Today, I decided to see if Frankenstein’s Monster would have had better luck if the Democrats had nominated him to run against Richard M. Nixon in 1960. In the real world, John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Nixon, despite the popularity of Dwight Eisenhower. (Kennedy had some extra help in Illinois.) Nixon had the experience and the depth of policy knowledge but Kennedy had the charisma that Nixon lacked. After logging into President Elect, I imagined a situation in which the Democrats of 1960 turned not to Kennedy but to Frankenstein’s Monster. Just as he had with Dracula, I imagined that Frankenstein would run on a largely non-partisan platform that put strong emphasis on fire prevention. As well, I had to give Frankenstein low scores on his speaking ability and his ability to stay cool under pressure. But he did get a high personal magnetism score because people have been interested in him for over 200 years. Would that be enough to beat the similarly challenged Nixon?
No, it would not.
Just as with the campaign against Dracula, it was obvious who was going to win from the start. Frankenstein’s Monster barely campaigned and, unlike Kennedy, he refused to debate Nixon.
On election night, the first result told the story.
The good news is that, unlike when he ran against Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster actually did manage carry a state. In fact, he carried two. He won both Mississippi and Georgia, receiving 51% of the vote in both. Every other state, he lost to Nixon.
The final vote tally:
Managing to win 43% of the vote while being unable to speak or be around fire is actually pretty impressive. But Frankenstein’s Monster still could not beat Richard Nixon.
The seventh and final single to be released off of their album Hysteria, Rocket allowed the members of Def Leppard to acknowledge the music of their youth. Among others, the song’s lyrics cites The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, T. Rex, and especially Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love.
Directed by Nigel Dick, the video for Rocket features Def Leppard playing in the same warehouse that was used in the video for Women. This time, the band is surrounded by televisions that flash footage from the 70s. Not only are there the expected clips of Richard Nixon, the Apollo 13 disaster, and Edward Heath but there’s also plenty of footage of various artists performing on Top of the Pops. Because Def Leppard is an English band, there’s also a good deal of footage of Arsenal winning the 1971 FA Cup Final. There’s also a very brief shot of the infamous Gary Glitter, who was a British icon at the time this video was released but who, nine years later, would dramatically fall from grace after being convicted on charges of downloading child pornography. This video was the last to feature lead guitarist Steve Clark, who died from alcohol poisoning in 1991.
Rocket ultimately peaked at number 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
Since yesterday’s entry in movie a day featured Philip Baker Hall playing Richard Nixon in Secret Honor, I decided to use today’s entry to talk about a movie that featured Lane Smith in the same role.
Based on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s follow-up to All The President’s Men, The Final Days is about the final months of the Nixon presidency. The movie begins shortly after the resignations of Nixon aides John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman and follows Nixon (Lane Smith) as he grows increasingly more isolated and reclusive in the White House. All the familiar moments are here, Nixon ranting against the Kennedys and the establishment, Kennedy talking about his difficult childhood, and, most famously, Nixon asking Henry Kissinger (Theodore Bikel) to pray with him on the night before his resignation. The FinalDays also focuses on the ambitious men who surrounded Nixon during his downfall and who helped to engineer his eventual resignation, especially Al Haig (David Ogden Stiers).
A lot of very good actors have played Richard Nixon. Anthony Hopkins and Frank Langella both received Oscar nominations for playing him and Philip Baker Hall probably should have. Rip Torn, John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, Dan Hedaya, and Bob Gunton have all taken a shot at the role. But, in my opinion, no one has done a better job as the 37th president than Lane Smith, who bore about as close a resemblance to Nixon as anyone could without a prosthetic nose. Even more than Anthony Hopkins did in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, Lane Smith captured not only Nixon’s insecurity and paranoia but also his provides hints of the great leader that Nixon could have been if not for his own self-destructiveness.
Disgraced former President Richard M. Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) sits alone in his study. He has a bottle of Scotch, a loaded gun, and a tape recorder. He is surrounded by security monitors and paintings. All but one of the paintings are portraits of former presidents, all of whom are destined to be more fondly remembered than Nixon. The only non-presidential painting is a portrait of Henry Kissinger. Over the course of one long night, Nixon drinks and talks. He talks about his Quaker upbringing and his early political campaigns. He rails against all of his perceived enemies: Eishenhower, the Kennedys, the liberals, the conservatives, and everyone in between. As he gets drunker, he starts to talk about the real story behind Watergate and why his resignation actually shielded the country from a greater scandal. As Nixon explains it, his resignation was his greatest act of patriotism, his secret honor.
A mix of historical fact and speculation, Secret Honor was one of the filmed plays that Robert Altman directed in between the flop of Popeye and his comeback with The Player. Secret Honor is a one-man show, with Philip Baker Hall and only Philip Baker Hall on screen for the entire movie. Though he looks nothing like Nixon, Hall gives an amazing performance. Hall’s Nixon is bitter, angry, full of self-pity, and occasionally even sympathetic. Altman’s stagey direction makes no attempt to hide Secret Honor‘s theatrical origins but it is impossible to look away from Hall’s mesmerizing performance.
(Secret Honor was made long before Hall found fame as a character actor. It was his fourth feature film and his first major role.)
Secret Honor will probably not change anyone’s opinion on Nixon. Nixon haters will find more to hate and Nixon defenders will find more to defend. But everyone will agree that Philip Baker Hall gives a great performance as one of America’s most controversial presidents.
