Talking heads

Wednesday, 21st January 2009

Frost/Nixon
15, Nationwide

Frost/Nixon is a properly terrific, dramatised account of the television interview between David Frost and disgraced former American President Richard Nixon which, broadcast in the summer of 1977, achieved the largest audience ever for a news programme in the history of American TV with 45 million viewers. As I don’t remember much about it — I was 16 at the time and therefore much too busy shoplifting in Chelsea Girl (or Snob or Biba; I wasn’t that fussed) — I can’t comment on the historical accuracy, but can say it feels powerfully authentic and, even if it isn’t, who cares? It’s a tight and absorbing trip to the cinema, end of.

Directed by Ron Howard — who’d have thought it? Richie Cunningham from Happy Days! — and adapted by playwright/screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Last King of Scotland; not Happy Days) from his hit stage play, it follows all the shenanigans that ultimately led to the epic interview which, in and of itself, was filmed over 12 days, finally amounting to 28 hours and 45 minutes of footage. Sounds thrilling, doesn’t it? Let’s go! But here’s the thing: it actually is. I mean, it’s not thrilling thrilling, like Jaws the first time round, but it is thrilling to see something like this pulled off, and thrilling to see Frank Langella playing the dethroned Nixon with such festering splendour. It may even be that Frost/Nixon is about as thrilling as these things can get when sharks are not involved.

The film opens with the 1974 news footage of the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation, then cuts to a couple of years later and Frost (Michael Sheen) who, after having his talk show cancelled in America, is now hosting it in Australia. He isn’t thrilled about this. He liked being big in New York. People couldn’t get a table at Sardi’s for love nor money but him? ‘It was my canteen,’ he laments at one point. His career is on the wane. He needs a plan. But when he first moots the idea of interviewing Nixon to John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen), then Frost’s producer, Birt thinks it’s hilarious. ‘But you’re a talk show host,’ he laughs. ‘I saw you interviewing the Bee Gees yesterday.’ Frost wants to show he’s not just a lightweight shmuck — don’t we all, my dear, don’t we all — in the hope that, one day, he might even be considered smart enough to host Through the Keyhole. (Just saying...)

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