David Frost

[Ed's note: This interview has been expanded with online bonus content.]

I should start by admitting that I don’t have a crack team of researchers digging up dirt on your past.
Laughs Oh, what a relief that is.

Were you worried about disrupting the space-time continuum when you interviewed Ron Howard on your show about a movie based on a play based on an interview conducted by you?
Well, it was a novelty, but it worked out delightfully, and we managed to talk about the play and the film and Frank [Langella]’s performance as Nixon, and so on. So we didn’t get too incestuous and talk about me. It was suitably, suitably modest. I think throughout I was confident of my own existence. Thank you very much for your question. Terrific.

Would Ron Howard your first choice to direct the film version of Frost/Nixon
Yes, I think he would have been, particularly with his track record with Apollo 13, and just seeing what he has done. Yes, in retrospect, he would’ve been my first choice. Definitely. And he’s really done a superb job. Very sensitive job building up the company of people around Frost and Nixon and so on. It’s slightly odd talking about myself in the third person, but I’ve got used to it. And of course the casting was spot on, keeping Frank Langella and keeping Michael Sheen.

You don’t think that the film would’ve been better served if they had tapped John Woo to direct it?
Who?

John Woo, the famous action director. He did Face/Off with Nick Cage. There are a lot of explosions in his movies.
Yes, I don’t think they would’ve quite fit in. Do you?

Well, American audiences like a lot of special effects.
Yes, but there weren’t any explosions, really, in this one. Unless they suddenly cut away to bombing in Cambodia or something, at the time of the original events. But no, I don’t think he would’ve been the right person.

Right. When you sat down with Nixon in ’77, did you see him as more of a malevolent figure or an object of pity?
Not just sad and not just malevolent. I was still in the process, at that time, of trying to work out the relationship between the “Good Nixon,” as it were, and the “Bad Nixon.” The conclusion I came to at the end was that there was indeed a good Nixon and a bad Nixon, but the bad Nixon won out.

Nixon was a human after all?
He had very human values. He was obviously not a great communicator. He built a transparent wall between himself and other people. He had no small talk. And he found it difficult to communicate in a relaxed way with people. When I went to take my leave of him, after the interviews were over and the first two had aired, the other two we had finished editing but he hadn’t seen them, there was 20 minutes that day he was carefree, a word I’ve never heard used about Nixon. And that was an extraordinary moment. In general, though, he was careworn, I think.

You mentioned his mediocre communication skills. Do you think he was at all overwhelmed by your superior British erudition?
Laughs I don’t think so, because he’d obviously traveled the world. He’d had a lot of formal meetings with Brits, from prime ministers to members of the royal family. So I don’t think that would have particularly surprised him. I think the fact that I hadn’t been on television every night dealing with Watergate throughout the year and half, that probably helped in the sense that he felt I was an independent voice. But basically, I don’t think that the nationality thing affected him very much.

You’ve conducted literally billions of interviews throughout your career. Is there anyone who you’ve wanted to talk to but, for whatever reason, haven’t been able to?
Well, Fidel Castro is still holding out at the moment, but I’d like to think that…

Does he have a publicist?
No, he has the reverse, I think. I think he has a de-publicist.

Probably not too much time left to set that one up.
No, there isn’t. But I mean, the journey he’s been through. In the beginning, he was thought of as really just a left-winger, you know, to becoming the last Stalinist, as it were. Fascinating human journey. He would be intriguing.

Who is your favorite Beatle?
What a great question. I know Paul McCartney from back when we did our first interview back in 1963, I think it was. Yes. Through the years I’ve known Paul better than I’ve known John, but John always delighted me with his cast of mind, and so on. I remember on one occasion, he came on a show of mine carrying a white box. It said, To David from John and Yoko. A box of smile. And you open it up, and all that was in it was a mirror. And you looked in it, and of course you smiled at the idea. And you had your box of smile. So, Paul, we’ve done things together over the years and he came over the house the other day, but John Lennon had a unique turn of mind.

Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews is released on DVD Tue 2, and the film Frost/Nixon is in theaters Dec 5.

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