Original subtitles

[Stone] It sets the proportions of the film by a biblical standard,

imposed by Richard Nixon's mother, in a sense, a Quaker, and a strict one.

the beauty of that statement, one of my favorites in the Bible,

is many of us surrender our spiritual side as we go.

I just don't understand it, Bob. I've logged a lot of miles.

I've followed the sales textbook by the letter.

I've applied myself diligently.

I mean, I try and I try, and I just cannot get in the door.

- I mean... what am I doin' wrong? - Earl, sit down.

[Stone] this is John McGinley playing a salesman in one of those remakes

of a 1950s training industrial film, which we saw a lot of as kids.

Motivational films. I played with this idea of a salesman because Dick Nixon

was considered by many a car salesman type. He was desperate to succeed.

A little too sweaty in that arrangement. this film embodies that.

[man] Something's changed. I don't want to pry,

but is everything all right at home, with Margie?

- Will there be anything else? - Leave it.

- Just leave it. - Yes, sir.

- Thank you. - Thanks.

[Bob] I watched you walking in front of my desk in an agitated manner,

smoking without having asked if you could smoke in my presence.

- [indistinct chatter] - 0121, mark.

OK, listen up. Fire team discipline in there at all times.

Keep your radios on at all times during the entire penetration.

Check yourselves. False IDs?

- Jim. - No wallets, no keys?

We rendezvous where? The Watergate, room 214. When?

- At 0300 hours. - Jawohl, mein fartin' fuhrer.

I swear, Frank, I'm gonna make you a new asshole.

Let's get the fuck out of here.

[Stone] that's Ed Harris, did me a favor by jumping in there as Howard Hunt.

If anything goes wrong, sit tight. You'll hear from me or Howard.

Personally, if anything goes wrong,

I'll be calling the President of the United States.

[Earl] I'm notjust gonna be a good salesman.

No, doggone it, I'm gonna be a great salesman.

- That's the spirit. - Thanks.

And remember, Earl, always look them in the eye.

Nothing sells like sincerity.

[Stone laughs] the American sort of commercial of that period.

Very direct. Very hard sell.

[man] Five men wearing surgical gloves, business suits,

carrying camera and electronic surveillance equipment

were arrested in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee

in Washington.

They were unarmed. Nobody knows yet why they were there

or what they were looking for.

[Stone] It's a fast start to the picture. I was conscious of the cutting.

this is a very, perhaps my most encapsulated picture,

the most structured in the sense of shooting back and forth through times

and layers of time.

By this point, I felt very confident in doing this

because we'd done it in various ways before with JFK.

Beautiful opening shot. We built that set. the White House,

we ended up shooting as a matte. I believe we took a shot

of approaching the fence at the White House with permission.

If we didn't, we built our own fence. I wanted to pay homage,

but not to slavishly imitate, Citizen Kane with this shot.

But it was fun to do. It was a night shoot.

And that was the man. He was austere, lonely in that White House alone.

Mad, half-mad, despised,

drinking because of his phlebitis

in his knee, the pain.

Taking painkillers. Mixing them. Not drinking a lot, but just...

We didn't ever say he was a drunkard.

there was one scene where you see Nixon drinking,

the scene that replays through the movie as a chorus.

It's always him drinking in the same place, so it could be the same drink.

It's not necessary for him to have more than three drinks in this movie.

[man] The White House continues to deny any involvement.

[man 2] Presidential counsel, John Dean,

testified before the Senate Watergate committee

that the scandal reaches to the highest levels.

[woman] Presidential aides Haldeman and Ehrlichman

were ordered to resign today.

In a stunning announcement, White House aide Alexander Butterfield

revealed the existence of a taping system.

[Stone] this is final stage of Nixon's presidency.

We started at the end, two years before the Watergate break-in.

But we didn't show the break-in because it's been shown in other films.

I skipped it and went right to this, two years later.

this is the end. We go from the beginning of the crime to the end.

Here are the results.

[man] Eight resolutions calling for the impeachment

of the president were referred to thejudiciary committee by the House.

[woman] It was disclosed to Judge Sirica there is an 18-and-a-half-minute gap

in a June 20th, 1972 taped conversation

between the president and Bob Haldeman.

[Stone] Newspaper headlines in The Times. John Williams is back.

[man] Sirica ordered the president to turn over tapes

to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.

[Stone] the montage of voices and news is essentially

a condensation of two years of misery that the country went through.

It's all jammed together for montage. We will return to these things

as the film unfolds.

[knocking]

[Nixon] Yeah.

[Stone] Powers Boothe, who played in U Turn, was Alexander Haig here

and I thought, certainly, gave Haig the benefit of the doubt.

These are the tapes you requested, Mr. President.

[Stone] Our first view of Nixon, which is shocking, gets your attention.

Air conditioner, fire, contradictions.

Kind of shuffling around there.

Cocksucker!

[Stone] Nixon was notoriously clumsy with his hands.

Nixon's never been good with these things, Al.

[Stone] He was a very cerebral man, a thinking man, a worrying man.

He thought too much. that's our first view of Tony Hopkins,

who's Welsh, not English. Many people were surprised at this choice.

But many people were very pleased with it in the long run.

You know, Al,

if Hoover were alive,

these tapes would never have gotten out.

I want the little shit back.

Mr. Hoover was a realist, sir.

[Stone] Tony had that roughness, gruffness. Same time,

he had enough sensitivity to really allow us in,

to see into his window, his eyes.

We never got our side of the story out, Al.

People have forgotten.

Such violence.

The tear gassing, the riots,

burning the draft cards,

the Black Panthers.

We fixed it, Al, and they hate me for it.

[Stone] I've seen Nixon movies where they make him look like Nixon.

I don't think that's the point. You have to get to the spirit.

What I did with people in the past. You can't get the exact replica.

Jim Garrison was six-foot-eight. Kevin Costner was six feet.

It was fine with me as long as the spirit of the man comes across.

Tony Hopkins, from the English stage, works a lot with gesture and mannerisms,

studies pictures, film. Works oFten from the outside in.

qrom the outer mannerisms into the head. We used quotes as much as we could

unless we had to build a bridge between them.

Between lines there was missing things. things are not shown up in documents

as dialogue, they're shown up as a remembered line here or there.

[tape rewinding]

[Stone] Here, it gets lost in the tape, which allows us to jump around in time.

We go back now to the beginnings following the Watergate break-in.

Start.

- [Nixon] They did what? - [Haldeman] Bugs, photographs.

It was a fishing expedition. It was their fourth attempt at the DNC.

[Nixon] O'Brien doesn't use that.

[Haldeman] Looking for an illegal Hughes donation to the Democrats,

so they couldn't make an issue of your Hughes money.

[Nixon] It was a legal contribution.

[Ehrlichman] Not clear burglars knew what they were looking for.

They were headed for McGovern's office later that same night.

- Christ, Did Mitchell know? - I don't know.

Mitchell's out of his mind. Martha put her head through a window.

[Stone] this is first time leap. there's gonna be more which are necessary

to keeping the unfolding onion of tension.

this film is dictated by the mandates of the mind, what you need to know next.

If Mitchell had been minding the store instead of Martha,

we wouldn't have Magruder running some third-rate burglary.

We feel the bigger concern is Gordon Liddy.

- Liddy? That fruitcake? What about him? - That's just it, sir. He is a nut.

Used to work with the plumbers, turns up running this Watergate caper.

Remember his plan to firebomb Brookings using Cubans as firemen?

- What's Liddy got? - He was using some campaign cash

that was laundered for us through Mexico, the FBI's onto it.

- We could have a problem. - [Stone] this is actual text.

Mostly between Haldeman here, played by Jimmy Woods, and Nixon.

But at times with Ehrlichman, Dean. All kinds of comings and goings.

Actually, this is a very interesting scene, especially if you know

the actual dialogue and how long it was.

We really did a good job of narrowing it down to the basic emotions of the scene

and keeping dialogue as it was and letting actors play it realistically.

Well, sir, one of the people implicated is still on the White House payroll.

Who? Not another goddamn Cuban.

No, sir. A guy named Hunt.

Howard Hunt, sir.

Hunt? Howard Hunt?

Left his White House phone number in his hotel room.

He works for Colson. He used him on the Pentagon Papers.

After arrest, he dumps his wiretapping stuff into his White House safe.

We're trying to figure out when he stopped being a White House consultant.

Howard Hunt is working for the White House? Jesus Christ.

This is goddamn Disneyland. Since when?

[Ehrlichman] Since Chappaquiddick. He wanted dirt on Kennedy.

- Colson brought him in. - You know Hunt, sir?

Yeah, on the list of horribles.

I know what he is and I know what he tracks back to.

- He was involved in the plumbers? - Definitely.

Colson had him break into Bremer's apartment after Bremer shot Wallace

- to plant McGovern's literature. - [screaming]

I had nothing to do with that.

- He was in this Ellsberg thing? - Yes. You approved it.

- I did? - [Stone] What's emerging is Nixon

approved a series of dirty tricks, in a broad sense, against his enemies.

It was his nature. At this time, he was angry about many things.

Fuck.

[thunder rumbles]

[camera shutter clicking]

What the fuck?! You're not supposed to take pictures of me!

Take pictures of the files! Give me the fuckin' film!

Howard Hunt.

Jesus Christ. You open up that scab, you'll uncover a lot of pus.

What do you mean?

- Where's Hunt now? - He's in hiding.

- He sent Liddy in to talk to Dean. - [Nixon] And?

- He wants money. - Pay him.

Pay him? I told him get out of the country. It's crazy to start...

What the hell are you doing, John, screwing with the CIA?

I don't care how much he wants. Pay him.

- What are we paying him for, sir? - [Stone] Nixon approved the bribe.

Silence.

But you're covered. It's only this Ellsberg thing,

and if that comes out, it's national security.

[Stone] I love this implication of silence.

And Woods rethinking this.

Cut ourselves loose from these clowns, and that's all there is to it.

No, it's more than that. I want Hunt paid.

We've never done that before, sir. How do we do it?

We should set up a Cuban defense fund on this and take care of all of 'em.

- Should we talk to Trini about paying? - [Nixon] Keep Trini out.

And for God's sake, keep Colson out.

It's time to baptize our young counsel here, Mr. Dean.

That means John can never talk about it. Attorney-client privilege.

[Stone laughs] Nixon, of course, was a lawyer.

[Stone laughs] I love that look.

OK.

- Did I approve the Ellsberg thing? - [Stone] A rhetorical question

because he doesn't know the answer.

You make so many decisions as president that sometimes you do forget.

I never approved the break-in at the Ellsbergs'.

- Maybe I approved it after the fact. - [Stone] I love the way he let us in

that he did remember it.

Someday we gotta start transcribing these tapes.

You approved that before the fact because I went over it with you. But...

- No one's gonna see these tapes. - [Stone laughs]

It's more of a problem for Ehrlichman. He fixed Hunt up with the phony CIA IDs.

But... what else does Hunt have on us?

We gotta turn off the FBI, Bob.

You go to the CIA and tell Helms that Hunt is blackmailing the president.

[Stone] this is the smoking tape. It's pretty much verbatim.

...if he goes public, if Hunt goes public,

it will be a fiasco for the CIA. He'll know what I'm talking about.

- All right. - Play it tough.

That's the way they play it, that's the way we're gonna play it.

- [Stone laughs] - Don't say there's no involvement.

Just say this is a sort of comedy of errors,

- bizarre, without getting into it. - [Stone laughs]

Say the president believes

it's gonna open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing again.

And tell Helms he should call the FBI, call Pat Gray,

and say that we wish, for the sake of the country,

don't go any further into this... hanky-panky...

[Stone laughs] I love Hopkins' acting here.

And Haldeman's an innocent.

Whenever Haldeman would ask Nixon, he would be stonewalled.

[Haldeman] The problem with that, sir,

- it gets us to obstruction ofjustice. - [Nixon] Nothing to do with justice.

- It's national security. - [Haldeman] How is this security?

[Nixon] The president says it is.

Now, this isn't a moral issue, Bob.

Myjob is to protect this country from its enemies,

- and its enemies are inside the walls. - [Stone] then we jump back

to the second time in the room.

[Nixon] ...or our whole program goes down the tubes.

[Stone] He did have a problem with awkwardness. He was taking pills

for a blood clot in his leg that got very serious with stress.

Very serious. He almost died.

Many people say that he was coming undone the last few months under stress.

You can imagine just a few glasses of Scotch, two glasses with these pills,

he's not a drinking man. Probably had a low tolerance for alcohol.

But was slurring in much of the transcripts.

In one transcript, he even slurred an obscenity.

- Expose me like this. - [Haldeman] Why would that threaten us?

- Why don't they fucking shoot me? - [Stone laughs]

I just love that image of a man crawling on the floor.

Talk about persecution. You gotta admit there's a comedic element.

In the election of 1960, with the world around us,

the question is whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free.

[Stone] And this cuts right back again to 1960.

the key moment, people feel, which he lost the '60 election to Kennedy

was the perception Kennedy had won the debate.

When it comes to experience,

through the years I have sat on the National Security Council,

I have been in the cabinet...

[Stone] Kennedy was handsome and Nixon was sweaty and a little sick.

It didn't play well on TV. And he bored people with his statistics,

which I tried to show here. these are actual transcripts.

- ...two emperors and the Shah of Iran. - Jesus Christ.

Has he told them how many push-ups he can do?

- [Stone laughs] - ...hydroelectric power.

- What happened? - He just got out of the hospital.

He hasn't taken one hour off.

[Nixon] When we consider the line-up of the world...

[Stone] We used a very good stand-in for Kennedy as well as stock footage.

...800 million people on the Communist side...

- Shoulda slapped makeup on. - It's not a beauty contest.

- We'd better hope not. - ...600 million people who are neutral.

What are you doing to him, Murray? He's not well.

- He doesn't have to debate Kennedy. - [Stone] Introduction of Joan Allen

who I thought had a remarkable resemblance to Pat Nixon,

was a wonderful theater actress in Chicago, who had been in a few movies.

Oh, shit, he's gonna do it. Here it comes.

We've seen Cuba go to the Communists.

Eightjet minutes from the coast of Florida.

We must attempt to strengthen the democratic anti-Castro forces in exile.

These fighters have had no support from our government.

- Son of a bitch! - What?

Kennedy was briefed last week by CIA. He's using it against us.

We can't respond, he welshed on a deal.

[Stone] Of course, the debate is still shrouded in mystery.

Kennedy was briefed by the CIA.

Nixon believes that he revealed national security secrets here.

the counterargument is that Kennedy was ignorant of all this stuff.

As he himself said, Eisenhower barely briefed him on Vietnam.

- [man] Mr. Nixon. - Yeah.

[Stone] the foreshadowing that he would be a loser.

I think that's the sort of very dangerous

- and irresponsible suggestion that... - It's over.

[Stone] Nixon could not play the common man. He was too smart.

Kennedy would come on as the prince, Nixon as the common man.

But he didn't have the empathy of the common man.

[man] It's still very close.

Senator Kennedy's lead is about 700,000.

[Haldeman] Think Daley stuffed the ballot boxes?

[Stone] there was many strong feelings the Kennedys barely scraped by

and may have stolen the election with Mob help.

In Chicago, with Richard Daley and maybe in West Virginia.

If that were the case, there's a theory that the Mob expected to be

better treated by Robert Kennedy.

All his following investigations against Hoffa and teamsters. Quite a war.

Some say it lead to the assassination,

but I have reasons to doubt that.

[man] Who's gonna do the counting? The Democrats control Texas, Illinois.

- We shift 25,000 votes in two states. - And how long will that take?

- Six months, a year? - What happens to the country?

If I'd called his shot on Cuba, I'd have won.

- That's what I say. - Made me look soft.

"I feel very sorry for Nixon

because he does not know who he is." You believe this?

