Frost/nixon

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

well, as anyone seen this yet. I watched this the other night with Garcia and his missus, and it was quite entertaining.

Just a couple of problems with it. The guy playing nixon played him as the father/grandfather in chinatown, rather than as nixon. He was playing a man 10 years older than nixon, and if nixon had his relatively easy way of talking then he wouldn't have had half the troubles he wound up having. The character he was playing was a lot better at faking humanity and geniality than Nixon. This character wasn't the humourless, borderline autistic snarling monster that nixon was, and he only swore when drunk. As far as I know that just wasn't Nixon's way.

I thought that michael sheen played david frost as though he was tony blair. David frost wasn't as much bambi in the headlights as sheen portrayed him, nor was he as much of a lightweight as he appears in the movie.

I know that at the time he wasn't taken particularly seriously, but Frost had been an officer in the cambridge union along with lamont, kenneth clarke and michael howard secretary of the Footlights and edited varsity and Granta. I suspect that he wasn't exactly a quivering mass of intellectual self doubt (whatever self doubt he may have had). There is one scene before the final interview where he is channelling Tony Blair.

I suppose that's what you get when you put something like this in the hands of a lightweight Ron Howard. It's a good movie, but given the subject matter it should be a lot better. 3/5

[Guest]

Frost/nixon

I think the rationale for presenting a slightly gentler Nixon was because he wasn't president any more and the pressure was off him to a certain degree, and so his madness was a little bit dissipated.

I thought the dialogue and most of the acting were pretty good, especially Langella. But Sheen wasn't too convincing as Frost, not least because he looks absolutely nothing like him.

The biggest problem with it was that the whole feel of it was too light and airy -- the music by Hans Zimmer was inappropriately jaunty at times, there was too much brightness and lack of shade in the cinematography. Basically, it felt a lot less sombre and weighty than it should have. Ron Howard's movies are renowned for being all-American and feelgood and optimistic, and he's not the sort of director you want in charge of a film about dark political intrigue.

[Lucy Waterman]

Frost/nixon

I know that at the time he wasn't taken particularly seriously, but Frost had been an officer in the cambridge union

I would be wary of attributing too much significance to this august body.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Frost/nixon

neither would I, just that he was involved in organizing so many things like footlights, and editing a college newspaper and a magazine, while getting a first in english.

Add in being the serious figure in the sixties satire boom, along with having turned down a contract with nottingham forest, and the portrait painted of him is as an unnecessarily light lightweight.

Sheen plays him as one of those flattering versions of blair, one where he is filled with self doubt and he hasn't been overtaken by his messiah complex.

[Lucy Waterman]

Frost/nixon

I dunno. Virtually everyone who was at uni with Frost and then was part of the "satire boom" seems to regard him now and have regarded him then as a total joke.

Hence:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Evc8KTGdF7E

[garcia]

Frost/nixon

spoilers

********

i thought the point in the movie was that frost, far from being riddled with self-doubt, was smug, vacuous and self-regarding, poncing about in a tuxedo and leaving all the preparation to his team. his complacency is only punctured when he hears his career is imploding & receives the drunken phone call from nixon. he realises then that the only way he can save himself is by doing some actual work for a change.

[RobW]

Frost/nixon

I enjoyed it very much, though for a lot of the film I just kept thinking Sheen as Blair, rather than David Frost. Smooth, media savvy who desperately wants everyone to like him and be treated seriously. When he wasn't reminding me of Blair, he just reminded me of Alan Patridge.

[Alderman Barnes]

Frost/nixon

My dad once kicked David Frost up the arse at the swimming baths when they were at school. He was being an "annoying little sod", apparently.

As you were.

[tracteurgarcon]

Frost/nixon

Peter Cook certainly wasn't a fan...

“My biggest regret in life is saving David Frost from drowning”

[Taylor]

Frost/nixon

Frost-bashing was like a sport for those Oxbridge Mafia types, though. I think Peter Cook had a genuine beef, as Frost (who was a Cook-worshipper) basically ripped him off and made a great deal more money than him in the process - although this overlooks the fact that Frost had a fierce work ethic and was very adaptable, while Cook didn't and wasn't, so Frost was always going to get ahead, one way or another. The fact that Cook was one of the great comic originals of our time, and Frost, er... wasn't, is secondary in career terms.

For the comedians who came after Frost, it's really just piss-taking. They might have had rather limited respect for him, but ultimately they were all aware that if he hadn't given them jobs on his TV series when they'd only just left university, there's a good chance that there would have been no Monty Python, for instance, and the world would instead have gained a lawyer, a historian, a copywriter, a bum cartoonist, a now-dead doctor and whatever the fuck Eric Idle would have done with himself.

Frost himself may have been a total dick, certainly in the 1960s, and it's hard to pin down any specific talent he may have had (apart from a talent for hard work and self-promotion), but I've always found that generation of comics' borderline obsession with his shortcomings somewhat churlish. An element of fags mocking prefects there, I think.

[Guest]

Frost/nixon

The original interviews are here for anyone who uses Rapidshare (will delete this post later on).