It's London's night of nights -- the BAFTAs -- Britain's Academy Awards.
And as the 'A' List braves the rain, there are stolen glimpses of Angelina, Brad and James Bond.
Along this red carpet of manufactured glamour and youth, strides an incongruous figure -- Sir
David Frost. For half a century this TV interviewer, extrovert and entrepreneur has moved effortlessly
between the powerful, rich and famous. 'They made it entertaining and they made it
tense as well so that's why it's... sort of an intellectual Rocky.'
Tonight he confronts life imitating art, imitating television, sharing the stage with the actor
who plays David Frost in Hollywood's take on his 1977 confrontation
with disgraced US President Richard Nixon.
The man who has committed the greatest felony in American history will never stand trial.
I had an idea for an interview -- Richard Nixon!
You're a talk show host. Yesterday I was watching you interview the Bee Gees.Weren't they terrific?
Why would I want to talk to David Frost? I got half a million dollars!
Really?
For Sir David Frost it seems there's no such thing as bad publicity. It portrays you, in that period, as initially,
as a lightweight, a Concorde flying, champagne sipping lightweight who's having a terribly
good time and not really that interested in the content. I mean it's almost, it's pretty
close to defamatory I would have thought. Well if it wasn't recouped by the rest of
the film I think it would be yeah, but basically he wanted to do this thing of building up
the under dog thing and I had granted them that I would not have editorial control which
I think was on basis, basically a good idea because people then knew it was independent
and there's only twelve.... twelve to fifteen per cent fiction in the film I think, but
that certainly was part of it.
In the early 1960s the real David Frost unleashed his biting political satire.
Driven by a fierce ambition, Frost wanted to do more than play the audience for laughs.
I felt a need to move on and I'd been to America, I'd seen talk shows in America. There were
no talk shows here. I didn't want to do a talk show that was pure
showbiz, but was a combination of things like showbiz and people playing the spoons, as
well as politicians and so on.
This, politics as entertainment formula, became a huge hit. Frost's mellow non-confrontational
style was widely criticised, but over the following decades world leaders lined up to
play TV celebrity. Do you think you will actually live to see
an independent Palestinian national state? Or will you never be allowed to see the Promised Land?
No! I would invite you to come to visit me
there in Palestine. All right I'll put the date in my diary. Yes
please.What... what is the date?
Frost jet-setted between shows in Britain, the US and Australia. He'd already notched
up four thousand interviews before facing the toughest challenge of his career.
After three years of negotiation, Richard Nixon agreed to nearly twenty-nine hours of interviews.
The movie shows how that cooperation came at a price. This was unashamed chequebook
journalism. Nixon would talk for six hundred thousand dollars. Frost raised the initial
two hundred thousand by selling his shares in a lucrative TV company.
Two hundred thousand dollars. I do hope that isn't coming out of your own
pocket. Believe me sir I wish my pockets were that
deep. Made out in the name of...? Richard Nixon.
Years, years later.... when London Weekend Television was sold to Granada, a very bright
communications journalist here in Britain
rang me up and said "Do you realise David that if you hadn't sold those London Weekend
shares, today you would be getting a cheque for thirty seven million pounds."
Was it worth it? Yes it was, I'd do it all over again because
it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Nixon also thought that he'd stitched up a
bargain. Frost is just not in your intellectual class,
Sir. You are going to be able to dictate terms, rebuild your reputation.
Was there a gotcha moment if you like where, as portrayed in the film, where you present
him with a series of facts and the dam wall bursts and you get this very
candid monologue or was it calculated on his part? Was this an exercise, a cynical calculated
exercise in damage control, in rehabilitation? No, I don't think - there have been one or
two minority thoughts of that but I think the general view of everybody's right - and
I mean I was as close as I am to you now - and I saw what he was going through and it was
in no way prepared or rehearsed at all and it was agony for him.
I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
After resigning in disgrace, Richard Nixon had been controversially pardoned
by his successor, Gerald Ford, but what he really craved was political rehabilitation.
Why didn't you stop it? However in the highest rating political interview in history, Frost
didn't stick to the script. Would you go further than mistakes? Nixon
made an extraordinary admission.And that was a heart stopping moment because instead
of answering the question, he said to me... Well what word would you express...?Now at
that moment I knew that he was more vulnerable than any time he'd been in his life and probably
would ever be again,
so I'd better ruddy well get this right because it had to be an ad lib summary of what we
were getting at, as it were, and so I threw the clip board aside because I wanted to indicate
this was, you know, not something we'd planned. Neither of us were expecting this, this was
just him and I ad-lib, just him and I and a few hundred million people around the world.
I think that there are three things -- since you ask me -- I would like to hear you say,
I think the American people would like to hear you say, and I think unless you say it
you're going to be haunted for the rest of your life.
I said things that were not true. Most of them were fundamentally true on the big issues.
