Richard Nixon (Frank Langella):You know those parties of yours, the ones I read about in the newspapers. Do you actually enjoy those?
David Frost (Michael Sheen):Of course.
Richard Nixon:You have no idea how fortunate that makes you, liking people. Being liked. Having that facility. That lightness, that charm. I don't have it, I never did.
I only saw "Frost/Nixon" recently. I didn't see it when it was showing in the theaters five years ago.
I wanted to see it. But my personal budget wouldn't allow it. (Still doesn't, for that matter.)
But, if I am to be honest with you as well as myself, I have to admit that I just couldn't see Frank Langella as Richard Nixon, and that was an obstacle for me.
That's one of the problems with movies about prominent people who have lived during one's lifetime, I guess. I was a child during the Nixon years, and I have a pretty vivid memory of what he looked like, what he sounded like. Of course, I only saw him on television. I never saw him in person, but that was probably the experience most Americans had as well. Nixon often spoke about life in "the arena," but the truth was that he wasn't very good at interacting with people. He never seemed to spend much time with them unless he felt compelled in some way to do so.
My gold standard for Nixon portrayals is Anthony Hopkins in the 1995 movie "Nixon." I will be the first to admit that Hopkins neither looked nor sounded like Nixon. But, as I have said many times, he captured Nixon's personality better than anyone I ever saw.
I still feel that way, but, after seeing "Frost/Nixon," I must concede that Langella looked and — not always but consistently — sounded a lot like Nixon.
Nixon was a complex man so I can understand why it would be damn near impossible for a single actor to adequately portray him. In a perfect world, I would combine Langella's external portrayal with Hopkins' internal one.
Perhaps then it would be possible to capture the essence of Nixon.
In a way, though, Langella's portrayal demonstrated quite vividly that an actor with a gift for mimicry probably could duplicate Nixon's unique voice and mannerisms well enough to get by. The movie told the behind–the–scenes story of a disgraced former president who desperately sought to rehabilitate his public image and the up–and–coming British interviewer who saw interviewing Nixon as one more high–profile credit for his resume.
It turned out to be something different than either anticipated.
I'm pretty sure it wasn't what either man expected. Nixon certainly had his moments in those interviews, but so did Frost.
If it was necessary to say which man was more successful after the interviews, I would have to say Frost. His career was revived, and he went on to do many things, including interview eight British prime ministers and all of Nixon's successors except Barack Obama. (Frost died of a heart attack nearly four months ago.)
And that was essentially the moral of the story. Frost went on to greater things; Nixon sank deeper into his post–presidential funk. In spite of the audience that the interviews generated, Nixon was yesterday's news.
As one of the characters said near the end of the movie, Nixon's legacy in his own lifetime was that every public scandal became known with the suffix –gate attached to it.
I still say Nixon was too complicated to be reduced to a single, simplistic phrase like that. But if one must summarize the man's life and work in a single sentence, that isn't bad.
Been there, done that, as the TV commercials used to say.
It is one of those classic TV moments that, if you are old enough to remember seeing it the first time, you only need to describe in a few words — and someone else who is old enough to remember it will nod knowingly, smile, perhaps laugh. Nothing more needs to be said.
It's like the episode of The Carol Burnett Show in which the cast parodied "Gone With the Wind."
Or the episode of M*A*S*H in which Henry left the series for good.
Or the episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in which Chuckles the Clown died.
Or several episodes of I Love Lucy.
It was ironic, too, I suppose, given the fact that Davis was a supporter of Richard Nixon — very publicly so, in fact, which was a cause of some tension between him and other black performers.
Sammy Davis never really fit the mold of prominent black entertainer. He did seem to try, but he just didn't quite make it. I always got the feeling that black Americans viewed him as something of a racial sellout, and he often appeared to be trying to make it up to them.
Maybe he didn't need to, but he may have felt that he did.
He voted for Democrats in his 20s and 30s and was a visible supporter of the civil rights movement, but he reportedly felt snubbed by John F. Kennedy when he was left off the entertainer list at the new president's inaugural party — allegedly because of his recent interracial marriage.
Consequently, he became a supporter of Nixon's during his presidency — but gravitated back to Democrats after Nixon resigned.
