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Review: FROST/NIXON / Ron Howard (2008)

December 3rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Nixon/Frost (2008)
Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Peter Morgan from his play
Starring: Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Patty McCormack and Clint Howard
Running Time: 122 min.
Photographed by Salvatore Totino in

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

If nothing else, Frost/Nixon answers one burning question: Whatever became of Patty McCormack, the pig-tailed demon in The Bad Seed. She’s all grow’d up now and playing Pat Nixon in Ron Howard’s made-for-TV blow-up of the sensational 1977 video dismantling of America’s 37th president.

In the closing minutes of Frost/Nixon, James Reston, Jr. (Sam Rockwell) admits to underestimating what it was that made the Nixon/Frost confrontation such a smashing success: the reductive power of the close-up. If I were Ron Howard, I wouldn’t end the picture by drawing attention to what I’d been doing for the past 115 minutes.

Howard wasn’t the first director to have his fingerprints on this project. Mike Nichols, George Clooney, Sam Mendes, Bennett Miller and even Marty were all in the running. (Everybody’s first choice on every film is Him. I bet Marty even got an offer to direct New York Minute.) Based on a play that was based on a TV interview, Ron Howard was the natural choice. (All kidding aside, Mike Nichols could have done wonders with this script.)

Perhaps the British accent fooled me growing up, but I don’t remember David Frost being this much of a lightweight. (Peter Cook dubbed Frost “the bubonic plagiarist.”) According to Howard’s vision of the events surrounding the historic interviews, David Frost comes off as an unprepared, unengaged, money mad pleasure seeker. Instead of spending the night before the interview cramming for the defining moment of his career, Frost is at the Cineramadome attending the premier of The Slipper and the Rose, a film he executive produced. He was still searching for sponsors days after the interviews began filming.

According to the film, the trio of media heavyweights Frost surrounded himself with were so formidable, the talk show host felt no need to brush up on his Nixon. Veteran reporter Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) was Frost’s strategist and executive editor of the interviews. John Birt (Matthey Macfadyen) produced the show and James Reston, Jr., the acerbic Nixon-hating author and lecturer, was hired as Frost’s writer. Reston’s diatribe against Nixon is pitched to a modern audience fed up with the current commander in chief.

Frost had a reputation as a womanizer, but the seemingly fictitious Caroline Cushing character, played by the comely Rebecca Hall, appears to be a composite created by the filmmakers for purposes of eye candy. Ms. Hall quietly stole the show in Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona. Under Howard’s lazy eye she does little more than change and model the Nino’s form fitting, authentic to the period costumes.

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