A dramatization of TV
interviews and their background brings out the rather gripping backstory of a
media event that also, in forgiving retrospect, amounts to history
A real-life tale shows how cultural “racehorses” were given respect in
an analog age, before the Internet came with its capacity to make worthy-enough
persons into roadkill
What a long and bizarre downfall
[for Nixon] it had been. If you had tried to tell me that there would be more
than 40 members of this administration convicted of felonies, that the
president himself would be the ringleader of a widespread criminal conspiracy
directed from the Oval Office, that there would be CIA operatives tapping
phones and breaking into houses, that there would be hush money paid and a guy
using his wife’s dishwashing gloves so there wouldn’t be any prints on the
money, I’d have said that the odds were better of seeing Fidel Castro riding
through the Capitol Rotunda on a giraffe.
—Dan Rather, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News (New
York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012), p. 144; I recommend this
readable memoir, by CBS’s main evening-news anchorman from 1981 to 2005, if
you’re interested in national-level U.S.
journalism or the history of the U.S. for the past 50 years
*Alludes to an Emily Dickinson poem—see at end of this
entry.
Subsections below:
The historical
phenomenon of the interviews
The Frost/Nixon play comes to shape the
legacy of the interviews; the movie goes further
Associates of the principal
characters often stand out, in their seize-the-day roles
Langella and Sheen in
superb performances
Frost as the film’s
education-undergoing pointman
How Frost as the
fun-loving flirt finally comes to terms with the project, after Nix with night
thoughts spills bile on the phone, complete with heavy-duty curse
A little too much
Austin Powers here?
[For an entry reviewing the film All the President’s Men (1976), see here. Edits 10/30/13.]
Richard Nixon still matters today because, as plenty
of now-aged baby boomers will tell you, he had a remarkably corrupt
administration, he was the first U.S. president to resign in disgrace, and he
was almost impeached by Congress (i.e., could have been subjected there to a
trial, with possible conviction for felonies).
Moreover, his handling of the second half of the Vietnam War
has been subject to intense criticism by some (the Frost/Nixon film has character James Reston point out more than a
million deaths from the Vietnamese and Cambodian populations); and Nixon was at
best an odd character who not only showed his derision-drawing side during his
presidential tenure (1969-74), but showed it at all sorts of points in the
prior portion of his career, starting with the Alger Hiss case of ~1948 and the
early-1950s “Checkers speech,” and on through the years. (For a biographical
film I suggest with reservations, see my two-part review on
Oliver Stone’s Nixon [1995].)
Watergate still stands as sort of “exemplar” of political
corruption. The Iran-contra affair of 1986-87, whose investigation in the press
I followed with as much deep interest as older people had regarding Watergate
in the early ’70s, directly concerned more important matters of international
policy than had Watergate. (On Iran-contra, articles by historian Theodore Draper in The New York Review of
Books were fine, thoughtfully probing reviews of proceeding transcripts and
the like in 1987.)
Meanwhile, the Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998, which led to
the first actual impeachment of a president since the 1800s, certainly
captivated popular attention with the media coverage, but to me it was (at the
hands of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and Congress) a farce, with President
Bill Clinton’s alleged wrongdoing unworthy of the Congress to dignify with a
trial. For the last 50 or so years, the only presidential scandal—which seems (as
a matter of historical pattern within the past 40 years) to turn up in the
second term of a reelected president’s period of service—that so redolently
showed a culture of rampant and felony-level corruption within an
administration was Watergate.
The historical
phenomenon of the interviews
I remember when the interviews of Richard Nixon by David
Frost in May 1977 were on television. Our TV at home had been on the fritz for
some time, and it was fixed (I think) just before these interviews aired, which
seemed fortuitous. There was some anticipatory ballyhoo in the media about
these interviews (such as in the major newsmagazines); Nixon, whose disgrace
was still fresh in people’s minds, was expected now to be faced—presumably with
tough questions—for the first chance of anyone’s holding him to some kind of
account for his most fundamental malfeasance in over two years. Typical of him,
most generally he had evaded prosecution (and President Ford had pardoned him);
detail-wise, so much of his addressing questions, before August 1974, about the
Watergate break-in and the prodigious consequences seemed to be limited to
handling that was evasive in one way or another, done under cover of
technicalities, or ostensibly addressed by his close administration advisors’
being led to resign like fall guys. Would “the man at the top” come clean, and/or
show some contrition, about Watergate? It was “must-see TV” at a time when that
concept wasn’t so familiar yet.