His sense of alienation really predated that event. In the late 1950s, as a member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack," Davis objected to Sinatra's calling the group of performers "the Clan" on the grounds that it reminded people of the Ku Klux Klan.
I'm not sure if it did or not — that was before I was born, and I have no memory of hearing Sinatra, Davis, et al., being referred to as anything other than "Rat Pack."
Maybe Davis was overly sensitive. Perhaps the politically correct influences of that time put that particular bug in Davis' ear.
Anyway, when All in the Family became a hit, Davis lobbied for a guest spot on the show. It wasn't hard for him to get it — he and Carroll O'Connor (who played Archie) were friends, and I have heard it was O'Connor who had the idea of having Davis kiss him on the cheek at the end of the show.
Whatever the source, it was an inspired moment of entertainment, a good–natured way for Davis to have a little fun at his own expense. A little more than four years earlier, Davis had kissed Nancy Sinatra on a highly rated TV special. It was one of the first interracial kisses in television history, and it caused quite a stir at the time. Practically no one would so much as bat an eye at it today.
That's what icons do, I guess. They do extraordinary things that few, if any, others have done before, and they render those extraordinary things ordinary by the time they're done.
What Sammy Davis did on All in the Family 40 years ago tonight truly was extraordinary by contemporary standards.
I try, I really do try to keep up. But sometimes things just slip through the cracks. You know?
Last January, I was starting my second semester as an adjunct journalism professor in the local community college. I was busy, but I didn't realize I was that busy — anyway, somehow it completely slipped past me that one of my favorite impressionists died.
It slipped by me so completely that it was only recently that I learned he was dead, nearly 10 months after the fact.
He wasn't exactly young — nor even middle–aged, for that matter — so I guess his death wasn't much of a shock. I don't know if he had been sick or if he had enjoyed generally good health.
No, I'm not speaking of Rich Little — although I did have the opportunity to see Rich Little perform here in Dallas about nine years ago. Little, by the way, is still living.
I'm speaking of David Frye, who was rather popular during the Nixon presidency — although he probably wasn't too popular with Nixon himself. The Nixon years were Frye's best, but it was kind of a meteoric thing. His popularity really took off when Nixon was elected president in 1968, seemed to reach its peak during the Watergate scandal, then began to decline dramatically after Nixon resigned.
Frye continued to do impressions of the major political figures of his time — often as well as or better than Little, at least in my opinion — and, like Little, he did impressions of other celebrities, too — movie stars (like George C. Scott and Henry Fonda), athletes (like Muhammad Ali and O.J. Simpson), etc. — but it was his impression of Nixon that people seemed to remember, even when he died.
I, for one, loved listening to Frye's records when I was a boy. His impression of Nixon was so good Nixon's own mother probably couldn't have told the difference. But, as I say, there was so much more to his comedy.
In one of my favorite Frye albums — "Richard Nixon: A Fantasy" — Nixon was dreaming about the Watergate break–in and the investigation.
One segment had his vice president, Spiro Agnew (who was particularly smarmy, even in comparison to some of the people who have been vice president since his day), being interviewed by Bill Buckley, who asked him if he had prepared himself for the possibility of becoming president. (Frye provided both voices — as well as nearly all the other voices on the album — and was spot on, as always.)
Agnew replied that he believed Nixon was innocent and he believed the rest of the country did, too. Then Frye provided the voice of Agnew thinking something entirely different — "Oh, boy! President Agnew! President Agnew! That'll show all those guys back in high school who used to tease me with 'Spiro, Spiro is a zero, With a name like that he must be a queer–o!' "
His humor went far beyond an uncanny ability to sound like so many people — and an occasional tendency to offend. He often could summarize entire personalities in one or two well–crafted lines.
Anyway, today would have been his 78th birthday. It's the first birthday he's missed.
And, while I wish I could have said this to him while he was living, better late than never, I guess.
I guess my brother and I really turned out differently.
We had the same parents, of course, and we grew up in the same house — but my brother probably has always preferred to build a motorcycle from spare parts while I have always leaned more toward reading and writing.
Like most siblings, we had different interests. Nothing wrong with that. The thing we had in common, the thing we both got from our parents, was an appreciation for creative expression. We expressed our creativity in different ways, that's all. Still do.
