A review of Frost Nixon

Millstone vs. Milestone, or: Politics vs. Entertainment—Frost Nixon

When a prominent figure is interviewed, the question has to be asked, is the interviewer being fair in his approach to asking his questions? Should the interviewer be objective in his tone, or should he basically cross-examine the person that he is interviewing; treating the interview as if it were a court case itself? In the historic interviews between British talk show host David Frost and Richard Nixon, the president who will forever go down in history as being termed “the worst president in our history,” both approaches were applied and successfully administered. It was about time. After Nixon resigned his presidency, in fear that he would be found guilty by Congress for being the instigator of both the Watergate incident and the subsequent cover-up, the country was furious that this crook in a sense got away scot-free. Years later, a miracle of a negotiation deal appeared where Nixon was going to be interviewed by television personality David Frost. The reason that Nixon took on such a tenuous deal was because he had the ludicrous notion that he would in a sense be vindicated when the public saw these interviews. That and the fact that Frost was going to pay him a million dollars, which would help Nixon get out of some financial scruples. This would in a sense be the public’s form of the conviction of Richard Nixon. The hope was that Nixon would admit his guilt, which he had never done before to the American people.

These historic interviews have been adapted into a play production by Peter Morgan, the renowned playwright and screenwriter who has basically made a career of dramatizing known historic events that dealt with famous world leaders. Movies of his that I have seen have been both The Queen and The Last King of Scotland. Both movies actually take on the tone of the world leader who is the main character, and they suffer because of that. The Last King of Scotland takes on the manic tone of Idi Amin, and what ends up happening is that the only identification that the audience has with this situation (we obviously cannot identify with him) is that feeling of constant negativity, when nothing seems to go right. The Queen took on the tone of the Queen of England during the time of Princess Diana’s death, when the English population was furious at the Queen for not showing any form of condolence because of the proper rules of the Buckingham palace. The movie is too detached for the audience to feel that same form of anger once again, and it’s also too highly dramatized with moments that never happened. Both of these problems have to stem from the fact that Morgan wants to get inside the mind of these historic figures; to understand why they did what they did. No one can truly do that unless they were “behind the scenes” and knew the figure.

That’s why it’s refreshing that in Frost Nixon, David Frost has a detached tone to his interviews, coupled with a beautiful sense of knowing just how to put Nixon in his corner; to end up having him state that, “I have impeached myself.” Even though Frost appears to be merely objective, he has a keen sense of knowing how to surprise his opponent in the form of legalistic cross examination. He’s not trying to get inside the head of Nixon the way many celebrity journalists do (if he did he may have had a hard time of shaking him off afterwards), instead he constantly asks the damning facts about Watergate, at least for the fourth and final interview. It’s a truly suspenseful play, not because of Nixon’s slyly horrifying behavior, but because Frost may be merely trying to interview Nixon objectively throughout the first three fourths of the process. James Reston Jr., one of the “crack team specialists” who participated in the fact finding mission for these interviews, at one point even felt that Frost had in a sense co-opted with Nixon; that he was bought off in order to not ask pertinent questions about Watergate, or the other horrific things that Nixon did while in office. (In Reston’s book, there are so many damning things that need to be covered, in his opinion, that there is a risk that the less important facts will take the place of the more important ones. I think that fact is funnier than any of the actual “witty” jokes in the play.) There’s a scene in Reston’s book The Conviction of Richard Nixon where Frost reassures his team at one point that he is on their side to cover a critical view of the president. He shows them the contract that does indeed stipulate that Frost will come up with all the questions. It’s a scene that should be in the play because it gives a more realistic view of Frost; that he is truly dedicated to try to not exonerate this president right from the beginning. However, if this scene where in the play, than the suspenseful motif of Frost being easily influenced would be subsided by reality.

However, it is a very good play, which in my opinion is some kind of strange feat. The fact that that moment in time, and that important kind of procedural interview, could not only be entertaining but good theatre is shocking to me. It shouldn’t work but it does, and the same could be said of the interviews themselves, where a personality talk show host from England arguably conducted the most important interview of the century. This audacious feat is the theme of the play; Morgan’s main statement in Frost Nixon is that the most important way to report the news is that the coverage should be both entertaining and thrilling. Frost is a person who is warm and amiable and fun to be around (entertainment), while Nixon is a stonewalling cold mercurial man who really couldn’t be trusted (politics). They are completely different opponents. It’s a miracle that Frost even had the savvy to interview Nixon, and in a sense make him confess. Nixon was a master stonewaller, and that’s the way Frank Langella plays him.

