Nixon (1995)

The characterizations by the actors were great but watching any Oliver stone movie is like getting hit on the head repeatedly with a sledgehammer. Uh...we got your point the first time.

R1 I usually agree, but Nixon (to me) is different.

It’s full of Oliver Stone with not as much Nixon as I would have liked.

Paul Sorvino gives the best performance of his career.

Better than JFK

AS films i like both JFK and Nixon

Sissy Spacek was wonderful as Jim's wife if i remember correctly.

Oliver Stone wanted Harrison Ford for Jim Garrison in JFK.

Genuinely great performances by Hopkins, Allen, and Sorvino, and an absolutely extraordinary performance by Mary Steenburgen as Nixon's cold and withholding mother Hannah Nixon (she deserved the Oscar for it, but it didn't have enough screen time to register).

If the screenplay hadn't been filled with Oliver Stone's JFK-worshipping nonsense the movie would have done much better at the Oscars.

What do the gays think of DL icon Miss Julia Roberts playing Martha for TV?

R9 Very true.

R10 the only portrayal of Martha Mitchell I care about is Madeline Kahn's. She should have been in it more.

Most of the superb cast is gone now, even James Woods....she ain't coming back.

R10 what do you think of that series? She's a fascinating character but i assume they will just Julia Roberts it to a ridiculous degree. Make sure you know there's a star present. But Martha was a great character

This is a film I’ve always meant to watch but haven’t.

Oliver Stone has his fixations, but he assembled a great and memorable cast for this film and got great and memorable performances.

E.G. Marshall didn't say "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's ever published" and I am very disappointed.

Did write this in another thread about the movie:

It was my favorite movie for several years, developed problems with watching movies and series later on and now watch some animated movies and series, that are also suited for adults, often just some bits; especially on laptop it is easier for me to view animated stuff than live action.

I hate it when actors have to wear masks and lots of make up; Hopkins fitted perfectly, the actor doesn't have to look similar to the biographical model. Don't like fake accents and dialects and changing of the voice, which I guess Hopkins did, changing of the voice, didn't see it at first in English, but my German. Hopkins, arguably the greatest actor of the past and present era, called it the best thing he's ever done. Oliver Stone also tends to make good director's commentary. It is strongly connected to JFK, maybe there is another movie to make it a trilogy, W was past his prime, the director's commentary might be decent, but e.g. it was also during W still in office; maybe Alexander makes it a trilogy or the Doors, the Doors has good commentary. Stone once called Salvador his best movie.

Hopkins played him perfectly, he was before my time, but it was a great portrayal and Shakespearean. Stone had at least three Capricorns as leads in his movies, all of them belonging to his most successful and most important ones. Val Kilmer in The Doors, Kevin Costner in JFK and Anthony Hopkins in Nixon, which is also a bit unusual, because Capricorns don't make such good leaders and also leading actors; albeit the male movie stars voted as greatest of them all in the most important ranking were Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant, both Capricorns. Which all helps me a little bit, because I'm a Capricorn, too. Hopkins' Nixon is one of the greatest portrayals of a Capricorn in movies, theater and maybe also fiction overall. Nixon's sexuality wasn't dealt with enough, but of course there is even less critical dealings of historical figures when dealing with people from more current empires and times than when dealing with people from eras further back.

Nixon, (wandering the halls, speaking to the portrait of JFK): "When they look at you, they see who they want be, when they look at me, they see who they are."

12/22/20

I thought Hopkins was a total fail as Nixon.

Hopkins captured some of the self-pity but lacked the "banality of evil" (to use Hannah Arendt's phrase) that was central to his character. I don't think it was his fault as that sort of thing made Hannibal Lechter so watchable. Joan Allen was better as Pat, although it failed to capture her ambivalence about Nixon---she hated politics and he had promised her more than once to leave it. She married him for security and had been repaid with Watergate. The film suffered from Oliver Stone--he was good at the Vietnam War which he had lived close-up but usually awful at everything else.

What does banality of evil mean?

Just kidding, I’m the literal definition of it!

