THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200037
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 153 lines
As Richard Nixon was leaving the White House, Henry Kissinger said to him, ``History will treat you kindly.''
Nixon responded, ``That depends on who writes the history.''
Even Nixon, awash in his paranoia and ``enemies lists,'' could not have imagined that ultra-controversial moviemaker Oliver Stone would be the one to make the call. ``Nixon,'' made at a carefully-budgeted $43 million and with 70 speaking parts, arrives in theaters today.
Let the debates begin.
Both those who are loyal to Nixon and those who despise him are likely to find things to dislike in Stone's new movie.
``It's not my role to be a textbook,'' director Stone said, sitting for interviews in New York a few days ago, clearly nervous about the unveiling of his new work. ``I don't feel comfortable with historians. I don't see enough dissonance among academics.
``My film has been thoroughly researched but, still, after all, it is a film. A painter paints things as he sees them, and that's what I have done. The very nature of film is that it is written in lightning - an expression, a movement, anything, can change the perception. Many writers who have attacked me, mostly on the op-ed pages, simply don't understand about movies - the magic of movies. I'm not a reporter. I'm a moviemaker.''
Still, his tone as well as his words seem defensive. The two-time Academy Award-winning director (for ``Platoon'' and ``Born on the Fourth of July'') came dangerously close to making a fool of himself over his conspiracy fantasies pictured in ``JFK.''
Stone is covering his tracks with ``Nixon.''
A 563-page book, including his script, is being published with the movie's release. It includes 168 footnotes chronicling his sources for each line and nuance in the movie. The sources are mostly mainstream biographies which, if anything, prove that historians haven't been able to agree on much of anything about the downfall of Richard Milhous Nixon.
The most controversial thing about the film, however, is that there is not likely to be that much controversy. ``Nixon'' is remarkably sympathetic to the fallen president and plays on a grand, epic scale - much like a Shakespearean tragedy.
Stone wonders why anyone would be surprised at this.
``Political stereotypes are not appropriate for anyone in these times, much less me. Categories are dangerous. You can't elucidate what is constantly changing. I came away from this project with great empathy for Nixon, the man. My father was a Republican. I was for Eisenhower. I was, initially, for Nixon but I turned against him when he dragged the Vietnam war out for four more years. I felt betrayed by that. I saw no reason for it. But I wouldn't say I was ever a Nixon hater. I didn't make the movie for that reason. This man had greatness within his grasp. He was corrupted by power. Any of us could be. It's difficult to judge him if you've never had that kind of power. Most of us haven't.''
The film pictures a Nixon who is heavy on booze and curse words, becoming increasingly paranoid as the Watergate accusers zero in.
Stone previously examined the Vietnam war in ``Platoon'' in 1986 and ``Born on the Fourth of July'' in 1989, as well as in the underrated ``Heaven and Earth'' in 1993. He examined the sub-culture of pop music with ``The Doors'' in 1991 (a box office disappointment) and financial greed with ``Wall Street'' in 1987. His dislike of the media permeated his ``Talk Radio'' in 1986 and the controversial ``Natural Born Killers'' in 1994.
``Natural Born Killers'' is perhaps the low point in his career. He claims he had to make 150 cuts from the film just to get an R rating, a process he calls ``demeaning.''
Before finally settling on Nixon as his next subject, Stone pulled out of plans to make ``Noriega,'' a film about convicted dictator Manuel Noriega, and ``Evita,'' the musical biography of Argentinian political ``saint'' Eva Peron. He hasn't given up on the Noriega plot; one can only guess what he may make of the still-evolving revelations involving claims the U.S. government was in on all kinds of Noriega deals before the man was convicted.
The Nixon film, though, is shockingly free of real accusations. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that controversy may be needed to sell tickets to the three and one-quarter hour long film, Stone said, ``I pray that what happened with `JFK' won't happen again. I don't, in advance, see what they will attack and, consequently, I don't have any defenses planned. That Washington press corps is a vicious lot. I'm sure that the film will be attacked.''