I brought myself down. I gave them a sword and they stuck it in and they twisted it with
relish. You did do some covering up.
I let down my friends. I let down the country. I let down our system of government and the
dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but will think it's
all too corrupt and the rest.
It's now thirty-two years since this interview series was conducted, half the audiences out
there weren't even born when this happened. What is the appeal, what is the attraction
for this period in history? Well that's a good question, but since you're
doing this program, probably you've got the answer as well... but I mean, no, I think
it is because it was a unique situation. First of all, historically, the first and so far
the only, President who had to step down from office, relinquish his office, resign. So
that gave it an awesome... Secondly, there was the fact that for a variety of reasons
he'd never given any other interview after he left office in those three years. He'd
never even testified in court, because he actually had an attack of phlebitis at the
time of the Watergate court case and so on, so that it was all absolutely new and absolutely
fresh and the most dramatic thing, that there was an urgency in the American people at that
time to have Nixon arraigned in some way. Some would have wished he'd been in court,
but here was a forum in which he was facing these issues, a forum he palpably did not
control in any way. Trial by television.
Yeah, trial by television and a rather dignified version of it, exactly. A number of people
said or wrote, that this was a cathartic experience for the American people,
and I think it was, because they really needed this to be put behind them by Nixon facing
the music in some way or other. Perhaps the success of the Frost--Nixon film
is also due to timing. There are recent parallels with the end of another highly contentious
presidency. Where Nixon felt unfairly condemned by Watergate, the legacy of George W Bush
is now viewed through the prism of Iraq and the war on terror.
Do you think George W Bush should perhaps consider a similar series of interviews, a
cathartic... George W Bush would be a very interesting
subject because he is much smarter and so on. I mean he's got very, very strong conservative
views and so on. Do you think he's smarter than Nixon?
No, I think that Nixon had a real depth in terms of his analysis of - the depth of an
academic almost - in dealing with some of the world issues that he was dealing with.
George W Bush was never the caricature he was made in the first year or two of his Office,
when people thought he couldn't put two words together and if you interviewed him you'd
only get stuff that had been handed to him - and that was not true. So he's a better
subject than that. But George W Bush... yes I would.... I would find that a very interesting
challenge, yes.
At nearly seventy years of age, Sir David Frost shows no sign of slowing down... Three
years ago he was back in the headlines with his decision to front Al Jazeera's new English
language channel. The Arabic network, owned by the Emir of Qatar,
has long been accused by the White House of anti American bias, of aiding and abetting
Washington's enemies in a propaganda campaign of the War on Terror.
I checked out the more lurid rumours about Al Jazeera.
Were you concerned from what you'd heard about Al Jazeera?
Well I was concerned to check them but I mean... I found that you know, they had never done...
shown beheadings or you know, those things from years ago... and in fact that sort of,
luckily that sort of rumour disappears as soon as
people have Al Jazeera English in their country. His weekly show is recorded in Al Jazeera's
London Bureau and according to Sir David, is seen in one hundred and forty million homes
in one hundred countries. The target audience? The same people who watch CNN and BBC World.
Once people see the output, either my show or the whole lot, they see that there is no
propaganda of the sort that they describe. There is no particular source material from
Osama bin Laden or whatever like that. Would you interview Osama bin Laden?
Well.... could I interview Osama bin Laden? If his people called you?
Yeah, on Al Jazeera English, could I do it? Would I be free to do it? Would there be any
editorial problem with Al Jazeera? No. They said there would be no.... I would have editorial
control and I've had complete editorial control. So as far as Al Jazeera is concerned, Al Jazeera
English, with some trepidation no doubt, they would not have any objection to it at all.
The only person who might have an objection to it is me, because -- and I think you would
be in the same position if this opportunity emerged for Foreign Correspondent -- I mean,
which is that... I mean is your duty as a citizen in a situation like that greater than
your responsibility as a journalist? That is, shouldn't you, if you're in the room with
this threat to the world, shouldn't your first duty be to try and perform a citizen's arrest
or whatever, or shoot him? Now you're not probably going to get out of there very easily
anyway, but should you do that? Is one's duty to this evil man greater than your duty to
journalism?
But there would be many in the Al Jazeera audience, particularly in the Middle East,
who would regard George W Bush as a criminal. Why should that matter if Osama bin Laden's
people call you and say, come and talk, we can cover all subjects. Why is there a problem?
I think that's a very encouraging argument towards being able to do it, but basically
George W Bush hasn't vowed to wipe a whole country off the map or send people out to
provide suicide bombings and all those things, on individuals. So I think it is different,
you're dealing with someone whose avowed policy is to do what he can to Israel, to do what
he can to other enemies, and therefore I think his declared program is rather different to
George W. Bush's. But it's a good debate. And it'd be interesting what your viewers
think. Sir David Frost thank you.
Pleasure. Thank you.