Latest / Off The Shelf With Phil and Dave- A Movie Review Podcast / 2008's Frost/Nixon

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2008's Frost/Nixon · Off The Shelf With Phil and Dave- A Movie Review Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome once again to Off the Shelf with Phil and
• 0:02
  Dave. This is Phil speaking with me,
• 0:05
  of course, is Dave. And this week we're taking off
• 0:07
  of my Shelf 2008's Frost Nixon, directed by Ron Howard, written
• 0:12
  by Peter Morgan. Dave, how are you this week and
• 0:17
  how are your initial thoughts of the movie?
• 0:19
  Doing great this. Have you ever seen it before?
• 0:21
  No, I have not vaguely heard of it.
• 0:24
  Week's going great. It's hot out there, that's for
• 0:26
  sure. But nice and cool inside.
• 0:30
  I haven't. I was looking forward to
• 0:32
  watching it because I hadn't seen it.
• 0:34
  And I was like, interested to see the cast and see how.
• 0:37
  Well, after we saw some portrayals of Clinton and and
• 0:41
  Hillary, how they're gonna do with Nixon and and and David
• 0:44
  Frost, which I'm not really familiar with.
• 0:46
  So it was nice to get another dose of Mr. Sheen in all in the
• 0:51
  in what? What was it, 70?
• 0:53
  This is what, 77 I think this took.
• 0:55
  Place. Yeah, OK.
• 0:56
  Yeah. 77 So I mean, just a couple quick early thoughts was
• 1:02
  I mean, I think it is, I think it's challenging to make a movie
• 1:04
  based around an event like an interview, because it's really
• 1:08
  the interview that you want to watch and it already exists,
• 1:12
  right? We don't need to see actors play
• 1:15
  it out. But I, I think this movie does
• 1:18
  achieve the goal of make the making the premise adequately
• 1:22
  entertaining. And I don't think that's an easy
• 1:24
  thing to do, to take this and make it into a film, like a
• 1:30
  feature film. So I think it overall is
• 1:32
  succeeds. I'm not going to go as far and
• 1:34
  say I love the movie and I'm eager to watch it for a third
• 1:38
  time. But I was the with the
• 1:40
  performances and the quality of the writing and such, I thought
• 1:45
  it was pretty good overall. So I enjoyed the watch.
• 1:48
  Phil and and and thanks for bringing it off your your shelf.
• 1:53
  Now, is this got something to do with the January 6th hearings we
• 1:56
  got going on in the news that I don't really pay much attention
• 1:59
  to, but entertaining nonetheless?
• 2:03
  Or is this our, I guess we're just, we've done this a theme
• 2:06
  lately, A we've done this special relationship.
• 2:08
  We did all the president's men. You just sticking with the
• 2:11
  theme. A little bit What I thought
• 2:13
  would be interesting with regards to choosing this movie
• 2:15
  this week was I thought it'd be interesting to close the loop a
• 2:18
  little bit on Watergate to some extent.
• 2:22
  And so I thought it would be an interesting counterpoint.
• 2:24
  And I honestly had forgotten completely that it was written
• 2:27
  by Peter Morgan, who coincidentally had written the
• 2:30
  special Relationship, which we. Yeah, I.
• 2:32
  Didn't realize that either, so that's interesting.
• 2:35
  So. That was kind of a nice little
• 2:36
  piece of it. It is obviously the Michael
• 2:38
  Sheen of it, which is, you know, he's sort of inching into Ben
• 2:42
  Affleck territory here. We should.
• 2:44
  We didn't take a little break, I guess.
• 2:47
  But more specifically, I thought it would be interesting to look
• 2:49
  at all the president's men and the sort of fall of Nixon.
• 2:54
  Let's suggest and this really kind of being what is sort of at
• 3:00
  least hyped to be or promoted to be like his sort of last
• 3:03
  statement on Watergate specifically.
• 3:06
  And in in many cases is is, you know, fewer and fewer public
• 3:11
  appearances after. So I thought it'd be interesting
• 3:13
  to kind of look at the before and after Watergate and before
• 3:15
  and after Nixon's resignation. So I thought that would be kind
• 3:18
  of interesting. And as a result, I really kind
• 3:20
  of, I think that the movie kind of provides at the very least
• 3:27
  general sense as to who Nixon the president was.
• 3:31
  And you know, it's just a a beautiful coincidence that it
• 3:34
  does tie into the to the January 6th trial hearings.
• 3:38
  Sorry, similarly, right, similar subject matter president abusing
• 3:43
  power and, and, and people trying to get to the bottom of
• 3:46
  it. So I All in all, I thought it
• 3:47
  was a timely choose a timely choice and and a good idea to to
• 3:54
  to look at it. And I hadn't seen the movie.
• 3:55
  I hadn't watched it many, many years.
• 3:57
  I'd say 567 maybe a long time. I remember seeing it in the
• 4:01
  theatre, however, because I was such a fan of all the present
• 4:04
  men, kind of a Nixon, you know, kind of, again, not like a sort
• 4:08
  of not digging into facts, but, but watching a lot of
• 4:11
  documentaries and, and, and movies and such on him.
• 4:15
  So I thought it'd be interesting to kind of investigate it.
• 4:17
  And I really liked it. This this time I was pleased
• 4:20
  that it sort of held up and impressed that, you know, Ron
• 4:25
  Howard is not a director that I particularly love.
• 4:27
  I don't know when he delivers, when he delivers, I think he
• 4:30
  delivers really well, but he's a really hit and miss director for
• 4:33
  me. Yeah, he's in my M Night Shamila
• 4:38
  category of some of them I like and some I don't.
• 4:42
  Yeah, I'm I'm I'm mixed on on Howard as well.
• 4:45
  All I knew is once I saw it was Ron Howard film.
• 4:47
  It's like, well, we're going to see Clint.
• 4:50
  At some point. Of course.
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  And there he was, and all his glory.
• 4:53
  Yeah. And I.
• 4:54
  Love him. Absolutely.
• 4:56
  Absolutely. But you know, we we speak about
• 4:59
  like, so he he made, you know, what I would consider to be like
• 5:01
  kind of garbage movies like The Da Vinci Code, which I really
• 5:04
  didn't like. Yeah.
• 5:05
  And yet also made Apollo 13, which is in my view, a bit of a
• 5:11
  masterpiece. So he's capable of doing good
• 5:15
  stuff and everything in between, You know, there's like good
• 5:18
  stuff and there's bad stuff. And this is a movie that I
• 5:20
  wouldn't have necessarily picked him for as, you know, as a, as
• 5:24
  a, as the visualist or what have you to sort of tell the story.
• 5:28
  But but All in all, I was pretty impressed by it.
• 5:30
  I thought he kept the tone, kept the pace pretty tight.
• 5:33
  And as you said, you know, it's interesting to structure a movie
• 5:36
  around an interview because it's.
• 5:41
  No easy feat. You know, that's well, it's not
• 5:43
  really, it's just it's difficult.
• 5:44
  It's difficult to make that compelling.
• 5:45
  And I think this is the same thing we talked about with with
• 5:48
  all the presidents men is kind of on some level, we know the
• 5:52
  the answer, you know, we know the the ending.
• 5:55
  No surprises really. That means a few things.
• 5:58
  We get to know more about Nixon, not Nixon the horse, but Nixon
• 6:03
  the man. So we get a little bit of an
• 6:05
  inside more Nixon where all the president's men.
• 6:08
  There was no Nixon other than actual footage.
• 6:11
  And those were, you know, speeches and and things like
• 6:13
  that that are available. No actual, you know, here's
• 6:17
  Nixon being shown the other side.
• 6:20
  Yeah. He's very scarce in in.
• 6:22
  He's very scarce in President's Men, right.
• 6:24
  He just has a couple of those like on the screen kind of
• 6:26
  moments is an there's no actor playing.
• 6:28
  There's no actor playing, Correct.
• 6:29
  So, yeah, exactly this really. And I think it was a pretty,
• 6:33
  pretty good job. I mean, as you said, this movie
• 6:35
  is structured well. We talked about that during the
• 6:39
  special relationship. So that makes sense to who's
• 6:41
  come behind it. And then and Ron Howard can
• 6:43
  certainly structure movie has that ability.
• 6:46
  You know, it's really fueled by again, solid performances by all
• 6:49
  the cast. My only my only kind of my thing
• 6:52
  with this was the relevance I felt was a little bit deflated
• 6:56
  now. It could be the matter of me not
• 6:59
  being around in the 70s and 80s to be to be that impacted by in
• 7:04
  the first place or something that kind of popped in my mind
• 7:09
  during my second watch was when we in our first season film we
• 7:11
  did a movie called The Quiz Show.
• 7:14
  Yeah, and just quiz show, Yeah. Sorry just quiz show first.
• 7:18
  I was searching game show the first time.
• 7:20
  Why is it not coming up? It's called game show.
• 7:22
  I know it's called game show and it's not clearly.
• 7:26
  And I was thinking how a big deal they may may may out of
• 7:29
  being cheating, like finding out that the producers were
• 7:32
  cheating. And I'm thinking I'm comparing
• 7:34
  it to today with, you know, Mr. Trump and all all the stuff
• 7:38
  that's gone on in the last five, eight years or so.
• 7:40
  And I feel like how much the people wanted Nixon to just say
• 7:45
  or apologize or or confess to to to it.
• 7:48
  We want, you know, we're begging for the truth here.
• 7:52
  And I just find that. So we're a little more, you
• 7:54
  know, we're just so tired. I feel that's just my opinion.
• 7:57
  I think we're so tired of it. Whatever, you know, it's a lot
• 7:59
  easier for them just to kind of do what they want because we're
• 8:01
  tired of fighting it, fighting to get the truth.
• 8:03
  But so I find it might be that. May be true.
• 8:06
  Yeah, that's what I think it. Yeah, go ahead.
• 8:08
  Of course, that's what we're here for.
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  We're here for, you know, oh, I'm here for your opinion.
• 8:14
  And, and you know, who knows who else is out there listening to
• 8:18
  this who's opinion they care about.
• 8:20
  But I, I think that I think, you know, ultimately, ironically,
• 8:25
  it's all, I think these, this Senate hearing that's happening
• 8:29
  right now is about, is about somebody taking ownership and
• 8:34
  responsibility for their actions.
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  And what ends up happening, particularly in politics, but
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  it's not, it's, it's true in many, many other facets.
• 8:42
  Is the passing the buck, ignoring it.
• 8:46
  I just it's too much. It's too much to think about.
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  It's too much to process, you know, ignore it.
• 8:51
  That that's from the public after cynicism.
• 8:53
  You know what, what's interesting about the Nixon
• 8:55
  story is the belief at least sort of, you know, the general
• 8:58
  consensus around it is that this is the loss of American
• 9:02
  innocence or, or what have you. It's the it's the peak of
• 9:07
  mistrust to government, you know, not necessarily conspiracy
• 9:11
  theorists, because that may have been attributed, you know, to
• 9:15
  obviously the Kennedy assassination in the 60s
• 9:17
  earlier. But there is a piece of, you
• 9:19
  know, Vietnam's going on 19686769, some really, kind of
• 9:25
  really hard times, generally speaking.
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  And so and you've got someone in the in the presidency that's
• 9:31
  frankly a crook, as he says, you know, I'm not a crook.
• 9:35
  But in the end, you know, in the last 50 years, we've discovered
• 9:38
  he actually was right. And whether that's the tapes or
• 9:42
  it's it's, it's, you know, any footage and, and, and the
• 9:46
  revelations that have come out since, the reality is he
• 9:49
  absolutely abused his power. He absolutely, you know, spied
• 9:53
  on people. He absolutely did was in charge
• 9:55
  of the bugging at the Watergate was absolutely in charge of the
• 9:59
  basically like The Dirty, filthy playbook, you know, the enemies
• 10:02
  list and, and, and convincing the IRS to to audit his enemies.
• 10:07
  Like this is a thing that these are things that he did right.
• 10:10
  And so there's this feeling of like, well, we used to put, I
• 10:14
  say we, they, you know, used to put presidents on a pedestal,
• 10:19
  you know, particularly Kennedy, you know, in 60, in 60, in the
• 10:22
  60s, maybe less so Lyndon Johnson, But they, you know,
• 10:25
  there's a certain amount of trust that came with that
• 10:27
  office. And I think what ended up
• 10:28
  happening with Nixon was that it got completely blown apart.
• 10:31
  There was no more trust to him. Everything was a shakedown.
• 10:34
  Everything was suspicious. And so when I think about the
• 10:37
  like you said, the relevance, I think it's still relevant today.
• 10:40
  But I think also back then, it's so heightened because, you know,
• 10:43
  millions and millions of people are watching those, those
• 10:45
  hearings, you know, all day long, all the time it because
• 10:49
  it, it was unprecedented, you know, and I think what's
• 10:52
  happened since sadly, is that it's been precedented it, you
• 10:57
  know, we've seen, we talked, you know, with, with Clinton and his
• 11:01
  impeachment and, and, and the, the Lewinsky, you know,
• 11:04
  controversy, the Kenneth Starr, you know, things like that.
