The Dandy vs. the Disgrace
Jerry Lewis, George Steinbrenner, and Richard Nixon are three personalities I could never resist when they appeared on TV. The inverted charisma of these men - their transparent and blustery attempts at concealing massive insecurities behind public personas - lent them an accident-waiting-to-happen aura I found particularly compelling. I just didn't want to avert my gaze, lest I miss that final moment when layers of obnoxiousness sloughed away to reveal the quivering mass of childhood trauma running the show. Watching Lewis's telethon clowning Steinbrenner's obsessive firing and rehiring of managers, or Nixon declaring, "I am not a crook" - these were my precusors to today's reality shows, the main draw being a public nervous breakdown. I may be wrong, but I'm betting on Sarah Palin as the next big thing in this genre.
There are moments in Frost/Nixon in which director Ron Howard captures Frank Langella’s Nixon in just such a state of rawness. All the actors I've seen play Nixon - Anthony Hopkins, Philip Baker Hall, Dan Hedaya, Rip Torn - have delivered meritorious performances. But Langella's is the one that truly fascinates, because it so thoroughly captures the pathos and inner desolation lurking underneath the familiar mannerisms and intonation.
The film, adapted from the stage play, recounts the circumstances surrounding the 1977 series of interviews of Nixon by David Frost, three years after the president had resigned in disgrace over Watergate. Frost offered Nixon $600,000 for the gig, topping an offer from CBS and putting himself at financial risk. None of the networks would buy the program, so Frost, in an unprecedented move, was forced to syndicate it.
Because Howard does such a terrific job of setting up what's at stake for the participants, the film builds formidable tension. Frost at the time was considered a celebrity interviewer, a lightweight. "I spent yesterday afternoon watching you interview the Bee Gees," his producer, skeptical of his boss's ability to pull off the hard-news coup, admonishes him. But Frost, played by Michael Sheen (Tony Blair in The Queen) as having a keen intelligence beneath the frothy exterior, wants to use the event as a springboard for a comeback in America, where his show had been cancelled. Meanwhile, Frost's researchers, James Reston and Bob Zelnick (Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt), see the event as a chance to put the liberal bete noire Nixon on trial, bringing him to justice in a way that Gerald Ford's pardon had precluded.
Nixon, of course, has the biggest fish to fry. He wants to exonerate himself and rehabilitate his reputation. Both the Nixon and Frost teams think Frost will be no match for Tricky Dick. “After this you can even move back east,” says his aide, Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon). “Frost is not in your intellectual class,” exudes another flunkie. “It’ll be a big wet kiss.”
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