The fact that it was David Frost doing the interviewing, as
I recall, was a bit novel, but not too bizarre to my young mind. I was 15 by
the time this program aired, and I had heard of Frost as, most of all to my
naïve mind, a talk show host. What I clearly enough remember is that it seemed
a little odd Frost was the one in the seat of the American TV inquisitor. If I
draw inferences with hindsight, Frost did not have the air of a tough, “ready-to-grill-the-interviewee”
news reporter; but it’s possible I thought he was OK because he was some kind
of fairly well-rounded TV personality in terms of the range of things he did. And
maybe we naifs took him as acceptable because we laypeople put faith in the TV
networks and producers, in line with how they were held in regard as having
usually “unimpeachable judgment” in filling their public-service roles, in the
days when there were mainly three networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) covering
world-historical issues of moment like the nuclear arms race, and that was it.
But more importantly, since this was Nixon being grilled, I
think just about anyone in the possible audience wouldn’t have felt the
interviews would comprise a puff piece, especially since they went on over several
broadcasts. It was ostensibly a big production, focusing on a person who
couldn’t help but be regarded with sober assessment, so how could the
interviews help but have some depth and a sense of serious responsibility?
There were comments from viewers after the interviews, such
as on when Nixon got confronted about Watergate. A teacher I had for a European
history class in ninth grade that school year (1976-77)—Arthur DiBenedetto, age
about 25 at the time—echoed a sentiment that I think many had, mocking Nixon’s
claim in the interviews, “It’s OK when the president does it” (which is I think
how “Mr. D” phrased it). This sentence stands for one rough summary of what
many people took away from the interviews’ evidence of Nixon’s
at-least-somewhat unapologetic demeanor and arguments. In fact, this idea in
particular was what rankled people the most: it showed he was the same old
Nixon, and in some sense he hadn’t been in these interviews—and may not ever be—brought
to account for his crimes.
That is, before the Frost interviews, Nixon never really
said “I’m sorry” for the trouble he had caused (as weak as this gesture still
might have been). Then, in the interviews, he merely said mistakes were made,
and he had “let the American people down.” This reflects what the historical
stakes, as perceived, were. Meanwhile, until that time, no one before David
Frost had had the opportunity to give a fairly rigorous set of interviews to
Nixon, and no one had gone to the effort to try to get Nixon to be held to
account on TV so that people might get some semblance of “closure” about
Watergate. Net result: The audience was not-trivially disappointed by the
interviews, I think; but Frost’s effort was better than not doing it at all,
and the interviews certainly made for high-ratings TV for a week or two that
spring.
I think it’s fair to say that over the years the interviews
took on a stature as being more noble and effective than they were regarded as
immediately afterward. When David Frost died this year, one newspaper
headlined the obit as if the Nixon interviews were where Nixon had apologized, but I clearly remember that
that fact hadn’t entirely been achieved, and this was widely enough understood
in 1977. But when you figure there was no other chance afterward, until Nixon
died in 1994, to “give [him] the trial he never had,” as is said by the Frost/Nixon character of James Reston, Jr., played vividly by Sam Rockwell in the film, these interviews
would (by default) have to stand for that trial, and they took on historical
significance for that reason.
The Frost/Nixon play comes to shape the
legacy of the interviews; the movie goes further
When I heard about the play Frost/Nixon in the early 2000s or so (as I’d later find, both the
stage play and the screenplay were written by Peter Morgan), I felt it
was a somewhat derivative thing to do about something that in 1977 had been a
little anticlimactic. The idea of such an adaptation conveyed, to me, some of
the “catch-as-catch-can” quality of some Broadway efforts, similar to something
from years ago called Nixon in China (directed
by Peter Sellars), where Nixon’s visit to that country was a
central image and piece of drama of the play. It goes to show that Nixon’s
novel, fulsome career is ripe for stories of one kind or another—books, plays,
movies—so that even if the artistic efforts are a little second-rate, you still
have some real-life drama to draw from, whether you hate(d) Nixon, admire(d)
him, or something in between, despite whatever the point of the art was.
All this is to preface my assessment that the film Frost/Nixon, which incidentally gives me
a chance to cover a film directed by the prolific Ron Howard, is a fine
work, and it is not only adaptable as part of a history-class effort to show
what Nixon was about as a historical figure and as a source of pungent meaning
in political culture even today. I think the movie, as could be true of the
play, might overstate how the interviews were regarded by people in 1977; but
in terms of the facts of the chanciness of how a historical TV event was
arranged, and what was more ideally at stake, the film is incisive and
suspenseful, with a lot of vivid details, and it has enough depth to reward
multiple viewings. And Frank Langella gives an excellent performance as Nixon, perhaps one of the very best you’ll
see of that fellow in any film. Michael Sheen as Frost is also quite good,
a sharp figure when at his best.