There are probably several reasons why that is true, and I'm sure it would make for a fascinating — and, in all likelihood, lengthy — essay, but I only mention it to make the point that I did a lot of reading when I was growing up.
My parents were both teachers, and they believed in reading. They encouraged me to do as much of it as I could so it wasn't unusual for me to read book after book after book during my summer vacations.
It also wasn't unusual for me to read books that were supposedly over my head — or, at least, "beyond my years," as my grandmother often said.
(My grandmother contributed to that, incidentally. She often gave me books that would have been incomprehensible to many of my peers — but I read most of them from cover to cover and got a lot from them.)
My grandmother probably was right — to a certain extent. I did read a lot of things that I really didn't completely understand at the time — but I have re–read them since then, and they made a lot more sense the second time around.
In the summer of 1976, I read a lot of books that probably should have been hard for me to comprehend, starting with Woodward and Bernstein's recently published sequel to "All the President's Men" — which kind of left readers hanging. At the end of that book, President Nixon was telling the nation in early 1974 that "I have no intention ... of walking away from the job the American people elected me to do."
And, at the time, it was hard to see — on the surface and to the untrained eye — how Nixon, who had been tripped up by several untruths in 1973, could possibly be removed from office without a so–called "smoking gun." All that anyone seemed to have against him were the words of one other person and what would be considered circumstantial evidence.
Yet, when Woodward and Bernstein resumed the story in "The Final Days," the emphasis from the start was on the behind–the–scenes efforts to persuade the president and his loyalists that he had to resign — efforts that led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974.
Like everyone else in America, I had been following the Watergate scandal, even when the topics were beyond my years.
And there had been times (i.e., when the so–called Senate Watergate Committee was questioning witnesses) when the topics clearly fell in that category.
There were also times — when the House Judiciary Committee was considering articles of impeachment against Nixon — when it was hard for me to keep up.
Part of that may have been an overabundance of characters in the story. I knew the names of the major players, of course, but sometimes I got lost in the maze of deputies and aides and lawyers who made up the vast supporting cast.
I came to the conclusion rather early in that process that many of those underlings were like the German soldiers from World War II — the ones who protested after the war ended that they had merely been "following orders" when they executed people in the concentration camps.
Even so, I followed things pretty well — if I do say so myself — and I still understand aspects of the Watergate scandal that people who lived through it never have understood.
I've got to admit, though — I enjoyed reading the inside stuff in "The Final Days" that nobody heard about at the time — how Nixon and Henry Kissinger got on their knees and prayed together in the Oval Office or how an inebriated Nixon wandered the halls of the White House, carrying on conversations with the portraits on the walls.
Those excerpts had been frequently published in the weeks before I finally got a copy of "The Final Days," and I was eager to read them for myself.
(I will never forget a wickedly funny Saturday Night Live parody of the book in which Nixon asked a portrait of Lincoln, "Why are they doing this to me, Abe?" and the portrait replied, "Because you're such a dip, Dick.")
I don't remember how I acquired my hardback copy of "The Final Days" — somebody must have given it to me because I hadn't started working in the summers yet and, even when I did, it probably would have taken me a day or two to earn enough take–home pay to purchase it on my own.
But I've still got that copy. The once–white cover has yellowed with age, and the dust on it betrays how long it has been since I read it, but it means a lot to me.
It took on even more value for me when, while I was teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, co–author Carl Bernstein came to campus. I went to hear him — with my copy of "The Final Days" in hand — and I got Bernstein to sign it after his lecture.
(I'm not usually an autograph hound — but I make an exception whenever I have an opportunity to meet a world–class journalist.)
Ultimately, I felt the Watergate story was a story of the triumph of the American system over an individual's paranoia and unquenchable thirst for power.
"The Final Days" completed the story that was started in "All the President's Men."
There are many things about 1995 that I simply do not remember.
In hindsight, I guess that is to be expected. In May of that year, my mother was killed in a flash flood; after that, many things that happened in the world in the second half of that year simply didn't happen, as far as I was concerned.
By the end of the year, I guess, I was regaining my footing. And, in December, I went to see a movie I had been anticipating for quite awhile — Oliver Stone's "Nixon" starring Anthony Hopkins.
The movie actually premiered 15 years ago today — but I have rarely gone to see a movie on its first day, even when I was a teenager. In those days, when one saw a movie was often considered more important than actually seeing it.
