Put your hand inside the puppet head

Rating: 6/10 (6 January 2009)

Living in exile, former President Richard Nixon, tanner but diminished under a western sun, sees opportunity in consenting to the proposed series of interviews with British talk show host David Frost(Michael Sheen); the opportunity being, a triumphant return to the east coast once he sets the record straight on his disgraced presidency. To Nixon's handlers, Frost's offer is perceived as a suitable vehicle for their rehabilitation campaign to vindicate Nixon from his role in the Watergate scandal. Since Frost, according to Jack Brennan(Kevin Bacon), an aide, can't match wits with the man he still respects unconditionally; since Frost's last interview happened to be with The Bee Gees, the four most dreaded words in the English language was definitely not, "David Frost is here." Nixon's misdeeds may have caused an ardent critic like James(Sam Rockwell) to throw a hissy fit about the man's legacy, but he was the president, at a time when being president meant you were the smartest man in the room. You don't throw your shoe at a smart man. Nixon was no amateur president. So despite his misgivings about this warmonger, this "Dick", James turns into jelly when he's up close and personal with the former leader of the free world. It's called having gravitas: something that our outgoing president lacks, hence the shoe incident. As a sad reflection of the world we live in, consider that Frost, a television personality, is, more than likely, not just an equivalent, but the intellectual superior of W. Maybe, just maybe, Presdient Bush might be able to go toe-to-toe with Carson Daly, in a no-holds-barred, sit-down interview about the economy, Guantanamo, Katrina, the Patriot Act, Dick, the other d**** in his cabinet, Iraq, "My Pet Goat", and his inability to pronounce the word "subliminal". In 1974, the standards in which to impeach a president by, was considerably less.
NBC. ABC. CBS. No. No. And no. They all passed on Frost's brain child, the Big 3, largely because the networks still asserted the antiquated notion that the entertainment and hard news sides of their programming be apportioned in separate isolation chambers with absolute demarcations. Cast as the underdog with something to prove, the talk show host inevitably triumphs over adversity, satisfying the sports movie paradigm it mimics, but his journalistic victory, in actuality, does more harm than good. Echoes of James Brooks' "Broadcast News" abound in "Frost/Nixon", as Frost, like Tom Grunick(William Hurt), is portrayed as the intellectual lightweight that Nixon's aide makes him out to be, a man who needs his girl Friday(Holly Hunter as Jane Craig), but gets "Crack No. 2"(Oliver Platt) and "Deep Crack"(Rockwell) instead, to help him overcompensate with their own expertise on the matter, as leverage against his own lack of credentials. While James and Bob Zelnick(Platt) do the work of yeomen, Frost attends the movie premiere of "The Slipper and the Rose", rather than join his team in the trenches, with the expressed goal of giving Nixon "the trial he never had". After the first three tapings go poorly, Frost is suddenly galvanized into action by a late night phone-call with the ex-president, inspiring him to pull an all-nighter, as if the Nixon interviews were a college final he wanted to ace. He's like Mallory(Justine Bateman) from the NBC sitcom "Family Ties"; now he knows what SCUBA stands for. In "Broadcast News", after Tom's interview with a foreign dignitary goes well, the anchorman compares Jane's collaboration(Hunter whispers the questions in Hurt's ear) to "great sex". For Frost, his interview with Nixon is akin to an act of masturbation; he is much more interested in self-promotion than the need to inform the public.
So "David Frost Interviews Richard Nixon" went into syndication and became a rousing success, just like Jim Henson's "The Muppet Show". It's appropriate, this comparison between these seemingly disparate programs, since Frost was a muppet of sorts, with the two "crack" investigators putting words into his mouth, and informing his movements: Frost the entertainer, doing an imitation of a hard-hitting journalist, such as Mike Wallace.
If you put your hand inside the puppet head, he will sing, he will dance, he will answer the right questions, he will make you believe that a frog can ride a bicycle