Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 14, 1995 TAG: 9508150097
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES TRUEHEART THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: TORONTO LENGTH: Medium
``Manolo! Wine!'' he barks at his faithful steward.
``The Chateau Lafite-Rothschild?''
``Yes, you bet!'' exclaims Nixon. ``For something like this, only the best.'' He warms his hands over his plate.
It is Oct. 12, 1972, or thereabouts, in the president's executive office hideaway. Also at the table are Henry Kissinger, H.R. Haldeman and Alexander Haig. The triumph they are toasting is Kissinger's return from Hanoi with a breakthrough toward an agreement to end the war in Vietnam. Peace is about to be at hand.
But, Haig gently wonders, will South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu go along with the deal?
``My Henry,'' Nixon says with a prideful wave of the wine glass toward Kissinger, ``can sell Thieu, explain it all away.'' Kissinger smiles modestly. Besides, Nixon says, jowls all aquiver, ``after my landslide victory on the seventh, nobody will say no to me. Not Thieu. Not Brezhnev. Not the whining press or the hippies.''
Later, as he sits in the Oval Office in his sleeveless T-shirt, Richard Nixon's hair and eyebrows and nose are gently peeled away by the makeup chief to reveal: Beau Bridges. He plays Nixon to Ron Silver's Kissinger in a Turner Network Television docudrama called ``Kissinger and Nixon.'' It's now ashoot on a Toronto sound stage and set for broadcast early next year.
Based on Walter Isaacson's biography ``Kissinger,'' and told from what many on the set describe as ``Kissinger's perspective,'' the production also stars Matt ``Max Headroom'' Frewer as Haig and Ron White as Haldeman.
The production's pedigree is perfect for the serious-minded: Director Dan Petrie Sr. directed ``Eleanor and Franklin'' and the Harry Truman one-man show ``Plain Speaking.'' Executive producer Daniel H. Blatt was responsible for TV docudramas on Tecumseh, Anwar Sadat and the Entebbe raid. Writer Lionel Chetwynd wrote ``Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye'' and the Vietnam pictures, ``The Hanoi Hilton'' and ``To Heal a Nation.''
Silver and Bridges also have won acclaim for portraying real-life characters: Silver memorably as Alan Dershowitz in the movie ``Reversal of Fortune,'' and Bridges convincingly as James Brady in the TV drama of the former White House press secretary's triumph over adversity.
``This is not a comic book we're doing here, but entertainment at the highest levels,'' observed Blatt, who also compared the 94-minute drama to Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. Chetwynd was more specific: ``Richard III.''
Not 16 months dead, Nixon already has returned as myth. Dickie, we hardly had a chance to forget ye. As for Kissinger, he's very much alive, and reportedly anxious about his portrayal - some things never change - in this dramatized slice of his life in power.
Kissinger was shown an early draft of the script, and Silver says he found Kissinger's comments about it ``very helpful, and we've tried to address those concerns in the final script.''Litigiousness on the part of the wounded living, says Petrie, is ``a constant dread.''
It's true that in one scene being passed around for a press peek, Silver's Kissinger has one of those tantrums for which he is infamous, shrieking abuse at underlings and hurling pieces of paper at them.
A regrettable caricature of the true complexities at the pinnacle of power, no doubt, but Kissinger probably has less to worry about in ``Kissinger and Nixon'' than he does in the season's other adventure in celluloid Nixoniana: ``Nixon,'' the forthcoming bio-pic by presidential-assassination specialist Oliver Stone. It features the slightly less plausible Anthony Hopkins as Nixon and Paul Sorvino as Kissinger.
The made-for-TV film covers only 18 weeks of history, the ones leading up to the signing of the Vietnam peace accords in Paris in January 1973.
At the end of the film, Chetwynd says, ``there's a sense of liberation, of having completed the work they set out to do. That's a good metaphor for how the nation felt. We were suffering from conflict fatigue.''
by CNB