Tonight’s Oscars will celebrate only-in-the-movies fantasy figures like Wall-E and the Joker . . . and Harvey Milk and Richard Nixon. Even when Hollywood is dealing with documented reality, it can’t resist turning it into a cartoon.
Eighty minutes into “Frost/Nixon,” an Oscar nominee for Best Picture, Richard Nixon, heavy with drink, calls up journalist David Frost in his hotel room. Nixon tries to find common ground with an urgent rant about class: “No matter how high we get, they still look down at us . . . We were headed both of us for the dirt . . . to hell with that! We’re not gonna let that happen, either of us. We’re gonna show those bums, we’re gonna make ’em choke on our continued success . . . We are gonna make those mother – – – – ers choke! Am I right?”
Nixon adds, “I shall be your fiercest adversary. I shall come at you with everything I’ve got. Because the limelight can only shine on one of us. As for the other, it’ll be the wilderness. With nothing and no one for company but those voices ringing in our head.”
The speech is the burning centerpiece of the movie, “King Lear” meets “Raging Bull.” It’s “On the Watergate.”
And it didn’t happen. Playwright/screenwriter Peter Morgan simply made it up.
Frost’s research aide James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell in the movie) wrote dryly in Smithsonian magazine that Morgan was miffed when a Ben Brantley review of the original play mentioned its embellishments. Reston writes that Morgan told him, “Brantley’s emphasis on the play’s factual alterations was not helpful.”
Ah, those facts. They can be so not helpful to a guy’s Oscar chances. Morgan told the New York Times that history is “a complete farce.” Really? Stuff that happened 30 years ago, and was videotaped and broadcast to millions, is already farce?
The phone call scene may not even be Morgan’s biggest lie. In its climactic moment, the movie portrays Frost as cornering Nixon into a confession and apology.
Here is movie Nixon: “I will admit there were times I did not fully meet that responsibility and I was involved in a ‘cover-up,’ as you call it. And for all those mistakes I have a very deep regret.”
Here’s what Nixon actually said: “You’re wanting to me to say that I participated in an illegal cover-up. No!” Morgan should have called his piece “Farce/Nixon.”
Another Best Picture nominee, “Milk,” also is built around a widely known recording. Before he died, San Francisco politician Harvey Milk predicted his own assassination in tapes he left with associates. The movie uses some accurate quotations from these tapes, which it portrays as capturing Milk reminiscing about his life and role in the gay-rights movement.
But as Randy Shilts’ biography “The Mayor of Castro Street” makes clear, Milk wasn’t really taping the “I have a dream speech” of the gay movement. He sounds more like a vindictive ward boss. In the transcript Shilts quotes, Milk expresses contempt for rival gay leaders he did not want to succeed him on the Board of Supervisor and promotes friends. One long paragraph is about Milk’s hatred for religion (“I would turn over in my grave if there was any kind of religious ceremony”). Only in the last couple of paragraphs does Milk get around to appealing for tolerance.
The movie ends with mourners observing Milk’s death with a peaceful candlelight march, but that isn’t really how Milk’s story concluded. Riots (referred to briefly in the film, with a title flashed on screen) followed the lenient sentencing given to Milk’s assassin. An enraged crowd set fire to police vehicles, smashed cars and stores, and attacked City Hall. Rocks flew into then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s office. One gay blogger, protesting the velvety, soft-focus feel of the film, referred to it as “pasteurized Milk.”
Or is it expired “Milk”? Movies about political history usually get made because of their contemporary resonance. Some see “Frost/Nixon” as a call for the trial of George W. Bush, and “Milk,” which retells the story of the defeat of the anti-gay Prop. Six, is called a powerful plea against Prop. Eight, the anti-gay marriage measure that passed in California – three weeks before the movie came out.
“Milk” was finished before that, though. It could have been released in the summer or earlier in the fall, when it could have influenced the debate over Prop. Eight. But the filmmakers held it back because they knew that movies that come out before November are forgotten by Oscar time. So: statutes or statuettes? “Milk” made its choice.