The Book Archive: Book TV's Afterwords-Sir David Frost: On The Frost Nixon Interviews 2007

Source:BookTV- Sir David Frost, being interviewed by Richard Nixon historian Tim Naftali, about his book Frsot/Nixon, in 2007.

Source:The FreeState

"In 1977 former President Richard Nixon sat down for a series of interviews with David Frost. The eleven sessions aired worldwide and included the former Presidents thoughts on topics ranging from Vietnam to Watergate. In "Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews" Sir David Frost recounts the preparation and execution required to produce the interviews and includes personal remembrances of his on and off camera conversations with President Nixon. David Frost discusses his book with Timothy Naftali, the director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum."

From BookTV

By 1977 Richard Nixon was a dead politician basically just looking to find relevancy again and get back on the national stage. He obviously was still alive physically, but his political career was dead and was a retired politician in his mid-sixties when even back then people with long public service careers in America were still working. Still holding a seat in public office, working in a cabinet, teaching somewhere, working as a consultant, like at a think tank. Perhaps writing a weekly column and hosting a radio show, or serving as an analyst for one of the network news divisions. Dick Nixon had none of that before the Frost/Nixon interviews.

As much as Americans and perhaps people around the world may have wanted to get inside of Dick Nixon’s head and hear what he thought about his own presidency and what was going on his own political mind and mind in general, Nixon needed for his own sake to get back on the national scene. To contribute to something that was seen as constructive, if not actually be doing these things. David Frost was essentially a news comedian and satirist at this point looking to get into hard news and make a name for himself there. And gets the idea about trying to interview the one man who no one has successfully interviewed. At least in a long time and find out what President Nixon went through as President.

What you get from the Frost/Nixon interviews is a look inside of perhaps the most fascinating American politician. At least in modern history, a man who was brilliant really about anything he ever worked on and yet had this other paranoid side about him that made him do horrible things to people. And to the country as far as he ran his own White House and perhaps administration overall. And these are really interviews that you need to see for yourself. But Frost someone who was a news satirist before he interviewed Nixon might have been the only man to get Nixon to open up the way he did. And actually talk about his own involvement and the Watergate coverup.