"At each stop he has to decide which Nixon he's going to be at the moment,

which must be very exhausting." Jack Kennedy.

[Stone] this is what Kennedy actually said to him at the time.

these are quotes from some of Kennedy's campaign speeches.

"If you vote for Nixon, then you oughta go to hell." Harry S. Truman.

That's what killed us, Dick, not Cuba.

It's the personality problem. You gonna let the Democrats get away with this?

Goes to Harvard. His father hands him everything on a silver platter.

All my life, they've been sticking it to me.

Not the right clothes, not the right schools, not the right family.

And then he steals from me.

[laughs] He says I have no class, and they love him for it.

Dick, you're only 47.

If you contest this election, you'll be finished.

You gotta swallow this one. They stole it fair and square.

We'll get 'em next time, Dick.

We'll get 'em next time.

What makes you think there's gonna be a next time, Murray?

Because if he's not this Nixon,

he's nobody.

- [man] Good morning, sir. - Hi.

- Hi. - [Pat] Hi.

We lost.

I know.

I hate to lose.

It makes us human.

It's not fair, Buddy.

I can take the insults, I can take the name-calling.

But I can't take the losing. I hate it.

We don't have to put ourselves through this again, Dick.

We worked for it. We earned it.

- It's ours. - [Pat] It is. We know that.

And it's enough that we know.

[Stone] this is a very telling scene.

As you may know, he almost quit politics here. He definitely quit in '62,

when he lost the governorship of California to Ed Brown.

that was a real shock to his system. He couldn't even be a governor.

Maybe I should get out of the game.

What do you think, Buddy?

And go back to being a lawyer.

End up with something solid, some money at the end of the line.

You know, I, uh...

I keep thinking of my old man tonight.

- He was a failure too. - You're not a failure, Dick.

You know how much money he had in the bank when he died?

Nothing.

He was so damned honest.

But I miss him.

I miss him a hell of a lot.

[Stone] Almost like he misses that honesty that he long ago surrendered.

I love this beginning with the orange groves ofWhittier, where he grew up.

We went to another feeling with Mary Steenburgen, who has a classic face.

Gas station.

We shot it down in Orange County, not too far from Whittier.

Tony Goldwyn plays the older brother. He was the charismatic one.

And there's Dick.

- How is thy son? - Very well, thank you.

- What'd he say? - [Stone] qather's played by Tom Bower,

one of the really underrated actors, a very stern-faced qrank Nixon,

who was as tough as they come, apparently.

One of those tough Irish immigrant types.

Drank, but serious, strong and died broke.

- Relax, Dick. - [register rings]

[Stone] Mary is an interesting actress 'cause she suggests both strength...

that's my son there, again, sneaks into the movie.

I have to keep track of him by diary. that's my diary.

Mary has soFt beauty. At the same time, I sense a will of steel underneath,

which makes her perfect for Hannah Nixon,

who I think is one of the key elements in the story, like Agnes Moorehead

may have been in Kane.

[Hannah] Let Harold's worldliness be a warning to thee, not an example.

[Stone] She talks to him in the most soothing way,

but she terrifies him.

Harold may have lost touch with his Bible,

but thee must never lapse.

Now, give it to me.

[Stone] I think he was held to a standard of tremendous pressure

by his mother in her perfectionism.

I think it affected his life because he was unable to live up to that,

as anybody would be. As a result, allowed himself many black areas

to develop in his soul so that he could lie

and escape his mother's overwhelmingness.

Mother, I'm sorry. It was...

It was just one time.

[Stone] the grandmother spoke in Quaker dialogue.

I transferred it to Hannah Nixon because I wanted the audience to at least

understand influences that surrounded Nixon growing up, "thees" and "thous."

No, please, don't...

[Stone] And qrank Nixon would take the kids behind the woodshed with a strap.

She never laid a hand on them, but it was enough to...

What she could do with her voice was enough.

Then this shall be our little secret.

Remember, I see into thy soul.

Thee may fool the world, even thy father,

but not me, Richard. Never me.

Mother...

...think of me always as thy faithful dog.

[Stone] He actually wrote a letter to his mother at that time

when he was in the fourth grade, I believe, signed it "your faithful dog."

the mother, of course, under the Quaker laws

kept food for passing people who were in need during the Depression.

- Richard. - Is it my turn?

Oh, Heavenly Father, we humbly thank you...

I'll do it. There's a couple of things I wanna say.

[Stone laughs] that's Tom Bower as the father, qrank.

This blood pays the bills, Hannah. I'm not ashamed of how I earn my money.

[clears throat]

Heavenly Father,

you told Adam in the garden, after that business with the snake,

that man would have to earn his way by the sweat of his face.

Well, as far as I can tell, Father,

what was true in Eden is true in Whittier, California.

So we ask you now to remind certain of our young people

the only way to get a new suit to go to the promenade with Margaret O'Herlihy,

who happens to be a Catholic, by the way,

- is to work for it. Amen. - [Stone laughs]

- Amen. - Amen.

- Amen. - Are we gonna pray now, Daddy?

- [Stone laughs] - You think this is funny?

Maybe a trip to the woodshed'll straighten you out.

Pretty soon you boys are gonna have to get out there and scratch.

'Cause you're not gonna get anywhere on your good looks.

- Just ask those fellas. - [Stone laughs]

Charity's only gonna get you so far,

even with saints like your mother around.

Struggle's what gives life meaning. Not victory, struggle.

[Stone] My son's playing Donald, turns out to be the crook in the family.

And then you end up in the street with your hand out.

[Stone] Pretty scary vision for young Richard,

who's gonna lose two of these brothers to early death.

"My father struggled his whole life" is true. He suffered and struggled.

- He scratched. - [Nixon] ...but they never beat him.

I always tried to remember that, when things didn't go my way.

Let's really get fired up now!

[Stone] Here's the middle Nixon.

He was a punching bag on the Whittier football team.

Mostly a water boy.

But we had fun shooting these old football-style...

- What's Nixon doing here? - He thinks he can make it.

Four years of being a tackling dummy. Poor guy.

- All right! Let's go, defense! - Hike!

[Stone] He did have grit. He would stick out there

and play until he was bleeding.

Worst athlete I've ever seen. But he's got guts.

OK, let's go! Let's do it!

[man] In California's gubernatorial race,

Richard Nixon has returned to the political arena...

[Stone] Again, we do another time shiFt. It gets complicated.

I don't even count the time shiFts.

Brown's campaign has benefited greatly from the support of President Kennedy,

while Nixon has had trouble convincing voters

this is not another run for the presidency.

With only a few precincts left unreported,

indications are of another defeat...

[Stone] Instead of going into newsreel fashion to the vice presidency,

we jump from Whittier back to '62, the close of his political career,

sort of paralleling the defeat in 1960. We go from there

back to the newsreel, March of Time,

which will give us the fill-in the rest of the Nixon background.

It's very important and I like the idea

because in Citizen Kane they do the March of Time at the beginning,

tell you the whole prologue. In this case,

it was very clever to put the documentary of his life

in the first third of the movie, but not the beginning.

[Pat] I'm glad they don't, Dick.

I'm glad they don't because life is tough and it is unfair

and sometimes you forget that in your self pity.

[Stone] In 1962, according to our researchers, the closest

the Nixons came to divorce.

- [bangs keys] - Cocksucker!

Don't you want to listen to Governor Brown's victory speech?

Nope. Not going to listen to any more speeches ever again.

Amen to that.

It's over, Dick.

- I'll concede in the morning. - Not that.

[playing classical piano]

Buddy?

[Stone] I was criticized, but research revealed that he called her Buddy

early on in their relationship.

this may not have been the case, we could be wrong, but we went

to Brodie's Richard Nixon and Roger Morris' Richard Nixon

and Pat's yearbook photograph file, she was called Buddy.

I concede that maybe later in their life, as people get older,

they drop the nicknames, go back to a formal name. I don't know.

But it's quite possible to me that he called her Buddy at this time.

But it's not a make-or-break point, as critics tried to make it.

"Stone's got it wrong again." How can you get everything right?

You're behind closed doors here. We don't know that this scene happened.

We imagined it from our research. this is what we developed.

We go behind closed doors. this is the dramatist's license we have.

I don't know that I have to always defend myself, but I may have to.

It's as if I, I don't know, just went to sleep a long time ago

and missed the years between.

I've had enough.

What are you saying? What are you talking about?

I want a divorce.

My God. Divorce? What about the girls?

The girls'll grow up.

[Stone] this is a powerful scene for Joan. She establishes strength.

She had been a political wife up to this point. In '62,

an age of liberation. Kennedys are in office, Jackie Kennedy.

Sexual liberation. I would imagine Pat would, in several points of his life,

been fed up with the unromantic nature of Dick Nixon.

She was a shy person, it seems. Meeting so many political people

and the public, as a politician's role, it must have been exhausting to her.

I love this scene, the way it's written. And I love their acting.

He's... He lies to her at the end.

We've been through too much together.

We belong together.

That's what you said the first time we met.

You didn't even know me.

Oh, yes, I did.

[Stone] He approached her, courted her, without really knowing her.

He met her at a play rehearsal. He was an actor, she was an actress.

In fact, on their first dates, he drove her to the date with another guy.

He never even asked her himself.

So strong.

- So beautiful. - Hi, I'm Pat Ryan.

[Stone] I love John Williams' music here.

- [Pat] It's a pleasure to meet you. - [Richard] Pleasure to meet you.

- [trolley bell ringing] - [Stone] A sense of Orange County,

the beauty of the '30s.

And here he is, driving the date.

tyrue story. [laughs]

[Richard] Well, in a way, yes.

Don't tell me you've been cutting my part.

Of course, honey, you know I would never deceive you. Don't you?

[fireworks whistling]

[Stone] then we use young actors and we went to the beautiful church

where they were actually married, I believe,

Uh, Escondido, down in Orange County. We shot in a home-movie style.

Dick went to the Navy, played poker most of his four years.

Made a lot of money playing poker

and was involved in administration and moving to cargo. Didn't see any combat.

Became very knowledgeable about bureaucracy's parts,

moving things, one of the brightest presidents we ever had.

He actually could read a budget and he could go over detail.

He was a very good administrative officer, no question about it.

AFter the war, also selling tires, all the used parts.

there was a huge industry in America. He was part of that, benefited from it.

We can be happy.

We really can.

[Stone] Went to Congress from California as a Republican

in the first wave of post-war enthusiasm,

Republican can-doism, which is sort of basically stripping the New Deal

from Roosevelt, because the New Deal still was bitterly resented

as government interference, socialism.

So Nixon was part of that first wave of Republicans in post-war years.

I'll do it. No more.

[Stone] that's a key moment.

Are you serious?

Yeah. I'm out.

Is that the truth?

[Stone] the acting of these two is so phenomenal.

the way they relate to each other visually.

they both read each other so well.

His beard. We really worked his beard.

I love you, Buddy.

[Stone] We made this scene... Tender as it is, this is our interpretation.

We made this in motivation for this following scene in which he quit.

If you remember, he said the wrongs things that night.

the press hated him for it. "You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore."

But perhaps we're suggesting it was motivated by this promise to his wife

to get out of politics, which he apparently made,

and which he will do here. But he doesn't wanna give up. He's a fighter.

- It's against his very nature. - Just a second!

Some quiet, please. Quiet!

- [reporters shouting] - Thank you!

- [man] Mr. Nixon! - Uh... Ahem.

I believe Governor Brown has a heart,

even though he believes I do not.

[Stone] He said these words. We composited them.

...even though he feels I am not.

I'm proud of the fact that I defended my opponent's patriotism.

[Stone] It was a very defensive speech, perceived as such.

We shot it in the style, uh, to emphasize

the, uh, fragmentation of his nature.

He had reasons to be angry. He did get the shaFt from the media.

No question about it. On the other hand, he did a lot to deserve the shaFt.

But recognize you have a responsibility,

if you're against the candidate, to give him the shaft.

But if you do that, at least put one lonely reporter on the campaign

who will report what the candidate says now and then. Uh...

I think, all in all, I've given as good as I've taken.

[Stone] this will be debated eternally.

Nixon as anti-communist crusader of the '40s and '50s,

breaking Alger Hiss is one perception of him by the right.

the one from the leFt is he broke any rules he could

to persecute communism,

which led to the Watergate problem. Watergate was a culmination

of a career of lying and dirty tricks.

the irony is Watergate is about nothing. they never found anything.

So it's the silliest thing that always traps you.

If you have bad habits, those habits continue through your life.

those bad habits will undo you.

And oFten will be the most banal of the bad habits.

Here's where we go into the past, and I love the way we did it

because his career is over.

that was our original nose on Tony. It was too big.

But we were shooting early stills, so we leFt it in.

We didn't have money to re-shoot it.

You'll see the nose looks like a proboscis there.

[man] Running as a South Pacific veteran,

victories over Congressman Jerry Voorhis

and Senator Helen Gahagan Douglas made it clear that, to Nixon,

politics was war. He didn't have opponents, he had enemies.

Why, she's pink, right down to her underwear!

[Stone] the March of Time at the third-way point is surprising

because where are you gonna go from there?

Where you gonna go? His political obituary is written.

In fact, five nights aFterward, ABC TV ran a program titled

The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon.

[man] ...intimate of FDR and Oliver Wendell Holmes,

Alger Hiss was a State Department diplomat

accused by freelance journalist Whittaker Chambers of passing...

[Stone] this will always be in contention. Chambers was the accuser,

Hiss the defendant.

Many of the neo-conservatives have come forward with this attack on Hiss,

which is based on supposed deconstruction of the files.

But this has not been examined enough. It's hard to find the evidence

that Hiss was this malevolent traitor. He was not. He was very much...

I met the man as an old man, fascinated by him.

I'm not saying I knew the answers, but I certainly sensed in him

a conviction of being an American and proud of it,

and a conviction he'd been wronged by this man, Nixon,

because he was a traveler, a fellow traveler, with the Soviet Union,

as were many intelligent people in the '30s.

Henry Wallace, our vice president, was.

And Wallace was one of the great visionaries. these people were really

scalded by people like Nixon and McCarthy.

[man] His speeches, if more subtle than those of his Republican ally...

[Stone] Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, when I was a child in New York,

was a staggering event. that's John Dean, by the way...

[laughs] ...playing one of our extras.

It's funny that Nixon made a large reputation attacking Mao

and, of course, reconciled with him later, historically.

that was Oppenheimer, another suspected communist spy.

He was the head of our atomic energy program

and who many people believe... I don't think so,

but was concerned about world peace to the degree that he felt

that if there was a mutual ability to destroy, there would be no war

which is what we pursued for many years unofficially.

It's called MADD. Mutual assured destructive deterrence.

...a complete financial history. Everything I've earned...

[man] The list included their house, Oldsmobile,

Pat's Republican cloth coat. And lastly, in what was to become history,

- a sentimental gift... - [Stone] Checkers speech.

Regarded by many as a new low in political groveling.

But it was, to Nixon, a highlight of his life. In his Six Crises book,

he considered that a major crisis, which he resolved

with his triumphant speech about his little pet dog.

It was one of the first really event things

that happened on national television

in black and white back then.

[man] He stayed on the scene, serving two terms as vice president

under Eisenhower, against Khrushchev at the Kitchen Debate in Moscow

and stoned by Latin mobs in Venezuela. Nixon once again became a national hero.

[Stone] Some nice digital work is in here.

[man] ...and Pat Brown in California in '62.

[Stone] the governorship of California is what stunned him.

He should not have lost it, he thought. But he was out of touch with that time.

We try to emphasize it here with that moment, that stop-frame moment.

We shoot forward in time into the future.

New York.

that's Madeline Kahn, the late Madeline Kahn,

who I admired so much from many films, including Mel Brooks',

but we didn't have much for her to do. the little I could, I tried to use.

