Return to trevor

Nixon/Frost

Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon

"Well, when the president does it; that means it is not illegal." – Richard Nixon to David Frost

Say what you will, Richard Nixon was pugnacious. He rose from nothing, the son of a failed grocery store owner. He showed none of the attributes one would associate with a future President. He was not handsome, always had a shifty look about him, had none of the rhetoric flare to move people, but he tried harder than everyone else around. Just like on the high school football field where he had absolutely no ability but threw himself into each practice at full speed, he approached life in the same fashion. Life was a constant war and he was going to give it everything he had and then some, even if it meant bending a rule here and there to do it. Coming home from the South Pacific in World War II, he ran for House of Representatives in the 12^th Congressional district in southern California against a five-term popular incumbent named Jerry Voorhis and won. Granted, it took stretching the truth a bit, claiming that Voorhis was collaborating with communist-controlled labor unions, but he won all the same. Once in there, he rose to fame on the House of Un-American Activities Committee by leading the case against Alger Hiss, a high State Department official and former advisor to President Roosevelt, for being a communist spy.

Again, working closely with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, they had to fabricate some evidence, withhold some documents here and there, and conduct illegal surveillance, but he got his man, and more important, headlines. After only four years in Washington, he turned his attention to the Senate, to the seat held by popular Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas who, while not a red communist, was "pink right down to her underwear." “The Pink Lady”, who became the focus of Nixon’s smears and attacks in defeat, gave the future President the nickname he carried the rest of his life, “Tricky Dick.” It did not matter, Nixon had a bigger prize in mind, the Vice-Presidency. Viewed by Republican stalwarts as the future of the party for his anti-Communist fervor, he was forced on a reluctant Dwight Eisenhower for the second spot on the ticket. Ike disliked his running mate and was going to drop him from the ticket when the New York Post revealed the young Senator had a large political “slush fund” he kept for personal use. Nixon did what he always did, worked hard behind the scenes, got on television, looked into the American people’s eyes and lied. He pulled at the American people’s heart strings by telling them the only political gift he had ever taken was an American Cocker Spaniel named "Checkers", which he was not going to give back because his daughters loved the little thing.

Despite the President’s loathing of him, he sat through the next eight years, campaigned for Republican candidates like a fiend, so he could get his shot at the Oval office in 1960, which he lost, in one of the closest elections in US history, to John F. Kennedy, a man who was everything Nixon was not. Trying to politically recover, Nixon melted down after losing in a landslide to Pat Brown for governor of California. He bellowed at reporters, “For 16 years, ever since the Hiss case, you've had a lot of—a lot of fun—that you've had an opportunity to attack me and I think I've given as good as I've taken.....But as I leave you I want you to know—just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” It was not his last press conference, nor was it his last political war. Moving to New York, he crisscrossed the country earning every political favor he could by campaigning for any candidate that asked him. In 1968, he was again the Republican nominee for the White House, a spot it looked like was going to lose again to another Kennedy, Robert, but Bobby died in a pool of blood in the kitchen passageway of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and Nixon became President.

Throughout his whole life he had defeated his enemies, overcome the odds, and every instinct he had developed throughout his adult life, spelled his doom with Watergate. While he had not authorized the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters, the seven men arrested there had been commissioned by the White House dirty tricks squad, called “the plumbers.” Rather than wash his hands of them, and get rid of the cancer that was chewing on the Presidency, Nixon went into cover up mode. He would have gotten away with it, and convinced enough Americans that he was “not a crook” to stay in power, but he made one mistake, he taped himself. Paranoid that advisors and staff members would claim things publicly that they had not said to him in the privacy of the Oval Office, Nixon had a hidden taping system set up. It was the smoking gun his opponents needed. With the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings, Richard Nixon became the first President in our country’s history to resign in disgrace.

Yet, just like after the California gubernatorial election, three years later, Richard Nixon tried to rise from the political grave one more time, rehab his image, and he needed a lightweight interviewer, someone he could buffalo, so he would not have to address the scandal again. He choose British talk show host David Frost as his foil. Frost was not the pushover that Nixon hoped for. Unlike Hiss, Voorhis, Gahagan Douglas, or the American people, Frost proved to be an opponent that the pugnacious Nixon could not steamroll. The interview that resulted was maybe one of the most truthful moments in television history with Nixon giving at least tacit admission about his role in the scandal.

Based on the Tony Award winning play, Frost/Nixon is the story of these two gentlemen leading up to the interview. It shows the negotiations, the maneuvering, and the deal making that went getting this once in a lifetime interview off the ground. When actors play real individuals who the public knows well, have seen on their television sets, it is often difficult, but Frank Langella is spot on as Nixon and Michael Sheen does a good job as David Frost. Surrounding these two actors is an all-star cast of character actors with Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, and Michael McFadden comprising Frost’s team. After the awful The DaVinci Code, director Ron Howard is back on his game. Whether it is Apollo 13, Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, or this film, Howard takes it to another level when recounting history you think that you know. There should easily be a handful of Academy Award nominations out of this film. It is a suspenseful, entertaining look behind the curtain of the beauty pageant known as modern politics and the best political drama since Thank You For Not Smoking. It allows the American public to see how politicians manipulate the press to get what they want and to present what is often not the truth. Politics is often a chess match and Richard Nixon is, in many ways, the spiritual father of modern hardball politics. Watching this film, a person cannot help but think about how the Bush administration manipulated the press to get America behind a needless war and how the Clintons have done similar efforts for their causes. This is an instant where one member of the press stood his ground and tried to get at the truth.

Verdict: An Oscar Worthy Film