I like how Stone used the opening of Schubert's Second Symphony to show everything going on: Vietnam, Watergate, protests, deception, etc.

I do think it is interesting that Spiro Agnew and Gerald Ford make little to no appearance in the 3.5 hour film.

I like it because it feels more like a gothic horror film than a bio pic.

Hopkins was solid but I couldn't help but feel that he struggled with his accent and/or layered on vocal tics in a way that was too obvious to me watching. There were moments where it worked wonderfully but then he'd sort of do something to take me out of the moment again.

It was distracting. Versus Joan Allen who was able to create and play a character without drowning in impersonation.

Like JFK, it seems like a big budget, poorly directed episode of Law and Order.

Who cares? Nixon was chump change.

Such a shame that ski accident screwed up the Pat Nixon casting. They'd still be talking about Lawson's performance.

R27 That was the reason cited publicly.

The real reason was that after the first rehearsals, Lawson flashed Hopkins and told him "Fuck the fava beans and chew on THIS!"

Unsurprisingly, Sir Anthony vomited and had to be helped to his car.

R27 Joan Allen was great. Lawson who?

^Found the youngster!

You simply must learn about Helen Lawson, star of stage, screen and casting couch.

R30 I know who Helen Lawson is, from Valley of the Dolls, but was thinking maybe there was a Sean Young Batman type of accident.

Who's Helen Lawson!? That's me baby, remember?

If you haven't heard of Helen Lawson's many accomplishments....I'm surprised you've never heard about her appearance on Sesame Street.....

They've traced the origins of helicopter parenting back to that episode. Which kinda works given it all started with her telling Bert the Vic Morrow jokes.

Let's circle back to Katie Graham getting her tit caught in a big fat wringer.

David Hyde Pierce as John W. Dean was good.

[quote] Anthony Hopkins as the titular haunted 37th President

Wouldn’t the titular one be Pat?

[quote] This is a film I’ve always meant to watch but haven’t.

Me too. And thanks to OP’s post, I probably will this weekend.

I watched Nixon Director's Cut again last night. A few things:

Sorvino IS Kissinger.

The White House walk and talk between Haldeman (Woods) and Ehrlichman (Walsh) is so complex and political thriller.

Nixon's cabinet room speech about going through Haldeman before going to the press was a stroke of brilliance by Hopkins.

R24 I took that as him being Nixon. Nixon had a hard time in social settings. He was awkward and uncomfortable with small talk and new people. It was strictly business.

The best scene that shows this is when Martha Mitchell (the impeccable Madeline Kahn) is talking at him. She's going on and on, his facial expressions are so good here. Then he goes to talk to John Mitchell, Nelson Rockefeller, and meeting Henry Kissinger, he is fine. He is doing business. No small talk.

Hopkins got this down.

Thanks, OP! I just now rented it from Amazon!

Well, OP, Nixon's Presidency was a Shakespearian (actually, Aristotelian) tragedy.

Step back and admire the breadth of just a few of Hopkins's portrayals:

Alfred Hitchcock

Pope Benedict

Yitzhak Rabin

Adolf Hitler

Pablo Picasso

Richard Nixon

The biggest problem with the film was that Oliver Stone worked in all his hero-worship of JFK into it, so Nixon's imaginary relationship with (and jealousy over) JFK's popularity and looks played far too big a part in the film.

I always keep hoping there will be a Nixon miniseries, which would of course have to be mostly about Watergate. (There's currently a mini-series about Watergate and Martha Mitchell, but Nixon does not even appear in it, though he's talked about frequently.) But I would like to see more of Nixon's weird relationship with his wife and daughters. It's often been rumored that he hit his wife (especially after the failed 1962 gubernatorial election), but I've never seen that claimed by anyone who was genuinely intimate with the family--I've only heard it talked about third-hand. And he adored his daughters, but did not spend much time with them because he was such a workaholic--and they grew up to be competitive with one another.

I'd also like to see more of what made Pat tick. Why did she stay with this horrible man who, even if he did not actually physically abuse her, at least ignored her and made her do things for his campaigns she hated doing? I hope if they do another season of "The First Lady" they make her one of the subjects.