E.G. Marshall is John Mitchell.

E.G. Marshall's another icon I always died to work with.

E.G. was a guy like Y.A. tyittle, who looked the same age in the '50s

as he did then. He never aged. [laughs]

He had that great New England face

and that flinty Americanism that we find in short supply.

Typical of the press, they wouldn't correct it.

I think we oughta catch Rocky before he leaves.

[Stone] Rocky was played by Edward Herrmann.

And I cut the scene too much, I think. But I loved Herrmann's performance.

Great theater actor and a fine film actor.

Dick Nixon is as misunderstood as a fox in a henhouse.

And do you know why? Because, my darlin',

they all think that your smile and your face

are never in the same place at the same time. [chuckles]

You and me, we're gonna have to work on that, sweetie.

[Stone] Now, Martha had a drinking problem, according to many people,

and her husband divorced her, put her in an institution saying she was alcoholic,

but she was the Cassandra of that administration

in that, in her wailing, she was saying outrageous things,

like, "there's a cancer" kind of thing, "Madness at the heart of this."

And she was right. [laughs] there was an insanity.

But she called it... Like Rose Cheramie in JFK.

I have my Rose Cheramie. this is Madeline Kahn.

Susan Kirkwood and then Madeline Kahn.

And you came damn close, Dick. How are you?

Hi, John. New York treating you all right?

I'm sorry I haven't been able to see you.

- You're looking happy, Rocky. - Happy. Happy, Dick Nixon.

- You remember him. - Nice to see you again.

- You're obviously making him happy. - Repartee, Dick! That's marvelous!

What you predicting? Your boy Goldwater gonna split the party?

- Some say you are, Rocky. - Let me tell you something.

Every time the Republican party is a home to extremism, we lose the election.

[Stone] Nelson Rockefeller was always a great shaker, mover, shaker.

He touched and feel you like Johnson would. He was a big guy, confident.

He had not had the defeats of his life yet,

until... he just had the divorce.

they say that was the end of his political career,

but he was denying it in that scene.

But I love the way he kind of crept on top of Nixon.

If you go to the outtakes, you will find this scene elaborated on.

I think it becomes more interesting if you're into acting and see what happens.

I miss making love to the people. I miss entering a room.

[Stone] this is a great little moment between these two.

this is self-realization that is wonderful.

I gotta get back in the arena.

[Stone] that is a line that he said. We tried to dramatize it.

[man] Ladies and gentlemen, it's showtime!

Come on up. Right this way, ladies and gentlemen.

It's for you, it's for me.

[Stone] Into the arena, he got back as a lawyer for Coca-Cola, I believe.

He did a lot of work all over the country and other companies.

He joined a top Wall Street firm, which would give him access

to the East Coast. He stayed in the east, a house in New Jersey.

Commuting to the city.

I wanted Larry Hagman to play one of these big, broad Texas types.

Not because I liked Dallas. I didn't really watch Dallas.

I just believed him. Something about him I like.

I met a lot of powerful guys like that.

I love this eight-millimeter grain look here, home movie.

Getting kissed by a girl. So ironic in his life.

He was never kissed.

- [Jack] We'll see about that. - Mr. Nixon, are you gonna run again?

- I don't know. - He will! I guarantee it!

[jazz music playing]

- Name it, baby. - That little convertible?

I'll buy you a diamond ring. I'll buy you one.

- [woman] Thank you. - Hello, baby.

[Stone] I love this interior. I dreamed of going through that...

...archway to introduce this strange little kind of gathering

at a big hacienda.

that's Bridgitte Wilson, who later went on to some success

with the Mortal Kombatseries and is still young.

Very beautiful. this is her first major role, with Anthony Hopkins.

- She did a wonderful job. - Well, I guess,

for me, it also depends on what I'm doin' to the music, Dick.

- Yeah. - So, what's it like bein' so famous?

[Stone] It was very important to show Nixon as...

...immune to sexual approaches.

there may have been a hint of an affair with a Chinese woman in Taiwan,

but there's very little talk of it.

He seems to have been a very physically neutered person, or repressed.

- No, Trini, we're fine here. - [Stone] I wanted to make this point

here in this fictional scene.

We do know Nixon was in Dallas the day of and the day before.

And he went to a couple of parties.

- Hoover was in town too. - ...especially for business.

- Agreed. - We know what you tried to do for Cuba.

If you had been elected in '60, Castro would be dead now.

[Stone] I've been criticized in this scene as overly dramatic,

and it probably is because, you know, perhaps too crude.

this is the problem when you make these movies,

or this kind of scene, where you have to get to the heart of an idea quickly.

People will hint around something forever and ever and ever.

And, uh, they're hinting here, but I did it broadly,

in one room. It probably would have been done in smaller meetings, phone calls.

But I love the scene anyway. It plays for me

'cause Nixon is so smart, and understands the veiled hint,

and he doesn't want to know about it,

which is smart. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt

in Dallas, when he was there. Him and Howard Hunt

were the only two people in the world, they said, who forgot where they were

when Kennedy was killed, because Nixon has three different stories

of where he was when Kennedy was killed. It's very confusing.

Love the way it's cut and canted, these shots.

I like the way he handles these people. He's tough.

that's the Nixon that was powerful and dominating.

I'm out of politics.

[Stone] It was sufficient. He didn't have to do more to scare people.

that's my feeling.

One criticism was, "Stone doesn't allow Nixon to show his positive traits,

his capacities to rule." there's an example,

perhaps in a negative capability. But by saying no,

he's saying something very important. He's saying, "Leave me out of the loop."

But he is saying, at the same time, "I would be president if it were possible."

It's a very veiled scene, but I liked it.

I love this shot. We did it in an airport somewhere in Los Angeles.

I just love dropping down from the sky.

Watch this. Nixon's going by.

Confederate flags, very anti-Kennedy period in the South.

And now we get down... wham.

Dallas Love qield. that's where it all comes to bear.

that's where Kennedy lands the next day, I believe.

that's a beautiful shot.

there is the retreat.

I'm trying to say something here that's sort of a...

A fate that is gonna befall the entire nation now.

then we're back into his mind.

Beautiful shot. Of course...

...the end of that moment of time, which was changed forever.

History.

those of us who don't know that should know it.

Look, Edgar, these... these guys were really strange.

- You know, extremists. - What do you mean?

- Right-wing stuff. - Birchers?

- Birchers, yeah. - [Stone] Dialogue I read about,

but the rest of the conversation is more or less what Hoover told them.

- To Castro? - [man] ...maximum security facility.

- Mrs. Kennedy... - [Nixon] He's a real Communist.

Well, that makes sense.

OK, well, thank you, Edgar.

Senator Ted Kennedy, arriving early this morning with his mother and sister.

Hoover says this Oswald checks out as a beatnik...

- [Stone] "Beatnik." - Dick, you should call Bobby.

[Stone] I love this scene because I like Pat's reactions.

- You don't have to go. - De Gaulle's gonna be there.

[Stone] She's emphasizing the human response and he is mechanical.

- He has to be invited to the funeral. - Nixon can't not be there.

[Stone] It's important to be seen. "Nixon can't not be there."

He's using the third person early.

- Jesus. - [man] ...to their fallen leader.

It's awful.

- It's an awful thing for this country. - [Pat] Dick?

[Stone] I give Nixon the benefit of the doubt on this.

He hates me.

He and Teddy.

They always hated me.

[Stone] Maybe Nixon was sentimental, able to kill millions abroad,

but not in this country. Maybe I'm being... Hitler liked dogs.

You don't know if somebody knows the price of murder

or lives it the way I might do or you might do.

[crying]

[doctor] Hold him tighter. Hold him tighter.

[screaming]

[Stone] this is his youngest brother dying.

Meningitis, I believe.

Ugh!

that's Dr. Chris Renna, who helped us on many movies.

To keep our crews going with maintenance and health.

Arthur was a beautiful little boy.

Must have broken Nixon's heart.

Whatever was leFt of his young heart.

that's my son, Sean, sneaking in as the evil Donald Nixon,

who took the money later from Hughes.

Arthur's getting sicker.

And Mom is praying every day.

"As I lay me down to sleep,

Lord, now I ask for you my soul to keep"

was the last things he was heard to say.

No. No, don't!

[Stone] Apparently, that happened.

In the moment, she was so shaken that she couldn't succor him

at a key moment there. I think that was a mistake.

If I'd been president, they never would've killed me.

[Stone] He felt unloved. that connection, "Even if I'd been president,

nobody would have loved me enough to hate me enough to kill me,"

which is an interesting allusion.

And it ends, prophetically enough, on Robert Kennedy, who's gonna be his foe

in '68 and end up also dead.

the riderless horse, which we'll see at the racetrack with Nixon and Hoover.

We saw it already with Jack Lemmon in JFK.

[Lyndon Johnson] ...to defend an honored cause...

[Stone] Like the Garrison story, it jumps ahead from November '63

to years later.

the Garrison story moves from '63 to '67.

Accordingly... I shall not seek...

...and I will not accept...

...the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

Good night, and God bless all of you.

[Stone] He feels the call.

this is his moment in time, his chance. Churchill, his hero, De Gaulle,

these people had come back from political burial.

[man] His mother, Hannah Nixon, just before her death last year,

commented on her son's chances.

Mrs. Nixon, do you think your son will ever return to politics?

I don't think he has a choice.

He has always been a leader.

Do you think he'd make a great president, Mrs. Nixon?

If he's on God's side, yes.

[Stone] Mary had prosthetics for this scene. Tough scene.

It was done improvisationally. I'm asking questions off-camera.

[indistinct chatter]

[Hannah] No one can see into the future.

We didn't know this day would come.

- [man] Where'd he go? - [man 2] In the side door.

- Is that Mitchell? - Shit! Missed him.

[doorbell buzzes]

I thought that guy was gonna kiss your hand on the side of it.

[Stone] I love that hat he wears. My father wore that in that period.

And always buttoned the jacket.

qour guys coming home from Wall Street.

this is a fun movie because it's just white guys talking. It's great.

It's like... Very few movies like this get made.

And she's so WASP-y, Joan.

She's a perfect WASP wife, in a way. I can see why Ang Lee cast her

in Ice Storm right aFter this.

Jesus. Pat?

[Stone] She was also good in The Crucible, Joan.

You need her, Dick. In '60, she was worth five, six million votes.

- [Stone laughs] - I'll use the old Nixon charm.

[Stone laughs] that got a laugh in the theaters.

Who could resist that?

[Stone] He's got a great expression. He's a wonderful actor.

He really inhabits the role and makes you get involved with him.

Look at his eyes. He's always slightly psychotic.

You should be going. Primaries are soon, aren't they?

[Stone] He broke her promise to her.

He was secretly planning to go back in.

Apparently, there was quite a bit of a spat at this point.

So we decided to dramatize it as best we could behind these closed doors.

I can win. We deserve it.

[Stone] We built this set

inside the old AqI building above Sunset.

Frank Nixon's boy.

Do you remember what Mom said? We're not like other people. We...

We don't choose our way.

We can really change things, Buddy.

We got a chance to get it right. We can change America.

It was our dream, Buddy, together, always.

- Do you really want this, Dick? - [Stone laughs]

- And then you'll be happy? - Yeah, you know I will. Yes! I will.

Then I'll be there for you.

And we are gonna win this time. I can feel it.

Yeah!

You're the strongest woman I ever met, Buddy.

- Can I just ask for one thing? - Anything.

- Would you kiss me? - Yeah!

[Stone laughs]

[big band jazz playing]

[Stone] I find that scene charming.

And I love Joan and Anthony.

My thanks to all of you. It's on to Chicago and let's win there. Thank you.

I would never question Senator Kennedy's patriotism.

But going around the country, promising peace at any price

is, uh, exactly what the North Vietnamese want to hear.

- [man] Cue the crowd. - [Stone] there's several stories

of Nixon manipulating campaigns.

Campaigning, it was just in his nature.

He'd have stuffed audiences, dummy audiences.

In one of them, apparently, it was an incident where one of these guys

in the audience started to get a little too tough on Nixon. You'll see this.

That's why Nixon's always been useful.

- [Tolson speaking Spanish] - [man replies]

Hold still.

- OK, who's next? - The Negro.

No, we gotta have a Negro. This guy right here.

Negro, front row.

[Stone] there's a third scene I put back in the movie for this version in DVD.

I hope you get a chance to look at it 'cause it establishes what Hoover's role

was in the wiretapping concept.

So there are now three scenes with Bob Hoskins instead of two, and I felt

- I made a mistake. - ...turning people against each other.

- Fuck's he doing? A speech! - Cut him off.

[Stone] I love Woods and this guy. He has a very good argument.

- Saying Negro things. - [Stone] "Negro things." tyrue line

- from one of Nixon's people. - ...what you really stand for?

- Go to commercial! - There are no commercials.

[Stone] that's Michael Chiklis, who played Belushi in Wired,

- who just cameo'ed for the day. - ...who you really are?

[man] Shut up and sit down!

- [Nixon] OK. OK. - It's a high hard one, chief.

[Stone] Woods has such intensity.

- That's because you created them. - I did not. The Democrats did.

If it's dialogue you want, you're more likely to get it from me

than from people burning down cities. Just think about it.

- Dr. King said the same thing. - Oh, please.

You know, young man, who a great hero is? Abraham Lincoln.

- Abraham Lincoln. - Lincoln. Is he beautiful?

He believed in common ground. He brought this country together.

- [applause] - I love that man. I love him.

[Stone laughs]

I want the son of a bitch who got that agitator in here fired!

- I have another question. - There's a little girl sitting here.

- A little girl sitting with a sign. - Bag the spook. Go to the girl.

- Can you see the girl? - There are three simple words:

"Bring us together." That is what I want,

and that is what the great silent majority ofAmericans want.

And that is why I want to be president. To bring us together.

- Give me a break, Mary. - Now, you all know me. I'm one of you.

I grew up here, a stone's throw from here,

- on a lemon ranch in Yorba Linda. - Poorest lemon ranch in California.

- Poorest lemon ranch... - [Stone] Speech he was famous for.

- My dad sold it before they found oil. - My dad sold it before they found oil.

- But it was all we had. - But it was all we had.

- My dad built the house with his hands. - You're new here. What's your name?

Joaquin, Mr. Hoover.

Oh.

[Nixon] My father sacrificed everything so that his sons could go to college.

- A gentle Quaker mother quietly wept... - [Stone laughs]

- Getting back at him. - Turn this crap off, Clyde.

- Giving me a headache. - [Nixon] Great teacher.

- You may go, Joaquin. - [Stone laughs] Bizarre scene.

- I want to see him, Clyde. - [Stone] "Edgar."

- Not the boy, you idiot. Nixon. - [Stone laughs]

As if Nixon is the flyboy.

It's between Nixon and a Kennedy again.

[Stone] Hoover reasserts his position on Nixon. He had files on everybody.

Never.

[Stone] He knew a lot about Nixon and the gangsters and Mafia.

He knew a lot about Cuba.

He knew about Rebozo.

...remind him that he needs us a hell of a lot more than we need him.

[trumpet plays Call to the Post]

[Stone] Hoover felt superior, Nixon would be in his pocket.

He was never upset with Nixon

as he was with Robert Kennedy and the Kennedys when they came in.

they'd had a good relationship in the '50s when Nixon was vice president.

Vice President Nixon also worked Allen Dulles and John qoster Dulles,

having dinner in Georgetown, getting to know them.

He was one of the young apprentice, young Dan Quayle of his time,

learning the ropes.

He's folding, Johnny.

No, no, no. You just wait a second.

[announcer] Olly's Boy on the inside!

Come on! Come on!

- [people gasping and shouting] - [horses whinnying]

[announcer] And a tragedy! Olly's Boy has fallen on the 16th pole.

[Stone] Different style, but a repeat of the JFK horse race.

