A Night to Remember

Well, last night ushering over at the performing arts center was just a thrill. I told other people that last night alone just made all the other effort worth it. The title says it all: Frost/Langella. As in Sir David Frost and Mr. Frank Langella. The man who has interviewed just about every famous or infamous person of the 20th Century and, you know, Dracula. Okay, he’s done other stuff too. But come one. He’s Dracula. Anyway. My silly girl-thrills aside, the topic was, of course, the interview.

David Frost (who was wearing a newscaster-ish suit with, please note, fuschia socks – kudos) and Frank Langella had such different, yet complimentary takes on the event. Frost of course had been at the actual interview with Nixon and knew all the behind scenes details of how the entire meeting occurred. Plus he had the perspective of viewing Nixon in context with so many other world leaders that he had interviewed. Langella, on the other hand, had done so much research on the man (talking to people who had met Nixon, reviewing news footage, visiting the Nixon library), trying to find a handle on this complex man in order to play the humanity behind that image.

And here was the thing that made the evening just electric for me. It was one of those things that will only happen once, and could only happen with those two people in the room. In his research, Langella had asked the Nixon library if he might be able to see notes written by Nixon, just so he could get a sense of the way the former president thought. What they gave him was the two boxes of papers Nixon had used prior to the Frost/Nixon interview. Wow. And in the box was the series of notes that was given to him by his media staff (Diane Sawyer among them) that said, “Frost may ask you about Cambodia, we suggest you say this . . .” or “He may ask about Watergate, we suggest you say this . . .” And because he was intimately familiar with the interview for the play, Langella could tell that at some points Nixon had repeated those answers practically verbatim. Which is something that Frost had never known until that very moment. Wow. Just wow.

It was just filled with that sort of historical detail, and verged off into current events, human behavior and other stories from both the participants’ lives. A really and truly amazing hour of conversation. I don’t think I can even call up enough details to give you an idea. There was just so much to absorb.

I don’t see how the ushering gig can ever come up to that kind of thrill for me again. Politics meets show biz in an epic showdown - could they have come up with something that would be a better theme for me? Not hardly. I may have peaked too soon. But can you imagine if something of that caliber happened again? Wow.