Actually, this film benefits from the fact that both Langella
and Sheen had performed their roles on the stage. They so much had their
characters under their skin that they brought excellent performances to the
screen. Since their characters were the “men of the hour” in this story anyway,
that excuses, or justifies, how their performances seem more solid and sharp in
details, than, arguably, those of the other actors, who have more of the
“fleetingly” incisive performances of movie actors stepping up to the plate on an emergent chance and being “on
point” largely because of the sheer opportunity they had for doing their
significant-enough jobs, which in a sense was also true of the real people they
played.
In other words, Nixon’s side men, as was true of Frost’s,
and other associated people such as TV production technicians, a literary
agent, and so on, “stepped up to the plate” to “be themselves” only (or in good
part) because of what this interview meant in a “nexus in time,” while the
“nexus” came off the heavily-demanded-on backs of Nixon and Frost. But Nixon and
Frost, as the movie conveys, were more thoroughly grounded in what fate these
interviews presented; they had their grander reputations and futures at stake
here, thus they had to give their work at hand whatever they had as men to make this encounter work. Thus
it was quite fitting that Langella and Sheen’s performances showed some
fullness of whatever their men had in them, and the actors meet this goal.
(How times have changed; all this seems like professional men—“seasoned
handlers”—from various political dispositions could come together, generally
peaceably, to see how two well-treated racehorses would do in a tight race.
Nowadays, control of “media exposure,” especially on the Internet [where
control is much harder to effect], means that “people of moment” are less like
respected racehorses, and more like rabbits or other small game that can be
smashed into roadkill on a highway.)
The result is a film that as director Howard says in DVD
commentary is a sort of “a thinking person’s Rocky.” The metaphor that this is a sort of boxing match with
multiple rounds isn’t too hokey. And even if some little details are fabricated
for the story, the film shows that, indeed, the Nixon/Frost interviews were a
sort of boxing match—one would think more formidable for the aging Nixon than
for Frost; and this naturally brings suspense to the story, and adds to the
chances for spicy character turns by the “corner men,” as Howard calls them—the
helpers of the boxers who, after a round has ended, tend passionately to them
when the boxers retreat to the corner to get washed off and a chance to spit.
Associates of the
principal characters often stand out, in their seize-the-day roles
In this capacity, on Nixon’s side, Kevin Bacon as Jack
Brennan, the ex-Marine chief of staff at Nixon’s San Clemente redoubt, is especially vivid and
effective. Bacon generally looks like someone attempted to carve a handsome
face out of oak and had trouble; and here with economical shows of emotion, he
does a good, etched job as Nixon’s tough protector, both having an H.R.
Haldeman flavor of a hard-ass confidant and showing some glimmers of humanity
amid his more routine tactics, as he wheels through a range of responses to the
promising-yet-dangerous situation his man is in. Other characters who are
present as Nixon’s advisors/cheerleading team, including a blonde woman playing
Diane Sawyer (who later in real life became a TV reporter and anchor), seem
like ghosts by comparison.
Frost’s “corner men” are a motley crew, but vivid in their
own ways:
Matthew Macfayden plays his British producer John
Birt, whom Frost tapped to help him in this project as he aimed to make
media-event hay out of a “big fish.” Birt more or less protects his man amid
the Americans, and is adequate as the advisor who most reflects Frost’s home
(Commonwealth) culture.
Oliver Platt plays Bob Zelnick, identified as a bureau
chief of ABC News, who brings some appropriate street smarts and Nixon-critical
moxie from the TV journalism world, and Rockwell as Reston
brings a sharp presence from the analytical cloisters of the academic world. Reston, per the film, had written books on Nixon and
abuses of power already. Zelnick and Reston are in a producer/advisor role, are
from the U.S., and are ready to provide (from ad hoc research) all the factual
and historical metes and bounds within which (in their opinions and with their
sense of obvious relevance, as Americans indignant at their former President)
Frost can and should zero in on Nixon when the interviews are taped.
