Frost/Nixon

Frost/Nixon.
2008 Universal Pictures, StudioCanal, Imagine Entertainment & Working Title Films.
Starring: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Macfadyen, Rebecca Hall, Patty McCormack, Toby Jones, Andy Milder, Jim Meskimen, Clint Howard
Director: Ron Howard
Buy Frost/Nixon from Amazon, and then visit the official site.

The real David Frost interviews with Richard Nixon can be purchased here.

Frost/Nixon is Ron Howard's cinematic adaptation of Peter Morgan's stage play, which also starred Michael Sheen as David Frost, and Frank Langella as Richard M. Nixon.

In 1974, after Richard Nixon's resignation from the Presidency, David Frost is interested in the possibility of interviewing him. He pitches the idea with his friend and producer John Birt (Macfadyen), who isn't sure that Nixon would be interested in talking to Frost. The former President is recovering from phlebitis in California, and discussing his memoirs with literary agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar (Jones) when Frost makes his request to conduct an interview with him for an offered $600,000. Lazar contacts Frost to tell him that Nixon is interested. Frost makes the first partial payment amid doubts that he'll be able to provide the entire amount, and has difficulties selling the series of interviews to the American broadcast networks, but he is able to put things together so that the interviews can begin by 1977. Frost also hired Bob Zelnick (Platt) and James Reston Jr. (Rockwell) to help dig for information, mainly about Watergate.

The first eleven recording sessions sees Frost trying to ask planned questions of Nixon, who takes up most of the time giving lengthy monologues (yes, just like Secret Honor), which prevents Frost from challenging him. Nixon's behavior causes Frost's team to start coming apart, since the former President appears to be exonerating himself, and Frost is not coming across as an effective interviewer. However, four days before the final taping session about Watergate, Frost receives a drunken phone call from Nixon (this did not happen in real life) saying that they both know the final interview will essentially make or break the other's career. Frost is spurred into action, resolving the final interview will be successful. Reston is told to talk to his source at the Federal Courthouse in Washington, who he mentioned before the tapings started.

Frost is a sterner adversary during the final interview, which results in Nixon admitting that he did things that would otherwise have been illegal had he not been the President, and he finally confesses to have participated in a cover-up, "letting the American people down".

Highly, highly, highly recommended! The next step for you now is to track down the DVD set of the genuine Frost-Nixon interviews.