It's rigged by Hoover. Never a level playing field.

Tony Lo Bianco, I love this character.

It was unbelievable, that stunt. He got the horse to take a fall.

Broke its leg.

there was numerous allegations... I can't get into it,

'cause it's proven or unproven, but Hoover had a gambling thing

and particularly with horses.

He loved the Del Mar track here in California.

But this scene is a fictional one.

Probably took place in different places. I don't know. But it was a point

that I was trying to make, which is coming up.

It's ironic. I wasn't thinking about Garrison and Jack Lemmon years before.

Perhaps it's the same track. No, it would have been in New Orleans.

- Bobby Kennedy. - Yeah.

Would you walk with me down to the paddock?

[Stone] that was a very malevolent thing Hoover did at that racetrack.

He killed a horse.

I'm trying to spare you an embarrassment.

That was Johnny Roselli you just passed. He's on his way back.

Roselli? Johnny Roselli?

Yes. You know him, Richard? No? From Cuba?

[mambo music playing]

- Hey, Johnny Roselli. How're you doin'? - Dick Nixon.

How are you?

[Stone] It's most likely that Nixon knew his share

of Mafioso from the Paradise Islands and the Bahamas where he went

and Cuba over the years. He was very oFten there.

OK.

- [bell rings] - [announcer] They're off and running!

[Stone] Beautiful ghost footage. God!

So bold a concept. In a sense, we're saying,

"It's all gone, it's all dream."

And Bobby's got the magic like a goddamn rock star.

[Stone] We hypostulate this scene that Nixon feels he's losing, which he did.

At times, he did.

He preferred to have taken on Humphrey.

He's got the anti-war vote.

Or he'll steal it...

[Stone] What Kennedy had was sudden fire and momentum.

Who knows if he would have won because, ultimately,

there could have been some trick? Momentum might have petered off.

But by all signs, from people who you talk to,

not everybody will agree, but many say Kennedy was on his way, on a roll.

He was going in.

Any information you have.

The son of a bitch is not gonna steal from me again.

Can you back me up on this? Can I count on your support?

I look at it from the point of view that the system can only take so much abuse.

- It adjusts itself eventually. - Yeah.

[Stone] Two English actors playing two American icons.

Stanley White in the background from Year of the Dragon.

- [whinnies] - Screwing women like a tomcat...

[Stone laughs] these are lines Hoover used about King.

"Tomcat. Degenerate tomcat."

the lines about cracking are our lines.

the riderless horse is, again, featured in JFK.

I don't believe we could survive another.

- Well, like I said, Edgar... - You ask...

...if you can count on my support.

As long as I can count on yours.

[Stone] It might be melodramatic, but I love Hoskins. [laughs]

I'm sure Hoover was more deadpan, but that's the movies.

No, he wasn't protecting me.

- He was just putting me on notice. - [Stone] It's great. You jump ahead

- four years. - Hoover knew a lot of gangsters.

[Stone] One of the endless Watergate discussions he would have

with Haldeman in the executive office building.

Oh, well, I know all about that.

I don't understand it. Track Two is Chile.

[Nixon] Yeah, Chile, Congo, Guadalajara, Iran, Cuba.

Wherever there was need for an executive action capability,

there's Track Two.

[Stone] Shoot ahead to '74, where that's the same night again.

the same night he's listening. Always the same night, in a way.

[Nixon] We thought the invasion wouldn't work unless we got rid of Castro.

[Stone] this is important to understand that it was Eisenhower, Nixon,

who wanted Castro removed. the invasion was approved on their watch

in 1960.

they also approved the murder, whether they deny it or not,

of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in '59.

He was killed, finally, in January '60, January 17th,

three days before Kennedy was inaugurated.

Don't forget that the moment Nixon became president again, he instituted

a major coup d'etat in Chile, killing the president,

the general staff of Rene Schneider, the general who was against

the concept of a coup. Avery important murder.

Shortly thereaFter, the coup occurred with full American backing.

And President Allende committed suicide. So Nixon was an old-time butcher.

He was coming up from the '50s.

And his coup d'etat in Chile was a ruthless, ruthless story.

But no... it got so much attention because the world changed

and Nixon hadn't. He was still dealing in the 1950s.

Yeah, Hunt reported to my military aide.

I don't know how much Hunt knows or the Cubans, but...

- ...you never know. - [Stone] He threatened Helms...

I'm not so sure he was saying to Helms, "Look, Kennedy's death will come out

that it was a CIA plot." Maybe he was. But that's the extreme version of it.

the other version is he's saying to Helms, "this shit's gonna come out

about the Kennedys and us. Nixon and Eisenhower

trying to get the Cubans.

that'll lead to Lumumba, and it's gonna be a mess for everybody

and the CIA, who's gonna take a major hit here."

Because Helms was counterintelligence. He was covert operations.

Sorry, by this time, Helms was head of the CIA.

But back then, he was head of covert ops.

'Cause he didn't even know about it.

The CIA, uh, never told him. Theyjust kept it going.

It had a life of its own like it was some...

[Stone] this is what I think is new and key.

Some people agree on this or not, but "a life of its own" is important.

Itjust eats people when it doesn't need 'em anymore.

[Nixon] Two days after the Bay of Pigs,

Kennedy called me and he reamed me out.

- He just found out about Track Two. - [Haldeman] You never told him?

I didn't want him to get the credit.

He said I'd stabbed him in the back

and called me a two-bit grocery clerk from Whittier.

[ Peggy Lee: Fever]

That's the last time I ever saw him.

See, when I saw Bobby lying there on the floor,

arms stretched out like that, his eyes staring...

...I knew then I'd be president.

His death paved the way, didn't it?

[Stone] this scene, uh, we invented out of whole cloth

because it was important to me to get across the idea of...

...Nixon, in a way, saw himself as a Lincoln ruling over a divided country.

the question was what was the means necessary,

how many bodies could be spared?

Lincoln underwent the greatest sacrifice of any U.S. president.

And must have had many a horrible night.

Four.

[Stone] As a survivor, Nixon, of course, is ridden with guilt.

the need to do it at all costs, to lie in order to succeed

and survivor guilt drives that.

Hundreds of thousands?

[Stone] All of a sudden, he's alone, drinking the same drink.

It's not another drink, by the way.

Spent more time alone in the Lincoln Room than ever before

during these last few months, according to witnesses.

Who's helping us?

[Stone] "What's helping us?"

- God, or is it... - [Stone] "Is it God...

- ...death? - [Stone] ...or is it death?"

He had to wonder because death had helped him all the way.

And the microbe that killed his brother.

[coughing and retching]

And this is based on Nixon's time

spent with his brother, the last few months

at the recuperation home in Arizona.

Tony Goldwyn, who is now directing some very nice films,

is a wonderful actor. I enjoyed working with him enormously.

Harold.

Harold, why don't you sit down, huh?

[wheezing]

Here.

[Stone] He lost a lot of weight to play this role. He was dedicated.

God, couldn't recognize him.

You'll be able to do it now.

- What? - Go to law school.

- Mom and Dad'll be able to afford it. - Harold.

Mama expects great things from you.

Can I... Can I get you anything?

Relax, Dick.

It's just me, all right?

[Stone] Show how hard it was for Nixon to relax.

The desert's so beautiful...

[Stone] Nixon had a hard time just being who he was.

David Barry Gray played Nixon.

And I thought did a very good job conveying the anguish in his face

and the discomfort with himself.

Harold was the magnetic older brother, much like Joe Kennedy might have been

to John, really the flamboyant one, as we saw earlier at the dinner table

when his death really rocked the family.

Rocked Nixon. He lost his youngest brother and his oldest.

Only Donald survived, the middle one.

Tom Bower.

[singing The Itsy-Bitsy Spider]

that's my other son, Mikey.

A great moment, succeeded beyond my wildest dreams to convey

the kind of halfway point I wanted in his life,

from the very lows of his life, his brother's death,

to the highs coming up, to me, symbolize Nixon highs and lows.

It's like a mad junkie who needs that intensity of lows and highs.

Who cannot live quite in the middle. He needs the drama to recreate himself,

reenergize himself. Watch this scene. It's one of my favorite scenes.

And the way it dissolves into the convention.

Something has to come of this.

It's meant to make us stronger.

[Stone] His mom said something like this at that time.

But I can't vouch for these words.

- What about happiness, Mother? - [Stone] that was a line.

Thee will find thy peace at the center, Richard.

Strength in this life, happiness in the next.

[Stone] "Happiness, mother" is a line that actually I read.

It was a dialogue line, but I don't know if it was in this context.

Now, watch this.

"Strength in this life.

Happiness in the next." I keep thinking of that moment when I see that face.

I wanted that pause before it all kicked in.

It was great, like with Kovic at The Fourth of July.

Now he sort of knows where he is.

And look at that. the transformation is great.

One of those moments where you just remember the past.

And it's another past.

We're mixing digital shots here, obviously, with the real man.

Ironically, this is the convention where Ron Kovic was thrown out of

in Born on the Fourth of July.

Removed from.

So there's a slight overlap in all these films.

this is a great moment for them. "Don't tell me you didn't want this."

I don't know if he said that, but God, it was great.

that was their moment. '68, they got it.

Nixon's long quest, since 1946, '48

had come true 20 years later.

It goes fast when it goes.

Within seven years, he had destroyed himself again.

When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down

for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight...

[Stone] I believe these are remarks from his exact speech, condensed.

Also, I believe we took from other speeches and combined.

...when a nation that has been known for a century for equality of opportunity

is torn by unprecedented racial violence,

when the president of the United States cannot travel abroad

or to any major city at home without fear of a hostile demonstration,

then it is time for new leadership for the United States ofAmerica.

[cheering]

As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame,

millions ofAmericans crying out in anguish,

"Did we come all the way for this? Did American boys die in Normandy

- and Valley Forge for this?" - [Stone] Clark Clifford, McNamara.

I pledge to you that the current wave ofviolence

will not be the wave of the future.

Now let us begin by committing ourselves...

[Stone] the speech was ambivalent. He had many fine things, many concepts.

He was a brilliant man, domestically.

In some ways, he was brilliant.

It is not the voice of the protesters or the shouters.

It is the quiet voice of the majority ofAmericans who've been forgotten...

[Stone] Some people say without George Wallace, Humphrey would've beat him.

They're the good people. They work hard and they save and they pay their taxes.

Now, who are they? Let me tell you who they are.

They're in this audience by the thousands.

They're the white Americans and black Americans,

Mexican Americans and Italian Americans.

- The great silent majority... - [Stone] these are actual words

- from the Silent Majority speech. - Angry, not with hate,

but angry, my friends, because they love America

and don't like what's happened to America these last four years.

[Stone] A form of polarization Nixon was famous for.

Us against they. We, them.

He was the first one to say the Republicans had a Southern strategy.

In other words, they could divide countries, classes, people.

Southerners were real Americans as opposed to ninnies in college

who protested. It was an ugly rhetoric, frankly.

qar worse, in many ways, than anything Johnson said about these people.

Johnson may have expressed disgust for these people in private,

by my God, he never went publicly as far as Nixon

in condemning and describing these people, polarization at its worst.

this is hate speech. At the same time, it's filled with idealism.

We can improve health care, make it more available to all people.

And yes, we can have a complete reform of this government.

We can have a new American revolution!

[cheering]

[Stone] Always the lurking inner image there.

- Here comes the opposition. - [chant] The whole world is watching!

the secret air bombings got worse and worse.

the most devastating bombings ofAmerican history.

It was just a disaster.

Doing this Cambodian bombing decision scene was very difficult for me.

I was going around for days on it, how to shoot it.

I couldn't find the right angle because the meeting is highly dramatized,

where a huge amount of information and time is condensed among phone calls,

many meetings. And United States interests in Cambodia preceded this.

It wasn't like it came up as one decision. We deposed King Sihanouk

in favor of the corrupt general working for us, Lon Nol,

who lost Cambodia within a few years to the Khmer Rouge.

What aggravated the situation even further than disrupting leadership

was bombing and invading Cambodia. Especially bombing it

for many, many... for several years. We bombed it ferociously.

As bad as Laos, if not worse.

the eastern borders, trying to get at the Vietnamese on the Ho Chi Minh tyrail.

So we invaded and bombed and were at war with another country.

Devastated Cambodia. And it is from the east that the Cambodian...

the Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge, got its initial burst of strength

and confidence, then united with the west.

Cambodia would never be the same because Pol Pot turned out to be

the strangest human being, like Hitler, and slaughtered...

A genocide occurred in Cambodia.

And it was really Pol Pot's responsibility as well as his leaders'.

But there's no question that the situation was heavily licensed

and encouraged by Nixon's bombing of Cambodia

and destruction of King Sihanouk's rule.

So that's Kissinger's war politics. Paul Sorvino plays Kissinger.

that's his politics of balance of power.

It's a dirty game. Someone wins, someone loses.

I call it the win-lose theory.

You can't have two winners. You can only have a winner and a loser.

But the point is that Cambodia didn't go away.

You must remember this, just to show you how corrupt our policy was,

even aFter we... aFter the Vietnamese ended the genocide in Cambodia

and occupied the country for ten years,

the U.S. continued to support the Khmer Rouge against Vietnamese.

So dedicated were we to the... So much was our anger to Vietnam

that we ignored the genocides caused by Pol Pot

in favor of being against the Vietnamese. that's how...

...miserable and hypocritical a policy we had. It's like saying

we're allies with Hitler now against qrance or England, basically.

Or Russia. It's really like...

What ifAmerica had suddenly allied with Germany in 1943

and said, "Let's attack Russia together."

How would you feel about it? Half the population would say, "Yeah."

But anyway, I came up with a solution at the last second.

We shot this in half a day. It followed something very energy-exhausting.

We shot it fast and it worked out very nicely because

we decided to cant the camera as much as we could through the scene

and shoot low angle. Portraits of men in power.

Eisensteinian. By canting it,

we got a sense of the distortion ofjudgment going on in Nixon.

that judgment was clouded by the fact that he had seen Patton 11 times,

the movie. the movie is a very jingoistic portrayal

by George C. Scott, won Academy Awards and all that.

One of the most damaging movies

in the sense that it was probably inspired by that movie.

Nixon was very inspired by it, as by the Washington Redskins' George Allen.

He went to war in Cambodia with the resolve of General Patton.

And it was the stupidest war, and he hurt many people.

But that's what he says in the scene. the big event.

Go for the big, big play. that's how you get the...

that's how you get the attention, how presidents get famous.

Bold moves. T.R. Lincoln.

this is the way he talked. "Bold moves."

the madman theory always interested him.

He believed in the madman theory.

Kissinger would be his, uh...

His diplomat,

and say, "Nixon, you don't know what that guy's gonna do.

He may just blow your country away. He just...

Dick Nixon is not necessarily Dwight Eisenhower."

Whatever the talk, the idea was Nixon liked the idea of being a madman.

And I think that brinksmanship contributed to Watergate,

in terms of bold moves. His Pentagon Papers, seeing his anger

at Ellsberg, leading to the break-in, was part of that brinksmanship.

But I think that self of skating close to the edge, as I said earlier,

creating crises, perhaps some artificially, that might destroy you.

It's a sort of suicidal kind of nature, I'd say.

By the way, uh, big events, big, bold move was China.

that is his boldest move, for which he's given much credit.

At the same time, the other side of the coin

is, in order to engage China, he destroyed Cambodia.

And that is a very important idea that mustn't be lost on historians.

the genocide that went on in Cambodia is almost

the flip side of our open-to-China approach.

So we supported China in the post-war years

in the '70s and the '80s.

Until the Vietnamese leFt in '89.

We supported China in Cambodia. We were allies.

We were both rooting for Pol Pot to come back.

It's an amazing piece of diplomacy. You could look to Nixon for that.