• 11:07
  Obviously Bush had his, you know, stuff with Iraq and Kuwait
• 11:11
  and so forth. And, and then you, you throw
• 11:14
  Trump on top of everything. So there's a real through line,
• 11:16
  it seems about on both sides of the aisle, as it were, abusing
• 11:21
  their powers to some extent. So that I, I guess watching it
• 11:25
  in 2022, there might be a a certain level of like, yeah, but
• 11:29
  what's the big deal? Kind of like quiz show, We just
• 11:31
  assume this stuff is rigged. We watch reality TV and and
• 11:34
  there's no illusion that it's fake, you know, or at least that
• 11:37
  it's that it's exactly, exactly. So like there is this sort of
• 11:41
  cynicism that has come with the last 50 years.
• 11:43
  But I think it's relevant still because ironically, as I said,
• 11:45
  50 years later, we still just want the guy in charge to say I
• 11:49
  fucked up or I did this. Yeah.
• 11:51
  And I take responsibility and it it's just not coming.
• 11:54
  It's just that it's just not. Happening you don't even want
• 11:56
  jail time necessarily just just say you did it.
• 11:59
  You know, just well, that's, that's it.
• 12:01
  He got the. Pardon, right, Like, you know,
• 12:02
  Nixon did from, from from the jail Ford.
• 12:06
  So so there is like this feeling of like there is nothing at this
• 12:10
  point to other than ego, right, which they kind of touch on
• 12:16
  other than ego, there's really not much at stake right now.
• 12:19
  Trump right now, he wants to, you know, want run for re
• 12:21
  election. So maybe there is some more at
• 12:22
  stake in that regard. But generally speaking, you're
• 12:24
  looking at at somebody that other than ego has no reason to
• 12:28
  sort of keep lying and lied throughout, right, Which we saw
• 12:32
  in in Watergate in all the president's men.
• 12:35
  So it's just been, I thought it would be an interesting kind of
• 12:37
  book, and I find it a fascinating piece of history
• 12:40
  that inevitably seems to be repeating itself.
• 12:44
  Now, maybe I've been thinking about Nixon too much, but
• 12:47
  there's a family in my podcast room here, and I think it might
• 12:50
  be spying on me a little. A little.
• 12:54
  There's a. Family on the wall?
• 12:56
  Yeah, it's where that term came from the the the fly.
• 12:59
  Yeah, it must be so. Yeah.
• 13:02
  So that that was my only sort of, you know, when I'm thinking
• 13:06
  about an entertaining movie and we watch All Presidents Men.
• 13:09
  I think what drew me into that or both of us into that was the
• 13:12
  journalistic aspect of it and just a really interesting story
• 13:17
  and a completely different film. And this was interesting about,
• 13:20
  we've talked about basically 3 movies and we, we get them all
• 13:26
  from a different perspective. We get the actual relationship
• 13:30
  and the special relationship focused on, of course, Blair and
• 13:33
  Clinton or, and that's who we're dealing with.
• 13:35
  And then we get the journalist. And now we have an interview
• 13:38
  situation with, with David Frost.
• 13:41
  Yeah. Now to are you familiar with
• 13:44
  David Frost at all? Before doing any sort of
• 13:47
  research or anything like that, have you have you had heard of
• 13:49
  him or anything? No, no, he was at the time of
• 13:52
  the at the time I saw this movie in 2008, I don't know that I'd
• 13:54
  ever really ever heard of him. OK, well, that makes sense.
• 13:58
  I mean he's, I mean, we don't, we don't get out much if it's
• 14:01
  not. There's a little bit, a little
• 14:02
  bit of when. It comes to to British because
• 14:05
  British is, has a lot of good stuff.
• 14:07
  I, I, I really enjoy like British comedies and things like
• 14:11
  that. But that's, I don't.
• 14:12
  I had never dive deep enough to get really much past Mr. Bean,
• 14:16
  you know what I mean? Like, everyone knows, of course.
• 14:18
  Yeah, but David Frost didn't. Benny Hill.
• 14:20
  Yeah. Even Benny Hill's only really a
• 14:22
  name that I know. I'm not really, I haven't really
• 14:24
  watched any any Benny Hill so. Yes, subsequent I've only The
• 14:29
  only real other connection I had to David Frost specifically is
• 14:32
  that he I found a YouTube clip a while back where he introduced
• 14:38
  and hosted an A special about the premiere of the movie Tommy,
• 14:44
  the Who's Tommy movie that came out in 75.
• 14:46
  So he's the host greeting and and sort of introducing the
• 14:50
  movie to on an ABC special or something like that.
• 14:52
  So but other than that, yeah, I had no real connection to him.
• 14:56
  So again, I couldn't really. But at the same time, having
• 14:58
  said that, at the time that this movie came out theatrically,
• 15:02
  they put out a DVD of the Nixon interview.
• 15:08
  And at the time it was just focused on Watergate
• 15:11
  specifically. So it was just like the day
• 15:12
  three interview just on DVD of the actual real deal.
• 15:17
  And then subsequent, I think because they love the double dip
• 15:20
  in the in the video market now I bought the I ended up getting
• 15:24
  the the original 1. But a little while later, I
• 15:28
  think around the time that Frost Nixon came out on DVD, they put
• 15:31
  they put out another one, a reissue of it and it was the
• 15:35
  entire three day interview segments.
• 15:39
  And at that time I just rented that because I thought, I don't
• 15:41
  know that I need this these, you know, 4 1/2 hours of of this
• 15:45
  interview. But so there's always an
• 15:47
  opportunity to cash in a little bit.
• 15:48
  And obviously that was all David Frost, but it not a guy would
• 15:52
  know. However, having said that, I
• 15:54
  thought Michael Sheen portraying and similarly with with with
• 15:57
  Blair in the special relationship is, as we
• 16:00
  mentioned, I don't really know Blair enough to know, like, is
• 16:02
  this an accurate representation of the man or his mannerisms or
• 16:07
  or or behaviors or any of that stuff?
• 16:10
  And yet watching this, to me, it's a full character.
• 16:13
  Whether it's accurate or or not, I can't explain, obviously, but
• 16:18
  I thought she was was incredible in terms of embodying the stress
• 16:22
  and the sort of pieces that that might come along with being a
• 16:25
  David Frost in this era, if that makes sense.
• 16:28
  Yeah, my first viewing, I'm not gonna lie, I I did suffer a
• 16:33
  little bit from the the classic nod, not because of not interest
• 16:37
  in the movie. It was just poor timing and I
• 16:39
  wanted to get a a viewing in when I could.
• 16:43
  So it was a bit of a late night. So I'm like, I'll get going.
• 16:45
  You're not gonna hear anything about the nod from me, my
• 16:48
  friend. I respect the nod.
• 16:51
  So I didn't there's a few things like I think I missed a little
• 16:54
  bit with this character because I feel like this is a great
• 16:57
  character and I like what Michael Sheen is doing with it.
• 16:59
  But I feel like I've missed a couple of things where I missed
• 17:02
  in the first. I want to say 45 because I ended
• 17:05
  up seeing the whole interview, all the interviews in the first
• 17:07
  go. Now, of course, I've watched the
• 17:09
  movie a couple of times since. So I've definitely I've seen it
• 17:12
  in its entirety a couple of times.
• 17:15
  And my, my final analysis, if you will, of Sheen's performance
• 17:19
  portrayal was pretty good. It was like, oh, yeah, this
• 17:22
  guy's a good actor and I liked him.
• 17:25
  You know, in the special relationship, it was certainly a
• 17:27
  part of the movie that maybe the movie we agreed didn't blow us
• 17:32
  away by any means. But it wasn't really anything to
• 17:34
  do with performances. And I think right from the
• 17:36
  start, I felt like the performances were going to be
• 17:38
  strong. And I got to give thanks to Sam
• 17:41
  Rockwell and Oliver Platt for that.
• 17:43
  There's some oh. Gosh, I love those guys.
• 17:45
  There's something really interesting about a character
• 17:48
  playing a character playing a character.
• 17:52
  I can't explain it, but the interview of Sam Rockwell being
• 17:56
  who he's portraying and doing it as, he's being interviewed more
• 17:59
  than just playing the role in the movie.
• 18:02
  I thought that. I wondered how you were going to
• 18:03
  react to that type of, yeah, structure, right.
• 18:06
  We don't have to, we'll get into the specifics, but but just in
• 18:09
  general, right, How do you feel about the sort of facing,
• 18:11
  talking head camera thing? Grabbed me right away.
• 18:14
  So I liked it. OK.
• 18:16
  And I think, and I think it's a lot to do with the performance
• 18:19
  of all of them that did it. Yeah.
• 18:20
  Kevin Bacon. Of course, you know Kevin Bacon
• 18:22
  is not a huge role in this movie, but I welcome him into my
• 18:25
  home anytime. So he's so good.
• 18:27
  We talked about him with a few good men and he's just, he's,
• 18:29
  he's in, he's not doing much more in this than he did in a
• 18:33
  few good men. You know, he's not in it as much
• 18:35
  or as a lot, but man, that guy delivers.
• 18:37
  Yeah. He's such a great a great face
• 18:39
  to see. So I thought, yeah.
• 18:42
  So I thought like right away, I'm like, OK, I think, I think I
• 18:45
  haven't even seen the main people yet.
• 18:47
  And I'm already thinking that this is going to be a good
• 18:51
  performance. And even before we see Sheen or
• 18:53
  Langella, if I'm saying that correctly.
• 18:56
  Yeah, OK. I think it's like Langella, but
• 18:58
  either way, I think yeah. Even though you know who I mean.
• 19:02
  That's 100% absolutely. It's more just to clear it up
• 19:05
  for future interests. If you're ever funny thing, in
• 19:07
  fact, I looked at his filmography a little bit and I
• 19:09
  went far back. Is he played Skeletor?
• 19:11
  I believe in. Absolutely he did.
• 19:14
  I haven't seen in the Masters of the Universe.
• 19:16
  So he certainly has a track record, but certainly a face
• 19:19
  that you would that shows up that you're recognizable, not
• 19:23
  necessarily as a major part or a main lead, but a good secondary
• 19:27
  character typically in in films throughout his career.
• 19:31
  And I again, seeing Nixon just briefly on on on film as himself
• 19:38
  through old, old stuff, old, old film.
• 19:42
  I thought they got that look pretty well down too.
• 19:44
  Like we don't really know about David Frost necessarily, but
• 19:46
  we're a little more exposed to at least what Nixon looks like.
• 19:49
  And it was funny yesterday I was going to work and I put Conan
• 19:53
  O'Brien on a good podcast. He's got, maybe he'll mention
• 19:57
  our podcast, but it's a great podcast if you ever heard it.
• 20:00
  Conan needs he's. Going to appreciate our German
• 20:03
  listener hopping over. Yeah, Conan.
• 20:04
  Needs surprise. I'd be surprised if they go up
• 20:06
  by 1 listener. Exactly.
• 20:08
  And and he was doing his Nixon impression.
• 20:11
  I just picked, I just picked, I love when these things happen.
• 20:14
  I just picked a random episode before I started because, you
• 20:17
  know, I just tap play and away one of my travels.
• 20:20
  And yeah, he's doing his Nixon. He gets into character and he'll
• 20:24
  do it for a good 5-10 minutes, whatever he's doing and just
• 20:28
  saying things in the Nixon voice.
• 20:30
  That's pretty good. He's actually got a pretty good.
• 20:31
  I mean, a lot of people clearly can do it.
• 20:33
  It's one of those voices it seems like even, you know, Platt
• 20:38
  does it right. His character does absolutely.
• 20:40
  So he's he's a voice that people like to have fun with because
• 20:44
  it's very. Yeah.
• 20:46
  He's a caricature. So I thought that that was just
• 20:51
  a funny, funny coincidence. It was yesterday.
• 20:53
  So it's like, wow, that's a funny coincidence.
• 20:55
  This random episode doing the Nixon impression but.
• 20:58
  I think what's interesting about that, as you say it is, and then
• 21:01
  we talked a little bit about this already, which is I think
• 21:03
  that Nixon continues to be in the zeitgeist.
• 21:06
  Watergate continues to be in the zeitgeist by virtue of the fact
• 21:09
  that it was so unique to its time that it the ripple of it is
• 21:16
  like every like he kind of mentions even at the end of the
• 21:18
  movie, right, like everything that anytime there's a kind of a
• 21:21
  particularly a presidential scandal, it gets gate at the end
• 21:26
  of it. You know, there is a Nicksonian
• 21:28
  through line to dirty politicians and crooked
• 21:32
  politicians and as sadly the result.
• 21:36
  The sad reality is that we've had a lot of crooked politicians
• 21:39
  along the way. So like he continues to be, he
• 21:42
  continues to be relevant over and over again because, you
• 21:45
  know, he kind of gets reminded the culture gets reminded that
• 21:48
  that that he was such a an interesting.
• 21:50
  I'm sure he liked being broken man until.
• 21:53
  He died. I'm sure he appreciated being
• 21:54
  remembered, but as as he says, if if you well, as he says, if
• 21:59
  throughout, he's like I remember, you know, I did.
• 22:01
  I did some good things, guys, like come on here, yes, you
• 22:04
  know, and I like that that overtone.
