FROST/NIXON sss Directed by Ron Howard Written by Peter Morgan, from his play With Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Macfadyen, Rebecca Hall, and Toby Jones
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But when drawing lessons from this punchy political entertainment, we may have more to learn from David Frost. When the venerable British broadcaster granted Morgan the rights to his story, he magnanimously relinquished any editorial control—just as Nixon had with the original interviews—and the result is less flattering to Frost than his own published accounts, I Gave Them a Sword (1978) and Frost/Nixon (2007). As Morgan makes clear, Frost in 1977 was widely regarded as a showman, not a newsman; his interrogating Richard Nixon would be analogous to Conan O’Brien interrogating Dick Cheney. In the early sessions, which focused on Vietnam, China, and the USSR, Nixon ran circles around him. The standard legend is that Frost, humbled by this, became a real journalist: he buckled down, did his homework, and nailed Nixon on the Watergate scandal. Frost/Nixon offers a more complicated assessment: that Frost may have succeeded not in spite of his showmanship but because of it.
In the movie, when Zelnick and Reston learn from a 60 Minutes story that Frost is also paying Nixon a percentage of the profits, even they begin to wonder if the project is legitimate. You can see why they’re worried. When his producer, John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen), asks him why he’s so eager to interview Nixon, Frost (Michael Sheen) tells him he wants to be able to get a good table at Sardi’s. The night before the first taping, while Zelnick and Reston (Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell, both typically fine) sweat it out at the hotel, Frost enjoys himself at a movie premiere. Several days later, with the project foundering, he sails off to a lavish birthday party for himself, where Sammy Cahn serenades him to the tune of “Love and Marriage”: “Frost and Nixon, Frost and Nixon / There’s an act that’s gonna take some fixin’.” Caroline Cushing (Rebecca Hall), the ravishing brunette Frost picks up on a transatlantic flight, sums it up nicely when she repeats something she heard about Frost on TV: “What made you exceptional, they said, was that you seemed to have achieved great fame without possessing any discernible quality.”
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