But that's what he meant by "bold moves."

Henry's getting strong signals from the Chinese.

They fear the Vietnamese more than the Russians,

and they're worried about a united Vietnam.

Now, ifwe stick it out, we'll end up negotiating separately

with both the Chinese and the Soviets.

And we'll get better deals than we ever dreamed offrom both.

That is triangular diplomacy.

[Stone] We must know that the Cambodian decision came about as a result

of dozens of phone calls, several meetings. this was not a decision made

like in the scene you just saw. that is the nature of this kind of movie.

You have to condense a huge amount of material. So this is typical.

It's dramatic. If you're gonna go that way, as I said earlier,

you go for it. You don't wimp it out and make it phony

and flat and boring. You go for it and make it exciting

because people wanna see exciting movies. Same time, you make it real.

the essence of those 40 meetings have to be in that meeting.

that's where you have to know your stuff, know what happened

to tell where it went.

Something always pops up. there's always some odd little bit.

Why don't we wait until the second term?

- This will get us a second term. - This will get me a second term.

Damn it, without risk, there's no heroism, there's no history.

Nixon was born to do this. Give history a nudge.

- Come on! - Hear, hear.

If Cambodia doesn't work, we'll bomb Hanoi ifwe have to.

- That's right. And if necessary... - [Stone] Drop the big one.

that's a very heavy statement. It was said by Nixon.

And the same thing was said by Kissinger.

"We must entertain that thought."

the context is not here on the Sequoia, but it was a quote I found

that I put in the movie for that reason.

I'm sorry, sir.

You all right?

Yeah.

My brother, Harold, was the same age as those kids, John.

- Tuberculosis got him. - It wasn't your fault.

The soldiers were kids too. Theyjust panicked.

Yeah.

They were throwing rocks, John, just rocks.

They don't think I feel,

but I feel too much sometimes.

I just can't let a whole policy be dominated by our sentimentality.

You're doing the right thing. Don't let 'em shake you.

You know, it broke my heart when Harold died.

That was a long time ago.

Yeah.

I think that's when it starts, when you're a kid.

The laughs and snubs and slights you get

because you're poor or Irish

or Jewish orjust ugly.

[Stone] It's great in a scene with Mitchell

that Nixon is able to show a more tender side.

I love the way we cut through because men like my father

would do that too. He was an intelligent man

and was certainly ambivalent and understood the other feeling

of the kids. It wasn't that Nixon was out of touch, necessarily,

with all his feelings. He could feel and perhaps empathize.

But he had learned, also, the ability to cut those feelings off,

to restrain them.

that was a very important part of his makeup.

You're going back to the daytime, this very funny limo scene

where very strong reminders of the protest that continued for two years

- against Nixon. this thing was serious. - [man] ...until the Vietnam War ends.

[Nixon] This is nothing compared to Venezuela.

When I was vice president, Ike sent me down there like a blocking tackle.

They threw rocks, broke out windows.

[Stone] When I look at this montage aFter many years,

I love it. It goes back from Nixon to the kids to the grain

to the different looks. It's tied together by this music.

Very Kubrickian to me. It has a symmetry,

which I just realized, watching it.

there's a lot of montage work in this film. You saw it at the convention.

Now you're seeing it again. Montage work is a way for me

to put more material in less time as possible. March of Time effect

is a montage. there's probably more montages in this movie

- than any single movie I've done. - Reminds me of my days at Whittier.

- These kids are useless. - Probably flunking.

Nothing to do except come here and chase girls.

Their parents' fault. They're poisoning the upper class, Bob.

- Too soft, too many cars, color TVs. - [Stone] Nixon was quoted

as talking of the protestors as spoiled rotten.

Dialogue you'll see in the limousine was based on observations he made.

Maybe not in that setting, but made about protestors at this time.

I put the limousine scene back in to texture it,

but I believe there was a time when protestors got close to his car.

there was a Nixon mask thrown up in front of him, which I thought was funny.

- Mr. President. - [Stone] He meets General Cushman,

an important figure in Nixon's life.

Soon as we learned from the Secret Service that you were en route,

the director was notified. He should be here.

- So where the hell is he? - Rushing back from his tennis game.

- So let's go. - Told me to take you

- to his conference room. - No, his office.

I want a private conversation with him. I don't wanna be bugged.

- Then his office will be fine. - OK.

[Stone] Walking down the corridor. We pre-cut to flowers

being sprayed. It's an interesting forewarning of what's going to happen

in this scene. A bit of tension.

- How's the job going, Bob? - Frankly, it stinks, sir.

I have no access.

[Stone] Helms thought that Nixon was horning in on his territory,

that Nixon was gonna be very dangerous to the CIA. It does lead to

the corroborating theory that the CIA had a lot to do with removing Nixon

- from office. - He's the epitome of sang-froid.

A world-class poker player.

Yeah? Well, I own the fucking casino.

[Stone] My favorite line is Nixon's gruff "I own the fucking casino."

I'm honored, Dick, that you've come all the way out here

to Virginia to visit us at last.

- My friends call me Mr. President. - Then so shall I.

[Stone] Sam Waterston, who plays Helms, head of CIA at that time,

appointed and fired by Nixon, or promoted, however you choose...

All the action with Helms, to me, are ambiguous.

It goes to the heart of Nixon. Nixon-Helms, Nixon-Hoover,

Nixon-Kissinger. there's this incredible duality in every situation.

It could mean one thing. there was no scene like this

where Nixon, to my knowledge, went to Helms' office,

which was not something normally done. But I did it because it was important

that it be the flower place, where he cultivated his flowers

like treacherous spiders.

I understand why you keep your budgets classified.

I suppose you're unhappy...

...because I haven't implemented your domestic intelligence plan.

Yeah, you're correct.

[Stone] Waterston's a true aristocrat, as an actor, also as a man too.

And a wonderful man. Very nice man. It broke my heart to cut this scene

from the movie. I put it back in this DVD because I love it,

and it belongs in the movie. Judging it like a theatrical seat in the theater

where you have to spend so many minutes, you can turn off the DVD

and go back. It's important because it shows obstacles surrounding

the man, the sense of increasingly being crushed.

- ...Congressional oversight committee. - Screw congressional oversight.

[Stone] When Nixon says, "Screw congressional oversight," he means it.

I mean, they're jokes.

A lot of them are jokes. they just are rubber-stamp committees

that pass these insane budgets. Nobody knows the budget of the CIA

or the National Security Agency.

And the Pentagon's budget swallows everything.

It's astounding what goes on and I don't know,

the congressmen make this occasional effort to say there are oversight

committees, but they don't work. As Nixon finds out, it's out of control.

His relationship to Helms, difficult to pin down.

Starts, for the purposes of this movie, with the Watergate incident.

He tells Haldeman, as you know earlier, to tell Helms

to call off the qBI, saying it's a national domestic matter.

By the way, a national domestic matter for the CIA is illegal

because the CIA is not really supposed to be operating here domestically,

which is what Waterston raises as a key point.

I'm clarifying this for the audience because these guys probably didn't talk.

If so, they didn't clarify it. I had to because I'm writing it

with my partners for an audience that doesn't understand this lingo.

So it's a hard mix between the two.

[gunfire]

[Stone] this scene was, for the record, the hardest to write.

We labored and labored over it. I'm very pleased with the amount

of information. When you really know what we had to deal with

and the tons of research and all these relationships

were very thick and deep, Cushman, Helms, Nixon,

you're not gonna be able to capture it in a quick movie.

It's a shame you didn't take similar precautions, Dick.

[Stone] Cat and mouse, corkscrews. they walk around and around

each other, as you can see. Nixon tries to stand firm and fades.

I like the way Waterston fights in this scene, in the staging.

He comes at him and keeps him off-balance.

Nixon keeps him off-balance too.

the dialogue is corkscrewing to another subject.

qinally, Russia, China. It's revealed that Waterston

knows that Kissinger and Nixon are working a China deal

because when they did it Nixon and Kissinger were so paranoid

they didn't want anybody in the State Department or anywhere to know.

they kept the lowest level contacts they could.

And Kissinger did it privately wherever he was traveling.

So it was a very secret negotiation

being carried on by Nixon and Kissinger. Nixon wanted to make the bold move,

to spring it on the world. But I'm predicating Helms did know

and were against it.

Helms was a firm anti-communist, old-school, a true believer

and very patrician man. What he knows about the Kennedy murder,

about the history of this country,

he is the true keeper of the secrets. If there were one man,

a political philosopher, I would love to interview in depth,

and I could have torture techniques standing by so he would talk

and tell the truth, it would be Richard Helms,

who is still alive.

And I want you to know that I serve only one president at a time.

Yes. And you'll give General Cushman full access.

[Stone] General Robert Cushman is a key shadow player in this whole affair.

Cushman was very tight with Nixon back in the '50s,

one of his military liaisons in the vice presidents office

to the CIA and various places.

And would've known about the gamblers, about Maheu,

about the Mafia contracts we took out to kill Castro.

Nixon did too. Cushman was his military cum fixer, enforcer.

He was his guy.

What's interesting is, aFter Kennedy is killed, Cushman shows up again

in LBJ's White House as one of his guys,

doing the liaison with the war.

then he shows up again with Nixon. AFter Johnson gets kicked out,

Nixon comes in and uses the same guy!

So who is Robert Cushman? that's another guy, aFter Helms,

I'd like to put in a sodium pentothal mode, hypnosis,

and maybe I'd have to do a major groin torture.

But it would take it. He deserves it.

the guy knows too much, and he really fucked overAmerica.

And he calls himself a patriot. this guy's a scoundrel.

Cushman was a longtime Nixon crony, military advisor,

and Nixon paid him off by appointing him what? Deputy chief of the CIA.

that's the number-two spot. CIA deputy director.

It's one of the top spots.

What happened was Helms completely stonewalled Cushman

for a long period of time.

And Haldeman's trying to get the papers and the Bay of Pigs out from Helms.

Nothing's coming. Helms is not doing anything. He's not cooperating.

Helms is sitting doing nothing. that's always the best reaction when you don't

know what to do, do nothing. I try that myself.

When in doubt, hesitate. I tried to build a scene around the idea

that Nixon is hungry and going over there to get something.

Cushman is one of the guys who will tell you Howard Hunt

was involved in the Cuba operation and later in the Bay of Pigs.

Knows about people like Maheu who worked for Howard Hughes.

Cushman knows a lot. But there's definitely the concept that

Bay of Pigs is a Cushman thing because Nixon can never deny

not knowing about Cuba when Cushman is his military advisor

and knows everything.

When Nixon wins the presidency in '68, he goes back to work on Cuba.

People forget, renewed attempts to destabilize the island occur.

In 1970, in that area,

the Americans inject swine flu biological warfare into Cuba,

into the pigs. We killed the entire population of pigs in Cuba,

which is a very big industry.

Who knows what else? Swine flu, for all I know, could've become AIDS in Africa.

Play with biological warfare, you're unloosing a Pandora's box

on the world. We did it in Cuba, and we're still paying for it in some way.

that's what my karma says. I could be dead wrong.

I think it was a huge mistake.

Here's Nixon trying to kill Castro again.

And not getting his rocks off on Castro in 1972 and 3, he goes aFter Chile.

this is a really bald attempt by Nixon.

He's acting like a buccaneer from the '50s again.

In the '70s, in Vietnam, he's ignoring the truth of what he said

and going for more war, destabilizing Cambodia,

bring a genocide. then on top of it, he's going aFterAllende in Chile.

And the CIA's very involved with the murder of Rene Schneider,

the chief of staff of Chilean military,

who was very much against the concept of the military coup.

He was a democrat. And Allende was elected.

that is what happened. they killed the general, replaced him with a Pinochet,

one of his type, and the junta went in and killed Allende.

they said he suicided himself with a machine gun,

which I loved. [laughs]

they disappeared several Americans and who knows how many Chileans.

the Chileans went through horror, as did Argentina, as did Brazil

prior to that, as did Guatemala,

as did Salvador in the '80s.

the record of torture in the South Americas and Central Americas

is depressing. tyruly depressing.

Particularly when you understand the degree of cooperation between

American military and CIA forces with death squads and torturers.

It was really one of the saddest episodes.

What rough beast

Its hour come round at last

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Yes.

This country stands at such a juncture.

Manolo?

Mano?

- [Manolo] Mr. President. - Yeah.

I'm sorry.

[Stone] I'm trying to follow the emotional levels of Nixon.

Here's Nixon coming out of the CIA meeting. Kids are ringing the gates.

If anything, he's aware of his limited power now.

It's gonna build through the Manolo scene,

where he realizes Manolo really emotionally connects to Kennedy.

But Richard Nixon can never emotionally connect to a Manolo.

Or to, for that matter, the students he's going to visit now.

this is very important, that he's looking for that Kennedy thing,

that magnetism, leadership quality

that De Gaulle and his heroes, Churchill especially, had.

We let you down, didn't we? Your people.

That was Mr. Kennedy, sir.

[Stone] I love this scene, particularly the humanity of it coming off

that tough scene with Sam Waterston, that cold scene,

which is unfortunately cut out of the film in the original.

You get to an end of a film, this huge cutting process, it's so big,

and you have to make decisions.

Sometimes the way you structured it will push you into a corner

where you cut your best scene.

Did you cry when he died?

Yes, sir.

Why?

I don't know.

He made me...

...see the stars.

How did he do that?

Those kids.

Why do they hate me so much?

[Stone] At the time, we did some very interesting time-lapse photography.

We'd been doing it for a while. We started in The Doors.

de did itin Natural Born Killers and we did it here.

It shows you Washington in a subjective way.

It's changing. Everything is going fast.

A beautiful shot of Tony at the actual memorial in Washington, D.C.

this is a set we built in L.A.

Amazing set. Almost the same size as the real Lincoln.

We put back there the matte of the Washington Memorial.

Here, we have another matte of the Vietnam War, which,

when I saw it five years later, really struck me,

out of the blue. I forgot a lot about these cuts I'd been doing.

I love this shot, the relationship of Nixon to Lincoln.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic, one of my favorites.

Whenever I hear that, I'm a sap.

[students murmuring]

Kids were hanging out at the Lincoln Memorial, inside and out.

All overWashington. they were sleeping inside in the corners.

Hi, I'm Dick Nixon.

Hi, there.

- Where you from? - Syracuse.

Oh, yeah, the, uh, Orangemen.

Now, there's a football program.

Jim Brown and that other tailback...

[Stone] I got to work with Jim Brown aFter this in Any Given Sunday.

A lot of my characters bounce from real life into my life.

Even had Richard Nixon once on TV. He referred to me as a liar. [laughs]

He was on with Larry King or David qrost

and he's saying, "that producer, Oliver Stone, he's making up that stuff..."

I'd gone to his buttons. I pushed his button about Vietnam.

About Kennedy and Vietnam. that was the one thing

that drove him nuts. He always wanted to prove Kennedy brought us to Vietnam

to destroy his reputation. He couldn't prove it.

As you know, from our other commentary on JFK he can't.

It just isn't true. But here I am saying that JqK wanted to get us

out of Vietnam, and he went nuts on David qrost

and called me a complete Hollywood nincompoop and liar.

It was funny to be insulted by Richard Nixon.

In a way, I did make a belated enemies list.

Tell that to the GIs who are gonna die tomorrow in Vietnam.

- What lets you kill women and children? - What you have to understand

is we're willing to die for what we believe in.

- That's the truth. - Yeah.

Yeah.

[Stone] this is the real Nixon, the log cabin Nixon in California.

Lincoln was a very important Republican, the first Republican.

- [man] This is all bullshit. - Sometimes I go to the Lincoln Room

at the White House and just pray. But, you know, liberals...

[Stone] this is an interesting intercut of the man, the reflection,

the respect he pays.

My family went Republican because Lincoln freed the slaves.

