks open the documents his researchers have been trying to get him to read for the past several months. In one only-in-the-movies feverish night of hitting the books he unravels the Watergate conspiracy, dispatches Reston to the Library of Congress to find the smoking gun transcript, and gets himself schooled up enough to, come daylight, nail Nixon with zinger interview questions until the ex-Prez breaks down and concedes culpability, abuse of power and cover-up.

I confess I’m not familiar enough with the source material (the actual interview tapes, Brennan’s and Reston’s books on them, the Broadway play) to know how close this hewed to “reality” versus how much was Hollywood-ized for the film, but I sense the Hand of (Ron) Howard in ease with which this drew to conclusion, and it troubles me. Life rarely works so neatly and I prefer films which portray real life to include a bit of that messiness. Did Nixon really achieve redemption in that TV close-up? Did America find closure? Did Frost and Caroline live happily ever after? The movie would have us believe all this but despite its technical prowess and fine performances (especially Langella as Nixon and Sam Rockwell as Reston) I slipped the disc back into its red envelope and it back to the Netflix mothership after a too-lengthy delay, ultimately unconvinced.