Frost/Nixon Movie Quotes
[from trailer]
David Frost
Are you really saying the President can do something illegal?
Richard Nixon
I'm saying that when the President does it, it's *not* illegal!
David Frost
...I'm sorry?
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Richard Nixon
That's our tragedy, you and I Mr. Frost. No matter how high we get, they still look down at us.
David Frost
I really don't know what you're talking about.
Richard Nixon
Yes you do. Now come on. No matter how many awards or column inches are written about you, or how high the elected office is, it's still not enough. We still feel like the little man. The loser. They told us we were a hundred times, the smart asses in college, the high ups. The well-born. The people who's respect we really wanted. Really craved. And isn't that why we work so hard now, why we fight for every inch? Scrambling our way up in undignified fashion. If we're honest for a minute, if we reflect privately, just for a moment, if we allow ourselves a glimpse into that shadowy place we call our soul, isn't that why we're here? Now? The two of us. Looking for a way back into the sun. Into the limelight. Back onto the winner's podium. Because we can feel it slipping away. We were headed, both of us, for the dirt. The place the snobs always told us that we'd end up. Face in the dust, humiliated all the more for having tried. So pitifully hard. Well, to *hell with that*! We're not going to let that happen, either of us. We're going to show those bums, we're going to make 'em choke on our continued success. Our continued headlines! Our continued awards! And power! And glory! We are gonna make those mother fuckers *choke*!
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Richard Nixon
I let them down. I let down my friends, I let down my country, and worst of all I let down our system of government, and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but now they think; 'Oh it's all too corrupt and the rest'. Yeah... I let the American people down. And I'm gonna have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life. My political life is over.
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Richard Nixon
Take my advice. You should marry that woman.
David Frost
Yes. Lovely, isn't she?
Richard Nixon
More important than that, she comes from Monaco. They pay no taxes there.
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James Reston, Jr.
[Referring to Nixon]
His most lasting legacy is that today any political wrongdoing is immediately given the suffix "-gate".
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Richard Nixon
You know those parties of yours, the ones I read about in the newspapers. Do you actually enjoy those?
David Frost
Of course.
Richard Nixon
You have no idea how fortunate that makes you, liking people. Being liked. Having that facility. That lightness, that charm. I don't have it, I never did.
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Richard Nixon
These men, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, I knew their families, I knew them since they were just kids. But you know, politically the pressure on me to let them go, that became overwhelming. So, I did it. I cut off one arm then I cut off the other and I'm not a good butcher. And I have always mantained what they were doing, what we were all doing was not criminal. Look, when you're in office you gotta do a lot of things sometimes that are not always in the strictest sense of the law, legal, but you do them because they're in the greater interest of the nation.
David Frost
Alright wait, wait just so I understand correctly, are you really saying that in certain situations the President can decide whether it's in the best interest of the nation and then do something illegal...
Richard Nixon
I'm saying that when the President does it, that means it's *not* illegal!
David Frost
I'm sorry?
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[from trailer]
David Frost
Why didn't you burn the tapes?
Richard Nixon
I didn't want to take any questions on Watergate!
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Bob Zelnick
[Impersonating Nixon, discussing Jack Kennedy]
That man, he screwed anything that moved, fixed elections, and took us into Vietnam. And the American people, they loved him for it! Whereas I, Richard Milhous Nixon, worked around the clock in their service, and they hated me! Look. Look. Now I'm sweating. Damn it! Damn it! And Kennedy's so goddamn handsome and blue-eyed! Had women all over him! He screwed anything that moved, and everything. Had a go at Checkers once. The poor little bitch was never the same!
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James Reston, Jr.
You know the first and greatest sin or deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, tranches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn't understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon's face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.
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Richard Nixon
[after being told that one of the interview segments will be about "Nixon the man"]
Nixon the man? As opposed to what? Nixon the horse?
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Caroline Cushing
Well, I've never been to Vienna.
David Frost
Oh. Well, you'd like it. It's like Paris without the French.
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Richard Nixon
[Watching Frost head for his car]
You mean to say he just paid me two hundred grand for a visit?
Jack Brennan
Yeah.
