Richard Nixon film may be a thinking man's Rocky - but I was not the underdog, says David Frost
Only one of the real-life antagonists in Frost/Nixon can be present when the film receives its world premiere in Leicester Square tonight.
Richard Nixon died 14 years ago, but the interviewer who persuaded him to apologise for Watergate is very much alive and looking forward to seeing his finest hour commemorated in the opening film of The Times BFI London Film Festival.
However, Sir David Frost’s evident delight at becoming a bona fide Hollywood hero is very slightly tempered by the liberties that the hit play, and now the film, have taken with his own achievements. For most of the two-hour running time “Frost” is depicted as a frivolous lightweight and, although the real Frost understands that this accentuates the drama, it rankles that posterity will inherit a warped idea of his career before the Nixon interviews.
“It’s an interesting situation to be in,” he said yesterday, with a nervous laugh. “It’s not my film. [He gave up editorial control but retains financial rights.] It’s just . . . my life!
“There’s 10 or 12 per cent of fiction in there, one or two bits of which I could do without.”
Frost, 69, has seen the film twice and thinks that it is “brilliant”. However, he regrets that “to build up the underdog thing”, Peter Morgan’s script downplays what was already a distinguished television career before the interviews.
Frost/Nixon is set in the summer of 1977, when more than 45 million Americans, a record for a news programme, watched transfixed as Frost, a Briton best known to them as a chat-show host, wrung a stunning confession from their disgraced former President...
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Richard Nixon died 14 years ago, but the interviewer who persuaded him to apologise for Watergate is very much alive and looking forward to seeing his finest hour commemorated in the opening film of The Times BFI London Film Festival.
However, Sir David Frost’s evident delight at becoming a bona fide Hollywood hero is very slightly tempered by the liberties that the hit play, and now the film, have taken with his own achievements. For most of the two-hour running time “Frost” is depicted as a frivolous lightweight and, although the real Frost understands that this accentuates the drama, it rankles that posterity will inherit a warped idea of his career before the Nixon interviews.
“It’s an interesting situation to be in,” he said yesterday, with a nervous laugh. “It’s not my film. [He gave up editorial control but retains financial rights.] It’s just . . . my life!
“There’s 10 or 12 per cent of fiction in there, one or two bits of which I could do without.”
Frost, 69, has seen the film twice and thinks that it is “brilliant”. However, he regrets that “to build up the underdog thing”, Peter Morgan’s script downplays what was already a distinguished television career before the interviews.
Frost/Nixon is set in the summer of 1977, when more than 45 million Americans, a record for a news programme, watched transfixed as Frost, a Briton best known to them as a chat-show host, wrung a stunning confession from their disgraced former President...