Does Ron Howard's Watergate pic commit a biopic break-in?

By Steven Zeitchik

With so many historical movies this season, it was only a matter of time before the first but-is-that-how-it-really-happened controversy hit. Honors go to "Frost/Nixon," which nabs the prize -- a feat that offers the odd coincidence of happening to Ron Howard, who faced a similar set of questions over "A Beautiful Mind.

The questions over the historical accuracy in "Nixon" comes courtesy of an Elizabeth Drew piece earlier this week in the Huffington Post. Drew doesn't just take off the gloves -- she grabs her subject and throws it hard into the ropes (in an academic scholarship-y kind of way, at least.) "Such a gross misrepresentation of such important events...in the name of entertainment and profits, to my mind, crosses the line of dramatic integrity and is dishonorable," she writes after laying out her case.

But what is that case? It's hard to know what to make of Drew's allegations. Some are significant and substantive; she argues, for instance, that the climactic moment of Frost cornering Nixon into a confession never really happened. Turns out the line in the movie in which Nixon admits a cover-up went down in real life as Nixon saying, combatively, "You're wanting to me to say that I participated in an illegal cover-up. No!"

Not exactly an admission.

It's also nice to see that the big moment of investigative discovery of the film of a tape in which Nixon admits wrongdoing to an aide -- which doesn't even feel entirely organic in the context of the movie -- turns out not to be very real in the context of history either; that conversation was not key to the FBI's or, by implication, Frost's investigation.

But many of the allegations are small and seem within the bounds of biopic license -- to wit, "In the movie, even the semi-admissions come across as dramatic; on the disks of the actual interviews, they seem bathetic."

And some of the supposed errors lie in the subjective nuances of character portrayal, which for many people isn't simple or consistent in real life, let alone in dramatized versions of same. "Langella's Nixon becomes an almost sympathetic figure, and also a jokey one, the one we most want to see, in order to have more laughs," Drew writes. "But Nixon wasn't funny. And he certainly wasn't the likable figure of Frost/Nixon." And Ray Charles didn't really always smile like Jamie Foxx did either.

The result of all this will be probably some off-the-culture pages debate and possibly a few more tickets sold. But we suspect the movie's ultimate awards and commercial fate will change only slightly. Which seems about right for distortions that feel only slight.

Comments

[Alex Rudman]

The actual full length interviews are available now on DVD. Frost/Nixon The Complete Interviews contains all of the footage that was originally aired. Watching David Frost masterfully interview one of the most infamous American figures of all time is amazing. As the interviews unfold you begin to learn more and more about who Nixon really was and gain a completely new perspective. The fascinating Watergate interviews keep you wanting more and the remaining interviews definitely deliver.

www.FrostNixon.com