• 22:07
  He has a very interesting character.
• 22:09
  He's a tough how they portrayed it anyway in in this film, it's
• 22:14
  a bit of a tough read to really understand the man and to really
• 22:19
  at the end, pick a side where, OK, he's good or he's not so bad
• 22:25
  or he's terrible. And so it's a it's a mixed,
• 22:27
  mixed feeling. And everyone has an opinion
• 22:31
  about everything these days, of course.
• 22:33
  And then you have like the truth and the actual truth, which is
• 22:37
  obviously an interesting thing and within the political world.
• 22:41
  But at the end, just generally, Phil, on Nixon, like, how do you
• 22:46
  feel about this guy generally? Like, is it like what he did?
• 22:50
  He's the worst, he's the worst. He's he's a person that, I mean,
• 22:56
  again, I've only, I only know what I've watched and yeah, like
• 23:00
  what you've got about and so forth, obviously.
• 23:02
  And that wasn't alive at the time, so I couldn't have lived
• 23:05
  through it so forth. But ultimately he's the worst
• 23:09
  because I think ultimately what you're doing is upending
• 23:14
  democracy. You're right.
• 23:16
  And, and, and obviously, you know, there's an argument that
• 23:19
  says we're going through something similar currently or,
• 23:21
  you know, in the US, But the, my thought is just that, that the
• 23:27
  amount of lying, deceit, subterfuge is astonishing.
• 23:34
  And it makes me uncomfortable to think.
• 23:37
  And, you know, the reality is here, I'm sure that these things
• 23:40
  exist in other presidencies before and after you just but
• 23:45
  but he would have been somebody that would have gotten away with
• 23:47
  it. And we talked a little bit about
• 23:49
  it in in President's Men, where Ziggler, the the press secretary
• 23:54
  is up there and he's talking about shoddy journalism and
• 23:56
  shabby. You're right, like, and it's all
• 23:58
  BS and everybody lied and that's what that great sort of ending
• 24:04
  to that movie kind of tells you, right?
• 24:06
  It's like Coulson and Macgruber and you know, everybody, right?
• 24:09
  They all lied and they all went to prison, Letty and and so
• 24:11
  forth. So the fact and Alderman and
• 24:14
  Ehrlichman, so it they're the worst because they're they're
• 24:18
  they just took advantage of every opportunity to.
• 24:24
  Yeah, they're there's their power.
• 24:25
  Yeah, they're. At the and at the same time
• 24:27
  they're, you know, the Cambodia stuff.
• 24:29
  I mean, you're just killing innocent people for no good
• 24:31
  reason except maybe political. Yeah, that's a subject matter
• 24:34
  points, right, Kissinger until other than what I'm Kissinger is
• 24:37
  an animal. Yeah, there's a war monger, you
• 24:39
  know, So there's just there's too much, right.
• 24:42
  So he did create the EPA, which is now a joke in the US sadly,
• 24:48
  but but the Environment Protection Act, right?
• 24:51
  Like he, he did create that and obviously building relationships
• 24:54
  or certain amount of relationships with China and
• 24:56
  Russia being the 1st president to do that.
• 24:57
  There are things about that relationship or those
• 25:00
  relationships that certainly had a benefit, but but very little,
• 25:03
  you know, the war in Vietnam, he did nothing to stop it.
• 25:06
  Yeah, it wasn't his war as he as he said, but yeah, he certainly
• 25:09
  didn't, you know. Make it well, that's reality,
• 25:11
  right? Like what you, you know, it
• 25:12
  wasn't, it's a lot of people's, you know, it's whoever starts
• 25:15
  the war, You, you have the opportunity to pull people out,
• 25:17
  you know, and you have the opportunity to call it a loss.
• 25:20
  But again, ego and other things just didn't make it happen.
• 25:23
  So anyway, there's a lot of a lot of language around the fact
• 25:26
  that I just don't think he's I think he's he's terrible.
• 25:28
  OK, and and and this movie doesn't do much to, I don't
• 25:32
  think to exonerate him. What do they do?
• 25:34
  What it does, at the very least, I would suggest is maybe
• 25:36
  humanize them from the caricature, you know, from the
• 25:40
  not a crook. Yeah, stuff.
• 25:42
  But I I think at the end of the day, it proves the reality.
• 25:46
  And, you know, he's got the great line later when he
• 25:48
  obviously talks about like when when the president does it, it's
• 25:52
  not illegal. You know, that is a that is a
• 25:54
  mindset that is astonishingly narrow and, and has a potential
• 26:02
  of being real problematic. And again, we're seeing it 50
• 26:05
  years later in the in the Senate hearings now.
• 26:07
  So I think he's terrible. Yeah.
• 26:10
  I think with the exposure. But as a character.
• 26:12
  Yeah. As a character, as a character,
• 26:13
  like, as somebody that you want to read about or read or listen
• 26:15
  to and like, you know, Oliver Stone made his Nixon movie.
• 26:19
  It's like 3 1/2 hours long, a real sort of A-Z kind of story
• 26:22
  of his life. He's a complex individual with a
• 26:25
  really interesting life. But I think as a president, he
• 26:29
  was, he was terrible. Yeah, I'm thinking as a as a
• 26:33
  person to portraying him as the man, not the horse or the cow or
• 26:37
  the pig, but as the as the man. You're you're I was looking for
• 26:41
  a glimmers of of is this guy an OK guy as a person, not
• 26:45
  necessarily as a president. Now it's a matter of, you know,
• 26:49
  when you cheating, like in sports, that sometimes it's the
• 26:53
  best ones that get caught. You know, if you look at Tom
• 26:55
  Brady, he kept getting caught because, well, they're the best
• 26:58
  team. They're going to catch him.
• 27:00
  The Jets cheated so much more, yet they never really got caught
• 27:05
  because they were still terrible.
• 27:06
  It's nothing worse than cheating at a game and still losing
• 27:09
  constantly. You're not even good at
• 27:10
  cheating. So I thought when I read that, I
• 27:12
  thought that was funny, but I was thinking, well, of all the
• 27:14
  people, like he did get caught, really, you know, it took a
• 27:20
  while for it really to, you know, come to light.
• 27:24
  And for him, obviously in this interview, ultimately to to I
• 27:29
  guess, confess, I think that he did what of doing illegal
• 27:33
  things. You wonder though, of all the
• 27:36
  people who who've done it and don't get caught, are they just
• 27:39
  better at it or they're just not doing it?
• 27:40
  I think that's the question. I mean, I think I don't really
• 27:43
  know Obama very well, but he seems like a pretty good fella.
• 27:46
  I don't think, you know, maybe he did something that he just
• 27:49
  never got caught for, but I don't, I think you see it in
• 27:51
  their character. There's only so much you can
• 27:54
  hide as a person that you can think you can genuinely see the
• 27:57
  difference between like a Nixon and an Obama or or Kennedy or,
• 28:02
  or even up here in Canada, you can get it kind of get a bit of
• 28:05
  a vibe of we have our own gates up here as well.
• 28:08
  They don't, they're not really comparable to necessarily the
• 28:11
  gates we get in in in the States.
• 28:14
  Maybe not enough to make a feature film, or maybe it is,
• 28:18
  but Speaking of feature film, I did get that feature film vibe
• 28:21
  from this that we didn't get from special relationship.
• 28:24
  Yeah, that's interesting. I thought the same.
• 28:25
  I have the same kind of note. It just feels bigger even though
• 28:28
  it's not too dissimilar. Yeah.
• 28:30
  And even though. Structure and content even like
• 28:32
  the. Voice of the producer of in that
• 28:35
  play, the producer in the movie, which I felt was another solid
• 28:38
  performance. Is this a very deep voice?
• 28:41
  It was just, yeah, I don't know if it was just the equipment
• 28:43
  they were using or just his voice, but it was very, very
• 28:46
  deep, very, very bass, very bassy.
• 28:49
  So you can really felt like that's like, oh, it's Howard,
• 28:52
  right? It's Ron Howard.
• 28:53
  He doesn't, you know, he doesn't mind spending a few bucks on a
• 28:55
  film, but I think they well, it's the biggest Universal
• 28:58
  movie. Like it's a it's yeah, it's like
• 28:59
  a real, real production for sure.
• 29:00
  Yeah. So I definitely felt that vibe.
• 29:03
  And I think no matter what you say, it makes a difference in in
• 29:07
  film quality and and it's helped being entertained more with with
• 29:13
  that umph. But all that aside, Phil, you
• 29:17
  know, this, this gets get into the movie, I guess to since we
• 29:22
  spend time kind of talking around politics and and Nixon
• 29:25
  and stuff, because we're dealing with with real people here.
• 29:27
  So there's really that little bit extra conversation to have
• 29:30
  dealing with, with real events. But let's get into the film
• 29:33
  itself and how it starts off. So let's get let's get the ball
• 29:38
  rolling. You get it rolling, buddy.
• 29:40
  What I love what I love about the intro of it.
• 29:42
  And I think you're right. I think anytime you're trying to
• 29:43
  deal with based on a true story and and and again, I always
• 29:48
  hesitate to use those. Oh, it's real because.
• 29:52
  Based on true. Event any dramatization is not
• 29:54
  right like so at the end of the day, everything is changed.
• 29:58
  You know, on some level you try and find the essence of things
• 30:00
  you try to build from it. So while we have the real actual
• 30:03
  footage of the interview for posterity to sort of double
• 30:06
  check you know the the performances within those scenes
• 30:10
  everything before after and is a potential fabrication on some
• 30:16
  level, you know you consolidate characters and so forth.
• 30:18
  But what I found interesting. Sorry, go ahead.
• 30:21
  I'll just say, do you actually ask him about fornicating before
• 30:24
  the interview? Is that real?
• 30:25
  Exactly. I don't know exactly
• 30:28
  entertaining. So things like that, we don't
• 30:30
  know, right. But I do believe that there's
• 30:32
  probably some truth to that, you know that David Frost was on the
• 30:35
  set at some level. So I think there was probably
• 30:38
  some creative license, but I think it's got some level of
• 30:43
  accuracy and so forth. But one of the things I really
• 30:45
  liked about the movie, particularly the intro is it's,
• 30:50
  as we talked about it, it kind of threads the needle, I thought
• 30:54
  between all the President's Men and 2008, you know, 76 and 2008,
• 31:01
  where you get, because since then, right, more tapes have
• 31:04
  been released because, because President's Men ends with his
• 31:07
  inauguration on the screen, right?
• 31:11
  And then just sort of talks about how he resigned in the in
• 31:14
  the typing, but doesn't really get into any of the particulars,
• 31:17
  right. And at the time the movie was
• 31:18
  made, a lot of those tapes hadn't been made public.
• 31:21
  You know, some of the the video footage hadn't been disclosed.
• 31:25
  So it's now 30 years later. And now the stuff is kind of
• 31:29
  starting to come out a little bit more.
• 31:30
  So they had, I thought they took advantage of some of those tapes
• 31:34
  and using anyway, it's Nixon's this is again, actual true stuff
• 31:39
  talking about like the income taxes and the investigations
• 31:42
  and, you know, wanting to hang Teddy Kennedy's operation, you
• 31:47
  know, and, and, and obviously all the Watergate stuff leading
• 31:51
  up until the, the resignation speech.
• 31:53
  So I, what I liked about it was it kind of gave us the post
• 31:57
  credits almost to all the president's men.
• 32:01
  So that if you know, even if you don't really know Nixon or like
• 32:05
  the story of Watergate, there is a fairly short, pretty succinct
• 32:10
  way to get you into what we're talking about, You know, and I,
• 32:15
  I, so I thought that was really effective.
• 32:16
  I thought it was a really smart choice to, to, to do that.
• 32:19
  And we watched these movies again, we talked about it, you
• 32:21
  know, sort of a little bit. I feel like they're really kind
• 32:23
  of a bookend, you know, obviously they're very different
• 32:25
  in, in style and tone. But I do think, and you thought,
• 32:28
  I thought you brought up an interesting point where you're
• 32:29
  comparing the two were sort of like two different mediums.
• 32:34
  You know, it's like the journalistic written, typed
• 32:37
  word, you know, that kind of brought him down.
• 32:40
  And this sort of Advent and the and the and the more caustic
• 32:45
  approach here with the with television and particularly
• 32:47
  Nixon's relationship with television, which I do like that
• 32:49
  they touched on it a little later on.
• 32:52
  So anyway, All in all, I was really impressed by the, the way
• 32:55
  in which they put this together so effortlessly and what feels
• 32:59
  like I think 10 maybe minutes or so, maybe a little less to
• 33:03
  really kind of hook you into what, what the catch you up,
• 33:06
  let's say on to what the character's been up to and stuff
• 33:08
  like that, including. So I thought that was really
• 33:10
  good. And then obviously opening with,
• 33:11
  with, with the, with the interviews, you know, with, with
• 33:14
  the Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt, who I think are just two
• 33:18
  fantastic actors. They're they're two people that
• 33:21
  every time they show up on screen, I'm I'm always
• 33:24
  pleasantly. Yeah, I'm very pleased by.