[Stone] Many people in America, of course,

were very moved by Lincoln and went Republican,

why the Republicans did so well. He was one of the great Republican presidents.

They were, you know, conservative Bible folk,

but they had a powerful sense of right and wrong.

[Stone] that's true. Nixon's ancestors had been involved in abolitionism.

...I was like you.

- Looking for answers. See? - Come on.

[man 2] Tricky Dick himself.

[Stone] Which makes the descent from his ethical roots more disappointing

and tragic. the beast catches up to him.

His entire entourage of Secret Service

and Woods, Haldeman, Ehrlichman

coming to get their master like Dobermans

to pull him back into the White House.

Chuck Pfeiffer, my friend, looks like a Nazi there.

I pulled out more than half the troops.

I'm trying to cut the military budget for the first time in 30 years.

I want a volunteer army.

But it's also a question ofAmerican credibility.

- Our position in the world. - Come on, Mr. Nixon.

- It's a civil war between Vietnamese. - [Stone] Woods'd like to strangle

the guy. [laughs]

So why does it go on?

[Stone] Another intercut.

And there's great mystery for me in the silence.

Hear the radio.

You can't stop it, can you?

Even if you wanted to.

[Stone] Can't stop fate.

The system won't let you stop it.

[Stone] It's almost the powerlessness he felt when his younger brothers died.

that same powerlessness is now invading him.

that's something that's very difficult for him as a survivor of those deaths.

You're powerless!

[Stone] To be a victim, you see, you have to overcome being the victim.

that was a crisis. Victim, overcome,

and become a victimizer until you become a victim again.

Victim, victimizer. Victim, victimizer.

Sounds like you're talking about a wild animal.

Yeah, maybe I am.

We really must go, Mr. President. Please.

- [woman] Hey, what about the war, man? - [man] When you gonna get us out?

- The old man's moving. - Move it. Get away.

She got it, Bob. Nineteen-year-old college kid.

[Stone] that was shot in interior set.

...that's taken me 25 years in politics to understand.

The CIA, the Mafia...

[Stone] I don't know why. I think at the time we were doing this,

Washington, D.C., the Memorial, was closed for refurbishing.

I had shot at the Memorial prior to that with Donald Sutherland,

Kevin Costner scene in JFK.

Here's The Battle Hymn of the Republic montage, beautifully cut.

Passage of time. When you see montages with passage of time like that,

they don't make those montages anymore.

Here he is still.

the unending war.

They've been at it for a whole year. Young kids just like Tricia.

[Stone] there's the marriage, the day of the rain. Real footage, I think.

- This whole damn system of government. - Remember what Lenin said in 1917.

[Stone] We mixed home-movie style, 16... No, eight-millimeter color,

with golf-ball grain, with some nice 35. Here's documentary footage.

there, you saw one of the guards. Nixon changed over the White House guards

to make them wear uniforms like... It was ridiculous because

it was typical Nixon in that it was so awkward the way he did it.

the uniforms were terrible. Like tin-pot Prussian policemen

from the 1840s. they didn't look like Americans at all.

Americans were turned off. He gave it up.

Where are they now?

How the hell The Times got a hold of this Ellsberg stuff is a disgrace.

Yeah. We can't keep a damn secret in this government.

They're stealing papers right out of this office.

Johnson had the same damn problem

- until he bugged his own office. - We took that system out.

That was a mistake.

The White House was full of Kennedy people then.

- It still is. - Who's behind this?

Well, you have CIA people all over this place.

Helms has seen to that. Then there's Kissinger's staff.

Kissinger himself, I believe, may be the leaker.

Kissinger?

He's obsessed with his own image.

He wants his Nobel Peace Prize a little too much.

And as the late Dr. King proved,

even an ape can win a prize with good press.

Jesus, I'd like to book him into a psychiatrist's office.

He comes in here ranting and raving, dumping his crap all over the place.

- Could you prove it, Edgar? - Mr. President,

I always get my man.

Yeah, you do.

This damn tie. Could you help me?

Yeah.

- See, I'd be bugging myself. - Look.

- Who'd get the tapes? - No one. Your property.

And it would prove your case.

Why do you think Kissinger is taping all your calls?

For history.

His word against yours.

And right now, he's got the records.

I'll get Manolo to do this.

Thanks.

You know, Churchill once said to me,

"If you want your own history written properly,

you better write it yourself."

The only thing is, Edgar,

I don't want this to come back and haunt me.

It won't, as long as I'm here.

Good.

[big band jazz playing]

This way.

What's wrong?

We'rejust not going to buckle to these people.

[chanting] No more war!

[chuckles]

- It's beautiful. - OK.

[man] Yes, thank you.

[Stone] And J. Edgar's checking out the guards. He likes the uniform.

Princess, may I?

Thank you.

I'm very proud of you today, Princess. Very.

Thank you, Daddy.

[applause]

Yeah?

Some secret essays on Vietnam have been leaked to The New York Times.

I know, I know. Not now, Chuck.

[Stone] I love the scene where he treats Kevin Dunn like,

"Don't wreck my wedding day." What Dunn is coming and telling him

is the Pentagon Papers have hit.

Of course, he's there watching everything.

He's a character, Hoover.

the Pentagon Papers is the big issue that's coming up.

the same weekend his daughter got married was the weekend, June 13th,

that Daniel Ellsberg apparently leaked papers on Vietnam for decades

to Neil Sheehan, who later wrote the book Bright Shining Lie.

Sheehan, at The Times. they went with it. Nixon sued them,

but they were overruled. A significant press first was established

by the publication of supposed secrets.

The State Department under Rogers is leaking like a sieve.

And now this little, insignificant little shit, Ellsberg,

publishing all the diplomatic secrets of this country

is destroying our ability to conduct foreign policy.

I wonder if people here wouldn't think ten years in prison

was cheap if they could contribute to ending this war.

[Stone] I think Nixon makes it clear it's not the Pentagon Papers he cares...

He's gonna explain what he cares about.

Nixon, if you look at it, is not upset. He's cool.

It's Kissinger who's upset.

Kissinger is upset because he looks bad,

and everyone in the room knows Kissinger cares a lot about his public image.

Ironically, because of the new cut, you will know in this scene,

that Nixon now knows, through Hoover, that Kissinger

is tapping him, spying on Nixon.

Which is amazing.

But there's another surprise coming later on Kissinger,

which will be the one-two punch that knocks Nixon out on Kissinger.

Kissinger turns on him, in a sense.

- He's photogenic. Try new biscuits. - Fuck it.

He doesn't like me, John. It's your fault, Henry.

- I beg your pardon? - [Stone] Great scene.

I love the black and white and the grain. We decided to go bold with this.

It's a very interestingly cut scene. It goes from different styles

and doesn't seem to conflict. It feels right.

I love the change from grain within a shot.

It doesn't bother me. To me, it's fractured.

All conversations like this are fractured.

Yeah, but it's not, bottom line, gonna change a goddamn thing, John.

The... question is how do we screw Ellsberg so bad,

it puts the fear of God into all leakers?

[Stone] People talk from a time and place. Say something in a meeting,

you're representing yourself in 1962. that's when you had the thought.

But it's really 1971.

Some people in the present, some in the past, some future.

We're all kind of from different places, coming at this thing.

The CIA and the FBI aren't doing thejob.

Now, we can create our own intelligence unit right here inside the White House.

[Stone] Kevin Dunn plays Charles Colson, one of the toughest guys on staff,

and went to jail, became a born-again Christian.

Blasted the film when it came out in The New York Times.

Don't know why they gave space and wouldn't give me space.

He was an ex-convict, I wasn't.

I like it. I like the idea.

Yeah, but is it legal? Has it ever been done before?

Oh, sure.

Lyndon, JFK, FDR.

I mean, Truman cut the shit out of my investigation of the Hiss case in '48.

- What he did was illegal. - With this kind of thing,

you got to be brutal. A leak happens, the whole damn place should be fired.

Really, I mean, you do it like the Germans in World War II.

[Stone] this is actual dialogue from Nixon in a speech to his aides.

I cut to Kissinger 'cause he was Jewish and German.

He was talking about the German ways of extinction.

Talking about a means to an end, which is what he did.

Took any means to the end.

- We're not Germans. - Yeah. Ellsberg's not the issue.

The Pentagon Papers aren't the issue.

It's the lie.

- Mr. Hiss is lying. - Yeah.

Remember, John, back in '48?

Nobody believed Alger Hiss was a communist except me.

[Stone] Not true. He got his information from the CIA and qBI.

He was their kind: Ivy League establishment.

- I am not, and never have been... - Mr. Hiss is lying.

- Mr. Hiss? - I was dirt to them, nothing.

- And Dick kicked the shit out of 'em. - I wouldn't have if Hiss hadn't lied

about knowing Chambers.

[Stone] the way Nixon got famous, taking Hiss apart

with planted information.

The key thing we proved was that Hiss was a liar.

Then people bought that he was a spy.

It's the lie that gets you.

All right, Henry, we're gonna go your way.

Crush this Ellsberg same way we did Hiss.

There is no other choice, Mr. President.

We'll hit him so hard, he'll look like everything that's sick and evil

about the eastern establishment. You and your plumbers,

you get all the dirt on this guy.

See him going to the bathroom in front of the public.

And when we finish with him, they'll crucify him.

Then we'll get our second term.

[Stone] Seems Nixon is more concerned with the second term here.

- [rooster crows] - [mambo music playing]

[yelling in Spanish]

The claws are out, Frank.

- You seen the guys? - They're around.

Why? You got a customer?

- The White House. - You're fuckin' me.

We're gonna be plumbers, Frank. We're gonna plug leaks.

- Who are we workin' for? - A guy named Gordon Liddy.

He thinks he's Martin Bormann. He wants to meet you.

[Stone] I think the real characters, qrank Sturgis, Howard Hunt

and Gordon Liddy here should be very flattered to be played

by three so attractive actors. they were not as attractive in real life.

Robert Beltran, on the leFt, is Sturgis and John Diehl, who I love,

from many movies looks mad. He has that mad quality Liddy had in his eyes.

Hunt was a more difficult character to create

'cause he looks more like Doonesbury character. He's a bit weaker-chinned

than Ed Harris. Ed Harris is a strong-looking man.

Bob, tell Trini I'll be in Key Biscayne at 4:00.

- With Pat? - No, alone.

Pat's staying here with Mrs. Eisenhower.

[Stone] Nixon and Pat at this time had separate bedrooms.

this is really a sad scene for me. It's about Pat realizing

- how leFt out she is of his life. - I missed you.

[Stone] this is one of my favorite lines in the movie.

- Because I have to relax. - [Stone] "I have to relax." [laughs]

He has to relax. He can't be with his wife.

they've reached this calcification where he says that. I love it.

there's an honesty between them.

Joan got an Academy-Award nomination for Pat. It looks like her,

and she's such a great actress.

Very, very dignified.

It was a long time ago.

[Stone] I think she was an equal match for Tony.

She had a great theater background. She could handle her own with him

without being intimidated.

they were good equals.

I don't need that.

[Stone] God, she looks like Pat Nixon... at times.

I'm not Jack Kennedy.

No, you're not.

So stop comparing yourself to him. You have no reason to.

[Stone] Scene goes from Nixon triumphant on the phone

to being in retreat.

Watch the staging around the room. It's sort of bizarre staging.

I tried to encourage them to do the opposite of what we thought

to keep the scene moving.

In flight. He's in flight from her. Almost like being cornered all the time.

You don't understand.

They're playing for keeps, Buddy.

You know, the press, the kids, the liberals out there.

They're out there trying to figure out how to tear me down.

- They're all your enemies? - [Stone] they are to him,

aFter Helms, the kids and the Pentagon Papers.

And the media, I have to say, we all know, they kept up a steady

attack on Nixon's character and doubt about it, but the reality is

in the years of '68, '69 and '70, '71 even,

he got breaks from the press. A lot of breaks.

But because of the old habit encrusted in his head of being hated by them,

it was hard for him to accept that. He saw it as a negative conspiracy.

You want to see that, Buddy? It's not pretty!

Sometimes I think that's what you want, Dick.

What the hell are you saying?

Are you drunk?

[Stone] Even his wife he feels is not there for him. She's too soFt.

I gotta keep fighting, Buddy, for the country.

These people running things, the elite!

They're just soft, chicken-shit faggots.

[Stone] Martha and George. [laughs]

They don't have the long-term vision anymore.

[Stone] these are actual quotes from Nixon.

Oh, God, this country's in deep, deep, deep trouble, Buddy.

- [Stone] Cover their asses. - I have to see this through, you know.

[Stone] "Mother would expect no less of me." these are actual quotes.

I'm sorry, Buddy.

I just wish you knew how much I love you, that's all.

It took me a long time to fall in love with you, Dick, but I did.

And it doesn't make you happy.

- You want them to love you. - No, I don't.

- I'm not Jack Kennedy. - They never will, Dick.

No matter how many elections you win, they never will.

[Stone] A lot of the portraits we did are dutched or canted.

they're from a low angle like Eisenstein and Russian revolutionaries did.

We wanted to create that sense of power and size these people had.

When he walks in the room, trick effects. Slams the door,

we rack the camera up so it looks ridiculous, but it's funny.

Gentlemen, this is our last damn leak.

It's no way to run a goddamn government.

We're gonna prosecute Ellsberg and anyone else who wants to leak

- and that means anyone here... - [Stone] I love that Eisenstein shot

- of Jimmy Woods. - Permissiveness of this year is over.

The belts are coming off and people are gonna go to the woodshed.

'Cause the government cannot survive with a counter-government inside it.

[Stone] Not one cabinet member says a word the whole time.

Nixon is the king, the mad King George.

He's Macbeth, Eisenstein's creation of Ivan the Terrible.

Nixon the Terrible.

The Harvard Hebrew boys who leak.

I hear people say, "But Ellsberg did it for the good of the country.

People's right to know."

Well, that's in every case. Alger Hiss said the same thing.

So did the Rosenbergs. Look what happened to them.

[mimics electrical crackling] Old Sparky got 'em.

They always underestimated old Nixon, see.

We're gonna fightjust as dirty. This is sudden death, gentlemen.

We're gonna get 'em on the ground,

stick in our spikes and twist and show them no mercy.

So, uh, starting today, no one in this room talks to the press

without checking with Mr. Haldeman here.

[Stone] Words he said about Haldeman. "Go to Haldeman

about everything." He isolated himself more and more, angrier and angrier.

...and The Washington Post.

Um, Mr. Haldeman is the chief high executioner from now on.

[Stone] He looks like the chief executioner from that angle.

Anyone who screws with us, his fucking head comes off.

- You got that? - [Stone] "You got that?"

Well, thank you very much, gentlemen.

Good day to you.

[Nixon] History will never be the same.

[Stone] that was John Diehl wearing a wig for the break-in.

[Nixon] We have changed the world.

- Five, ten. - What else you got?

[Stone] this is one of my favorite montages we did.

Took a while to cut. We kept going back and forth on pacing,

but it's so rich and dense in meaning to me.

You can't simulate Mao. It's very hard.

Who knows what they actually said? But we have a few clues.

Two fractured men coming together. But they're very united.

Both from poor families, both egoistic rulers

with strong sense of self.

Mao is hilarious in the scene. I don't know that he said that,

but this is a key point. Do you go with a protocol of what they might have said

which is boring, or was Mao, reportedly on heavy doses of opium,

living quite a degenerate life at this time, maybe he spoke bluntly.

Why not? Even if he didn't, let him speak what he feels.

And do it in a way that was clipped and fractured enough so it wouldn't

be pretentious and hang there. that's why the cutting is what it is.

We get glimpses of conversation as if it's hard to see.

Hard to get behind doors. Don't wanna make it too easy.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[speaking in Mandarin]

[interpreter] That has the added virtue of being true.

