"Obviously, there may never be anything quite like the Nixon interviews again," Frost said recently, "because he's the only president who was forced out of office. And he's the only president who's been interviewed for 28 and three-quarter hours. And obviously, he's the only president who came to say what he did."
The Frost/Nixon interviews actually began in 1975 when David Frost received a “tip” from the editor of New York Magazine that Richard Nixon wrote a book and Irving “Swifty” Lazar was handling the deal. Frost decided an interview with Richard Nixon was a “rather bold idea.”
“The fact that I had not been on the nightly news every night of his Watergate ordeal may have made him think that I would be more independent or open-minded, and he may not have been wholly aware of some of the heavyweight interviews I had conducted in America and the UK.”
“In fact, by that time I’d interviewed two or three presidents, two or three prime ministers, Moshe Dayan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a whole list of people. I had done a hell of a lot by then.”
Lawyers for Frost and Nixon negotiated for five and a half hours, creating a 13-page contract.
The interviews would be filmed over 12 days and shown on TV in four 90-minute parts.
Nixon would not know the questions in advance and would have no editorial control.
In order to pay Nixon’s $600,000 interview fee, Frost sold his shares in London Weekend Television.
Frost wanted an “extensive look back over [Nixon’s] life, his Presidency…and…a full, no-holds barred confession.”
Diane Sawyer served as a liaison between the Frost and Nixon camps.
Why did Nixon do the interviews?
Frost believed he would get a great interview as Nixon had “begun to analyze the past, and is ready to be really reflective or retrospective."
“I think he hoped in this case that ‘the tube’ would, in some way, exonerate him. I think he was also in a state of some financial insecurity, not knowing for example how many of the people who were serving prison sentences for following his instructions might sue him when they were released.”
“I never sympathized with him because, at the time I was doing those interviews, there were about 30 people in prison for doing things he had asked, or ordered, them to do.”
“After it was all over we realized we had actually forgotten one question, which was: ‘who was Deep Throat?’”
Many commentators wrote that they felt the interviews--and particularly Watergate--were the catharsis that Americans needed after the traumatic events of 1973 and 1974.
"I do think we got the truth out of Richard Nixon. And as to what we got, we got more than we could have hoped."
"He was a sad man who wanted to be great. And there was tragedy in that.”
All quotations are either directly from the script of FROST/NIXON or from Sir David Frost himself.
Click Here to Listen to Sir David Frost on Richard Nixon.
Click Here to Watch Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” interview Sir David Frost.
Also check out the following DVD and Books:
The Original Watergate Interviews (on DVD) by David Frost
Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews by David Frost
"I gave them a sword": Behind the scenes of the Nixon interviews by David Frost
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