• 33:28
  Yeah, I would agree. I haven't seen Plaid in a lot of
• 33:30
  things, but I feel like every time I see him, like I love this
• 33:33
  guy. I don't know, it's something.
• 33:34
  He's funny, he's witty and he brings that to his character,
• 33:37
  and he's smart and and and fantastic and Rockwell, I
• 33:41
  haven't seen many, many films with him, but yeah, he generally
• 33:45
  provides a solid performance and most of his stuff.
• 33:48
  Absolutely, Yeah. Yeah, I always like him.
• 33:51
  I mean even in the the remake to Poltergeist, which was a yeah,
• 33:55
  an absolute abomination. 4.4 I believe on.
• 33:59
  IMED. But terrible.
• 34:02
  But other than that. We'll hold that against him.
• 34:05
  He's great. We'll hold that again.
• 34:06
  Exactly, exactly. Everyone needs a paycheck.
• 34:08
  Everyone gets a free one free pass other than Bruce Willis,
• 34:12
  who gets 20 free passes. That's OK.
• 34:16
  That's right. So I like that I I kind of
• 34:18
  thought the setup because we all to some extent I think the movie
• 34:22
  presupposes and certainly does in that in that little bit kind
• 34:25
  of give us the Cole's notes on Nixon in the last, you know,
• 34:29
  again, the sort of four or five years since his resignation to
• 34:32
  the yeah with. His little hospital spell and
• 34:35
  then the pardon and. Yeah, exactly.
• 34:37
  Kind of gives you that summary, right?
• 34:39
  What I think that's interesting because we all kind of know
• 34:41
  Nixon to some extent, I think, whereas nobody knows Frost at
• 34:44
  all, or at least, you know, in my experience.
• 34:46
  So I kind of thought you had to spend more time with him.
• 34:49
  And I kind of like they kind of do that, yeah, by sort of
• 34:51
  setting him up as this sort of TV loose on some level or really
• 34:55
  kind of a success, I guess, but a little bit of a.
• 34:57
  Himself, as his love interest says, you seem like a sad guy.
• 35:03
  And he sort of, he sort of acknowledges that and agrees
• 35:06
  without saying like, yes, I am. He changes the subject.
• 35:09
  And I like that. That chemistry that that with
• 35:13
  those two is something I sort of missed the first time.
• 35:16
  And when I watched it the second time, it really connected some
• 35:18
  more dots to his character that were quite important for the
• 35:21
  film really to understand him more as as a person.
• 35:26
  He he liked the fame, you know, he liked being in the spotlight.
• 35:30
  But he had this part of them that want to do something really
• 35:33
  big and obviously a bit of a risk taker and trying to figure
• 35:37
  out what's driving him to do this.
• 35:40
  Why? A little bit, you know,
• 35:41
  necessarily arrogant. But.
• 35:44
  A little bit, I'd say a little bit.
• 35:45
  A little bit, but at the same time I don't very charismatic at
• 35:48
  the same time, just even the way he says beans, peas and lamb,
• 35:52
  I'm like, oh, that's just. You said that really.
• 35:53
  Well, I don't know what it is, but the way you order your food
• 35:57
  is just very charming. And yeah, so I liked his
• 36:01
  introduction and his his repertoire with his producer
• 36:06
  and, and his intrigue and, and doing Nixon.
• 36:08
  I do want to ask you a question though, because I think happened
• 36:10
  pretty early on the film is when he's watching the TV and Nixon's
• 36:14
  getting getting on the plane. And then Nixon has this this
• 36:18
  look. Now I'm thinking he's he's
• 36:20
  actually, that's not actually happening.
• 36:21
  He's just seeing that because it was a weird look.
• 36:24
  What are your thoughts in around that?
• 36:25
  I thought that was that was weird.
• 36:27
  Weirdly interesting. Yeah.
• 36:29
  I think that's the dramatic license, right?
• 36:32
  So the idea, I think the idea of that shot is to say Nixon's got
• 36:36
  more to say or he's got something haunting him, right?
• 36:39
  Whereas if you watch the real footage, he doesn't, they
• 36:42
  obviously don't, they don't zoom in, they don't have that moment,
• 36:45
  right? He's just at the base of the
• 36:46
  helicopter doing his peace signs and he gets in, right.
• 36:49
  So it's, again, it's a creative license and I think it does sort
• 36:51
  of indicate there's more here. There's something here, you
• 36:55
  know, and I kind of like how that's tied into Frost sort of
• 36:58
  approach where he's like, let's dig in here, you know?
• 37:01
  Yeah, I respect. That was a nice touch.
• 37:03
  It's good luck because it's funny.
• 37:05
  Ironically, at the end it was when they talk about it too and
• 37:07
  they show us it's all about that look, you know, and the zoom in
• 37:11
  on the camera during the interview was quite telling as
• 37:14
  we see it, of course, towards to the end.
• 37:15
  Now. Do you have a perspiration
• 37:17
  issue, Philip? Do you?
• 37:18
  Are you? Do you?
• 37:19
  Are you sweating now? I do not have a perspiration
• 37:23
  issue. And I think that's a story I
• 37:25
  heard years and years ago. And I thought, well, that's
• 37:28
  fascinating, the idea that Nixon technically would have what was
• 37:33
  considered to be the winner of the 1960 presidential debate,
• 37:37
  but for the fact that. So if you listen to all the
• 37:40
  radio, he won. And if you watch it on
• 37:41
  television, he didn't because he was skittish and his eyes darted
• 37:44
  around and he was clearly uncomfortable and he was
• 37:47
  sweating profusely. And his opponent was John
• 37:51
  Kennedy, who's, you know, this sort of beautiful man well, you
• 37:55
  know, poised, well spoken, so forth.
• 37:57
  So that I'd heard years and years ago as a real interesting
• 38:01
  kind of counterpoint to some of the reasons why Nixon was sort
• 38:05
  of as embittered in some ways as he was, you know, was like, and
• 38:08
  jealous and angry and sort of frustrated and annoyed by the
• 38:12
  whole process because I think he thought he probably deserved to
• 38:15
  win that. And yeah, it's a whole other
• 38:20
  movie, I suspect. Was that second?
• 38:23
  But yeah, I. Personally, luckily don't have a
• 38:25
  perspiration problem. But that's good.
• 38:26
  Well, thanks for clearing for that for our, our, our
• 38:29
  listeners. So what after that?
• 38:33
  So they they set up the characters pretty nicely.
• 38:35
  I I felt with the interviews and then of course with, with a
• 38:38
  little bit of Nixon and and like you mentioned a little bit more
• 38:41
  of Frost just to get the, the, the people watching the movie,
• 38:45
  the viewers has a good word to use.
• 38:47
  Yeah, kind of familiar, kind of familiar with Mr. Frost being
• 38:51
  just obviously being an American film, but being a British
• 38:55
  British fella, I think British right, because he because he had
• 38:57
  an Australian show as well. So.
• 39:00
  He's, yeah. He's a British, British, British
• 39:01
  personality who worked in Australia.
• 39:04
  Yeah. OK.
• 39:04
  You know, he'd work anywhere just to get just to get, you
• 39:07
  know, whatever on television and so forth.
• 39:09
  Yeah, you can tell like he's doing these shows that are a
• 39:11
  little like kids, you know, he's not escape.
• 39:13
  The guy trying to, but those are always entertaining.
• 39:18
  Well, that's the thing. He's, you know, they kind of
• 39:20
  call him out on it, which again, I really like the setup of this
• 39:22
  movie where it's sort of like it's, it's the rise, it's a
• 39:24
  little bit of this sort of meek. They've set him up as a meek,
• 39:28
  quiet, irrelevant. Talk show host.
• 39:31
  You know that someone has no no backbone.
• 39:33
  No political ambitions. You know, Oliver Platt kind of
• 39:36
  calls him out. Like, who would have thought
• 39:37
  that Nixon sort of moment of truth, as it were, would come
• 39:40
  from somebody that had no political leanings and no real
• 39:42
  interest in anything other than ratings and television?
• 39:47
  You know, I had no real vested interest in like Sam Rockwell.
• 39:50
  What I love about that character is he's like the, you know, the
• 39:53
  piss and vinegar guy. You know, that's just like, we
• 39:55
  got to take him down, you know, it's a travesty.
• 39:58
  It's bullshit. I got to, you know, I want to be
• 40:00
  the guy that, that, that. Watches him fall and see him
• 40:02
  apologize because I got angry and angry, right.
• 40:05
  So he kind of covers the the ground of like the Crusader.
• 40:09
  And I think he's just phenomenal in it.
• 40:11
  You know, I think he plays that role so, so, so well generally.
• 40:14
  And yeah, now and Platt, Platt is obviously a little bit more
• 40:18
  even headed and. Keeled, if you will.
• 40:21
  Yeah, but the reality is that, you know, Frost is presented as
• 40:23
  somebody that's just like, I just want to make some money,
• 40:25
  like, you know, in general. And if I end up doing this
• 40:28
  thing, you know, and that's, I think that's the beauty of the
• 40:30
  structure of Morgan's script is that I don't know that that's
• 40:33
  real. I don't know if that's like the
• 40:36
  true story of David Frost's. But I will say that in terms of
• 40:40
  characterization and building a structure of a movie and having
• 40:44
  a place to go from a character perspective, it's brilliant.
• 40:47
  You know, having the sort of David and Goliath vibe, you
• 40:51
  know, kind of throughout. And I really like that.
• 40:53
  And I think this is where Sheen really gets to shine because in
• 40:56
  these early stages, he's so kind of vacuous.
• 40:59
  You know, he's presented like such a Playboy.
• 41:01
  And, you know, again, just like a ego to some extent.
• 41:04
  He likes the parties. He's kind of, you know, flirting
• 41:06
  with the woman on the plane. He's really just like a
• 41:08
  schmoozer and low levels. His growth throughout the movie
• 41:11
  is really set up when you see A. Character like that, we've seen
• 41:13
  people do it bigger, you know what I mean?
• 41:16
  For sure. But nonetheless, he likes, you
• 41:19
  know, the light, the limelight. What was interesting about
• 41:23
  Rockwell's character is I did like how that was set up.
• 41:26
  If we talk about when they first kind of get together, the crew,
• 41:30
  if you will, and the producer says, no, you don't want this
• 41:33
  guy, he's going to be annoying and troublesome.
• 41:36
  And I like just the line where he, what's his name, Frost.
• 41:43
  Yeah, Michael Sheen. Yeah, Michael.
• 41:44
  Sheen plays a guy named David Frost, for those who don't know.
• 41:48
  Yeah. Those just tuning.
• 41:51
  In And he he sort of and Rockwell's character leaves,
• 41:54
  leaves the room briefly, and they're talking and he wants to
• 41:58
  keep them. And he says I've been told I
• 42:00
  should get out of my comfort zone.
• 42:03
  And what I, what I got from that is I feel like his love
• 42:06
  interest, her influence on him is what almost grounds him a
• 42:10
  little bit. And, and it's almost like
• 42:13
  pulling him away from being that arrogant party fella.
• 42:17
  Now I don't know if I'm again, I don't know if this is too much
• 42:20
  of A of the week of a weekly dig here, but I felt that's that's
• 42:25
  that's she. He said that because of her
• 42:27
  getting out of the comfort zone. That's just maybe it's because
• 42:29
  my wife keeps telling me to get out of my comfort zone.
• 42:31
  So that could be something simple.
• 42:33
  You're just hearing it all the time and you're here, so it
• 42:35
  could be. Something as simple as that.
• 42:37
  But with that scene, I love what Rockwell does with that.
• 42:41
  I I wish. There's one thing I did wish
• 42:44
  with this movie that he had stuck to his guns a little bit
• 42:46
  more consistently throughout the movie.
• 42:49
  He does this at the beginning and a little bit towards the end
• 42:52
  and sporadically thrilled. But there's a couple moments
• 42:54
  where I felt like he didn't push hard enough to get what he
• 42:57
  wanted. Just an example, the I want to
• 43:01
  go to New York. I think it was New York I'm not
• 43:03
  mistaken for or somewhere for Washington maybe, but for the
• 43:06
  week to get some information I think on Coulson.
• 43:09
  I think if I'm not mistaken and you know, Frost basically shuts
• 43:13
  them down. Like no, we need you here and
• 43:15
  now. I don't want you to do that.
• 43:16
  I got everything. Everything is good.
• 43:17
  Don't worry about it. And he didn't really put out
• 43:19
  much of a fight at that point. And I was a little disappointed
• 43:23
  where he just didn't stick with that because he came on really
• 43:25
  strong at the at the beginning of the first time where they get
• 43:29
  together. I think, Oh yeah, this is going
• 43:31
  to be there's going to be some friction here.
• 43:33
  And I like what they're doing at this.
• 43:34
  So I just, you know, I just felt they could have.
• 43:37
  Yeah, I think. That's less of a character thing
• 43:39
  and more of a story thing because you have that's the
• 43:41
  smoking gun that ends up putting Frost in the place, right.
• 43:45
  So it's like, if he does that and they let him go 2 weeks
• 43:49
  earlier, you know, so, so I get, I get the, that the character is
• 43:52
  kind of betrayed a little bit. Like to your point again,
• 43:55
  there's, there's maybe something missing where he's not, but, but
• 44:00
  it's like for story reasons, you kind of had to hold it off.
