DISQUS

newcritics: Frost Nixon - Back to the Future?

  • Tom Watson · 2 years ago
    I really have to try and see this. Those interviews were so integral to understanding Nixon, who I retain a very real soft spot for - because he was such a major figure when I was young. I was at Scout camp when he resigned - we watched it on a tiny b&w; TV in the counselor's tent. He had a generator.
  • Tom Kissane · 2 years ago
    I learned he would resign from a message on the Jumbo-tron at a Mets-Pirates game I was watching on WOR.

    Thanks to baseballreference.com, I can tell you that Jerry Reuss beat Jon Matlack, 4-3, on solo shot by Richie Zisk in the bottom of the 9th. Ahh, history.
  • Howard Chaykin · 2 years ago
    I saw Frost/Nixon last month on a trip to NYC, and thought it was extraordinary.

    Langella lived up to every expectation--while Sheen, who gets nowhere near the attention he deserves, did equally wonderful work. I first became aware of him as Mozart in Amadeus, and was blown away by his performance. He's equally terrific as Tony Blair, but again is overshadowed by Helen Mirren.

    For the record, if you get to more theater, you'll realize audiences give everything standing ovations these days--applauding their own misperceived good taste for being there, I suppose, but diminishing genuine excellence when it all too infrequently comes along.
  • Jason Chervokas · 2 years ago
    Howard, you're so right about the standing ovations. Audiences seem almost desperate to be in the presence of something great. They project their desired experience on everything--opera, concerts, theater.