I went to see it a few days after Christmas. It's safe to say Christmas was a difficult holiday in my family that year, and it is equally safe to say I was preoccupied with other matters until Christmas was over. But I did see the movie before the new year began.
What's more, he is clearly associated with the left–leaning political elements in America, and, presumably because of that, it was generally accepted that any biopic Stone would do on Nixon would be exceedingly negative.
I wanted to see it with my father, who remembered not only Nixon's presidency but his vice presidency as well. Oh, and he hated Nixon, too. (I think I may have mentioned that from time to time.)
Well, that, he said, was precisely why he wouldn't go see the movie.
"I hated Nixon so much," he told me over dinner one night, "that I won't go see it even though they trash him in it."
After Nixon resigned, I don't think Dad ever thought about him again — unless he was forced to do so, like when Nixon did his famous post–presidency interview with David Frost or when he had a stroke and lapsed into a coma — and died shortly thereafter.
Personally, I didn't feel that Nixon was "trashed" in the movie. Maybe that was Stone's intention — and maybe my response was all cockeyed — but I found myself sympathizing with Nixon — the dutiful son craving his mother's approval, the vice presidential nominee chastened by attacks on his integrity, the gubernatorial candidate who lashes out at the press on Election Night, the president who wrestles daily with his inner demons.
Nixon's story — how he achieved his heart's desire only to see it slip through his fingers and crash on the floor — was a drama of truly Shakespearean proportions.
I don't agree with most of the things Nixon said. I still oppose many of his policies. But the movie didn't really explore the political side. It explored the darker, human side, the side where doubt and personal recrimination dwell.
I think there is at least a little of that in every human heart. Most people manage to rise above it to a certain degree, but Nixon may represent the opposite extreme. The dark side had its way within him so often they could have played "Darth Vader's theme" instead of "Hail to the Chief" when he entered a room.
We are truly the sum of our individual experiences, and sometimes that can be seen in unpleasant ways. More than anything, that may have been Stone's message.
An experience like asking viewers to express their support for keeping him on the ticket was another humiliation Nixon was not eager to duplicate.
At each juncture in his life, he was presented as a "new" Nixon — that may be the most persistent memory I have of Nixon, that he was constantly trying to reinvent himself — but it was always the same Nixon underneath.
I still hate Nixon — thanks mostly to my parents' influence, I suppose — but I feel that I understand him better for having seen Stone's film. That may be an unintended consequence.
Granted, Stone took what could be called poetic license with both his film about Nixon and his earlier film about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Neither could be called a literal history. Some events were not presented chronologically; others were condensed and/or combined, primarily (I presume) in the interest of brevity and, perhaps, more palatable ratings.
(Beware, high school or college students working on research papers about Kennedy or Nixon: Do not use these films as resources. They are dramatizations that are partly based on verifiable facts. Use those verifications as your sources.)
And I guess that would be my primary complaint about Stone's filmmaking style. His free association approach could lead to misinterpretation of the events, to say the least.
It was something that had to be done, really. You couldn't tell the story of Watergate — let alone the story of Nixon's life — in a few hours. You had to hit the high points and merge other things.
But a few things were given a pretty accurate — and seemingly complete — treatment.
Like, for example, Nixon's visit to the Lincoln Memorial in the wee hours of May 9, 1970, only days after four students were killed in an antiwar demonstration at Kent State University.
That visit to the Lincoln Memorial really did happen. I couldn't swear that the conversation that was shown in the film was, word for word, the conversation that took place — although I know that Nixon did have the conversation about Syracuse football.
On that occasion, Nixon spoke with a group of young people who were preparing to participate in an antiwar demonstration in Washington. I've heard varying accounts of that meeting, and it struck me that Stone's re–creation was as faithful a retelling as one could expect.
Nixon, as we all know, secretly recorded Oval Office conversations, but no one, to my knowledge, was carrying a portable tape recorder at the Lincoln Memorial.
But, clearly, there were composite scenes in "Nixon," like the scene where Nixon discusses payment for Howard Hunt with his aides, then has his conversation with Bob Haldeman about opening up the "whole Bay of Pigs thing."
Without going into much detail, any student of Watergate can tell you that such scenes are not literal retellings, merely combining known events.