• 44:03
  But I get it. I, I think for me, I, I, what I
• 44:06
  liked is the, is the real anger and rage and, and I'm going to,
• 44:09
  you know, punch Nixon in the face.
• 44:10
  And then Nixon walks in and he shakes his hand.
• 44:14
  Because there's the recognition that even in all the anger, this
• 44:18
  is the thing we're talking about, right?
• 44:19
  Even in all the anger and even in all the stuff is still the
• 44:21
  president, right? There's still a level of respect
• 44:22
  that kind of comes with the office, even if you're a
• 44:24
  monster. So and I like that that scene
• 44:27
  kind of touches on it, which is is really kind of good.
• 44:30
  Absolutely. And what do we have anything
• 44:32
  else in every That's kind of a big scene, them getting all
• 44:34
  getting together and and. No, I kind of like the way that
• 44:37
  they put all that stuff. We don't spend a ton of time
• 44:39
  with Nixon. And when we do, he's sort of
• 44:41
  he's with Jack, you know, Kevin Bacon's character.
• 44:46
  And he's got a couple of great lines, you know, but he doesn't
• 44:49
  really kind of become he's, you know, joking about like, you
• 44:51
  know, you never know when you're getting taped and and things
• 44:54
  like that. But but at the end of the day,
• 44:56
  it's really about Nixon's like the known entity, right?
• 44:59
  And so the story really is how Frost and his team get to him.
• 45:03
  So I like that. And those scenes when they're
• 45:06
  getting together in their hospital or the hotel store and
• 45:08
  they're trying to put it together and they're coming up
• 45:09
  with some stuff, you know, I think it's really wonderful.
• 45:11
  And Rockwell plays all that. What I like is the is the, is
• 45:16
  the ability to galvanized the team, right?
• 45:22
  These are great. The similar with with all the
• 45:24
  President's Men, right? You can have this moment where
• 45:25
  these two people have to kind of work together to do this thing
• 45:29
  and the investigation and all the legwork and all the stuff.
• 45:33
  And I like that we get this beautiful little montage of the
• 45:36
  prep kind of piercing it together and putting, putting
• 45:39
  all that stuff. I really am impressed by it and
• 45:41
  like trying to get to the structure of it and start all
• 45:44
  those things. I think is really, really great
• 45:46
  filmmaking. Again, Ron Howard, not an actor,
• 45:48
  not a director that I really love, but you get that stuff and
• 45:52
  you get Nixon, you know, talking about how it's a duel, you know,
• 45:55
  and like the the preparing for battle, all the sort of
• 45:58
  metaphors to say like he is the the the the genius, let's say
• 46:03
  the political genius, the ability to manipulate and kind
• 46:06
  of control this this situation and Frost is this and this team
• 46:10
  or like a ragtag, a bunch of, you know, television people
• 46:14
  trying to make it good, you know, and as I said, I.
• 46:16
  Thought from a from a structure and a.
• 46:18
  Perspective. I thought it was really
• 46:19
  wonderful. I really loved everything about
• 46:20
  it. And, you know, I love a montage.
• 46:23
  I think I've made that very clear over the years, yeah.
• 46:25
  I, I and yes, and I and I and I respect it.
• 46:27
  I, I do like a montage. The only time I, I, I struggle
• 46:31
  and it's not really necessarily a montage.
• 46:34
  It's, it's something it's, it's, it's manipulating time.
• 46:38
  And I, I feel often directors struggle to show the struggle
• 46:42
  and the time consumption and sort of and some scenarios and
• 46:47
  I'm, I'm more referring to a little bit later in the movie
• 46:51
  after the, the phone conversation.
• 46:53
  I don't want to jump jump too far ahead, but I will because I
• 46:57
  am and. Please.
• 47:00
  And we'll loop back, but once Frost really wants to sink his
• 47:03
  teeth into it, he's starting to do his research.
• 47:06
  Then he sends Sam Rockwell, of course, to do what he wanted to
• 47:10
  do. Initially.
• 47:11
  What would have taken a week has now taken just a day.
• 47:15
  And that's what it feels like to me, Like they were able to.
• 47:18
  I mean, here we have there originally months and months and
• 47:20
  months of investigation, going through the tapes.
• 47:23
  There's so much to go through. They got the FBI, the all sorts
• 47:26
  of stuff. But David Frost seems to be able
• 47:30
  to go through it. What felt to me, I'm not saying
• 47:32
  it is what felt to me in one night and I I just feel that's
• 47:36
  something that is hard to do. I'm not saying it's an easy
• 47:39
  feat. I think there's a few movies
• 47:42
  that we've we noticed, like blood diamond, I'll throw out as
• 47:45
  an example that we talked about a few weeks ago, how we show how
• 47:48
  the top the child's shoulder. I'm sorry, the child child
• 47:52
  soldiers, how they changed and over and how that would take a
• 47:56
  little bit of time, but how they filmed it and how they portrayed
• 48:00
  it to us, it really made us, you know, believe it.
• 48:04
  And I thought they did a really good job where this movie I
• 48:07
  didn't really, you know, clicking's like all that.
• 48:10
  That's going to take some time and maybe again, maybe they did
• 48:12
  have that time where there's weeks between interviews and so
• 48:16
  I didn't get that sense and I thought that was just a bit of a
• 48:19
  cheat. That whole, that part, That's
• 48:23
  that's, I don't know if you had the same feeling or you want to.
• 48:27
  No, I don't think, I don't tend to think about things like that
• 48:29
  when I watch the movie. So, so I don't like whether it
• 48:32
  takes a minute or it takes, you know, an hour or whatever else,
• 48:36
  unless it affects the flow of the movie, it doesn't stick out.
• 48:39
  So this is like, you know, he went and did all the research.
• 48:42
  Maybe he did it faster, maybe he didn't like, you know, those
• 48:44
  things don't really. I just want to see the grind.
• 48:46
  I want to see the struggle. I want to see the grind.
• 48:48
  Nothing. Yeah, that's.
• 48:49
  Fair. I mean I get.
• 48:50
  Right. It looked like it just came
• 48:51
  easy. Well, it doesn't come easy.
• 48:53
  You really have to put your work into it.
• 48:55
  Therefore, I think it kind of hurts a bit of a payoff, you
• 48:58
  know, for work, for all that struggle you would have to go
• 49:00
  through to have that day three interview.
• 49:03
  I just for me anyway, it didn't pay off as much because I didn't
• 49:06
  really see him struggle to really.
• 49:08
  Oh, oh, oh, you want to go like, OK, well, I got to win this.
• 49:11
  OK, well, I'll just I'll do basically just listen to some
• 49:15
  tapes. And I also, I'm going to be the
• 49:17
  better person. I'm going to win this debate, if
• 49:19
  you will. And I thought a little.
• 49:21
  Bit a little bit weak. For me to what they're trying to
• 49:24
  sell to to the to the audience. That's the sure thoughts around
• 49:27
  that. But that's really I mean for a
• 49:30
  movie, I think as I think we both agree the structure as I
• 49:33
  think we have to give a lot of credit, I guess it's Morgan.
• 49:34
  It must be Morgan. He's just great at structure.
• 49:37
  So I think we. Already said yeah, he's a
• 49:38
  playwright and screenwriter. I suppose it comes with some of
• 49:41
  that territory, you know, you're.
• 49:42
  Yeah. You're about same character.
• 49:44
  That. Same actors played the the stage
• 49:46
  playing from what I understood. Yeah, I think that's what helps
• 49:49
  make this movie. The performance is so, so, so
• 49:51
  tight and so strong is that they did it for years on stage and
• 49:54
  then translate it to the screen. It's often the case where you
• 49:59
  recast in an effort to like go with the big, big names or what
• 50:02
  have you. So it's impressive to me that
• 50:04
  they were these guys were the same.
• 50:05
  And then I think that's why those performances are so solid.
• 50:08
  Yeah, absolutely. There's in this movie
• 50:10
  throughout, I think there's though there's some some
• 50:13
  characters, actors that didn't really have a lot to do.
• 50:15
  There's we talk about that every week.
• 50:17
  There's always going to be an under under use of characters,
• 50:20
  but I felt like there's no weak link in this movie in my
• 50:24
  opinion. Not even Clint Howard.
• 50:26
  I think he just gave it all, you know, poor left.
• 50:28
  It all on the table, heart and soul.
• 50:30
  Do it. I don't I love seeing Clint
• 50:32
  Howard. I really do.
• 50:33
  But absolutely. So but that anyway, that's that.
• 50:36
  If I was to to what's the word I'm looking for?
• 50:41
  That's my looking for if I was to.
• 50:44
  Nitpick. Yeah, nitpick, but I was going
• 50:46
  to use a more sophisticated word.
• 50:48
  Criticize the movie that would. Dug deep for that one.
• 50:54
  Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, to get the thesaurus
• 50:56
  out. But, and then the reason I bring
• 50:58
  it up now is because I was just talking about how Sam Rockwell,
• 51:01
  as you said, sort of betrayed the character for this payoff
• 51:05
  later. And I get it.
• 51:07
  But I just, I didn't feel like all of that, the payoff was good
• 51:09
  enough for me to, to do, to do the portrayal in the 1st place.
• 51:12
  So that's really my, my biggest, biggest, probably only real
• 51:17
  criticism of the movie. Philip, I don't know if
• 51:20
  anything. You said you hadn't watched the
• 51:22
  film for 7-8 years and you really enjoyed this view.
• 51:26
  Yeah, at the point we are at least up to the point where we
• 51:28
  are at the movie, which is basically just getting to the
• 51:31
  interviews. Do you have any criticisms that
• 51:33
  you that can pop out or you're just, you're just right in it,
• 51:36
  You're loving every minute? No, I'm just right in it, lover
• 51:38
  boy. I really just eaten it up.
• 51:39
  There wasn't anything that really stuck out as being
• 51:41
  something that that was, you know, worth, for lack of a
• 51:45
  better term, worth the criticism, because I didn't feel
• 51:47
  any of those. I felt like it's really tightly
• 51:49
  put together, as I said. So it didn't drag.
• 51:51
  It didn't feel too long. I didn't feel any of the, like
• 51:54
  you said, the betrayal of a character.
• 51:57
  I just bought it. I'm like, yeah, this is right.
• 51:59
  This is how it goes. So again, I'm not, you know,
• 52:02
  there are movies certainly where you watch the critical eye, and
• 52:04
  this one I watched with a critical eye, but I didn't find
• 52:07
  much to criticize. So I was kind of right with it.
• 52:10
  I really liked everything that was kind of happening and the
• 52:12
  structure of it kept it moving, as I said.
• 52:13
  So as we're gearing up for the interview, I'm like, I'm right
• 52:16
  in it. I'm right with it.
• 52:17
  You know, I think like, yeah, absolutely.
• 52:18
  This is great. And they when I when like that
• 52:23
  one moment where he doesn't push to go away, Frost is the guy
• 52:26
  that has to agree to let him go. So ultimately it's like his
• 52:30
  show. He's getting paid by this, by
• 52:31
  this, You know, he's an employee, right?
• 52:33
  So what I like is that even though they may not, he may not
• 52:37
  have pushed to fly to Washington to go to the archives and do the
• 52:39
  thing. He is still in the first
• 52:42
  interview pushing back and fighting and kind of chirping
• 52:46
  from the from the sideline saying like, you know, you got
• 52:48
  to dig in. This is bullshit.
• 52:49
  You know, you got to push him back.
• 52:50
  You got to fight. What is what are we even doing
• 52:52
  here? So he's frustrated and angered
• 52:54
  by the process. So again, none of that stuck out
• 52:57
  as being antithetical to the character sort of structure.
• 53:01
  It felt like this is this is the art, you know, this is this is
• 53:04
  how it goes. Yeah.
• 53:05
  So I'm right in it. What I love is, is, is Bacon,
• 53:08
  who in this one moment where he's sort of arguing this is
• 53:11
  right after sort of right before the first day of the interviews,
• 53:15
  and he's having this conversation with Frost around,
• 53:22
  you know, the we're trying to defend Nixon, you know, 60% of
• 53:25
  the time. 6030 great president. Why did he leave 10% on the
• 53:28
  table? I mean, it it was a great line.
• 53:31
  I mean, it sets up the frost line.
• 53:34
  Well, whatever percent. Yeah, that was a good.
• 53:36
  That was a conversation about trying to make anything
• 53:38
  negative. It qualifies as it's Watergate
• 53:42
  and you only get 25% Watergate. SO20.
• 53:44
  Only 25% of the interview can be negative and make him look bad
• 53:47
  and then 75% makes him look good.
• 53:50
  Nice try, Kevin. Nice try.
• 53:52
  Yeah, but there's no way that's going to happen.
• 53:55
  But that's that's a funny scene. Everything negative goes
• 53:57
  underwater. Yeah, it's great.
• 53:58
  And so, yeah, the the line of saying like 60% of the time he
• 54:02
  was a great president. 30% of the time he's like, he did bad
• 54:04
  things, but he thought they were right.
• 54:06
  And then 1010% is doing bad things and knowing they were bad
• 54:10
  things. So I think it's a great line.
