Another Movie Review This Week: Frost/Nixon - Boring/Lies

Anyone can become Richard Milhous Nixon. They mass-produce the little masks and sell them during Halloween. In 2008’s Frost/Nixon, Frank Langella becomes the notorious ex-president almost as well as Nixon himself, complete with a prosthetic nose and several pounds of Hollywood makeup. But it wasn’t just a mask – Langella captured the core of Nixon, a broken-down old man who feels remorse for the Watergate scandal. Only, what actually happened is much different.
The fallen president has recently resigned from office. He’s old, fat and discouraged about retiring until David Frost (Michael Sheen) baits Nixon with a surplus of cash in return for an unscripted interview. Nixon takes the money like a greedy child.
Frost, with his sculpted hair, plastic smile and oblivious attitude can’t get anyone to take him seriously, not even the audience in some cases. Because Frost had just been canned from his popular talk show, the Nixon interview was just a way for the unemployed man to make himself famous and meaningful again, but even Frost doesn’t seem incredibly concerned with the outcome.
For months, Frost’s team of investigators prepared hard-hitting questions to “take Nixon down,” implying that this vendetta is what America needed to move on. Frost picked some intelligent companions who uncover some damning evidence, but Frost also chose boring and two-dimensional people. Sam Rockwell plays the underdeveloped James Reston Jr. who’s only personality trait is getting angry about the former president. Executive editor Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) sits in the back, quietly sulking, occasionally angry about Nixon. Even John Birt (Matthew Macfayden) only defends Frost’s every boneheaded move and again, gets angry about Nixon.
The rest of the cast are forgettable, including whatever chick Frost was boning and Nixon’s uptight aides. Director Ron Howard truly only invested in Frost and Nixon, pitting them against each other to make the interview seem of extreme importance.
Historically, the interviews were insignificant in the sense that they didn’t change anything and were mostly forgotten. And watching the original tapes is little more than two boring people talking candidly. Unlike the drama on screen, Nixon almost never raised his voice and Frost’s stoic face never cracked.
The movie doesn’t mention that Frost interviewed Nixon almost ten years prior to the big one. In 1968, Frost visited the White House with his mother, celebrating Christmas with the Nixons for a campy fluff piece on how great America is. The interview was bland and lifeless, and that attitude didn’t change much by 1977.
Even what the interviews were supposed to signify was lackluster. Ford had already pardoned Nixon, so admitting guilt in Watergate would have done nothing. Besides, Nixon never did admit guilt, unlike what the melodrama in the film suggested.
All the interview did was line the pockets of an old, retired thief. All the movie did was make an unimportant debate seem like a justice was finally brought forth. It wasn’t.
But Ron Howard’s creation came out just after Obama was sworn into office, which wasn’t mere coincidence. In interviews and DVD featurettes, Howard compared Nixon’s abuse of power to President Bush’s similar administration. Howard was hoping to encourage a repeat in history, perhaps with a different ending.
So far this hasn’t happened, but if it does, one can expect the same results. Why would anybody expect a president, let alone anyone, admit to felonies and treason on national television? The Frost/Nixon interviews weren’t exactly Judge Judy. Bush would make the same excuses for his civilian-bombing wars, wiretapping and abuses of power that Nixon did. And Bush would also get away with it, several million dollars richer.
Broadcast journalism employs a lot of theatrics, but the leaps and bounds Frost/Nixon makes in the fact department are absurd. First of all, what’s with all the pseudo-documentary interviews with characters in-between scenes? It’s as if the drama couldn’t speak for itself, so Howard gave his spiritless supporting actors a couple more lines to explain the plot, all while inaccurately representing the real people they were based on.
The tension-building phone call between Nixon and Frost never happened, but from the screenwriter’s point of view, it makes sense to include it. It made the final interview seem like a bloodthirsty fight to the finish, pumping up the action so the climax was more rewarding. But one question remains: if they original story didn’t have enough action to begin with, so much that you have to falsify history to include excitement, why make a movie about it at all?