It's Nixon, Baby, Yeah!
While walking to the theater in New York City the other night, I said idly to myself, "I wonder if I'll see any celebrities in the audience." One sometimes does at Broadway shows.
The play I was seeing was the acclaimed Frost/Nixon, about David Frost's "get" interview with the disgraced Richard Nixon in 1977. (My nutshell verdict: not bad but not all that.) As I inched my way into the lobby, I played a game with myself to pass the time. I picked out a random back-of-the-head in the crowd, two or three people in front of me, and asked myself: If that guy over there were a celebrity, who would it be? Without much thought, I answered, "Um . . . Mike Myers?"
Just then the man turned his head to the side and I saw him in profile. It was Mike Myers.
Sitting in the row in front of me and a bit off to my right during the play was former congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. It was a somewhat "meta" experience watching Pat Schroeder, as I couldn't resist doing from time to time throughout the performance, watching a play about Richard Nixon.
Or was it ironic . . . ?
The play I was seeing was the acclaimed Frost/Nixon, about David Frost's "get" interview with the disgraced Richard Nixon in 1977. (My nutshell verdict: not bad but not all that.) As I inched my way into the lobby, I played a game with myself to pass the time. I picked out a random back-of-the-head in the crowd, two or three people in front of me, and asked myself: If that guy over there were a celebrity, who would it be? Without much thought, I answered, "Um . . . Mike Myers?"
Just then the man turned his head to the side and I saw him in profile. It was Mike Myers. Sitting in the row in front of me and a bit off to my right during the play was former congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. It was a somewhat "meta" experience watching Pat Schroeder, as I couldn't resist doing from time to time throughout the performance, watching a play about Richard Nixon.
Or was it ironic . . . ?
posted by Billy at 9:22 PM
3 Comments:
i've never seen a celebrity at a play/show, then again, i usually see shows well into their runs.
And how did you like the show? I remember the Frost/Nixon interviews as they were broadcast. Does this go behind the scenes? Do you think it will make a compelling movie for people who were not caught up in the story as it was happening?
See "not bad but not all that," above. The play goes behind the scenes, it speculates and imagines, and it also recreates portions of the actual interviews. I didn't think the play or the production was as impressive as I'd been led to believe. Part of the problem was that I found the actor who played journalist James Reston, who serves as a kind of narrator of the action, to be irritating in the extreme (and not at all plausible as James Reson, not that I know James Reston!). The two leads, Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, were good.
Will it make a compelling movie? Perhaps. I was wondering about the movie as I watched the play. If they "open it up," as they usually do with plays, it could actually be much better. Will it be compelling for people who weren't caught up in it? I don't know. With the right director and cast, it very well could.
I too remember the interviews as they were broadcast -- and the hype surrounding them -- even though I was just fifteen and didn't watch them in their entirety.
The play gets one thing very wrong. The goofball Reston character tells the audience at the end, in his know-it-all way, that Nixon didn't achieve the rehabilitation that he'd hoped for after the interviews, or words to that effect. But Nixon did become a kind of elder statesman by the time of his death in 1994 -- as mystifying and maddening as that transformation was to many. In his final years, he was consulted and quoted in the media to a remarkable degree. I was thinking this as I walked out of the theater, and wondering if I was imagining what I perceived to be Nixon's rehabilitation, when I overheard another audience member say to her companion, "But Nixon did rehabilitate himself after those interviews!"
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