• 54:12
  It's a great written line, but it's performed with such, you
• 54:14
  know, I think with bacon is just such a great delivery.
• 54:18
  Now, do you think I love? Do you think Kevin Bacon's
• 54:22
  character, do you think he just isn't very good at math or he
• 54:25
  left that 10% on the table on purpose?
• 54:28
  Where you. Should.
• 54:29
  Well, I think someone wrote, wrote it, wrote it for him to
• 54:31
  leave it on purpose. That's pretty much 6040.
• 54:34
  What? Did it go?
• 54:35
  But that was good. That was good.
• 54:38
  I think. I mean, I think when we talk
• 54:39
  about Kevin Bacon's character, he's an Army guy.
• 54:42
  He was the, I forget his specific role, secretary of.
• 54:47
  Steve. Not sure.
• 54:48
  Not sure, it's not important, but you know, he not having a
• 54:52
  big role, he always felt like he had Nixon.
• 54:54
  He was always in Nixon's corner. And he almost wanted to, you
• 54:59
  know, turn the blind eye to anything negative about Nixon.
• 55:03
  Like I thought that was interesting character, as if we
• 55:05
  didn't dive too deep into his character too much, but it was
• 55:08
  just enough to show there is someone in Nixon's corner.
• 55:11
  This isn't all. Everyone doesn't like Nixon.
• 55:14
  We're all trying to get Nixon. Nixon has obviously there's not
• 55:18
  just Kevin Bacon, Kevin Bacon's character.
• 55:20
  He has his his room of people who are all excited when he gets
• 55:24
  his for sure his. Diane Sawyer is one of whom he
• 55:26
  gets his victory. Ben Stein is another one.
• 55:28
  Yeah. Ben Stein.
• 55:29
  Yeah, yeah. Ben Stein the Ben Stein.
• 55:32
  Yeah, the Ben Stein was a Nixon speech writer and is like, so
• 55:36
  emotionally he thinks he's the best president they ever had in
• 55:38
  the country. So it's not unheard of.
• 55:40
  Nixon is not like a monster to everybody.
• 55:42
  He's like, now you have your party lines and you have people
• 55:47
  that will defend any behavior because it's what you do.
• 55:51
  Or you like somebody. You don't want to believe that
• 55:53
  they're monsters. Yeah, right.
• 55:55
  So you're like, well, this is my best friend for 30 years.
• 55:57
  I don't want to have to say he's an asshole.
• 56:00
  So I'll just, you know, he's just, he's just my friend.
• 56:02
  I never knew him like that. And that's, that's funny
• 56:04
  because, I mean, even Nixon mentioned something when he
• 56:07
  talks about Halderman and those guys.
• 56:09
  Like I known him these guys for 30 years, like during the
• 56:11
  interview. Yeah, these are my friends.
• 56:13
  I'm not going to just call the, you know, sort of home in
• 56:15
  prison. Yeah.
• 56:18
  That's a that's a funny thing. But yeah.
• 56:20
  Exactly. So you go along with it, even
• 56:22
  though you're the one that's instructed them to do it.
• 56:25
  So again, it's more lies. It's just lying.
• 56:27
  It's just, you know, Alderman and Earthman, they're the finest
• 56:29
  people I've ever known. They're all dirty people.
• 56:32
  And he was the ringleader to the whole thing.
• 56:34
  So I don't think you get a chance to do it.
• 56:37
  But I mean, it's, again, you can't have, in my estimation, if
• 56:40
  you're making a movie, you can't have a completely unsympathetic
• 56:42
  character. You have to have a reason to
• 56:45
  care one way or the other. So if it's just Nixon alone on
• 56:48
  an island, it's a pretty boring movie, right?
• 56:51
  You want to have somebody around this standing up for him or
• 56:53
  whatever, And he had those people because it's against what
• 56:56
  you do. He's the former president.
• 56:58
  People love that still. In place of power right as well.
• 57:01
  Yeah. And so Bacon, I thought, just
• 57:03
  played that really well because he knows what he's saying is
• 57:06
  true, but also knows that he's probably on the, you know, maybe
• 57:10
  he doesn't know it, but he feels maybe at some point that he's on
• 57:13
  the wrong side of history on it. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:15
  He seems like a little naive to not real.
• 57:18
  I don't know. It's a very interesting
• 57:20
  character and I like how he played it.
• 57:22
  Or it wasn't just playing like a Nixon henchman, sort of where
• 57:28
  he's just a bad guy. He just sincerely believes he's
• 57:31
  not a terrible president. And the verdicts, verdicts out
• 57:35
  for me. I haven't decided yet.
• 57:36
  But we get to the, I guess we're pretty much at the point where
• 57:40
  they, they sit down and they've met each other and they, they
• 57:42
  sit down for the, the first interview, unless there's
• 57:45
  something else like that comes up before, because where we're
• 57:48
  at and what I will just come out and say what I do like about it.
• 57:52
  When you look at the interview 1-2 and three, you really see
• 57:55
  the a transformation. I like to use that word a lot
• 57:58
  because it's a good word of a Frost's approach, of course,
• 58:03
  from what happened the first interview to the second and and
• 58:06
  to the third. And I really, and I think we
• 58:10
  forget or could forget that he is human.
• 58:15
  David Frost, those who don't know, is a human and he's
• 58:20
  sitting down with the with the President of the United States
• 58:22
  of America. And as as arrogant as he is and
• 58:25
  confident as he is, I think there's like, Oh my God, this is
• 58:28
  the President of the United States.
• 58:29
  This is huge. He's nervous, you know, it's
• 58:32
  doesn't know exactly how to approach it, doesn't know what
• 58:35
  to expect to a certain degree. And I think maybe they
• 58:37
  underestimated, I think maybe the Nixon's team, I think on
• 58:43
  both, both sides or some underestimation, overestimation.
• 58:46
  You know, as I say, it's like a battle between these two, right?
• 58:49
  No holds barred, I think was mentioned.
• 58:51
  That's right. Nixon kept repeating over and
• 58:53
  over, no holds barred. Yeah, he like he wanted this,
• 58:55
  this thing, which is quite interesting as we can get to
• 58:57
  towards after that phone call we get to.
• 58:59
  But I think they did a good job in my opinion of showing that
• 59:03
  where it starts off of a little bit of Nixon intimidating
• 59:08
  intimidation tactics. You know, how about the more is
• 59:10
  the money coming from like, you know, like he's having to spend
• 59:13
  his own money to budget the whole to finance the whole
• 59:15
  thing. So I think they made it very
• 59:17
  clear of we starting off Nixon on the off the on the offensive
• 59:22
  and kind of taking this a bit of a stranglehold on the interviews
• 59:25
  to start off. And I think that's portrayed
• 59:27
  well. And then you have, you know,
• 59:29
  Frost's team, you know, Platt and and Rockwell and the
• 59:33
  producer, of course, is just getting so frustrated.
• 59:36
  Like, what are you doing here? You're you're letting this guy
• 59:39
  Babble on and you're not cutting him off.
• 59:41
  You're not, you're not owning the interview, right?
• 59:43
  There's there's a there's a power struggle and I thought it
• 59:46
  was really good showing how they start off this power struggle.
• 59:51
  As I haven't seen interviews, Phil, like I haven't seen the
• 59:53
  actual footage. I am curious to see it and I
• 59:56
  will probably take a look at the next probably week or so.
• 59:59
  I mean, it's a lot. I mean, it's pretty time
• 1:00:01
  consuming, but I'll check it out.
• 1:00:04
  Now you you mentioned you had seen them or have seen all of
• 1:00:08
  it. How recent was that?
• 1:00:10
  In 2008, yeah, it was. 2008 OK. So, but one of the benefits, one
• 1:00:15
  of the special features on the Blu-ray here is side by side of
• 1:00:20
  some key moments in the interviews, OK.
• 1:00:23
  So that stuff is all very accurate, OK.
• 1:00:26
  It might be worth just put on the shelf just to have the the
• 1:00:29
  the Blu-ray extras. Yeah, it's they're really good
• 1:00:31
  special features. They've got a commentary track
• 1:00:34
  with Ron Howard, of course. They've got like a making of doc
• 1:00:36
  and one of the things they've got like the Knicks and archives
• 1:00:39
  or something is a special feature and it runs throughout
• 1:00:41
  the movie. There's a little picture in
• 1:00:42
  picture and it'll pop up key information.
• 1:00:44
  And one near the end when they're doing the interviews,
• 1:00:46
  they do these sort of split screen bits and pieces.
• 1:00:49
  You can choose the interview audio or the movie audio, but
• 1:00:53
  all that stuff is very well put together and very accurate.
• 1:00:58
  Interesting in the presentation. Yeah, it's a fascinating.
• 1:01:01
  Situation now, what did you take away from the first interview?
• 1:01:03
  What's going on in your mind at this point?
• 1:01:05
  Again, it's the structure of the movie, right?
• 1:01:07
  So they've set it up. This guy is sort of on his
• 1:01:10
  heels. He's trying to find the money.
• 1:01:11
  They don't have this indication. They don't know what's gonna
• 1:01:13
  happen. He's an an untested interviewer,
• 1:01:17
  right? They've spent the last hour of
• 1:01:18
  the movie or 45 minutes of the movie building up.
• 1:01:20
  This character is being less than.
• 1:01:23
  So to me, it's just like, again, it's part of what you do with
• 1:01:27
  that type of character is now they're they're they were sort
• 1:01:30
  of batting heads and I loved it. You know, again, you're showing
• 1:01:34
  Nixon. He's sort of he's pontificating.
• 1:01:36
  He's going on and on and again and you've got now you've got
• 1:01:41
  Frost kind of struggle struggling, as it were, to kind
• 1:01:44
  of stay on his heels. Now that stuff, you know, the
• 1:01:46
  certain level of, you know, the Watergate stuff is what does the
• 1:01:49
  the A&B comparison. And that's the interview I
• 1:01:52
  watched more in 2008. But it's the, it's the, you
• 1:01:57
  know, I don't know that it was so bad.
• 1:01:59
  As they have, as they're. Portraying it in the movie, it's
• 1:02:02
  like so ineffective. I mean, but it's again, you're
• 1:02:04
  telling a movie. This is why it's based on a true
• 1:02:06
  story. It's not the identical thing.
• 1:02:07
  If you want the interviews, go watch the interviews, right.
• 1:02:09
  So for me, this is how it goes. You're watching Sheen in a
• 1:02:12
  performance that really says, oh shit, I'm outmatched.
• 1:02:17
  And you've got the Knicks and team laughing their butts off in
• 1:02:19
  the back because you know, because they know that he's just
• 1:02:22
  taking taking advantage on him, right?
• 1:02:23
  Take him from for a walk. You know, he's wasted an hour of
• 1:02:27
  a 2 hour interview on one subject right now.
• 1:02:30
  I did like the how they portrayed this like knockout
• 1:02:33
  punch or why didn't you burn the tapes as being there?
• 1:02:36
  Like, yeah, big off putting first opening salvo.
• 1:02:40
  And I like that Nixon just fucks with him the whole time.
• 1:02:43
  Yeah. And you know, and you're like,
• 1:02:44
  oh, well, this is this is great, like great opportunity because
• 1:02:47
  you again, you're setting up the the antagonist, you know, with
• 1:02:50
  all the power and stuff like that.
• 1:02:51
  So again, from a structure perspective, I just thought it
• 1:02:52
  was really wonderful. And you've got bacon doing the
• 1:02:55
  interview or something like that.
• 1:02:56
  I believe it's the interview one-on-one where he talks about
• 1:02:59
  how like Nixon's this great boxer and like, you know, when
• 1:03:01
  you're when you're kind of punching out of your league and
• 1:03:04
  stuff. And all of that is visible in
• 1:03:05
  the first in the first thing, which is, again, I just what
• 1:03:07
  makes it so compelling to me is, is you're building an arc, you
• 1:03:11
  know, and and Ron Howard isn't always the greatest at this, but
• 1:03:13
  clearly Peter Morgan is where you're you're you're building to
• 1:03:17
  something. Yeah.
• 1:03:18
  And and, and and and it's it's so I love the first day.
• 1:03:21
  I thought I was really great that that they kind of really
• 1:03:24
  give it to him. Yeah.
• 1:03:25
  And how frustrating everybody else is after.
• 1:03:26
  I love, you know, Rockwell is like furious, you know, and and
• 1:03:29
  and and plateau. Like, what do we do?
• 1:03:32
  What are we even doing here? Right.
• 1:03:33
  I I like all that stuff too. The inner.
• 1:03:34
  Yeah, and. I think for us has also got that
• 1:03:36
  preoccupation of trying to get the funds right.
• 1:03:39
  That's why he's just. Yeah, So I know it wasn't great.
• 1:03:40
  Yeah, let's skip all this. I gotta, you know, run around
• 1:03:43
  the. The guy I gotta go meet?
• 1:03:44
  The weed eater, Yeah. Exactly, Yeah, Isn't that dog
• 1:03:48
  later dog food company? We still got the dog food
• 1:03:50
  company. So that was.
• 1:03:53
  So again, it does a really good job of setting that up to me.
