Following the resounding success of the eponymous West End and Broadway hit play, Frost/Nixon tells the extraordinary story of how Sir David Frost pursued and landed the biggest fish of his career—and how the series drew larger audiences than any news interview ever had in the United States, before being shown all over the world.
This is Frost's absorbing story of his pursuit of Richard Nixon, and is no less revealing of his own toughness and pertinacity than of the ex-President's elusiveness. Frost's encounters with such figures as Swifty Lazar, Ron Ziegler, potential sponsors, and Nixon as negotiator are nothing short of hilarious, and his insight into the taping of the programs themselves is fascinating.
Frost/Nixon provides the authoritative account of the only public trial that Nixon would ever have, and a revelation of the man's character as it appeared in the stress of eleven grueling sessions before the cameras. Including historical perspective and transcripts of the edited interviews, this is the story of Sir David Frost's quest to produce one of the most dramatic pieces of television ever broadcast, described by commentators at the time as "a catharsis" for the American people.
"It will be a sort of intellectual Rocky."
The speaker was the writer Peter Morgan, and the time was January 2004. Peter and his producer, Matthew Byam-Shaw, had come to my office to talk about their idea for a stage play, to be called Frost/Nixon, which would tell the story of the Nixon interviews and Nixon's dramatic mea culpa in 1977.
They had three main requests. First: As the holder of the rights, would I give them permission to go ahead with the project? After some discussion, I said that, in principle, I would. That led to the second request: Would I let them have these rights for nothing? Peter and Matthew are both charming and persuasive, as you can tell by the fact that I said yes to this request. Frost/Nixon, they hoped, would open at the Donmar Warehouse in London and hopefully transfer into the West End. I said that my free grant of rights would extend to both these eventualities but not to any further manifestations of Frost/Nixon.
Oddly enough, it was not the money, it was the third request that gave me the most pause. Peter said that they both thought that Frost/Nixon would have more credibility if I had no editorial control. That was more difficult, and I said that I needed time to think about it.
It was a couple of months later before I gave them the green light on this issue. I felt very fifty-fifty about it at the time because I would be entrusting a project that was very precious to me to third parties. On the other hand, they felt that the play would get a better hearing if it were independent of my or my company Paradine's editorial control. In the end, I decided that the advantages probably just about outweighed the disadvantages, though when I saw the first draft, I was not so sure. Later drafts upset me less. I think that was because they were an improvement, or maybe I was just getting inured to the experience!
It is a curious feeling to go to the theater and watch yourself onstage—particularly if the "Frost" character is depicting some of the most dramatic episodes of your life. They were events that had taken place thirty years before, but somehow it did not feel that way. Peter had promised that he could make these events seem relevant, even current, and he had achieved that.
I attended a preview of Frost/Nixon two or three nights before the play opened in August 2006. I thought it was brilliantly written, directed, and acted. There were more fictionalizations than I would have preferred, although one such piece of fictionalization—Nixon's phone call to me on the eve of Watergate—was, I thought, a masterpiece.
I was not so sure about some of the other fictionalizations. Why was Watergate now the twelfth of the twelve sessions and not—as actually happened—two sessions in the middle, at sessions eight and nine? Why did James Reston's discoveries from the Watergate tapes only reach me on the morning of the Watergate session and not eight months earlier, as had actually been the case? Why did the early sessions, which contained a lot of good material, have to be depicted so negatively? Why do we see Swifty Lazar, Nixon's agent, making a series of demands without learning that they had been successfully rejected? Whenever I made these points to Peter, he would simply sigh and say, "David, you've got to remember this is a play, not a documentary." However, aware of my concern, he thoughtfully added an author's note to the program, making the point that he had sometimes found it irresistible to let his imagination take over.
And the play was an instant hit. The rave reviews were unanimous and Peter, the director, Michael Grandage, and both Michael Sheen ("Frost") and Frank Langella ("Nixon")...
Sir David Frost is the only person to have interviewed the last seven Presidents of the United States and the last six prime ministers of Great Britain. He has been awarded all the major television awards including the Emmy Award (twice, for The David Frost Show) in the US and the BAFTA Fellowship in the UK, their highest honor. Often described as "a one-man conglomerate", Sir David has worked variously as an author, film and television producer, publisher, lecturer and impresario and co-founded two network companies in the United Kingdom, LWT and TV-am. Sir David is currently hosting Frost Over The World, his weekly current affairs programme for Al-jazeera English, as well as series for the BBC and ITV. He is also executive producing a remake of the film, The Dam Busters, with Peter Jackson and Universal. He lives in London, Hampshire and on British Airways.
