MovieChat Forums > Frost/Nixon (2009) Discussion > Scene: Nixon meets James Reston--unreali...

Scene: Nixon meets James Reston--unrealistic?

posted 13 years ago by kustom135
7 replies | jump to latest

I'm reading a 1973 book on Watergate. It states that anti-Nixon writer James Reston (Sam Rockwell) was on the White House 'Enemies List' as of 1971.

Ron Howard portrays the meeting between Nixon and Reston somewhat unrealistically. Langella plays it like Nixon was meeting just another unknown junior research intern, but Nixon surely knew who and what Reston was. I can imagine Nixon being far more arch than he was portrayed in the film.

The scene itself is rather touching as Nixon seems genuine and friendly towards Reston, who earlier expresses hostility and disdain at meeting the President. I did have to laugh (like Platt's Zelnick) when his lefty-bravado facade crumples in the face of real power.

But in real life Nixon would have likely been more dismissive of Reston. Maybe the record shows otherwise, though.

[–] enzo_Q 13 years ago

you can see the look on Langella's face that he knows who Reston is.

[–] kustom135 13 years ago

Really? To me Langella's face seems frank and open; no sarcasm or irony at all.

Rockwell's play on Reston was a little off-the-wall too. Reston was a news reporter. I doubt he was as hot-headed as portrayed in the film.

[–] enzo_Q 13 years ago

Really. Than you are missing the nuances of a performance.

[–] mobile707 13 years ago

James Reston's father, "Scotty" Reston, was a very famous and nationally-prominent political reporter/editor for the New York Times, and I feel it must have been he (and not his son) who was on the so-called "Enemies List" which John Dean produced on national television in June 1973. Dean himself has admitted the EL was blown way out of proportion, and in any event no one has credibly maintained that Nixon was even aware of it (much less knew who was on it) prior to its exposure in the media.

Scotty Reston, a native to Scotland, was pretty much a mainstream media-liberal of his generation. Basically anti-Nixon, although not hysterically so. James Reston, on the other hand, published a book in 2007 ("The Conviction of Richard Nixon") in which he seems deeply and personally offended that Richard Nixon ever lived, never mind participated in American politics. The performance by Sam Rockwell in the movie is actually more restrained than Reston's book would indicate to be the case.

[–] joyceday 12 years ago

If the real Reston is worse then the one they portrayed in the movie then please I never want to meet him! The character was sour and obsessive and entirely self-righteous. You would think they were going after Hitler or Osama Bin Laden the way he went on and I finished the movie (which I loved by the way) thinking I would rather deal with Nixon than him. All I kept saying to myself was get a life. That and get a better haircut, LOL!

[–] palisade-1 12 years ago

You're quite correct, Reston was and is an obsessive individual, though he has mellowed somewhat.

This website is pretty interesting:
"The Thirteen Obsessions of James Reston, Jr. 1971-2013"
http://www.jrobsessions.com/index.html

However, his book "Fragile Innocence" about his handicapped daughter is quite moving and shows a different side of his character (why I say he has mellowed):
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/books/review/26morrice.html?_r=0

[–] Petronius Arbiter II 9 years ago

And then came Vietnam and the impossible moral burden that was placed on my generation. I was a classic example of inner conflict: to join up begrudgingly, heeding the demand of a draft-centered conscription?....or to resist and avoid, like nearly all of my peers? Uncertainly, full of inner doubts, I signed up for military service, feeling that I could not, in good faith, represent that I conscientiously objected to this war and all wars. My three years as an Army intelligence officer gave me a profound, abiding sympathy for the American soldier, especially that soldier who is forced to risk death for reasons he or she does not fully understand and may secretly dispute. And if my empathy for the soldier is deep, so is my contempt for the politician who blithely puts men and women in harm’s way for abstract, theoretical geopolitical reasons without pondering the human cost.

...All of which came after Reston had been at the center of the civil rights movement in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1959 to 1963.

Yeah, he was intense. He saw the ugly facets of American life with clear vision. He was no limousine liberal. He was not an uninvolved journalist who stands off to the side and takes notes while horrible injustice is going on right before his eyes.

He was a man of conscience. He put his life on the line more than once for the greater good.

Sorry if you're so jaded and shallow you think people with a solid touch of the heroic in their character and conduct need to "get a life." As if you had one.

Need I remind you than both in the film and in real life, David Frost couldn't have succeeded in unlocking the real face of Richard Nixon without that crucial research that James Reston doggedly pursued?

"I don't deduce, I observe."