I guess it also takes for granted that a viewer is fairly well acquainted with the story of Richard Nixon and the Watergate coverup.
But that's a pretty broad assumption, don't you think? It's been more than 35 years now since Nixon resigned, but, in my experience, most people still don't understand many things about Watergate or what drove Nixon to do the things he did.
I understand that. Watergate was a complex event. Nixon was a complex man. People my age and younger have no memory of the days when Nixon was vice president, when he was involved in some rather clandestine dealings.
As much as there is a desire for a simple answer to why things happened the way they did, I'm afraid there isn't one.
But perhaps the final scene of "Nixon" comes as close to truth as is possible.
He didn't, of course. Instead, he provided, perhaps unknowingly, a moment of keen insight into his own personality when he told his staff never to be bitter or petty. "Remember," he said, "others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them — and then you destroy yourself."
I thought Hopkins did a remarkable job of re–creating that blinding moment of clarity in Nixon's presidency — in the very last minutes of his presidency.
Shakespeare himself probably couldn't have written a more compelling tragedy.
I'm not really sure why Turner Classic Movies chose to show "All the President's Men" tonight at 10 p.m. (Central). After all, TCM's annual "31 Days of Oscar" salute concluded yesterday.
But the thing is that a movie about Watergate — indeed, the very subject of Watergate — has a great deal of relevance to the presidency — well, presidential power, at least. And Watergate was the story of how one president abused his power beyond the point that most Americans would have thought possible.
That's the thing I have always found remarkable about Watergate — the fact that so many people resisted the truth about Nixon. It was almost as if the nation had not just been through the many deceptions of Lyndon Johnson and his subordinates. In the days of Watergate, even those who hated Richard Nixon — and there were many — had a hard time imagining a scoundrel like Nixon occupying the Oval Office. Perhaps it was the residual effect of being taught, as most people who grew up in America were, to trust and respect authority.
It was as if the fact that a politician had been elected president, even if by a narrow margin, transformed that person into a saintly person, above pettiness, above the messiness of grudges and personal insecurity.
At his best, Richard Nixon was not a bad president. He possessed a mind that was often capable of conceiving original, creative solutions to the nation's problems. But it was a great misfortune, for both Nixon and the country, that he was at his worst far more often than he was at his best.
In many ways, Nixon was a textbook example of what a president should not be — a paranoid introvert.
But "All the President's Men" wasn't really about Nixon. He wasn't even a supporting character. "All the President's Men" was about the crimes that were committed in his name, the men who committed the crimes — and the men who uncovered the whole ugly mess.
I have a soft spot in my heart for "All the President's Men" — both the book and the film. The story of Woodward and Bernstein (which was masterfully presented on the big screen by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford) inspired me to study journalism and pursue it in my professional life.
And it taught me a lesson about the vulnerability of freedom and democracy — and the vital role that a free press plays in preserving both.
It's been kind of a dreary, rainy New Year's Eve here in Dallas, and I have been looking out my window, thinking about the past.
My only sibling — my younger brother — will celebrate his birthday on Saturday. And I have been thinking about when we were children, and I took a certain amount of pleasure from making sure the adults knew I was the older of the two.
At some point, I guess, older siblings discover that being older is not an advantage after all. And, I wonder, when exactly does that happen?
Well, I don't know if Sir Anthony Hopkins has any siblings. But, if he does — and if any of those siblings are younger than he is — I doubt if Sir Anthony ever reached the point where he felt he didn't enjoy the advantage. And he's 72 today.
I guess, if you took a poll asking people to name Hopkins' most memorable role, it would be Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs." You might get some support for James Stevens in "The Remains of the Day" or Adolf Hitler in "The Bunker" or John Quincy Adams in "Amistad."
But, personally, I have always been fond of his performance as Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's "Nixon."
I grew up during the Nixon years. I remember him very well. And I can tell you — beyond even the hint of a doubt — that Anthony Hopkins did not look like Nixon. And he didn't sound like him, either.
But he captured the essence of Nixon's introverted, paranoid personality. He was Richard Nixon, even though he neither looked nor sounded like him. For that, he was nominated for an Oscar. He lost, but that is beside the point.
That is the true test of Hopkins' skill. And it is the best reason I can think of why many people think he is the greatest living actor.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