Rockwell through numerous films has given colorful
performances (such as in Matchstick Men
[2003], on which I did a two-part review last summer [July 31 and August 3,
2012]; by the way, the Frost/Nixon
musical score is done by Hans Zimmer, who also scored MM, and I get a “flashback” sense of MM with some of Zimmer’s occasional
repeating-figure mood music and Rockwell kibbitzing around in Frost/Nixon). Here Rockwell brings the
most potent show of youthful indignation to the “representatives of schools of rigorously
critical thought on Nixon” who avidly contribute to the production of the
interview-bout. His turn of Reston’s initial inclination not to shake Nixon’s
hand when the old fellow turns up on set with a certain courteous equanimity,
and to stare at him with a kind of elegantly indignant air of being appalled
(while also being thrown off his balance), symbolizes the sort of stark
disapproval that the young who in 1977 found Nixon to be decidedly outré would
have exhibited, even if it would have been rude in the context, by more
conservative moral standards.
In terms of the more trivial style points of his character,
Rockwell says in DVD commentary that he thrives in 1970s depictions (or such); in
fact, he was born in 1968 and would have been a young kid through much of the
’70s. I wasn’t much older then, but I remember the personal and social styles
from that time, and I think if you really want a truly ’70s-flavor “hip
firebrand” type, you would have to look at more hippieish models like Dennis
Hopper or other shaggy and somewhat loopy types from films of that time. But
today’s audiences best identify with what is stipulated as their ultra-hip
stand-ins when the latter are more like the modern version; and as an excellent
example today of a restlessly hip type, Rockwell is as good as anyone to play
“sharp-eyed youth” stepping up to the feverish edge of the ring where Nixon may
get his due. Meanwhile, Dennis Hopper, even if give sci-fi style “time travel”
from his Apocalypse Now role to
today, in order to play Reston, would seem quite dated and odd to modern
viewers.
Langella and Sheen in
superb performances
Langella in his portrayal of Nixon, as you’ve probably
heard, is excellent. (He got a Tony for his stage role.) Nixon is such an odd
character that not only have multiple actors tackled him in high-profile
projects (see, e.g., Oliver Stone’s Nixon
films, where Anthony Hopkins tackles him meritoriously, but [it may be argued]
gives a slightly campy take; and maybe Hopkins was inclined to perform along
these lines because of how the film as a whole slants toward camp, whether
intentionally at director Stone’s hand or not). Actually, Nixon has been
imitated by many people of all
stations in life (including myself—showing how “indiscriminately” widespread
this has been), with Nix’s manner that marries to his more dignified side a
pretentiousness, a rather cardboard seriousness, neurotic mannerisms, and a
certain importunate darkness, all in one package.
Comedian Rich Little did him for years, when Nixon was
still alive. You could feel that to portray such a character well would be like
trying to imitate the painting the Mona
Lisa: there’s only one of that
ilk, so how imitate him? But then, if you just watched the TV clips and sound
bites of Nixon himself, for some people their reaction might be as if to a
rather spasm-inducing eternal object of scorn and dismissal, or like that of a
cat to a natural enemy: with a hissing, the raising of hairs on the back….
Langella manages to find a portrayal that doesn’t come
across as mere camp or an “impression,” and adds well-earned dignity to the
mix. You get Nixon’s hunched posture, his carriage of himself that seems to
teeter between (1) the genuine gravitas of an accomplished personage who has that
certain ineffable je ne sais quoi of
the world-historical Leader Among Men, and (2) an old, strikingly ordinary
oddball who seems like he hasn’t moved his bowels in four weeks. The banality
and self-respect are both there. The passing biased or curmudgeonly remarks.
The shows of hypocrisy and the eternal willingness to self-justify.
Langella has the character down so well that when he has
Nixon spontaneously make a joke, or even has his eyes look lively and probing
after a passing-through attractive woman in the taping studio (at which Bacon’s
Brennan offers his clipped “Focus, sir!”), these actions blend in with his
Nixon character; they aren’t simply, as coming amid an overall hack imitation,
like some indulgence in some whimsy that seems inconsistent with the ongoing
imitation.
Even when, in the interview chair, Nixon shifts his eyes
with indignation, or otherwise undergoes some fleeting “moral readjustment” as
Frost interviews him, we seem to see “this Nixon” displaying his wide-ranging heart’s
different sides. It’s remarkable to watch this performance; we seem to smile
and be amused, not because we’re laughing at how ridiculous the real-life Nixon
was, but because of how well Langella delivers a character that, when treated
most sympathetically, is still a weird if somehow worth-examining “piece of
work” for us more average people to try to understand.
