Why a play, not a movie or a TV film?
I thought to myself, I’d sooner it were a play than one of those respectable adult political HBO film dramas. I didn’t want it to be too earnest. I wanted to do a human story, almost like a love story. It’s that wonderful gladiatorial thing where only one man can be left standing at the end. But on the way, two men kind of become obsessed by one another. It struck me that Frost’s lightness and charm his likability and his sociability were things Nixon craved but didn’t have. So these two characters would each have things of which the other could be profoundly envious. And yet your Nixon is very funny. I hadn’t written him to be funny until we did a reading. I suddenly realized, we’ve got something wittier than I thought we had. I went away and worked more on that tone. So what happened with the film rights going to Ron Howard? I have to be careful what I say here, so I’m going to think carefully. I had meetings with a number of directors, and phone conversations with a number of direct