It is such a great film

I am about to read King Richard: An American Tragedy by Michael Dobbs.

Regardless of your thoughts on the film, John Williams score is one the best of his career.

R46 Listened to King Richard book on Audible a couple months ago. Bonus was excerpts from the real tapes next to the recreated ones. It would make a fabulous limited series.

R48 Nice! Why a limited series when you have this epic film?

OP, what did you think of Gaslit?

R50 I haven't watched it yet. Your thoughts?

Wouldn't this version of the Nixon story be more up Datalounge's ... um ... alley? The title is certainly more appealing.

R52 no. the DL I am apart of discusses literature, art, film, science, politics, and a myriad of high brow subjects.

R48 I am currently listening to King Richard right now. It is great! I love the tapes.

When I'm done, I want to watch this interview with the author Michael Dobbs and the political author/commentator Peter Baker (one of my favorites).

R46 OhI need to listen to that interview, thanks. I think King Richard could make a good streaming series because it is such a taut timeline. Hopkins almost redeems Nixon too much in the movie. King Richard really gets at how weird and crass Nixon really was. It’s also sort of like the the material in All the President’s Men, except it’s the view from the inside. There’s something almost surreal about it to me.

R55 You should! Have you read/listened to Peter Baker's books? He has two on Audible- one on the George W. Bush Administration and the other on James A. Baker III. His next book, on the Trump Administration, is coming out Sept 20.

I used to do a piss poor impression of Nixon's mother after this movie came out.; "Dost thou thinketh that thine war mongering shall bring forth a way for me to acknowledge you within the white walls in which thou do so inhabit thy ego?" I'm weird.

This movie really works. One would not have found it to work at the time but it really did.

R10 Lord knows how that will turn out. Kathy Bates aged out (I'm very sorry for my phrasing) for that role I guess because she would have nailed it.

R57 I think Madeline Kahn was the best Martha Mitchell. Bat shit crazy, but you can't help but like her.

It’s under appreciated

R60 I think it is a very intelligent political thriller that was not made for the common man. One of the main reasons why this movie isn't as well known.

I just finished King Richard by Michal Dobbs are love this excerpt in the epilogue:

"Together with Harry Truman, he was one of the most ordinary of American presidents. A common man distinguished by his recklessness and awkwardness. He lacked the pedigree of the Roosevelts, the glamor of the Kennedys, the privilege of the Bushes, the star power of Ronald Reagan, the eloquence of Barack Obama, the showmanship of Donald Trump. What he possessed was instead were the virtues and defects of regular Americans, the difference being he display these qualities in outsized quantities...."

Katie Graham's tit still hasn't got caught in a big fat wringer

Does he go to China in the movie?

R63 Yes he does.

r17, your horoscope fixation is embarrassing nonsense.

Horoscopes are for dummies and housewives who are waiting the the clothes to come out of the dryer. What's with gays suddenly being enraptured with this dopey pseudoscience?

R64 Does it answer the statement why only Nixon can go to China?

R66 You asked if he went to China in the film and I said yes. ?????

Cocksuckers!

Ed Harris is underrated, he has been in so many films he could be a Kevin Bacon 7 degrees type.

Thanks to the OP and his fascinating hobby, I ordered the blu-ray of NIXON - as someone mentioned upthread, NIXON is a film I have always wanted to see but somehow missed.

Anyway OP, as I did the search on Amazon, FROST-NIXON came up as well. I did see that film, and I am wondering what you thought of Frank Langella's performance as Nixon?

R70 You're welcome! I like Frank Langella and thought he gave a great performance, but I think Anthony Hopkins is the best Nixon on screen.

Hopkin

Langella

Cusack

Spacey

Hedaya

OP, missing from your list is Philip Baker Hall - aka Mr. Bookman, the library cop on Seinfeld. I read in his recent obituary that he played NIXON in a 1980's one man film entitled SECRET HONOR - iti was directed by Robert Altman!

I have not seen it but it sounds well-worthy of your list.