Sheen as Frost is often very interesting; his character,
inevitably, is lighter in mood—with its own busy mastery of his career- and
personally-related areas of affairs—than that of Nixon. (Sheen recently played
William Masters in a cable TV film on scholars of sexuality Masters and
Johnson, titled Masters of Sex.) This
Frost has all sorts of jaunty and sophisticated ways of showing—amid his
flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants business—British good manners and elegant good
cheer. Nixon, with his more ponderous song and dance, we seem to know all too
well, but Frost—beyond the bites of him we’ve seen in all sorts of TV
engagements over the years—is more of a revelation in this film. For one thing,
I didn’t know he was such a playboy.
In fact, less pleasingly—as I’ll return to—here he seems to
have a certain (unintended) Austin Powers air, especially in scenes as on
the airplane, when he picks up a woman, Caroline Cushing (played by Rebecca Hall, who appears here with a certain Shelley Duvall look), who will end
up being Frost’s female companion throughout the interviews project. (Hall ends
up being one of the very few consistent female presences in a film that is
overwhelmingly a story about men, i.e., is almost a sort of war or
high-government film, which in a certain sense it is. It’s interesting that Cushing
has a much bigger profile here, as Frost’s “consort” so to speak, than does the
Diane Sawyer character, whose limited part here seems very much like that
of a TV-movie style also-ran, with seemingly her blonde hair [and being named] the
only feature marking her as Sawyer.)
Frost’s TV career was quite varied, even before these
interviews. His first big break, I think, was in a British entertainment show, That Was the Week That Was. He so much made the rounds as a sort of
all-purpose TV impresario that (momentarily) he was the host present when The
Beatles filmed some promotional spots (probably to appear on Frost’s show of
the time) for their singles “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” at Twickenham Studios
in September 1968 (see The Beatles’ Anthology
tapes, number 8). As I said, I knew of him (not
as a super-media-knowledgeable kid) as a talk-show host in my young 1970s
years.
Frost as the film’s
education-undergoing pointman
In the film, Frost seems like a savvy TV operator who, when
he sees Nixon resign from office in August 1974 while amid working on an
Australian entertainment show, figures it could be a high-ratings coup to do a
program with Nixon on TV. A lot of what makes this film interesting—you don’t
even have to know much about what it takes to plan and produce a TV special
(and goodness knows my own knowledge of this is limited)—is all the preliminary
maneuvering Frost had to do, first to try arranging through an intermediary to get
Nixon to be interviewed (the intermediary was a literary agent, Irving “Swifty”
Lazar, played here as a slick creep with all the un-sexy quality of a garden
slug by Toby Jones), then to try to get the major U.S. TV networks signed
on as producing partners (Frost failed to achieve this). Presumably these
arranging efforts all happened between August 1974 and sometime in 1976, which
the film tells us is when Frost first met in a New York hotel with his ad hoc producing
team to really get going on the production.
He ended up funding the production to a large extent with
his own money, as corporate sponsors dropped out (apparently because of how credible—not, actually—the project was
anticipated to be). For whatever reason, amid the Nixon project, he appears to
have suffered having his show in Australia (as well as elsewhere) being
dropped by the relevant TV network(s). Thus, he ended up doing the Nixon
interviews on speculation, with limited sponsor support (including his paying a
huge sum to Nixon, brokered by the oily Lazar, up front). Frost hoped, as
apparently depending on how well they came out, to get the interviews
syndicated—an apparent alternative to network backing and distribution at the
time.
Further, the continuation of his career ended up resting
entirely on this project, as did those—from their comments—of his associates
Zelnick and Reston. Whatever amount of these details presented in the film is
correct—and certainly none of us rank-and-file Shmoes on the street knew about
this background stuff in 1977—they certainly, cumulatively, give a sense of
suspense to the story of the film.
How Frost as the
fun-loving flirt finally comes to terms with the project, after Nix with night
thoughts spills bile on the phone, complete with heavy-duty curse
Perhaps what is disappointing to me about the story—along
with making Frost seem like such a good-time-y sort that I now and then (with
fun humor, watching for a second or more time) compared him on his off moments
to Austin Powers—is also what helps tie it together in a sort of gripping drama:
that Frost is so cheery and shallow, and a little (daily-initiative-wise) behind
the curve in terms of keeping to his agenda while Nixon bullishly pursues his own
(even while Reston and Zelnick start feeling their careers are put majorly at
risk by Frost’s cheery obliviousness), that he doesn’t realize what a challenge
he has—to stand his ground when facing Nixon on the most touchy subject,
Watergate. Even in a scene where Zelnick and Reston are taking their concerns
to Frost around a “craft service” table in a garage (which may not have been
just a set but an actual craft-service table for the film, doing double-duty),
Frost seems almost so cheerily oblivious to the political and moral dimensions
of what they are doing with Nixon that you have to wonder, was Frost this “out
in left field” in real life at the time?