[Kissinger] Your writings have changed the world, Mr. Chairman.

[interpreter speaking Mandarin]

[speaks in Mandarin]

[interpreter] Bullshit. My writings mean...

[Stone] that's Bai Ling, the Chinese actress there.

Did a nice job as the interpreter.

Supposed to be Zhou Enlai, which I kind of like.

[speaking in Mandarin]

[Stone] I love this line about fat men.

How a fat man gets so many girls.

Power, Mr. Chairman, is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

[Stone] And that is a Kissinger line,

which was not in this context. But it was a very funny line.

Kissinger was one of the most attractive men, single bachelors of that era.

this is a young actor playing Mao. We found him out of Toronto.

It was a similarity we worked on with prosthetics.

But we had to age him down. He had to learn Mandarin, which is difficult.

His name was Ric Young.

I'm glad to see Marty Scorsese used him years later in Kundun.

In my case, millions of reactionaries.

In your case, millions of Vietnamese.

Civil war is always the cruelest kind ofwar,

but our two nations were forged by revolution.

The United States, China.

[Stone] Like Mao's inside man is laughing because he died soon aFter.

But he knows Nixon's dark soul, dark heart.

[speaking in Mandarin]

History is a symptom of our disease.

[Stone] the music and flowering, the Helms montage, if you think about it.

Except instead of flowers, we're using bombs.

As if Mao was saying to Nixon, "qace up to who you are.

You're nuts. You're evil.

You have to kill in order to achieve."

[man] Newspapers are calling it a Stone Age tactic

and Nixon a maddened tyrant. Nixon's response:

"When the Vietnamese take the Paris peace talks seriously, I'll stop."

A penny for your thoughts.

Just think of the...

Think of the life Mao's led.

In '52, I... I called him a monster.

Now he could be our most important ally.

Only Nixon could've done that.

[Stone] Nixon referred to himself several times in the third person.

[Nixon] Yep.

[Stone] Again, the schism between the public and the private.

Congratulations, Dick.

- Mr. Ziegler. - Mr. President,

the press guys asked if you could come back.

- The hell with them. - [Stone] I love, "To hell with them."

A knee-jerk reaction from Nixon to the press because he had been shaFted.

But he personalized it.

He was thin-skinned.

OK.

[Stone] He was thin-skinned because he was bright and sensitive too.

People that way tend to be thin-skinned.

And hurt.

Ron Ziegler, David Paymer.

Always a wonderful supporting actor, willing to just bring an energy

that's correct to the role of the supporting man.

I love this scene, 'cause he's shocked. Look at Tony's eye.

You can see that he's just amazed. He resorts to a characteristic...

...gesture that really is a hollow, rigid gesture.

He can't respond emotionally to compliments.

But it's a great moment. It did happen. the press gave him that reception

in the plane on the way back.

Well, it looks to me

like we're gonna lose a war for the first goddamn time.

- Yep. - You're goin' right along with it,

buyin' into this Kissinger bullshit,

this... detente with Communists.

Detente. Sounds like a couple of fags dancin'.

Jack, we're not living in the same country you and I knew in '46.

Our people are just not gonna sacrifice in major numbers for war.

Can't even get 'em to accept cuts in their gas tax.

Now, the Arabs and the Japanese are draining the gold reserves...

Whose fault is that?

Ifwe'd won in Vietnam, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Nobody's fault, Jack. It's change. It's a fact of history.

Even that old cocksucker J. Edgar Hoover's dead.

Now who'd have thought that possible?

[Stone] Where we find out Hoover's gone.

We see the way Nixon refers to him, "that old cocksucker."

So much for friendship.

Actually, Hoover protected Nixon, I think, a lot more than people know.

I think Hoover liked Nixon, but knew Nixon.

As he said at the pool, he could recite the speech about his father.

He knew Nixon to be a manipulator and a liar,

which is why he liked him. He could get along with that kind of guy.

Now, Kissinger's misunderstood.

He acts like a liberal for his establishment friends,

- but he's even tougher than I am. - [man] So Kissinger stays.

Just like Castro, Mr. Nixon.

Yeah. He stays.

And you are comfortable with that decision?

[Jack] Desi's got a point.

What the hell are we gonna do about the Communists in our own backyard?

What do you really mean, Jack?

I mean, I got federal price controls on my oil.

And the rag heads are beatin' the shit out of me, Dick.

And your EPA environmental agency has got its thumb so far up my ass,

- it's scratchin' my ear! - I think it's time for us to be...

- Let him finish, Bob. - I got a federal judge orderin' me

to bus my grandkids halfway across this town to go to school with nigger kids.

Now, Dick, Mr. President,

aren't you forgetting who put you where you are?

The American people put me where I am, Jack.

- Really? - [Stone laughs]

- Well, that can be changed. - In a heartbeat.

[Stone] Lighting here is superb from Richardson.

Especially against this stone wall. He's a man in hell.

In which Nixon emerges as the hero.

Another ironic twist.

Well, let me tell you this, Jack.

If you don't like it, there's an election in November

and you can take your money out in the open and give it to Wallace.

How about it, Jack? Willing to do that?

Hand this country over to some pansy poet socialist like George McGovern?

'Cause if you're not happy with the EPA up your ass,

try the IRS.

Goddamn, Dick.

- You're not threatening me, are ya? - Presidents don't threaten, Jack.

They don't have to.

Good day to you, gentlemen. Thank you.

[Stone laughs]

[man] With third party candidate George Wallace out of the race,

paralyzed by an assassin's bullet,

Richard Nixon has crushed George McGovern

in the 1972 presidential election.

It is the second-biggest landslide in American history.

As the new term begins,

it does not seem the Watergate investigations have damaged Nixon

politically in any significant way.

[Stone] Again, the time-lapse. this is well done

'cause it shows you the danger coming up over the White House.

It's pulling out of Vietnam without a right-wing revolt.

- I believe you're right. - The presidency isn't enough anymore.

[Stone] It's like Nixon understands that he's just a cog in the wheel.

He's the frontman for what the real power structure

of the United States is, which is way beyond the control

of one man or the command of one man.

the emperor is the ghost in the machine. And if his public relations don't fit,

he's out. His decisions are minor decisions,

not international trade decisions as much as issues of social reform.

That mad bomber theory wasn't so crazy after all.

Henry is coming back tojoin us.

He wants to be included in the photographs, of course.

- [Haldeman] There's a surprise. - This could be it.

This could be it. Four long years. Jeez.

Incidentally, I don't know if this is the right time, but you should know.

Bill Sullivan at the FBI got back to us with his report on Kissinger.

- I didn't wanna bring it up because... - Go on.

Well, Sullivan thinks he's the one. Henry's the leaker.

[Stone] the double whammy because coming aFter Hoover

telling him Kissinger was taping Nixon,

now this is pretty solid evidence that Kissinger was the talker.

And that's what we believe. there's reasons to believe it.

they're stated in the anthology.

Of course, it will be denied by many people.

Claims that he was dead set against the bombing,

that you were unstable and that he has to handle you with kid gloves.

[Stone] It's interesting that Nixon doesn't fire him at this point

for this betrayal, because Nixon's too smart. He's always thinking.

- Never deciding quickly. - ...The New York Times?

[Ehrlichman] Yes, he did.

[Haldeman] We ought a fire his whining ass right now, when he's on top.

You know what? It'd set the right example...

[Stone] Nixon took to wearing an American flag in his lapel.

It was one of his corny gestures. Got a lot of attention.

He was the first one. I think they all wear them now.

No. No.

He's our only star right now. He'd go crying to the press.

- He'd crucify us. - [Stone laughs]

Son of a bitch.

Get someone on our staff on his ass.

Tap his phones. I wanna know everyone he talks to.

Let's see how long the Kissinger mystique lasts.

So, John, what about these Watergate clowns?

This Sirica's crazy. Thirty-five year sentence.

No weapons, right? No injuries.

There's no success. It's just ridiculous.

Sirica's just trying to force someone to testify, but they're solid.

What about this Washington Post crap? Woodwind and Fernstein.

- Bernstein, sir. - Who the fuck are they, anyway?

[Stone] I love that. He gets right to the point. Power.

- Yes, sir, I am. - Good.

Well, they're trying to connect Bob and John with the secret fund.

[Stone] We sense for the first time that Haldeman and Ehrlichman know

- they're going down. - The FBI's feeding me their reports.

[Stone] David Hyde Pierce is wonderful in the role of Dean.

He's got an innocence to him which I found to be true in the man I met.

the timing on that was interesting because it falls nicely.

the hydraulic pressed the plane down so we drop.

they're all worried, on the edge, but reassuring each other,

but there is no reassurance as the airplane shows us.

It's a real gangster movie. [laughs] Like gang members

who sell each other out gradually until the last one leFt.

...and our prisoners ofwar are coming back home.

South Vietnam has the right to determine its own future.

So, we have peace with honor.

The president will take some of your questions now.

- [man] Mr. President! - Dan.

Isn't it true little has been achieved

that the Communists have not been offering since 1969,

that in fact your administration has needlessly prolonged the war

and escalated it to new levels ofviolence?

I will, uh... try to answer that question in some detail.

[woman] Mr. President!

What is your reaction to James McCord's statement

that high-level White House officials

were involved in the Watergate break-in?

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

The Washington Post is reporting that Mr. Haldeman and Ehrlichman

secretly dispersed up to $900,000 in campaign funds.

Is there any truth to that?

Now, let me make this perfectly clear.

I will not respond to the charges of The Washington Post.

Nor will I comment on a matter that is currently before the courts.

[Stone] Nixon was upset that the press conference was not well received

where he announced the peace agreement in Vietnam. He was thinking

he would be applauded as a hero. It was four years later.

I don't think the press was excited as it was about Watergate, which is what

they asked him about until he fled the news conference.

[reporters clamoring]

Mr. President, sir...

Ron, get in there and do something!

[Stone] At one news conference I saw a picture file of Nixon actually pushing

Ron Ziegler back... It was outside the White House.

Pushing Ron back to deal with the press.

God!

You know who's behind this, don't you? Teddy Kennedy.

Yeah, he drowns a broad in his car, and he can't run for president.

[Stone] One of my favorite scenes.

I love the magnetism of Hopkins' anger

that floods into Jimmy Woods,

who takes it up another notch.

Pleasing his boss with his Doberman-like anger.

We gave Ehrlichman too much of the benefit of the doubt.

But J.T. wanted to go more in that direction. J.T. Walsh,

who's unfortunately passed away. I also pushed him in that way

because I felt we needed some kind of conscience, something to reflect

what honesty was. We lose sight of it with all these crooks.

But that might have been a mistake.

Ehrlichman was a tough guy too. But there was some evidence

that he had some sense of compassion at times.

So did Haldeman. Haldeman was a human being,

as his son attested.

But he served his master oFten without thought.

OFten without questioning his orders like a good German.

You know what? You should be proud, because they'll never trust you, sir.

Because we speak for the average American.

You know why they're turning on me?

It's because they're not serious about power, that's why.

They're playing with power.

They're forgetting the national interest.

In the old days people knew how to hold power, how to set limits.

They wouldn't have torn this country apart over a third-rate burglary.

For Christ's sake, now all they care about are their egos,

looking good at cocktail parties.

Beating out other papers and chasing girls.

Wondering whether someone said something nice about them.

Short-term, frivolous bullshit.

Ben Bradlee worrying about Teddy Kennedy liking him.

[Stone laughs] Some of those are actual Nixon lines about the parties.

We are playing a totally reactive game.

We have to get ahead of the ball. Now, we all know that you are clean.

Right?

Then let's take off the gloves. Let's do a housecleaning.

Housecleaning?

No, it could be ugly, Henry, really ugly.

It must be done, sir. Your government is paralyzed.

All kinds of shit could come out. The Ellsberg thing.

You knew about that, didn't you, Henry?

Well, I heard something. It sounded idiotic.

Idiotic. Yeah, I suppose it was.

I thought it was your idea to expose Ellsberg as a sex fiend.

I guess somebodyjust took you too literally.

I never suggested a bunch of imbeciles break into a psychiatrist's office.

It doesn't matter.

[Stone] I love the editing here.

All these interior psychological thoughts are passing in the air,

canted angles. Again, the Russian concept of...

Look at the four men going towards closure.

I like the staging of this. I asked all four actors to stand up.

I didn't want anybody sitting down. I wanted to keep it moving.

As I did the bedroom scene.

I was in that mood for that bedroom scene with Pat and Dick

just to keep it moving. I asked both actors to stop as little as possible

when we rehearsed it. Keeping on the move.

Out of that grew the idea of her circling, him circling,

which I saw the scene as sort of a circling scene.

- Sir. - Yeah?

There are times when even the president can go too far.

You played it perfectly, sir. That cocksucker'll think twice

- before he leaks again. - [Stone] qurther on the scene.

You think that would be the end of the scene,

but I encouraged them to go one extra step.

Hunt wants more money.

- Another 122,000. - Fuck.

If he doesn't get it right away, he's going to blow us out of the water.

He means it. Since his wife died in the plane crash, he's over the edge.

Pay him. Pay him what he wants.

[Stone] Here's another Oval Office scene. We did them back to back.

It was originally one scene that we put the fade-out and fade-in

between the two. But this has been lengthened since the original.

And I think it's important because it re-echoes the circle with Helms.

Why we took it out. Helms had not been in the movie.

We took Helms out and then put him back in.

This has nothing to do with the Bay of Pigs!

I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs!

[Haldeman] I couldn't believe it.

This is what the president told me to relay to you, Dick.

I had to remind him who he was talking to.

So I was wondering? What's such dynamite in this Bay of Pigs thing?

Sir.

It was clearly effective because all of a sudden it was no problem

for Helms to go to the FBI and try to put a lid on Watergate.

- What about the documents promised? - He'll give us the documents.

But I think ifwe offer him an ambassadorship,

the ambassadorship to Iran, we can get rid of him. He'll go...

- No, I promised Iran to Townsend. - Townsend in Belgium. It's available.

He gave us 300 grand. Belgium's not worth more than 100, 150.

What about England?

Forget it. Annenberg's paid three times that much.

Helms wants Iran, or there might be a problem.

All his old buddies are over there making a fortune...

When does this end, Bob?

- Executive clemency. - What?

Hunt and the Cubans have nothing to lose now. Pardon them all.

[Stone] qrom a transcript in which Nixon sells ambassadorships,

which makes you wonder what the Iran deal was with Helms, the CIA.

Was it to enrich Helms in Iran or not?

Was it to pay Helms off? Hide him?

Lyndon bugged, so did Kennedy.

FDR cut a deal with Lucky Luciano. Christ, even Eisenhower had a mistress.

What's so special about me? Huh?

What about Lyndon? He could make a couple calls to the... Hell, and...

...shut this whole damn thing down.

- Anyone talk to him? - I have.

- What'd he say? - No dice, he hit the roof.

Why?

He said if you go out with a story about how he bugged your plane,

he's gonna reveal...

He's gonna reveal... [muttering]

- ...Vietnamese peace talks... - All right.

All right! Stop!

What's the matter with you?

I know. I just know we've made too many enemies.

There's another thing. Bob and I have to testify before the urban committee.

No, you're not. You're gonna claim executive privilege.

You're gonna stonewall it all the way.

Plead the 5th Amendment. I don't give a shit.

They can't force the president's people to testify.

Executive privilege looks like we're covering.

We are covering up for God's sake.

Some petty, stupid shit.

There are things I can say what other people said, and they'd be lies.

When I say them, nobody believes me anyway.

[Stone] We built the Oval Office to exact specifications.

We rented it from American President, but we built it higher

to the exact specifications of the White House.

John's right, boss.

[Stone] I love this scene because it's truly a circling of the wagons.

Sometimes you gotta punt.