Can Stone do a disaster film? Because Dump! needs to be made.

Movies like Nixon and All the Presidents Men have lost their power since the Orange Buffoon got into office. What used to seem like a big deal is now just petty, small potatoes.

R74 I agree! Nixon is one of the best political thriller movies of all time

R73, Stone loves Putin so maybe he'll end up making a loving ode to Russia's favorite strongman.

Only John W. Dean and Henry Kissinger are the only two living major players of the Nixon Administration.

I highly recommend Waler Isaacson's biography of Kissinger and all of John Dean's books.

Joan Allen is great even if she doesn't mimic Pat's exceptionally pronounced California twang in her speech. The problem is that for some insane reason Oliver Stone makes Pat her husband's liberal conscience, when actually she was a pretty diehard Republican in her own right. She actually very much did not want her husband to resign, and was overheard in the family residence part of the white House the night before the resignation shouting at him, "You've ruined my life!" they did not speak to each other for months after Watergate, and his personal assistant (Diane Sawyer!) had to carry notes between them when they wanted to communicate.

Still, Allen is great registering Pat's many humiliations at her husband's hands. There's a great recreation of the "Checkers" speech where they show Pat with Nixon on television and her neck sinews are tensing with embarrassment at what he's done to her, even though otherwise she's placid and gently smiling.

I'd like them to do a really first-rate version of Watergate with the Nixons at the center, but this time NOT have Oliver Stone and his bizarre agenda behind it.

Oliver Stone's Nixon was a great film. His film on Bush "W" was a white-washed nonsense exercise.

I'll have to watch this, OP. I'm a fan of Frost/Nixon (2008) and look forward to seeing Nixon (1995). Such a tragic character.

R43, But he never played Sid Vicious!

David Hyde Pierce was hot in a WASPy way back in 1990's

Nixon is much better than JFK

Any other thoughts?

Great music

Just posting to remind everyone of Madeline Kahn's crazy Martha Mitchell

Paul Sorvino should have won an Oscar for his performance as Kissinger in Nixon.

R87 I agree! It was so out of left field for the Law and Order and Goodfellas actor turned tenor.

Fap away OP

The film starts off really loose and all over the place, but the noose soon tightens and you feel it

This is my favorite Watergate book. Written by a NYT reporter who refused to use anonymous sourcing. Its long and very detailed.

r89 Nixon had (shockingly) good abs.

I just started Watergate: A New History by Garrett Graff

It is good so far!

Just finished watching the 3:30 directors cut and it was masterful. Compared to the batshit crazy but equally good JFK this was subdued and Stone tried and succeeded in getting to the heart of the man. Tons of great performances and Stones usual visual mastery. Whoever bumped this thank you.

R94 You are welcome! What was your favorite part? Favorite actor?

To me, all of the actors were perfectly cast. You can hardly tell the figure from the actor.

I loved the scene when Nixon and Kissinger are talking with Mao and Zhou enLai. Bai Ling is the interpreter. Zhou is one of the most interesting figures in 20th century history. He somehow managed to survive all the purges (especially the Cultural Revolution) while being the day to day power behind the throne. Loved it when Mao said that you cant trust the Russians nor the Vietnamese..they are dogs.

Joan Allen, Mary Steenburgen and James Woods as Haldeman were exceptional in supporting roles. Really liked Hopkins but occasionally he played Nixon as being too fragile.

I recommend the directors cut too. It restores the scenes at the CIA. The scene when Nixon and Richard Helms (Sam Waterston) are sparring over their secrets was amazing.

Liked the speech when Nixon mentioned...white Americans, black Americans, Mexican Americans, Italian Americans....

The transition from his brothers death to his RNC speech is good too

Bump

Kissinger died. Only John Dean is left.

I saw the runtime of this political movie and I just said yeah I’m not gonna even try to watch it.

in a number of ways, nixon would be left of the democrats today. it's amazing how far the overton window has been pushed in the us.

R101 how sad of you. It is worth the watch

Name one R102

I didn't know there was a movie about Cynthia Nixon in 1995.