Frost Nixon

My Father’s Day present from my wife was tickets to see Frost Nixon on Broadway. I had heard only a little bit about this play. It’s one where your initial reaction is “they’re making a play about that?” The play is about the interviews that David Frost, a British talk show host, did with Richard Nixon after his resignation. Sure, that sounds very entertaining.

But my wife knows that I am very interested in history and politics and she heard from a friend that it was excellent. The actor who played Nixon won the Tony and most other awards for the role. It’s apparently, according to Wikipedia, being adapted into a film to be directed by Ron Howard.

For those too young to remember, here’s the basic overview. The interviews took place in 1977 (Nixon resigned in 1974). The fact that David Frost was the one who landed the first big interview with Nixon after the resignation was quite unusual. David Frost was a British talk show host with a bit of a playboy reputation and not a real political heavyweight. He briefly had a show in the U.S. but it had been canceled. He was looking to jump start his career.

Important note. I am getting much of this history from the play. I know that the play is drama and not completely historically accurate. But I don’t know the actual history well enough to know exactly which parts are totally true and which are drama. This was definitely one of those plays that makes you want to go and read about the history.

Anyway, the Nixon camp was getting offers from mainstream US media for a big interview (the play kept mentioning that Mike Wallace was willing to pay $300K). But they were quite concerned that Nixon would just get attacked. They were looking for a shot at redeeming his reputation. So a lightweight British talk show host seemed perfect. Plus they got more money (again, according to the play).

So the main conflict in the play is the two central characters, both trying to redeem their reputations. Frost hires some serious people to help him with research. But Nixon is a master during the initial interviews and totally takes over, always painting himself in the best possible light.

In the final interview, Frost had some factual ammunition to catch Nixon in an outright lie regarding Watergate and this finally pushes Nixon to the point where he gets the confession/apology that he was truly looking for.

Even reading what I’ve written above, it still doesn’t sound like a great play. But it was. It is very well written and the actors are tremendous. The whole thing was riveting. I don’t know if it will translate to the screen well, because it was the incredible presence of the actors that made the play. It’s just different when you are 40 feet away.