• 1:03:55
  I really like that, yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:03:56
  And then he has this producer has a nice pep talk with him
• 1:04:00
  trying to he listens to his producer, right.
• 1:04:02
  They're friends and they respect each other.
• 1:04:04
  And, you know, coming from him is a little bit different than
• 1:04:08
  obviously coming from the other characters.
• 1:04:09
  So coming from his producer, long time friend, and he said
• 1:04:12
  you got to do this. You got to lean in, You got to
• 1:04:14
  you got to cut him off. Yeah.
• 1:04:15
  So that was a good scene. And I like, again, when we had
• 1:04:19
  the second interview, you see that, but it's still not
• 1:04:23
  necessarily clearly, which is funny because it goes better
• 1:04:28
  than the first one. And Frost says it goes better.
• 1:04:30
  And he's not wrong. The other guys are so
• 1:04:32
  frustrated, yeah, with everything.
• 1:04:35
  So again, I like how they went from the first, the first day,
• 1:04:39
  day one interviews to the next day footage that we see from
• 1:04:42
  that, what they put in the movie.
• 1:04:44
  I like that. I like the IT still doesn't go
• 1:04:47
  great, but there's some improvement.
• 1:04:48
  What are your thoughts around #2?
• 1:04:52
  Yeah, I thought the same. I thought, again, you're
• 1:04:53
  building up to something. Obviously, you know, it's a
• 1:04:55
  little better, but everybody's kind of losing their patience
• 1:04:57
  with them, right? Because they're, you know, the
• 1:04:59
  point of the movie really is Watergate right now.
• 1:05:02
  The point of the interviews, there's an argument that says it
• 1:05:04
  is Watergate as well, because nobody really cares about, I
• 1:05:08
  should say nobody. But like, I think the belief at
• 1:05:09
  the time was that Watergate's the story, Watergate's the
• 1:05:12
  money. It's it's why it's dedicated its
• 1:05:15
  own episode, you know, foreign, foreign policy, domestic policy,
• 1:05:19
  like those are things. But excuse me, it's all about
• 1:05:22
  Watergate. So what I think it just sort of
• 1:05:25
  sets that up, right? And I think that's great.
• 1:05:27
  I love how frustrated everybody is.
• 1:05:28
  And again, they sort of talk about how the banal anecdotes
• 1:05:31
  are just the type of thing that will distract a talk show host
• 1:05:35
  and how cutting that is. Because Frost is trying to be.
• 1:05:38
  I think he wants to believe himself to be something more
• 1:05:42
  than what he is. He's already getting browbeaten
• 1:05:43
  by advertisers and networks. Nobody wants to work with them.
• 1:05:47
  And Rockwell calls them out and basically just says, like, yeah,
• 1:05:50
  you're you're like, you're a paperweight.
• 1:05:52
  You're nothing, you know? And that's devastating.
• 1:05:56
  To to, to Frost to I think is as an ego obviously, and has an
• 1:06:00
  interest in sort of doing well. Wake up call.
• 1:06:03
  No wake up call, but a realization or of oh wait, you
• 1:06:07
  know, maybe I'm not that great. To some extent, I think it kind
• 1:06:11
  of looks and, or maybe he already struggles with that
• 1:06:13
  belief anyway. You know, like it's like the
• 1:06:15
  imposter syndrome, right? It's like I've been faking it
• 1:06:17
  and now I'm getting called out on it.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah, and that's a good point. This is like the biggest thing
• 1:06:21
  I've ever done and I'm on the hook for $1,000,000 or whatever.
• 1:06:26
  And it's not going well, right. So I think all those things kind
• 1:06:28
  of coalesce into a pretty great scene.
• 1:06:30
  I really love that. Sets up a good line with that.
• 1:06:33
  Platt delivers when, you know, he's not just in it for his Rep
• 1:06:36
  for with the money. It's his reputation.
• 1:06:38
  And then Platt's like, yeah, well, that's what about.
• 1:06:40
  Yeah, reputation. Yeah.
• 1:06:42
  And we're not and we're not. Yeah, it's a big.
• 1:06:44
  He was like something to do with the Washington Post.
• 1:06:46
  So. Yeah.
• 1:06:48
  So they have a. Well, no one's taking it
• 1:06:52
  seriously, right? That's what they kind of call
• 1:06:54
  them out on, right? Nobody's taking this seriously.
• 1:06:56
  They can't get the advertising because there's no, nobody
• 1:06:58
  believes in anything and certainly doesn't believe in
• 1:07:00
  Frost. And Platt's character is talking
• 1:07:03
  about how like, he's like, I I feel like I'm just going to be
• 1:07:05
  in the wilderness with all my Washington people.
• 1:07:08
  You know, I'm here to make a difference.
• 1:07:09
  I'm here to do the thing. And it's going so poorly that
• 1:07:12
  we're all going to walk away as embarrassments, right.
• 1:07:15
  And so all of those things, I think are really, really clever
• 1:07:17
  to me. Yeah.
• 1:07:17
  And then you get. To the point where he's like,
• 1:07:18
  hey guys, you guys aren't on board If you, if you don't think
• 1:07:21
  we can see this through, leave now.
• 1:07:24
  And they don't. And then he invites them out for
• 1:07:28
  for for dinner, drinks, or what have you for.
• 1:07:30
  His birthday, His. Birthday, yeah, which is just a
• 1:07:32
  great scene to show. That's kind of sad.
• 1:07:35
  These are his friends. And I thought that whole scene,
• 1:07:38
  although short and they part of the the main point of the movie.
• 1:07:41
  I just thought it was really well done and a nice, nice touch
• 1:07:43
  to it. And then they're immediately,
• 1:07:46
  you know, before he says it's my birthday.
• 1:07:47
  They're like bashing even though they they're not leaving, right.
• 1:07:50
  They're like, they're in it. Yeah.
• 1:07:51
  They still are talking negatively about it.
• 1:07:53
  They don't stop. Yeah.
• 1:07:55
  Yeah, they don't believe in it, right?
• 1:07:56
  Like they don't believe in him. Yeah.
• 1:07:57
  And then he's like, it's my birthday.
• 1:07:59
  I just thought it was really powerful to see him.
• 1:08:00
  It's really, really well done for this birthday.
• 1:08:02
  I thought it was. Beautiful.
• 1:08:03
  I thought it was beautiful and it does get into his brain.
• 1:08:06
  Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 1:08:07
  Like, you know, from there now we're watching him sort of
• 1:08:09
  struggle with the realities he's got one more day, right?
• 1:08:12
  It's again, it's just from a movie, you know, from an arc,
• 1:08:15
  you know, a plot structure. It's his last chance.
• 1:08:18
  You know, he's got to leave it all on the field, which is why
• 1:08:21
  he starts to, he's a little distant at the at the dinner
• 1:08:25
  party and then ends up getting the call from Nixon.
• 1:08:28
  Yeah, this drunken phone call. And there's a couple of
• 1:08:32
  different allusions to drunk Nixon.
• 1:08:34
  They they talk about it in Nixon the movie and some documentaries
• 1:08:38
  and stuff like that. Now, there's apparently no
• 1:08:40
  evidence that he made this call to Frost.
• 1:08:41
  This was a complete movie slash play contrivance.
• 1:08:44
  Interesting. But apparently it's not unheard
• 1:08:46
  of that he did make some phone calls in his.
• 1:08:50
  Yeah. I did a little bit of research
• 1:08:51
  and that's what I got too. I didn't dig too deep.
• 1:08:54
  Yeah, it. Was kind of curious.
• 1:08:55
  This one is apparently entirely made-up.
• 1:08:57
  OK, it's OK, but the principle is there.
• 1:09:00
  I think it's that same pugilistic we're in this.
• 1:09:02
  It's a fight to the death, you know kind of thing.
• 1:09:04
  And and which he's alluded to all your a game.
• 1:09:06
  I'll bring mine. Exactly, it's not.
• 1:09:08
  This is not new, it's just amping it up for the final.
• 1:09:13
  Showdown, I think it's coming from exactly and it's coming at
• 1:09:16
  the late stages and it's finally kind of putting things in
• 1:09:19
  perspective that like, you know, it's the showdown, you know,
• 1:09:24
  showdown at 9:00 AM kind of thing and.
• 1:09:27
  I don't understand because what often happens is you just awake
• 1:09:30
  a giant, you know, I mean, the movie's indicating that he might
• 1:09:34
  have made the call because he's under the influence.
• 1:09:36
  And had he not been, he may have of course not made the call, if
• 1:09:38
  I can certainly relate to that. But you know, you just now
• 1:09:44
  obviously that just has Frost basically at a, I'm going to say
• 1:09:49
  a crossroad. He's either in it or he's not.
• 1:09:51
  If he's, he's got to go hard, He realizes who's who's he up
• 1:09:54
  against and he's been challenged and he realizes what's on the
• 1:09:59
  line and not everything that has transpired up to this point with
• 1:10:02
  the other characters. And he goes all in.
• 1:10:05
  And then of course, we get the the sequence of him really
• 1:10:08
  digging deep and trying to get to be prepared for for the final
• 1:10:12
  interview and of course, sends Rockwell's character to, you
• 1:10:16
  know, get some more information on the whole Coulson thing and,
• 1:10:19
  and what have you. And that really, really sets it
• 1:10:21
  up. I mean, it's kind of a 123.
• 1:10:24
  We have obviously a few scenes when in between murder, they're
• 1:10:28
  clearly frustrated. But once we get through the the
• 1:10:31
  intro of the movie, when they set up the characters, they
• 1:10:33
  really just do interview one, interview 2, the phone call, if
• 1:10:37
  you will, which really sets up the the 3rd and final interview,
• 1:10:41
  which is interesting I. Think it's really the big yeah,
• 1:10:43
  the big crescendo of the movie. I think it really builds to this
• 1:10:47
  interview, right? He's trying to take all the
• 1:10:48
  tools. It's Frost's chance to sort of
• 1:10:51
  stand up and and make a stance, as it were.
• 1:10:53
  It's it's Rockwell's got his opportunity to kind of follow
• 1:10:56
  his lead, to reveal these the, you know, his his tail that he
• 1:11:01
  wanted to kind of get him on. Yeah, I love it.
• 1:11:04
  I think it's great. I think it's, again, it's just
• 1:11:06
  directed really, really well and written so well that by the time
• 1:11:08
  they get to that third day, you really had, no, I think anyway,
• 1:11:12
  both characters, you know, Nixon, you know where he's
• 1:11:14
  coming from and you know, Frost, where he's coming from.
• 1:11:17
  And as a result, you get really great, beautiful performances
• 1:11:21
  that does lead on some level to what they want, even though it's
• 1:11:27
  not exactly what they want, I think.
• 1:11:29
  But that's when you get real, you know, real peak
• 1:11:32
  performances. You get Nixon and his.
• 1:11:34
  Again, when the president does it, it's not illegal.
• 1:11:37
  And Frost kind of pushing and and and begging him just really
• 1:11:42
  say like, you know, I think you want to apologize.
• 1:11:44
  Like I think you want to say I'm sorry for all of this.
• 1:11:47
  Yeah. And you get, and they do enough
• 1:11:48
  to give us that impression from Langella's performance that
• 1:11:52
  there's Nixon wants to get the he doesn't.
• 1:11:54
  And with the interaction he has with with with Kevin Bacon, when
• 1:11:58
  he interrupts the course the and you know, that's an interesting
• 1:12:04
  like he and doesn't want to live with the lie.
• 1:12:06
  I think there's I mean, that's pretty normal to come to feel
• 1:12:11
  that way. Certainly.
• 1:12:12
  I do want to ask you, do you have a favorite line or a phrase
• 1:12:17
  that that Nixon said in this movie by Langella and that stood
• 1:12:22
  out to? You.
• 1:12:23
  Well, yeah, I mean, I think I remember it from the interview,
• 1:12:27
  which was the I'm saying what the president doesn't.
• 1:12:29
  It's not illegal. That's a scene and that's a line
• 1:12:31
  that I. Think is that's my chilling.
• 1:12:33
  Yeah. That was my #2 my number one was
• 1:12:38
  I'm not a very good butcher When he talks about cutting off.
• 1:12:41
  Sure, Yeah, yeah, yeah, cutting off the arm of Alderman and this
• 1:12:45
  guy, and I'm not a very good butcher.
• 1:12:46
  I was like, oh, that's funny. I like that.
• 1:12:49
  Yeah. I just like, really.
• 1:12:51
  I just remember I was like thinking of days of wine and
• 1:12:53
  roses. Like that's just.
• 1:12:55
  Good, good, good dialogue. Good, good, good writing.
• 1:12:57
  Yeah, good writing. Fantastic.
• 1:12:59
  So I appreciate that that aspect.
• 1:13:01
  Yeah, that's a great scene. That whole day has got a bunch
• 1:13:03
  of really great stuff. Yeah, that's really, I mean, I
• 1:13:06
  mean, like a movie, it builds up to that and it does a pretty
• 1:13:08
  good job of delivering it. And then of course, when he's
• 1:13:11
  sort of more or less about the spill the beans, as it were, not
• 1:13:14
  really spill the beans, but just confess.
