Frost/Nixon critic: Movies no place to learn real history

If you watched Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK,” and came away with the belief that everybody did it, you also unintentionally stumbled into a debate about the responsibilities of filmmakers dealing with historical subject matter. “JFK” still stands as the most notorious example of how Hollywood sometimes takes facts, puts them in a blender, then serves the resulting smoothie to often unsuspecting moviegoers.

Of course, this phenomenon is hardly an issue to those who do not go to the cinema for a history lesson. There are plenty of folks who read and seek their history from historians. They can differentiate between what is presented as an objective account of real events and what is offered as entertainment.

The film “Frost/Nixon” opens Dec. 5. It is an adaptation of a stage play by Peter Morgan, which is itself taken from a series of real-life interviews done in 1977 between British TV personality David Frost and former President Richard M. Nixon. The stage version received raves when it opened in London two years ago, and the Ron Howard-directed film is receiving a considerable amount of Oscar buzz....