Worthy Opponents

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Frost/Nixon - Movie PosterFROST/NIXON is the fantastic film based on the award-winning stage play, and if you think it is going to consist of two men playing David Frost and former president Richard Nixon just sitting down and conducting the interviews that resulted in the May 1977 broadcasts, think again.

Directed by Ron Howard and starring Michael Sheen as Frost and Frank Langella as Nixon, the film covers the time between August 1974 when Nixon became the only president to resign while in office and immediately after the last interview was broadcast three years later.

In other words, we also see the beginning of Frost’s idea to conduct the interviews in order to rejuvenate his own career in television, the tricky negotiations to get Nixon to agree, the preparations on both sides for the taping of the interviews, and then the interviews themselves, which resulted in Nixon’s famous exclamation, “I’m saying that when the president does it, it’s not illegal!”

Yes, there are many obvious parallels between Nixon’s presidency and the current President Bush Administration and the situation in Iraq, and those parallels are obviously intentional.

It was also obvious from the film that Nixon didn’t agree to the interviews just to set the record straight. He was paid $600,000 and would receive 20% of any profits, the interviews took place in a rented house not far from Nixon’s home in San Clemente, California, Nixon would not see the questions beforehand, and Frost had total editorial control of the finished product.

The only stipulation was that no more than 25% of the interview would be about Watergate, and as we see from the film, that led to a controversial discussion as to the definition of “Watergate.”

Kevin Bacon plays Jack Brennan, an aide to Nixon who figures prominently in the preparations, and based on the film’s publicity, you might not even have realized that he appears in the film.

Even given the importance of the two people involved and the subject matter of the interviews, Frost and his producer had a difficult time selling advertising for the project and even getting a television network to air the results.

If you want to see the finished product as broadcast, those interviews are now available on DVD.

FROST/NIXON is an excellent dramatization of those worthy opponents, and there is suspense up until the final shot.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”