That is, this was the case, the film says, until Nixon
phones Frost up one night before the last, Watergate-aimed interview, having
had a stiff drink or two. Nix on the phone, at a climactic point—more
expressing his career-long sense of grievance than anything personally directed
at Frost—explodes in such a volcanic eruption of bitterness and prodigious
willingness to show his critics wrong that Frost realizes he has to study hard,
as he hasn’t yet, to be ready for the final interview session.
So what does a “homecoming king”–type do? He “pulls an all-nighter”;
he burns the midnight oil, and fiercely listens to the Watergate-related tapes,
studies the public-record transcripts, and has Jim Reston head off
enthusiastically (with his Sam Rockwell bedhead hair) to do some special
research in D.C.—all to be ready with the necessary particulars like a
well-prepared prosecutor.
It’s as if Frost never realized—could this have been true?—what
a source of trouble he was up against with his interviewee until Nixon, in a
sudden spell of insecurity, has had a few too many drinks (in real life, Nixon
was known among some [like Henry Kissinger], because of pressure, to drink
excessively when in the White House), and spews forth his brewing night
thoughts to Frost—complete with that certain special-purpose tool, the four-syllable
curse word that earned this film an R rating—in a way that can’t help but make
Frost blanch (and maybe feel, “I gotta
shit!”).
A little too much
Austin Powers here?
I think this film, like numerous works on serious topics
today, had (from the producers' and/or studio's viewpoints) to be sweetened with the chocolate of coolness, along with a moral compass aspect—so that Frost comes off
maybe more “hip” and devil-may-care (as the putative good guy) than he really
may have been in 1977 (i.e., he could have been more "square" in 1977). This is so that today’s young box-office ticket-payers could see in
this morality play who really had all the aces “morality-wise”: no, it wasn’t
the old warhorse in the power suit, who could step out of his car with awkward,
“spastic” leg in one tasty moment, and at another, stand at his oceanside villa
like a regretful, old, grace-less fellow with one foot in the grave. No, Mr. Cool
was the British bon vivant who, when his high-stakes interviews were finally in
the can, could turn up at a club with his girlfriend of the time, with Donna
Summer’s “I Feel Love” pulsing on the dance floor.
For me, I think Sheen’s Frost slips a little toward
self-parody at times in a way that Langella’s Nixon decidedly does not. So, if we may be sly for a minute, for those who
can create at home with video-making tools, a nice project might be a mashup of this
film with some scenes from the Austin Powers films. It doesn’t take much to
blend, in your mind, the Frost here with Mike Myers’ dandy with his “Oh, be-have!” with effusive grin and profoundly
bad teeth; his Brit-fruity way of pronouncing “Oh, you mean a sen-sual [with
soft esses] mass-age? [pron. MASS-azh]”
Or, from the first film, his doggerel in a hot tub where he
has just let out a bathtub fart, “Pardon me for being rude; / it was not me, it
was my food / It just popped up to say ‘Hello,’ / and now it’s gone back down
be-low.” With the last word
pronounced—you could exaggerate a bit—with an elongated, plummy accent of the
James Mason/Tim Curry variety.
But this is small quibble about Sheen's portrayal. Overall, this is a fine film
that should be essential for anyone doing a multi-media history lesson on the
Nixon administration and what it still means today. And it shows how good a job director
Ron Howard can do.
##
Emily Dickinson’s
poem #389, written ca. 1865, appearing in Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson’s Poems, selection and with
introduction by Thomas H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961; my
copy bought ~1981)—with punctuation and spelling as in original, with line
breaks indicated by me with slashes, and stanza breaks with double slashes:
A narrow Fellow in the Grass /
Occasionally rides – / You may have met Him – did you not / His notice sudden
is – // The Grass divides as with a Comb – / A spotted shaft is seen – / And
then it closes at your feet / And opens further on – // He likes a Boggy Acre /
A Floor too cool for Corn – / Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot – / I more than once
at Noon // Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash / Unbraiding in the Sun / When
stooping to secure it / It wrinkled, and was gone – // Several of Nature’s People
/ I know, and they know me – / I feel for them a transport / Of cordiality – //
But never met this Fellow / Attended, or alone / Without a tighter breathing /
And Zero at the Bone –
