Frosted Dick
Frank Langella’s portrayal of the late president reveals the folly of all such efforts
By Andy Klein
Films based on real events from the lives of celebrities face a peculiar tradeoff: The more famous the character, the likelier the built-in audience interest ... and the less likely the actor can escape our familiarity with the original’s look and sound.
Cases in point: Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon (opening on Friday) and Gus Van Sant’s Milk (already in theaters). Last week I wrote, “Penn looks so much like Milk that you wonder how the producers could have ever considered anyone else (like, at one point, Robin Williams); but on reflection you realize that he doesn’t innately look that much like Milk – which is a sign of how terrific his performance is.”
It’s impossible to say the same thing about Frank Langella’s Nixon, but then the task is geometrically harder: Nixon – the politician, the president, the bitter creep – is so pervasive a figure in the culture that I doubt there are a dozen people (other than ex-friends) to whom Harvey Milk is more familiar or iconic.
Howard opens with a quick montage about Nixon’s fall from power. (One can’t say “fall from grace,” since there was never any grace there to start with.) We see news clips and footage from the Watergate hearings and hear scratchy excerpts from the White House tapes that proved Nixon’s undoing. Howard shows us the real Chuck Colson and John Dean but cannily avoids showing Nixon himself; we hear him – which is fine, because, when Langella shows up, our ears are naturally more forgiving of any discrepancies than our eyes.
Frost/Nixon bridges the gap between the historical material and the fictionalized portrait with a series of participants “testifying” to the camera, as in Reds. At first, one might be confused as to whether they’re the actual people or actors; for me, it wasn’t until Oliver Platt’s marvelous, familiar mug showed up on screen that it became clear.
The focus soon shifts to David Frost (Michael Sheen), then a TV “presenter.” The real life Frost had tasted American success in his mid-20s on the U.S. version of That Was the Week That Was (a.k.a. TW3), a knockoff of the British satirical show that had made him famous when he was barely out of Cambridge. While the American version only ran for a season and a half, its impact was huge, paving the way for Laugh-In and, eventually, Saturday Night Live.
But – by the mid-’70s, when the film starts – Frost’s career, having started in glory in England and the U.S., is in decline. In what sounds like the punch line to a bad joke, he finds himself hosting a talk show in Australia.
Eager to come up with something sensational to reverse his fortunes, he fixates on getting the biggest possible interview subject – Richard Nixon, who has yet to speak extensively (and certainly not frankly) to the press since resigning in disgrace. To Nixon and his agent – the legendary Irving “Don’t call me Swifty!” Lazar (Toby Jones) – money is the central issue, and, when network interest is disappointing, Frost writes out a personal check for the advance.
The problem Frost has in selling such an apparently surefire concept is that he’s not a journalist; the journalism community is dubious that a comedian-turned-TV-host will come up with anything beyond a series of softball questions, thus handing Nixon an international platform to begin rewriting history in his own favor. (There is also the issue, not resolved to this day, about “checkbook journalism” – paying public figures for interviews.)
That same expectation is precisely why Nixon is agreeable. It’s hard to imagine that any sum of money would convince this quintessential politician to assent to a similar format – four days of questioning – with the likes of Mike Wallace or Dan Rather. (The latter devastatingly one-upped Nixon in a press conference during Watergate.) He expects that Frost will be easy to manipulate.
And he’s right. As presented in the film, Nixon throws his interrogator off balance only seconds before the first taping begins. He then drones on so endlessly in his answers that Frost doesn’t have time to ask many; it’s as though Nixon is daring this polite Brit to interrupt him.
According to the script by playwright Peter Morgan (who also wrote The Queen and The Last King of Scotland), it’s only in the final interview that Frost develops the nerve to actually take control and corner the slippery pol into something akin to a confession.
To their credit, Howard and Morgan are able to structure a series of largely mundane events for maximum suspense. And the cast acquits itself well. Sheen finally breaks out of his cage as the official portrayer of Tony Blair, a role that has previously defined his career (in the 2004 TV movie The Deal, as well as in The Queen). For someone of his distinctive appearance, Jones can be remarkably chameleonlike, adding Lazar to his gallery of impersonations – Truman Capote, Karl Rove, and several more ancient figures.
Which brings us to Langella, who almost nails Nixon. It’s a nearly impossible thing to pull off: In Oliver Stone’s Nixon, Anthony Hopkins couldn’t completely lose his native accent, nor did he attempt to look much like Nixon. Langella looks and sounds much more convincing, but that presents a different set of problems.
Even before his presidency, Nixon was the butt of numerous impressionists; comic David Frye built a career on him. So, by the time of his resignation, the public Nixon was an amalgam of the real Nixon and a series of increasingly spot-on parodies. The closer Langella gets to our memories of the man, the more he accidentally evokes Dan Aykroyd’s devastating SNL impression. It’s hard to fault Langella: It’s probably impossible for any actor in the role to escape the ghost of Aykroyd. (That said, it might have been better to cast someone who could have coasted on a stronger physical resemblance – Phillip Baker Hall or Lane Smith, both of whom have played Nixon before.)
Like Stone, Howard paints Nixon a little more sympathetically than many of us who remember the era are likely to warm to. Nixon was an unlovable scoundrel, a villain who would have dismantled the Constitution, had he been able to.
But time softens many judgments. And Nixon has one great advantage nowadays over most hated historical figures – the subsequent presidency of George W. Bush, a man who has few of Nixon’s redeeming traits and whose transgressions make Nixon look like a Quaker choirboy.
Frost/Nixon. Directed by Ron Howard. Screenplay by Peter Morgan; based on his play. With Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Toby Jones, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, and Rebecca Hall. Opens Friday at Pacific’s ArcLight.
Published: 12/04/2008
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