Great Scene: “Frost/Nixon”

A late night phone call from a drunk ex-President to his interviewer.

Some time ago, I put the call out on Twitter for some suggestions for the Great Scene series. Got a lot of responses including this one:

Movie: Frost/Nixon (2008), screenplay by Peter Morgan based on his play

IMDb plot summary: A dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.

Scene Setup: It is the night before the last interview segment. Nixon has been drinking and reading some background information on Frost. He calls up the journalist. This is what transpires.

Watch the scene below:

Now THAT is a monologue. But of course, it’s penned by Peter Morgan, so we should expect no less.

A couple of points of interest about this scene:

• The phone conversation at midnight between Frost and Nixon never actually happened. Screenwriter Peter Morgan got the inspiration from well-known phone calls at midnight, that Nixon did to some government members during the Watergate scandal.
• The pivotal scene where a drunken Nixon telephones Frost in the middle of the night was filmed in two adjacent sets with both actors on stage at the same time in order to bring a real sense of spontaneity to such a key scene.

This is a terrific movie, one director Ron Howard describes as a “thinking man’s Rocky”.

If you have a suggestion for a Great Scene, don’t be shy, let me hear from you.

For more in the Great Scene series, go here.