On Fri, 20 Jul 2007, Page Six was quoted as saying
> RICHARD Milhous Nixon, the socially awkward 37th president, tried
> being jocular with David Frost as they prepared for their famous 1977
> TV interviews, which inspired the smash Broadway show. "Mr. Nixon
> turned to me and quite casually asked, 'Well, did you do any
> fornicating this weekend?' For a moment I could not believe the
> evidence of my own ears. Richard Nixon didn't say that, did he? He
> couldn't have," Frost writes in "Frost/Nixon - Behind the Scenes of
> the Nixon Interviews," out this October. "I had indeed heard
> right . . . I suppose Nixon liked to fancy himself one of the boys."
FWIW, there was a review in last week's Nation Magazine about Frost/Nixon that turned on this very point: the Nixon in the play, played by Frank Langella, is a genius at small talk and banter -- which makes him fun to watch, easy to identify with, and completely the opposite of the Nixon who actually existed.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070716/drew
From the July 16, 2007 issue of
The Nation Magazine
Nixon's Broadway Revival
by ELIZABETH DREW
Frost/Nixon, the hot play in New York, makes for a highly enjoyable
evening at the theater.... But the play, the talented Peter Morgan's
dramatization of Frost's
wildly popular series of televised interviews, in 1977, with the former
President, profoundly misleads as it entertains. Langella's Nixon is
not the Richard Nixon of history, and the ending significantly alters
what actually happened. It doesn't always matter when entertainment
collides with history--but in this case it does.
<snip>
The difficulties begin almost from the opening moments of the play. The
first problem is that Nixon comes across as an expansive, witty,
likable man for whom the audience ends up rooting....the play
transforms brooding, tormented, often angry, extremely
introverted and socially awkward Nixon into a figure who readily and
humorously, if still somewhat clumsily, chats with Frost between takes
in the interviews. Langella's Nixon is a lot of fun. The real Nixon did
try to banter with interviewers, but he was virtually incapable of
small talk and was not known for his humor. Though the play does give
the audience whiffs of Nixon's remnant anger and bitterness,
particularly toward those who'd been born to privilege, it lightens up
his dark nature and presents a Nixon who never was. The real Nixon was
riveting enough, and would have made for gripping drama, if perhaps a
less amusing evening. So sympathetic a figure has Morgan/Langella made
Nixon that when he utters the chilling line, "When the President does
it, that means it's not illegal," the audience laughs.
<end excerpt>