Richard Nixon
Huh. If I'd known that I would invited him for tea.
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Richard Nixon
I wouldn't want to be a Russian leader. They never know when they're being taped.
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[reading from a newspaper]
Caroline Cushing
"Frost has hired three crack investigators..."
James Reston, Jr.
Can I be Crack #1?
Bob Zelnick
Can I be Deep Crack?
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Richard Nixon
[a few seconds before the cameras begin to roll]
Did you have a pleasant evening last night?
David Frost
Yes, thank you.
Richard Nixon
Did you do any fornicating?
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James Reston, Jr.
Am I gonna shake - are you kidding me? After everything that prick's done to this country? I'm not gonna shake his hand!
David Frost
Ah, gentlemen! May I present Bob Zelnick, my executive editor.
Richard Nixon
How d'you do?
Bob Zelnick
Pleasure, Mr. President.
David Frost
And Jim Reston, one of my researchers.
Richard Nixon
Ah. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Reston.
[Offers Reston his hand]
Jack Brennan
Excuse me, sir, got a room for you right here.
Bob Zelnick
[after Nixon leaves]
Wow. That was devastating. Withering. I mean, I don't think he's ever going to get over that.
James Reston, Jr.
Fuck off.
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Richard Nixon
David, did I really call you that night?
David Frost
Yes.
Richard Nixon
Did we discuss anything important?
David Frost
Cheeseburgers.
Richard Nixon
Cheeseburgers?
David Frost
Goodbye, sir.
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Richard Nixon
[drunk]
Mmm. That sounds good. I used to love cheeseburgers, but Dr. Lundgren made me give them up. He switched me to cottage cheese and pineapple instead. He calls them my Hawaiian burgers, but they don't taste like burgers at all. They taste like Styrofoam.
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Richard Nixon
Please excuse my golf outfit. It's the official uniform of the retired.
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[from trailer]
David Frost
I've had an idea for an interview: Richard Nixon.
John Birt
You're a talk show host. I spent yesterday watching you interview the Bee Gees.
David Frost
Weren't they terrific?
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Richard Nixon
I shall be your fiercest adversary. I shall come at you with everything I got, because the limelight can only shine on one of us. And for the other, it'll be the wilderness, with nothing and no one for company but those voices ringing in our head.
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James Reston, Jr.
I want to give Richard Nixon the trial he never had!
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David Frost
I'm in this for all I've got.
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David Frost
Success in America is unlike success anywhere else.
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Richard Nixon
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've 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!
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[from trailer]
Richard Nixon
Why would I want to talk to David Frost?
Swifty Lazar
I've got half a million dollars.
Richard Nixon
Really?
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David Frost
What have I done?
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David Frost
More like a trusted confidante.
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Jack Brennan
Well, in boxing, you know, there's always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger's face. It's that moment that he feels the impact from the champ's first jab. It's kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along. You could see it in Frost's face. If he didn't know the caliber of the man that he was up against before the interview started, he certainly knew it halfway through the President's first answer.
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James Reston, Jr.
You have to set up that he has an anti-democratic personality. There's a reason they call him Tricky Dick.
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Bob Zelnick
What about wiretapping?
John Birt
How many people has he wiretapped?
James Reston, Jr.
This guy wiretapped 17 people.
John Birt
17?
Bob Zelnick
Including his own brother. But you know what? We can't ask him about his brother, 'cause frankly, if Donald Nixon was my brother, I'd wiretap him too.
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John Birt
Don't worry. David is a performer of the highest caliber who has been in pressure situations many times before. Come the hour, he'll be fine.
Bob Zelnick
Yes.
James Reston, Jr.
That was the word he used?
Bob Zelnick
Yes, he said "performer".
James Reston, Jr.
Not "journalist"? Or "interviewer"?
Bob Zelnick
No, he said "performer".
James Reston, Jr.
Out of interest... where are you at this moment. Psychically?
Bob Zelnick
I am imagining the dust, the darkness, the agony, and the unimaginable loneliness of the wilderness I am about to be dispatched to by my Washington political colleagues.
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Richard Nixon
We're not gonna let that happen! We're gonna make 'em choke!
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