During my sophomore year of college, I had a political science professor who, every day of class, would sit on his desk and ramble on and on and on about his past as a political activist. He protested Viet Nam, he hung out with revolutionaries, he loved Hugo Chavez, and I assume he probably had a Che Guevara poster hanging in his office. Whenever he wanted to criticize George W. Bush, he would compare him to Richard Nixon and then pause as if he was waiting for the class to all start hissing in unison. He always seemed to be so bitterly disappointed that we didn’t. What he, and a whole lot of other people his age, didn’t seem to understand was that Richard Nixon was his boogeyman. The rest of us could hardly care less.
That was the same problem that faced the 2008 best picture nominee Frost/Nixon.
Directed rather flatly by Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon tells the true story about how a light-weight English journalist named David Frost (played by Michael Sheen) managed to score the first televised interview with former President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). Both Frost and Nixon see the interviews as a chance to score their own individual redemptions while Frost’s assistants (played by Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell) see the interview as a chance to put Richard Nixon on trial for Watergate, the Viet Nam War, and every thing else under the sun. That may not sound like a very exciting movie but it does sound like a sure Oscar contender, doesn’t it?
I’ve always secretly been a big history nerd so I was really looking forward to seeing Frost/Nixon when it was first released in 2008. When I first saw it, I was vaguely disappointed but I told myself that maybe I just didn’t know enough about Richard Nixon or Watergate to really “get” the film. So, when the film later showed up on cable, I gave it another chance. And then I gave it a chance after that because I really wanted to like this film. Afterall, it was a best picture nominee. It was critically acclaimed. The word appeared to be insisting that this was a great film. And the more I watched it, the more I realized that the world was wrong. (If nothing else, my reaction to Frost/Nixon made it easier for me to reject the similarly acclaimed Avatar a year later.) Frost/Nixon is well-acted and slickly produced but it’s not a great film. In fact, Frost/Nixon is epitome of the type of best picture nominee that inspires people to be cynical about the Academy Awards.
Before I get into why Frost/Nixon didn’t work for me, I want to acknowledge that this was a very well-acted film. By that, I mean that the cast (Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Sam Rockwell, and Oliver Platt) all gave very watchable and entertaining performances. At the same time, none of them brought much depth to their characters. Much like the film itself, nobody seems to have much going on underneath the surface. Frank Langella may be playing a historic figure but, ultimately, his Oscar-nominated performance feels like just a typically grouchy Frank Langella performance. Michael Sheen actually gives a far more interesting performance as David Frost but, at the same time, the character might as well have just been identified as “the English guy.” In fact, a better title for this film would have been The Grouchy, the English, and the Superfluous.
For all the time that the film devotes to Rockwell and Platt blathering on about how they’re going to be giving Richard Nixon “the trial he never had,” this film is ultimately less about politics and more about show business. Ron Howard devotes almost as much time to the rather boring details of how the interviews were set up and sold into syndication as he does to the issues that the interview brings up. Unfortunately, for a movie about show business to succeed, the audience has to believe that the show is one that they would actually enjoy watching, This, ultimately, is why Frost/Nixon fails. While the filmmakers continually tell us that the Frost/Nixon interviews were an important moment in American history, they never show us. Yes, everyone has hideous hair and wide lapels but, otherwise, the film never recreates the period or the atmosphere of the film’s setting and, as a result, its hard not to feel detached from the action happening on-screen. For all the self-congratulatory claims made at the end of the film, it never convinces us that the Frost/Nixon interviews were really worth all the trouble. Much like my old poli sci professor, Frost/Nixon never gives us a reason to care.
For a far more interesting and entertaining look at the Watergate scandal, I would recommend the 1976 best picture nominee All The President’s Men. Recreating the story of how two Washington Post reporters (played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) exposed the Watergate scandal that eventually led to Nixon’s resignation, All The President’s Men is the movie that Frost/Nixon wishes it could be. Despite being made only two years after Watergate, All The President’s Men doesn’t take the audience’s interest for granted. Instead, director Pakula earns our interest by crafting his story as an exciting thriller. Pakula directs the film like an old school film noir, filling the screen with menacing shadows and always keeping the camera slightly off-center. Like Frost/Nixon, All The President’s Men is a well-acted film with a bunch of wonderful 70s character actors — performers like Ned Beatty, Jason Robards, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, and Robert Walden, and Jane Alexander — all giving effectively low-key and realistic performances. The end result is a film that manages to be exciting and fascinating to those of us who really don’t have any reason to care about Richard Nixon or Watergate.
Both of these two films were nominated for best picture. Frost/Nixon quite rightly lost to Slumdog Millionaire. All The President’s Men, on the other hand, lost to Rocky.
Since yesterday’s entry in movie a day featured Philip Baker Hall playing Richard Nixon in 
Disgraced former President Richard M. Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) sits alone in his study. He has a bottle of Scotch, a loaded gun, and a tape recorder. He is surrounded by security monitors and paintings. All but one of the paintings are portraits of former presidents, all of whom are destined to be more fondly remembered than Nixon. The only non-presidential painting is a portrait of Henry Kissinger. Over the course of one long night, Nixon drinks and talks. He talks about his Quaker upbringing and his early political campaigns. He rails against all of his perceived enemies: Eishenhower, the Kennedys, the liberals, the conservatives, and everyone in between. As he gets drunker, he starts to talk about the real story behind Watergate and why his resignation actually shielded the country from a greater scandal. As Nixon explains it, his resignation was his greatest act of patriotism, his secret honor.
Through the Shattered Lens 