He admits that the Nixon project probably would not have been undertaken before Nixon's death, in spring of 1994. ``He would have been a tough litigator and I don't think he was a big fan of mine after `JFK.' ''
The film is centered on the Watergate years, the last years of Nixon's presidency, but flashes back to his childhood and political past (with many flashbacks filmed in black and white).
Stone's surprise choice of Anthony Hopkins, a Welshman, to play Nixon was, he claims, no real surprise. ``He was the one. After I saw `Remains of the Day,' I knew he could play the repression and loneliness needed for the part - never mind that he didn't look at all like Nixon. I knew he could get the essence.''
Hopkins says that he received a note from Nixon daughter Julie that simply expressed hope that you will ``humanize'' my father.
On the eve of the film's release, though, the Nixon family issued a blast that characterized the film as ``character assassination'' with scenes concocted `` solely and maliciously to defame and degrade President and Mrs. Nixon's memories in the mind of the American public.''
Broadway theater veteran Joan Allen plays Pat Nixon, whom Stone calls ``the Mona Lisa of American politics.''
Allen says she studied endlessly for the role but ``to tell you the truth, if Oliver had wanted Pat Nixon to wear a G-string and swing from a chandelier, I would have played it that way. Oliver discussed every scene carefully.''
Paul Sorvino is Henry Kissinger. Powers Boothe is Alexander Haig. Ed Harris plays E. Howard Hunt. Bob Hoskins is J. Edgar Hoover. E.G. Marshall is John Mitchell. David Hyde Pierce, of the ``Frasier'' TV show, plays John Dean. Mary Steenburgen plays Nixon's religion-minded mother and Tony Goldwyn plays the older brother who died with TB. J.T. Walsh is John Ehrlichman and James Woods is H.R. Haldeman.
The cast has mixed feeling about the project. Boothe, for example, said, ``My mother had been a life-long Democrat but she supported Nixon then and now. She says he didn't do anything the others didn't do - only he just happened to be caught.''
Sorvino said, succinctly, ``I saw Nixon as a good president. I also saw him as a crook. Both beings existed.''
Woods, whose Oscar nomination for ``Salvador'' was also directed by Stone, said, ``What strikes me about the project is that it is a product of the times. Look at today. You have Hillary Clinton directing her secretary to remove files from an office and shred papers. If the Whitewater thing isn't a blatant case of cover-up, then what could be? Yet no one in the country seems to get excited about it.
``In another time, the president would have been impeached by now, but, at the time of Watergate, we were a country weary with a war and Nixon was so easily hateable. When you get down to it, Nixon didn't look good on the cover of Time Magazine, and Bill Clinton does.''
Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, who co-wrote the script with Stone, freely admit that they began the project with ``nothing but loathing for Nixon.'' Both claim, though, that their research persuaded them to take a softer view.
Stone is even more outgoing in his praise of the late president. ``He is perhaps the more intelligent man to be in the White House in this century. That doesn't mean that I can forgive what he did with his intelligence, but the fact is that he opened up China and he brought about detente with the Soviet Union. The world is very different today because of him. It is because of him that it is not possible today to drift back into the Cold War.''
The central controversy, in spite of Stone's opening disclaimer that ``dramatic license'' is admitted, is likely to be a snide hint that Nixon may have been knowledgable of CIA efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro and that, somehow, these efforts later became a plan to kill John F. Kennedy.
Stone admits that he's probably stuck with heady, controversial fare. ``Sure, I'd like to make an action movie like `The Fugitive,' '' he said with a laugh, ``but I can't quite bring myself to it. `Natural Born Killers' was my effort at making an action movie, and look what happened with that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Hollywood Pictures
[Anthony Hopkins as Nixon]
[James Woods, right, as H.L Haldeman]
[Broadway veteran Joan Allen as Pat Nixon]
[Color photo of Oliver Stone]
by CNB