Fireworks at "Frost/Nixon" Washington screening

This is the time of year when every studio with starry-eyed award-season hopes has hundreds of endless opinion maker screenings where filmmakers get to talk about their movies in the kind of lofty circles that might impress Oscar voters. So it was no surprise to see that Universal had a high-powered screening in Washington last night for "Frost/Nixon," the Ron Howard-directed adaptation of Peter Morgan's savvy stage play that chronicles the 1977 TV showdown between disgraced former President Richard Nixon (played by Frank Langella) and checkbook journalist David Frost (played by Michael Sheen). After the screening, noted historian Robert Dallek hosted a discussion with Howard, Morgan and journalist James Reston Jr., who was one of Frost's researchers for the original interviews.

The joint was full of old Watergate hands, including Watergate committee counsel Richard Ben-Veniste and the ageless ex-CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr, who proudly told the audience that he was "No. 14 on Nixon's enemies list." According to a clever dispatch from Gawker, Howard revealed during the discussion that he'd actually voted for Nixon. But the real fireworks came during the audience Q&A session, when Fox News reporter Chris Wallace (whose dad, Mike, was a fixture at CBS News during the Watergate era) took issue with Howard and Co.'s comparison of Nixon's transgressions to George Bush's post 9/11 war on terror abuses, especially Reston's description of the movie as "a metaphor for George W. Bush."

"I think to compare what Nixon did, and the abuses of power for pure political self-preservation, to George W. Bush trying to protect the country -- even if you disagree with rendition or waterboarding -- it seems to me is both a gross misreading of history both then and now," said Wallace. He added that Bush's so-called abuses were in the service of protecting the country, not himself, saying "the fact is that we sit here so comfortably, and the country has not been attacked again since 9/11."

It sounds like it was far more lively than the usual award season screening session, where (having hosted a few myself) the moderator usually finds himself dividing his time between preventing crackpot audience members from delivering 10-minute monologues about their pet screenplay to stifling another long-winded digression about the acting "process" from a self-absorbed movie star. Surely Peter Morgan, who writes wonderful dialogue himself, must have appreciated the following zesty exchange between Dallek and Wallace, after Dallek said that we can only imagine the full sinister scope of the Bush presidency, since historians haven't yet had the opportunity to dig up the dirt on Bush's worst excesses.

Wallace: "You make suppositions on no facts whatsoever."

Dallek: "Do you read the New York Times?"

If nothing else, the evening was another poke in the nose to the outgoing conservative establishment, who were pretty grumpy about the prospect of hearing the Hollywood left Nixonize the Bush years. As Fox News' James Pinkerton put it, the screening represented "a happy masque of liberal triumphalism," which I guess means that all the news footage I've been watching the past four weeks wasn't from some fevered dream -- Barack Obama actually is going to be the next president.

Photo: The set of "Frost/Nixon." Credit: Ralph Nelson /Universal Pictures

Comments

[Drew]

People in Hollywood cannot see straight when it comes to Bush. They truly believe that he is the devil. That Castro and Hugo Chavez have higher moral standing than Bush. Look back on some quotes from Brian Grazer's meeting with Castro, lest you think i exaggerate. And more recently, Sean Penn's love fest with Chavez.

People are missing the point, anyway. Nixon has a lot more in common with Clinton, than Bush. Both were proven to be liars; impeached or threatened with it. And Nixon stole one FBI file; what did Hillary get; close to a 1,000? Please.

Maybe Ron thinks it better than Saddam would still be in power slaughtering by the thousands his fellow countrymen. And those 2 fun loving sons of his; one of whom tortured Olympic athletes when they failed to medal. Ah, yes but Bush invaded Iraq because he's an oil guy and Iraq has lot of oil. Oops, that didn't happen.

Intellectual rigorousness will show up on the left in Hollywood the day Castro opens the jails and frees the dissidents who dared to criticize him.

[Big Shaker]

Drew's comment gets this totally right.

[Christian Toto]

Love that someone was able to fire back/challenge a Hollywood liberal for once. Typically, the stars make their inane comments in places where they can't be challenged (fawning print outlets, Bill Maher's show, etc). A healthy exchange is a good thing.

The "do you read the NY Times" line is priceless. Some people still labor under the delusion it's a fair and balanced pub. Please.

[Drew]

In a rush to post, I botched my earlier comment. It should read:

...Maybe Ron thinks it better that Saddam should still be in power slaughtering by the thousands his fellow countrymen. And those 2 fun loving sons of his; one of whom tortured Olympic athletes when they failed to medal. Ah, yes but Bush invaded Iraq because he's an oil guy and Iraq has lot of oil and we would take all the oil. Oops, that didn't happen (oil wells went back to Russia and France; who were operating them beforehand).

Intellectual rigorousness will show up on the left in Hollywood the day Castro opens the jails and frees the dissidents who dared to criticize him. Which is Latin for: never.

[Kirsten]

After watching Wallace on O’Reilly last night, I felt the factual errors in Pinkerton's post and this one needed remedy, so I blogged about it, but for some reason the site won’t pick up my trackback.

Having been present at the screening, I take issue with Pinkerton's statement, “Only when such information comes out, Dallek suggested, would the full horror of Bush’s presidency become visible. Which, of course, proved Wallace’s point: It was not fair to equate proven facts about Nixon with mere allegations about Bush.”

Wallace’s point was not that, “It was not fair to equate proven facts about Nixon with mere allegations about Bush,” but rather that every possible abuse of power President Bush has committed, even if it was truly illegal, was done “to protect the American people.” Professor Dallek’s point to Wallace was that we cannot draw any conclusions about the legality of President Bush’s actions or the virtue of his motives because we don’t have access to the records as we do to Nixon’s records. Dallek admitted his personal biases, and suggested Wallace’s as well in mentioning the NYT, but he ended the pissing match Wallace was trying to provoke with a conciliatory, “We will see.”

[Ken]

If Bush is really so evil and nefarious and taking away rights, none of these critics would be able to say that they do in public. Thank God Bush isn't like Nixon, and thank God even more that Bush isn't like these actual dictators so common around the world.