• 1:13:16
  Obviously Kevin Bacon's character interrupts him and
• 1:13:19
  says, you know, he's realizing, oh, it's like, make sure you
• 1:13:23
  know what you're you're doing. Is there anything that you that
• 1:13:26
  you want to take away from that scene with?
• 1:13:29
  No, I mean, I like, I like that it's there.
• 1:13:31
  I think, you know, again, you got Bacon trying to protect him.
• 1:13:33
  You've got this sort of, you know, trying to protect the
• 1:13:36
  essence. You know, I think what ends up
• 1:13:38
  happening in real life and in the movie is is you don't really
• 1:13:41
  get that real admission of, you know, there's a lot of words,
• 1:13:46
  but he never says I'm sorry. He's still is still guarded
• 1:13:49
  around the whole thing. You know, he get they get the
• 1:13:52
  most out of them that anybody's ever gotten out of them.
• 1:13:54
  But I still don't think it's like enough.
• 1:13:55
  I don't know that Rockwell would be as happy with the final
• 1:14:00
  thing. But I love that.
• 1:14:01
  Again, you're building this tension, right.
• 1:14:02
  Again, this is just great filmmaking where you're
• 1:14:05
  ratcheting it up. You're building to this moment
• 1:14:09
  of sort of, as you said, honesty or like this is a breaking point
• 1:14:13
  of Nixon and you got to flap it down.
• 1:14:15
  You got to stop it, you know, and and Bacon comes, comes
• 1:14:18
  broke, breaks the rift. And and I think it's a great
• 1:14:21
  scene of humility on Langella's version of Nixon and to try and
• 1:14:27
  calm it down. And and finally, kind of the
• 1:14:28
  resignation of of Nixon to kind of go like, yeah, we're good.
• 1:14:31
  Like, you know, like, let's just let's just do it.
• 1:14:34
  Yeah, but he still kind of puts it on Frost.
• 1:14:37
  Like what? What would you have me say?
• 1:14:38
  You know, what would you like me to say?
• 1:14:40
  Yeah, and this is obviously Frost moment to a he kind of is
• 1:14:44
  not not expecting it. You know, he kind of takes it,
• 1:14:47
  puts his papers down, you know, and and really thinks like I
• 1:14:52
  think you have to apologize at the you know, there's three
• 1:14:54
  things, you know, but one of the big one was apologize.
• 1:14:57
  And if you don't do it now, I think you're going to haunt it.
• 1:14:58
  And it's difficult, you know, any man, you know, especially
• 1:15:01
  you, but I think you want to do it and he didn't really do it.
• 1:15:06
  I don't think. You know, Nixon didn't ever say
• 1:15:09
  I'm sorry. He just talked a lot about some
• 1:15:12
  of the stuff around it and it's definitely.
• 1:15:14
  How it made? Him feel more than like how it
• 1:15:15
  made. Him feel, yes, I have to live
• 1:15:17
  with like, you know, you almost I'm like, I'm thinking as a
• 1:15:19
  viewer, like he's almost getting my sympathy.
• 1:15:22
  I feel bad for a guy. And that's that's a common play
• 1:15:25
  and a good play. And then but then you have and
• 1:15:28
  then I love how they're having the interviews and how the
• 1:15:30
  producers jumping into the water and he's all excited.
• 1:15:34
  They feel like this is a big victory, but I didn't, I didn't
• 1:15:37
  feel that. And they allude to that.
• 1:15:38
  It's like Rockwell's characters, like this is really a big
• 1:15:41
  victory. But even he concedes as it being
• 1:15:43
  a big victory. I believe ultimately, Yep, he
• 1:15:46
  says at the end. But I I don't quite feel it.
• 1:15:49
  It is. I think it is for the time,
• 1:15:52
  yeah, because again, it's the most anybody ever got out of
• 1:15:54
  Nixon around Watergate. It's the closest he ever came to
• 1:15:58
  taking any, any responsibility for him.
• 1:16:01
  So that is I think the resonance of it.
• 1:16:04
  And and yeah, so I agree in that.
• 1:16:07
  And, you know, when I watched the movie or the interview story
• 1:16:10
  after the movie, I was sort of like, well, that doesn't feel
• 1:16:14
  like it's this big knockout punch.
• 1:16:16
  But in history, 50 years later, it's the only it's the only
• 1:16:20
  person that ever got in the ring, you know, in some ways to
• 1:16:23
  keep the boxing metaphor alive. So.
• 1:16:26
  So yeah. So I think it's relevance and
• 1:16:28
  it's important. I don't think it's necessarily
• 1:16:31
  the like, I'm so sorry, everybody.
• 1:16:33
  I apologize and like a crying 60 minutes interview, you know, But
• 1:16:37
  I do think it's important to recognize that he did accept a
• 1:16:40
  certain amount of, I could have done better, you know, which is
• 1:16:44
  probably more than what anybody else would have gotten from him.
• 1:16:46
  So it's, I think, what makes that important.
• 1:16:49
  Yeah, and I think they explained it well too.
• 1:16:50
  Are they? Yes, exactly.
• 1:16:52
  Absolutely. And you got the benefit of those
• 1:16:54
  Talking heads kind of moments. You've got opportunities for
• 1:16:58
  Plaid or Rockwell to kind of tell the story post interview,
• 1:17:02
  you know, and sort of what they accomplished and so forth.
• 1:17:04
  You know, because they don't talk about the ratings.
• 1:17:05
  There's no like, yeah, yeah, scenes for that, right.
• 1:17:09
  So anyway, I, I really thought that that was a really good
• 1:17:12
  ending. I don't love so much with the
• 1:17:14
  shoes and the sort of looking out on the beach and stuff like
• 1:17:16
  that. I didn't love that, but I liked
• 1:17:18
  it nonetheless. There's this like that.
• 1:17:20
  Now somehow Frost has sort of met Nixon at his level, right?
• 1:17:24
  Like there's a now they look down on him when he first got
• 1:17:27
  there, and now he's more or less like kind of accepting him into
• 1:17:31
  that world. And I thought that was really,
• 1:17:33
  really, really good. I did.
• 1:17:34
  I like the their last meeting of Ross goes to see him before he
• 1:17:38
  goes back to to London and they have a, you know, pretty candid
• 1:17:42
  conversation for the most part. You know, in this retired close
• 1:17:46
  again Nixon, there's some dialogue that indicates he's
• 1:17:49
  just an everyday guy. You know, he's just, you know,
• 1:17:52
  pretty normal guy. But then the conversation, he
• 1:17:54
  says how I should have been the interviewer and vice versa
• 1:17:56
  because no, I don't like people. They don't like me.
• 1:17:59
  I shouldn't be a politician. That's really good stuff.
• 1:18:02
  I thought that was a good, good conversation between the two and
• 1:18:06
  the whole cheeseburger thing, you know, I thought was
• 1:18:09
  interesting, a good touch. So I appreciated that.
• 1:18:13
  I thought it was sort of a pretty good way to kind of wrap
• 1:18:17
  up the movie. Just have them to have one last
• 1:18:19
  conversation. Like you said, sort of on the
• 1:18:22
  same level. You know, he's he's now less of
• 1:18:25
  a president now. He's just retired and golfing.
• 1:18:27
  He's done what he's done. He's done his memoirs or is
• 1:18:29
  about to and he's really just closing the book on that part of
• 1:18:32
  his life and he just children at that point, I guess, you know,
• 1:18:36
  actually he continued to made visits to China and Russia
• 1:18:39
  afterwards, apparently just as a.
• 1:18:41
  Regular as a citizen. As a citizen, yeah, so quite
• 1:18:43
  interesting, but I like that. Is there anything you want to
• 1:18:46
  add to to the sort of the the whole Denu ma of it all or
• 1:18:50
  anything you want? No, I thought, you know, I
• 1:18:52
  thought the movie does a really good job of sort of peeking at
• 1:18:55
  the interview and then everything else is really just
• 1:18:57
  like tying it up. But I didn't feel like it
• 1:18:59
  dragged on. I didn't find like it was any
• 1:19:00
  like, kind of useless information.
• 1:19:01
  I didn't feel like it was sort of anything overindulgent.
• 1:19:05
  You know, I thought really, really kind of a perfectly
• 1:19:09
  structured movie. You know, while the movie
• 1:19:11
  itself, I wouldn't put in the pantheon of like the great
• 1:19:14
  movies I've ever seen, I really like it.
• 1:19:17
  I find it very entertaining and enjoyable.
• 1:19:19
  And even though, as I said, we know the ending, I find the
• 1:19:23
  performances and the structure of it to be compelling and and
• 1:19:28
  interesting. And again, it's it's just he's a
• 1:19:30
  character that is forever fascinating to me.
• 1:19:34
  And as long as they keep kind of making movies about him, I'll
• 1:19:37
  keep watching him because he's he's really quite an enigma at
• 1:19:40
  times. So it's happily going back on my
• 1:19:42
  shelf. I really like it.
• 1:19:44
  I really appreciated it. I thought it's a nice little
• 1:19:47
  bookend to all the president's men.
• 1:19:49
  It's again timely and I I really enjoyed the watch.
• 1:19:52
  Your thoughts on the matter and what have you got for us next
• 1:19:55
  week, Con Sir? I think when I'm thinking about
• 1:19:58
  this movie, I think about a lemon and I think I'm in a way
• 1:20:00
  that when you take a subject like this and it's a movie.
• 1:20:04
  Not a Jack Lemmon or. No, no, no, no, just no.
• 1:20:08
  But different to take this subject matter and make it into
• 1:20:12
  a feature film. They took a lemon and they
• 1:20:15
  squeeze every little bit of juice out of this lemon.
• 1:20:18
  I think they could have. I don't really think they left
• 1:20:20
  anything on the table with the subject matter.
• 1:20:25
  And again, as I said in the beginning, it's a bit of a
• 1:20:27
  challenge to make a movie like this interesting and
• 1:20:30
  entertaining cuz ultimately that's what we want to be.
• 1:20:32
  It boils down to, are we entertained?
• 1:20:34
  Is this fun to watch? And I said, like you said, it's
• 1:20:38
  not my favorite movie. I don't know if I'll watch it
• 1:20:40
  again. I almost feel like we've done a
• 1:20:43
  lot of Nixon. I'm pretty much ready just to
• 1:20:46
  close the the file on it. I think I will likely visit the
• 1:20:50
  real interview or at least the the Watergate aspect of it.
• 1:20:56
  But I feel like I've got my my fill and I feel like cuz I like
• 1:21:00
  you mentioned, it's everything. He's a well known, you know, a
• 1:21:04
  lot of things since have been compared to him where he still
• 1:21:09
  has a place in history that's relevant to today on some
• 1:21:13
  levels. So I think it's definitely an
• 1:21:15
  interesting watch and I appreciate you taking off your
• 1:21:18
  shelf. I think it's certainly a fun
• 1:21:21
  movie to sort of discuss. And I again, I really like the
• 1:21:24
  performances of it. So I think that makes again,
• 1:21:27
  makes the movie that's kind of hard to make even better because
• 1:21:30
  everyone just did a bang up job. And I think we can agree that
• 1:21:33
  Morgan can structure a movie. I think that's what we've
• 1:21:36
  learned. That's the big take.
• 1:21:39
  Away. That's the big take away.
• 1:21:40
  That's the big take away. Yeah.
• 1:21:42
  So thanks for the watch, Phil. I appreciate you bringing it to
• 1:21:45
  us. As for next week, I think it's
• 1:21:47
  we're going to switch gears a little bit and I won't go in too
• 1:21:50
  much to why this one's going to be the next one, but we are
• 1:21:53
  going to watch the Arrival. I believe that.
• 1:21:58
  I don't know if you've seen it, that's Amy Adams.
• 1:22:00
  And oh, OK, that's just Arrival. What?
• 1:22:04
  Stop adding those. That's funny because the Arrival
• 1:22:08
  is a really shitty Charlie Sheen movie from like the mid 90s.
• 1:22:12
  And I was like sank a little bit.
• 1:22:15
  I always do that when when I post these podcasts, Phil, I'm
• 1:22:17
  like, is it the, is it the days of wine and roses?
• 1:22:20
  And I always have to look it up because I wouldn't want to make
• 1:22:22
  the the mistake. No, of course.
• 1:22:25
  So it's a rival with Amy Adams and I believe that Reiner
• 1:22:29
  character that's. The Everyone loves Jeremy
• 1:22:33
  Renner. Jeremy Renner.
• 1:22:33
  Yes, everyone knows and loves. So yeah.
• 1:22:37
  And I'll disclose to why next week.
• 1:22:39
  I'll leave you know people hanging on that, but I hope you
• 1:22:43
  tune in for it. I know you will.
• 1:22:45
  Well, I will be here. I I can't wait to watch arrival
• 1:22:52
  with you and talk about it next week.
• 1:22:53
  All right, folks, that's it. You can follow us if you like at
• 1:22:56
  Facebook off the shelf with Phil and Dave.
• 1:22:59
  And obviously feel free to share this podcast with anyone.
• 1:23:02
  You know, we really appreciate it.
• 1:23:04
  As for then, I'll talk to you next week.
• 1:23:06
  Good day.