There really isn’t much to be said about Langella’s performance, other than that he has the Nixon mannerisms but doesn’t have that form of stilted madness that many associate with that figure. Morgan’s play doesn’t concentrate on that aspect of Nixon, which is fine. The only problem is that because of the omission of that character trait, there are now discrepant viewpoints regarding what exactly is the intention of the work. Some reviewers feel that the play itself vindicates Nixon by making him witty and warmer than he appeared. This view is a mistake because if anything, Frost Nixon is a play about how good journalism can triumph over any illicit politician. It’s a work made for today’s audience, which primarily consists of people who are used to objective reporting. As Reston says in his book, who will be the Richard Frost to George W. Bush? That’s the risk of making the play witty and to give Langella credit, he doesn’t make Nixon that warm of a fellow and neither does Morgan. That’s why that fictional scene of Nixon calling Frost, while he is completely inebriated and in a sense warning him of his actions, is in the play. Langella at that moment is indeed a cold terrifying stiff; the person that he is playing mistakenly feels that those characteristics are forms of charm.

Even with the fantastic performance by Langella, it’s Michael Sheen’s play. As Frost, he reminds you of Dudley Moore with his hip mannerisms and hip British accent. However, that’s where the similarities between the two differ; Frost is a highly dedicated person, particularly before the last set of interviews concerning Watergate. He may not appear to be deadly serious about what he asks the former president, but that’s merely the bait for Nixon to fall for. Nixon may have a sly tactic of deviating away from the topic, but Frost is also cleverly deceitful. Even his whole staff falls for his laid back quality. The only problem is that even Frost doesn’t know where the lie ends and the truth begins, and he has a hard time figuring out just when to ask the hard questions. He doesn’t believe in himself at that point; he’s basically fallen in his own trap and experiences turmoil that many politicians have felt in previous years. He says to his staff very unconvincingly that the interviews are going well, when what we see is Nixon talking about how great his achievements in China were ect. Frost is losing the match. The actor adequately conveys this feeling of impending doom, but it’s away from the interviews where Sheen’s performance really shines and where the audience truly understands this unusual interviewer, particularly when Frost comes to the realization of how he should conduct the fourth interview. There are great pauses from Sheen which are moments of realization for the character. He’s held off his guard at those moments, and this particular characteristic appears on Nixon’s face during the last interview when he admits to the world that he has indeed impeached himself. This moment is preserved in a freeze frame on the big screen above the interview (which is a clever idea that may or may not be the director Michael Grandage’s; anyway the direction is solid), all so that the audience can know the importance of the close-up which is a television technique that is more telling than Nixon realized. However, Sheen’s/Frost’s moment is more subtle.

It’s the power of the close-up notion which Reston feels doesn’t really have any merit. He’s always felt that these sets of interviews, no matter how powerful, were really not very informative. Nothing new was brought out in the open, except for that Colson conversation with Nixon, which confirmed that Nixon knew about the Watergate cover-up much earlier than he disclosed. Morgan cannot agree with this assessment because he has to take on the tone of Frost (at least his writing did not take on the tone of Nixon), and he as a playwright has to view these set of interviews as being vitally important, or else the tone of the play would be completely different. The play would end up being less entertaining, more informative, and more negative, if written by Reston. The truth of the matter is that Frost and Reston did not talk to one another for years afterward for a reason. There’s a difference between the Reston book and the Morgan play, and this is because they both have different views on these sets of interviews. Here’s a great excerpt from Reston’s book: “Again and again I returned to Book IV of the Odyssey in which the difficulty of snaring Proteus was described. The Old Man of the Sea, as the watery god was called, would emerge warily from the brine, carrying with him the fishlike stench of the deep. To capture Proteus, Odysseus would have to summon all his strength and courage. He would need Olympian exertions from his three most stalwart oarsmen. If Odysseus was lucky enough to grab the old sorcerer, he must hold on bravely as the beast changed from a lion with a great mane into a dragon and a wild boar, then into running water and a blazing fire, and finally into a tree.” That quote is never felt in Frost Nixon, but there are a multitude of other feelings for the audience to experience in the play.