As you probably know, Frost/Nixon was a stage play and a movie, both starring Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as the other guy. I enjoyed the movie (as delineated here) but had a lot of reservations about the way it portrayed certain true events.
The National Touring Company, which features Alan Cox as Frost and Stacy Keach as Nixon, has parked itself down at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles for a few weeks and this evening, Carolyn and I attended the first performance. Sad to say, I didn't much like it. The production is slick and well-assembled but I found it superficial and shallow, reducing its story down to the kind of conflict that gets resolved by one outta-left-field "gotcha" moment. David slays Goliath and snatches victory from defeat wholly because at the last minute, one of his researchers hands him a magic bullet in the form of a previously-unknown tape transcript.
That was one problem I had with it. Another, greater one was that I rarely saw Richard Nixon on that stage. Stacy Keach is a fine actor but you either buy him as Nixon or you don't and I couldn't buy him. Among other problems, he seemed too commanding in a movie star way. Richard M. Nixon was socially awkward (the play even says that a few times) and despite his many triumphs, always had an air about him of trying to prove that he belonged among the elite crowd. Keach's Nixon says that in so many words but Keach's manner is confident, charming and theatrical. There's that famous exchange when Nixon made a desperate stab at male bonding small talk, asking Frost, "Did you do any fornicating this weekend?" Coming from Stacy Keach, it sounds like a deliberate joke.
Maybe I'm too familiar with the material and the real events to warm fully to any shorthand or fictionalization...but it seems to me there's a deeper story there, having to do with Nixon's vulnerabilities. Keach does a great job of wringing audience laughter at the sheer disingenuousness of many real Nixon quotes but I just felt he was too good an actor to play someone who was that bad an actor.
This afternoon, I had an inexplicable urge to see the opening number from The Music Man as performed on a subway by students from Boston University. Fortunately, there turned out to be just such a clip on YouTube...
Above is a photo I took in 1975 (I think) of Al Feldstein, who was then the editor of MAD Magazine — a post he held for 26 years. During some of those 26 years, the publication sold in the millions (plural) and did an awful lot to instill a sense of humor and healthy skepticism in a couple of generations. Before that, of course, Al was the editor and main writer for many of the great EC comics like Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror and Weird Fantasy and he corrupted America that way.
Al retired from MAD in 1984 and embarked on yet another career as a painter, mostly of western scenes. You can see a lot of them at his website and be very impressed. He's also been very active on the convention circuit, and I'm glad of that because it's given me the chance to interview him many times and to just get to know the guy. He's an amazing and important figure in the history of comics and humor. He was kind of brusque to me that day in the MAD offices when I was up there taking pictures but we've now become good friends.
Sad to say, my good friend is cancelling convention appearances for health reasons. He is awaiting admission to the Mayo Clinic where, if all goes according to plan, he will undergo one of them heart bypass things where they cut you open and reroute your blood. This should happen around mid-April and we're hoping it all goes well not for his sake so much as ours. We want to have Al around for a long time.
I expect it will. Matter of fact, I'm just posting this because I had the photo around and I figure it'll be quite a while before I get to use it on an obit.
I must admit I've been enjoying the spat between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, partly because it's funny and partly because Stewart is doing something that doesn't happen nearly enough in the media today. He's pointing out when so-called experts were dead wrong. There seems to be no penalty — no recognition, even — when what happens is precisely the opposite of what was predicted. Erroneous punditry is shrugged off, not just by those who make the bad calls but by their peers and even by the viewing public. I believe this is called The William Kristol Syndrome.
Some web comments are making a big deal about Cramer's support (or lack thereof, in some ways) to Barack Obama, saying that this is "The Left's" way of punishing him for straying a bit from the reservation. I don't think everything in this country has to be viewed through the prism of being for or against Obama. Certainly, folks on either side of that divide are quite capable of saying foolish things. Mr. Stewart and his crew may be Liberal on most issues but those like Joe Scarborough who think he doesn't ridicule Democrats and the new White House occupant haven't been watching the show. (I think some of them are foolishly expecting or hoping to encourage that Obama in his first fifty days be mocked as much as Bush was in his last fifty days.)
Cramer is scheduled to appear tomorrow night on The Daily Show. I imagine he'll cop to giving out some advice but insist that in later broadcasts, which Stewart did not cite, he course-corrected some or all of that. That may be so but it will affirm Stewart's point, which is that if one listens to CNBC, one hears a certain amount of financial advice which later proves to be inoperative. I hope he doesn't take to arguing, as he has in some recent responses, that Jon Stewart is not a financial expert. We already all know that. Stewart was just trying to point out that some of the folks on TV who are sold as financial experts aren't, either.
March 12, 2009
