dir Ron Howard
2008
IMDB 8.2
Frank Langelia – Richard Nixon
Michael Sheen – David Frost
also with Sam Rockwell and Kevin Bacon
Story of a popular interview (David Frost) who was granted ‘exit interviews” with the post-presidential Nixon. A hard nosed journalist might be difficult, as Nixon still refused to admit real wrongdoing in Watergate; and besides, Frost was willing to pay.
The film is both the production of the interviews and the interviews themselves. The plastic, commercial personality of Frost is contrasted both with the journalistic oeuvre and with the savvy presidential machine. It’s a good movie. Basically it is as much about approach as it is about the historical events. Snippets on utube of the actual interviews shows it to be less dramatic than the film portrays. It’s likely that the ‘admissions’ of Nixon were not so apparent as the film would like to allow; but in a way this is the not the linchpin of the film. It’s a flip-side film: the flip-side of Nixon, off camera, and outside of the regular press presented view, and the view allowed by the presidential machine itself. Frost is the vehicle to present that outside view; his popular journalism is the wild card in the regular high-end information steam.
So it’s not a documentary about a historical event; it’s a film about people; a series of psychological portraits, and an attempt to demonstrate a more ground-level human view of larger-than-life people and the important events at which they are at the centre.
