A man like him with his political views? I actually thought Nixon was very competent as a president, but of course his thin-skinned personality and the fact he got caught is what got the best of him.
My dad, who was very conservative, saw the trailer on this when me and him went to see Apollo 13 and he groaned. I figure he thought Stone would tell a bold faced lie about the man and make him look even worse.
Stone actually voted for Nixon.
He thought that both Nixon and Kennedy were victims of the establishment and the military industrial complex - which becomes obvious in his retelling of events. He voted for Nixon because Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam - and in the movie, he suggests that Nixon wants to end the war but does not really have the power to do so, making him a tragic figure that should be sympathized with.
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Of course, Stone was still a conservative in the '60s.
But, yes, as hard as it is to sympathize with Nixon (and I think Hopkins' too soft performance is part of the problem) the more we learn about Watergate today -- and I can't quite believe I'm saying this -- the more evident it becomes that TPTB framed a guilty man (only one who possibly wasn't guilty in Watergate).
Nixon was a crook, but one whose crooked image worked for the establishment that went after him... Once in office, Nixon, wanting to leave behind an impressive legacy that only a shift to populist policies can create, incurred the wrath of the people who'd put him in power.
And it's a sad, sad day when we can truthfully say that Tricky Dicky was actually a victim -- a victim of a non-violent coup just as JFK has succumbed to a violent coup a decade before (with many of the same players, and even foot soldiers like Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, both Watergate conspirators in 1972 who were in Dealey Plaza in 1963).
Gordon Liddy and John Ehrlichman both later wrote that Watergate "hero" John Dean, White House council, had actually initiated the break-in; Dean sued them both, losing one suit and saw the other thrown out of court.
If anything, in retrospect, perhaps Oliver Stone's NIXON wasn't sympathetic enough (even though I don't think he meant it to be). And certainly Pakula's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN needs a serious new afterward.
PS: Has anybody read Russ Baker's "Family of Secrets" from 2009? It's all right there...
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Non-sequiturs are delicious.
But he does suggest Nixon was involved in the murder of JFK (Bay of Pigs is code for it throughout the film).
shareWouldn't have been a point in making a film just to kick a dead underdog
shareLook what we've got in the WH now! Worst EVER!!!
sharelook what we got now!!!
shareLook at the dodo in the White House now!
shareHe was always a crook. He was also a good President - I'd have voted for him even over Kennedy.My main criticisms are his failures to stop busing and transferring technology to Russia.
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