Frost\Nixon Page #8

And we're not?

You seemed very confident last time.

I don't understand. Why

this sudden change of heart?

All right, this is just

madness. It's Richard Nixon.

These interviews will do

mid-30s audience share, minimum.

Jimmy! Yes. Yes, back again,

like the proverbial bad penny.

Look, I hate to do this to a friend,

and I know you're already

in for more than I asked for,

but I need you to dig a little deeper.

I'm right up against it now.

So, I had a chance to

review yesterday's tapes.

And?

Honestly? Far too soft, David.

Go on. Beat me, John.

Beat me with a stick.

Look. No, I'm serious.

You have got to make it

more uncomfortable for him.

You can start by sitting

forward. You've gotta attack more.

If he starts tailing off, bang,

jump in with another question.

Don't trade generalizations.

Be specific.

And above all, don't let him give

these self-serving, 23-minute homilies.

Right. And keep your distance

before the tape starts running.

He was toying with you yesterday.

All that sh*t about Ben-Hur and

struggling to raise the money.

Those are mind games. Don't engage.

Never forget, you are in

there with a major operator.

Got it.

Ah.

The Grand Inquisitor!

No, just your friendly

neighborhood confidant.

It's okay. We just blew a bulb.

This is why I got all these

Secret Service guys around.

There's nothing to worry about.

As a president, you get

used to this kind of stuff.

Ed, we gotta get in here and

change out this 750, ASAP.

Focus, sir. Yeah.

Okay, we are back. Okay,

take it on my count.

Okay, stand by to roll tape. 30 seconds.

Settling.

You have a pleasant evening last night?

Yes, thank you.

Did you do any fornicating?

David, we're starting

with camera two in four,

three, two and...

Mr. President, you came

to office promising peace,

but no sooner did you

get into the White House

than US involvement in Vietnam

deepened and the war was prolonged

with calamitous consequences.

Did you feel that you'd betrayed

the people that had elected you?

Well, Vietnam was not my war.

It was my inheritance.

And it looked to me... Jump in.

...as if the reason for our being there

had perhaps not been adequately

understood by the American people.

It seemed to me they hadn't realized

how important a test this

was of American credibility.

The whole world was watching to see

if we have the character

to see it through.

Now, look, I could have

bugged out. I could have.

I could have blamed

it on my predecessors.

I could have pulled the

troops out of Vietnam early,

and very possibly, I would have won

some Scandinavian peace

prize into the bargain.

But I believed in the cause.

And sometimes, you know, what you

believe in, it's the harder path.

You might even say that I was the

last casualty of the Vietnam War.

Yeah, tell that to the paraplegics.

Come on, David, Cambodia.

And Cambodia? An invasion which

everybody advised you against.

All the CIA and Pentagon

intelligence suggested it would fail.

So why did you do it?

Well, first of all,

as a result of our incursion into

Cambodia, we picked up 22,000 rifles,

That's all belonging

to the North Vietnamese,

which would only otherwise

have been directed

right onto American soldiers.

But one of the principal justifications

you gave for the incursion

was the supposed existence of

the "headquarters of the entire Communist

military operation in South Vietnam,"

a sort of "bamboo Pentagon"

which proved not to exist at all.

No, no. Wait a minute there.

No, I was... And by sending...

And by sending B-52s to

carpet bomb a country,

wiping out whole civilian areas,

you end up radicalizing

a once moderate people,

uniting them in anti-American sentiment

and creating a monster

in the Khmer Rouge

that would lead to civil war...

All right!... and genocide.

Yes, good, good, good. There it is.

Okay, run VT.

Roll tape.

Well, sir, I'm sure you'd agree,

some pretty stirring images there.

Look, it was never US policy to kill

civilians. That's the enemy's way.

Well, I'm not suggesting...

And if you're asking the question

do I regret the casualties on both sides

in the war, yeah, sure, of course I do.

Let me tell you something.

It can just wear you down.

Well, all right, sir, when you

are faced with someone who...

But whenever I have had my doubts,

I remembered the construction

worker in Philadelphia,

because he came up to me

and he said, "Sir, I got only one

criticism of that Cambodia thing.

"If you'd gone in earlier,

"you might have captured the gun

"that killed my boy three months ago."

So you're asking me, do I

regret going into Cambodia?

No! I don't. You know what?

I wish I'd gone in sooner and harder.

Got him. Safe!

It was horrifying. It was

horrifying. And he was so confident.

What are you gonna say about Watergate?

Sorry, boys, just all

talked out, you know?

Better?

It was. Unquestionably better.

What's next?

Foreign policy.

Great. Russia, China,

the big power stuff.

Yeah, so?

So if he beats him up

like that on Vietnam,

imagine what he's gonna do

with his real achievements.

It ain't gonna be pretty.

The answer was grow by six inches.

It was agony to watch.

Now, that's when Khrushchev

called me, begging me to intervene.

You see, he and Mao didn't get along,

and Khrushchev knew that the Chairman

would talk to me, no one else.

You see, I was the only one that Mao

would trust personally, man-to-man.

When David tried to lay a finger on him,

Nixon made mincemeat out of him.

What "revolution," David?

You just let Richard Nixon claim

the country was in a

state of revolution?

What, with protestors "bombing"

and "assaulting" police officers?

That's not how I remember it.

What I remember is people protesting

peacefully and legitimately

against the Vietnam War!

That's what I remember.

Music off, please. Off.

By the end, wiretapping students

and breaking into journalists' homes

was beginning to sound

like a rational response.

Well, I'm sorry you feel this way,

but I simply cannot share your view.

About what exactly?

About any of it, frankly!

I thought today was a huge improvement.

Are you nuts?

Let me tell you how

bad things were today.

After the taping finished, I

overheard two members of the crew say

they never voted for him

when they had the chance,

but if he ran for office again

today, he'd get their support.

You're making him look

presidential, for Christ's sake!

And forget about the trivia, David.

Who cares whether Nixon took

the White House bed to Europe

when he traveled? I do!

Well, it's irrelevant!

And it's just the sort of banal

anecdote that would distract a talk...

A what?

Go on. No, say it.

What, you were gonna

say "talk show host"?

Yeah. Yeah, I was.

All right, look, it's useless

me trying to answer your points.

Frankly, I don't share any of

your sense of pessimism or alarm.

And this ridiculous self-flagellation,

in my view, is just depressing.

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