10tonfunk

we watched (most) of frost and nixon the other night and i’ve been wondering about part of it ever since, largely as a mental exercise to keep me occupied on the beijing transit every day.

what if frost made up that pivotal phone call where nixon calls him on a friday night and snarls out a class tinged rant at frost through a knotty mouth lined with fangs and smelling of whiskey. nixon identifies himself with frost as men who will never be recognized by their fancy (probably not quaker) friends and challenges him again – no holds barred.

this call spurs frost – who for the first three parts of the four part interview has been doing a terrible job of keeping nixon from doing victory taunts – into action and he eventually truimphs over nixon in round four. when he mentions the call to nixon just before taping nixon denies making it. after taping nixon asks frost if he really called him. frost never – at least in the parts i saw- mentions their little tet a tet to anyone else.

it just seems to convenient to be necessarily true, whether it was frost, or the writer of the original play, or the movie scriptwriters that put it in ...read more