[Stone] David Hyde Pierce did a wonderful job of interpreting John Dean,

who was on the set quite a bit. But as oFten the case,

David didn't want to do it in front of John. I don't blame him.

But John was a supporter of the film and helped us a lot in detail.

As did Alexander Butterfield. Howard Hunt stopped by.

Quite a few people. John Sears. Bob Scheer was there as consultant.

We had many different consultants on the film who were very helpful.

About Kennedy and LBJ and Truman.

How so?

[Stone] this is a one-shot scene. It's shot as a one-shot. It's cut up.

But watch the flow of the Steadicam.

And the actors, the way they hit their marks. Nice.

these are two pros here.

this is tough dialogue, too, because it's got little shadings.

I wanted to keep the hallway jumping too. I put a friend of mine

as a tour guide leading these Nigerians around.

And they kind of come in the other room. You'll see.

this is the actual layout of that area of the White House.

20 years, you ever shake hands with him?

Ever have a real conversation with him?

No, this... This is about Richard Nixon.

You got people dying because he didn't make varsity football.

[Stone] Ehrlichman is playing off of Haldeman's sense of conscience.

this is a scene that also allows Haldeman to have a bit of a conscience.

Goes white every time you mention it.

- It's a code or something. - Well, shit, even I figured that out.

I think he means...

- The Kennedy assassination... - Yeah?

They went after Castro and in some crazy way it got turned back on Kennedy.

I don't think the old man knows what happened. But he's afraid to find out.

He's shitting peach pits every time he thinks about it.

Created a Frankenstein with those damn Cubans.

Eight words back in '72:

"I covered up." "I was wrong." "I'm sorry."

And the American public would've forgiven him.

But we never opened our mouths, John.

We failed him.

Dick Nixon saying "I'm sorry"? [laughs] That'll be the day.

[Stone] Nerve-wracking for actors, especially Jimmy, nervous type.

He has to walk and talk. All those lines. He gets to the end.

Afraid he's gonna blow a line at the end.

You do know that we're next, don't you?

[Stone] this was a scene I was much criticized for.

Hunt meets Dean on the bridge.

Dean has asked for the meeting on the basis of how much more

will it take? they're being blackmailed.

You're early, John.

If you'd been that stealthy at the Watergate, we wouldn't be in this mess.

[Stone] A little zinger in there. And it was true.

- I was sorry to hear about your wife. - Yes.

Take out the money.

The president would like to know if that was the last payment.

- I'll bet he would. - Is it?

In Richard Nixon's long history of underhanded dealings

he's never had better value for his money. If I were to open my mouth,

all the dominoes would fall.

Can I ask you a question?

How the hell do you have the temerity

to blackmail the president of the United States?

That's not the question, John. The question is, why is he paying?

- To protect his people. - I'm one of his people.

The Cubans are his people. And we're going to jail for him.

Howard, you will serve no more than two years, then he'll pardon you.

Maybe. Maybe not.

But you don't leave your men on the beach, John.

You don't make them beg for their money like thieves.

You don't dump men with families who've served their country.

He didn't know. This thing has gotten out of hand.

You think a man as controlled as Richard Nixon would've allowed a break-in

at the Democratic National Headquarters without knowing it?

You think Mitchell or Haldeman wouldn't have run it by him at least once?

The president's men did nothing,

nothing without Richard Nixon's permission.

John, sooner or later...

Sooner, I think, you're going to learn the lesson that's been learned

by everyone who's ever gotten close to Richard Nixon.

That he's the darkness reaching out for the darkness.

And eventually it's either you or him.

Your grave's already been dug, John.

[man] FBI director-designate L. Patrick Gray

shocked the Senate by revealing that John Dean

has been secretly receiving FBI reports on Watergate.

[Stone] Distorting wide-angle low lens. Moving, trying to get into the mind,

unbalancing mind of John Dean who has now felt the pressure from Hunt.

Dean has to know that he's next.

this is a wonderful scene. I enjoyed it. this scene we let play

at the length we shot it. You had to understand all the nuances

of Dick Nixon's shifty behavior. I love the way Nixon starts the scene

with, "How much you need?" Like a Mafia statement instead of the president.

You just hear him. "How much you need?" Like a gangster.

You don't see him till here. You see a sweaty lip.

this is dialogue directly from the transcripts of the telephone.

"How much cash?" [laughs] Dean going through legal stuff.

"How much do you need?" Get to the point, lawyer.

Hunt's not the only problem.

[Stone] And this is actually the taping system as reconstructed by Butterfield

for us of that time. Very cheap taping system.

Small, you know, very common tape recorders.

those tapes, of course, take forever to wind and rewind.

You can break them down with razors. But there's reasons to believe,

honestly, that these tapes were re-duplicated by some agency.

that's what makes this bizarre about181/2 minutes of missing tape.

I believe what Haig at the end of the movie says, "Always another copy,"

means we have some evidence in that 181/2 minutes that could bury us.

"Bury you, Nixon, and bury us, the country."

I think that's very important to realize. What happens to those tapes.

they go out of there and put... they're stored by the Secret Service.

qrom there on, we don't know what happens.

Everything's a crisis among the upper intellectual types, the softheads.

The average people don't think it's much of a crisis.

For Christ's sake, this is not Vietnam. No one's dying here.

[Stone] All these are actual texts of Nixon. Sometimes conjoined.

Goldwater was right when he said

"For Christ's sakes, everybody bugs everybody else." We know that.

[Stone] Actual wording from the last scene.

Last scene played out at a longer length than this.

Sometimes I'd take dialogue from other places and other people

and put it in a scene. I love that richness of that dialogue.

I wanted to use it. If I could get the proper context, it made sense.

I wouldn't use it in the wrong context, in my opinion. I was very careful.

Mitchell's gonna get it anyway, so it's time he assumed responsibility.

You're not paying attention.

He won't. He's told Ehrlichman he won't.

You tell my good friend Dick I got suckered into this thing...

[Stone] Which is what Mitchell said, actually.

Mitchell didn't help Nixon in this. He just let him hang out.

Mitchell didn't want to take the fall. But he did take the fall.

He did take one of the falls. So did Nixon.

Everybody took a fall. [laughs] they were all doomed, these guys.

this is like, I guess...

If you ever saw that play, Glengarry Glen Ross, Mametwrote,

with all these loser salesmen, you think of these guys as...

that's why I started the movie with used car salesmen.

these are all salesmen but all doomed in their circle.

the noose keeps tightening the whole movie.

they all sell each other out in the end.

this is a very Mamet-like structure

but it's actually closer to Scarface. [laughs]

- People would never understand. - No.

[Stone] I love Anthony and David's performances in this movie.

I just watched over and over, enjoyed it.

Write up a report.

Put everything you know about Watergate in there and say,

"Mr. President, here it all is." OK?

You want me to put it all in writing over my signature?

Well, nobody knows more about this thing than you do, John.

[Stone] All this is exact quote from Nixon. [laughs]

But that is Anthony Hopkins doing a little mannerism with his tongue.

I'm not going to be the scapegoat for this.

[Stone] I love this talk too. Another dialogue he gave John.

the irony is that Nixon, too, was a man who was...

...who received informant information

from Dewey and perhaps from Chambers.

Now, it's beyond you, or even me, John.

[Stone] Nixon tried to set up Dean to write the memo.

the idea, I think, behind it was Dean would implicate himself in some way

and take the burden off Nixon. then he could let Dean hang out to dry

before he had to sacrifice Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

But Dean was smart enough to sense what was coming and that's why Dean turned.

I think Dean did not get a fair shake in history.

I love the door knob coming off here.

Nixon always has a problem getting in and out of rooms. He was awkward.

He dropped the pills in the first scene and very typical

of somebody who was awkward.

[Stone] As you see, Haldeman and Ehrlichman took it bad.

Haldeman took a large hit. Went to jail, as did Ehrlichman.

And Haldeman wrote a book with co-author Joe DiMona,

called The Ends ofPower in which he confessed

to many interesting things, including Bay of Pigs code,

what he thought was the code for the JqK assassination.

It is said he denied it aFter he got out ofjail, but the truth was

right before he died, he reaffirmed it.

Beside the point is when he got out of jail, Nixon cozied up to him again.

So right away, Haldeman was compromised.

Nixon had a very strong influence over Haldeman.

Magnetism. Called him up aFterjail and said, "Hey, Bob, how are you?

Horrible thing happened. Horrible thing."

Nixon stayed out ofjail, as you know.

Of course, not the jail of his own mind,

but the jail that we all call jail.

It's a burn basket. that's Sam Waterston. I'm suggesting

he's burning documents because he knows the ship is sinking.

There can be no whitewash at the White House.

Two wrongs do not make a right.

Now, I love America.

God bless America, and God bless each and every one of you.

[Stone] It became pathetic at the end. Many of us remember

TV telecasts that came intermittently from the White House.

Each time Nixon was groping, like the Checkers speech, at straws,

insisting on his innocence and insisting this...

An audience refined to the television world

of acting thought him... Many of us thought him hollow

and clearly lying.

People said this was based on Citizen Kane. Yes, to some degree,

the length of the table. Nixon would have very formal dinners.

Towards the end, of course, he dined alone a lot.

this is one of the rare instances he may have dined with Pat.

Are you going to Key Biscayne?

- Yeah. - Excuse me, sir.

When?

Tomorrow.

Ron told me that, um... Bob Haldeman has been calling,

but you won't talk to him.

If he's convicted, will you pardon him?

No.

Why are you cutting yourself off from the rest of us?

Can't we discuss this?

- What exactly do you want to discuss? - You. What you're doing.

- What am I doing? - I wish I knew. You're hiding.

[Stone laughs]

- Hiding what? - Whatever it is you've been hiding.

You're letting it destroy you, Dick.

- [Stone laughs] - You won't ask for help...

My father did that with his hands.

Manolo, uh...

Mrs. Nixon's finished.

[Stone] You had to be that age to play Nixon.

Tony Hopkins is 56, 8, got Nixon. Got something in the inner man.

Nobody can actually mimic somebody else totally.

But, God, he came close.

Brezhnev's coming in three days.

I don't wanna deal with them and him and you.

How much more? How much more is it going to cost?

When do the rest of us stop paying off your debts?

I'd like to finish my dinner in peace,

if it's not too much to ask.

[Stone] Of course, there's rumors Pat Nixon was drinking more and more,

and had always had drinking issues, but became totally numbed out

during these last few months. tyrying to leave some kind of strength

and healthiness in this family. Maybe Joan Allen is too powerful

to have been Pat Nixon. Who knows? Pat, like so many women in the '50s

and the '40s, that Barbie doll generation, was a betrayed wife,

in the sense that she grew into... lived through the man. And the man,

at the end of the day, disappointed her, let her down.

[man] The committee will come to order. Counsel will call the first witness.

Mr. John W. Dean, III.

[Stone] When Dean went public, that was a disaster.

Everything was snowballing now.

You had Woodward-Bernstein articles in The Post

keeping it alive in the public media,

but there was a whole judicial machinery at work here.

It was a disappointment to me because it was quite clear that the cover-up,

as far as the White House was... was concerned, was going to continue.

Why is he doing this? He's our goddamn lawyer.

If he had a problem, why didn't he talk with us?

[Stone] John Stockwell on the leFt, who's now directing movies.

It's still an informer's word against the president's.

[Dean] ...were all indictable for obstruction ofjustice.

[Stone] Now we're bouncing into the Russian montage off the Chinese montage.

[speaking Russian]

[Stone] And of course Brezhnev is dissing Mao, Mao is dissing Russians.

I wanted to make the point that it was a triangle.

Nixon could have made some huge strides here, understand?

But he couldn't concentrate. that's true. At that meeting in Washington,

he was so distracted by the end of the Watergate affair

that he blew a great opportunity to further the peace

between the Soviet Union and America.

It's a shame because that's what had been his plan.

Actually, Nixon, you could argue, I'm not saying correctly,

that he sacrificed Vietnam for the larger issue of Russia and China,

looking for world peace, looking for the end of the Cold War,

the detente that would prevent those Vietnams from happening.

So he was saying, "Let's keep the war going."

that could have been in his thinking, which is geo-political

and Kissinger-like in terms of its grand scenario,

its Machiavellian principle.

[woman] Life is the best teacher, and therefore it must not interfere

with the building of the S.A.L.T. Two treaty...

[Stone] I love this mushroom bomb. that was what was at stake.

the mushroom bomb is the leading motif of this conversation

as the Chinese lettering was between Mao, I think the bomb

holds strong implications here.

[speaking Russian]

[Stone] I like how the Russians know everything in the White House

as much as Nixon. It was true in the last months of the administration,

people were talking, "Will he last?"

Like the Clinton impeachment, but it was perhaps more serious.

Not only the crime was more serious, the idea of impeachment

had not been around for so many years.

Since Andrew Johnson, aFter the Civil War.

Did you?

- Daddy? - What?

Did you cover it up?

[Stone] the concept of this scene was he lied to his family.

He never says yes or no. All he does is ask a rhetorical question.

You think I'd do something like that, honey?

Well, then you can't give up. You just can't.

You're one of the best presidents this country has ever had.

You've done what Lincoln did, brought this country back from civil war.

[Stone] All done in one move

from beginning to the end. I think we did it 15 times.

You've gotta stay and fight.

I'll go out there and make speeches. Nobody knows the real you,

how sweet you are, how nice you are to people.

[Stone] the two daughters really loved him

and said very good things about him always. No question about that.

there was no bad-mouthing. We read one of the books of the daughters

about their parents. Maybe they saw him through rose-colored glasses.

Theyjust don't know the real you.

Theyjust don't know.

[Stone] Margaret Mitchell was one of the... another one

of the obstacle courses. Everywhere, she was attacking him.

In the last few months when she was a loose cannon,

aFter the divorce or the proposed divorce of Mitchell.

Mitchell was a tough nut like Nixon. I loved him in that very...

Wouldn't give an inch. He hated him like Agnew.

When Mitchell would be photographed,

he had the most puffy cheeks and little beady eyes.

He was attorney general at one point. He was tough as they come.

Now, were the visitors that went into the White House warned

that their conversations with the president would be taped?

[man] Again, I am not aware of the technical details.

On Friday, we have the high school students from Ohio.

Saturday is the National Women's Republican Club.

[reporter] ...Watergate wide open, former White House aide

Alexander Butterfield testified before the Senate Select committee.

He revealed a taping system that may have recorded conversations

in the White House, the executive office building

and even members of his own family.

[Stone] Now it just unrolls. this scene, of course,

is based on the fact that Butterfield, in testimony to Congress,

revealed the tapes.

Alexander, who was one of our advisors, never thought of it as malicious.

He never thought of it. It was a slip, and it just came out.

He didn't realize the implications. He was a bit lost.

It was a very confusing story. It's hard to completely understand

the scope of it at the time because it was unrolling

against other world events over a long period of almost two years.

Of more than two years.

Now the secret is out. this is the key moment,

'cause everybody wants to keep it a secret and in a sense

wants to let it out. that's what she says in this scene.

If Hunt goes public, it'll be a fiasco for the C.I.A.

They're like love letters.

[tape rewinding]

You should burn 'em.

[Stone] this is a psychological scene in the movie

because she's drunk.

They're evidence. You can't legally destroy evidence.

You don't expect me to believe that...

[Stone] Now she's drunk a little bit. I let her go.

Now we let her go a little bit. She did like her drink.

Oliver Stone movie, you gotta have a ghost, so there's Mary Steenburgen.

they're both drunk in this scene. I don't see why not. [laughs]

- I rememberAlger Hiss. - [Stone] She's scolding him now.

- I know how ugly you can be. - [Stone] She knows how ugly he can be.

that's a scolding thing. "Where's the secret that Mary Steenburgen asked?"

But I think Mom and wife have a lot in common.

He sees her again, but then the light comes on.

I love this look of Tony's 'cause it's so haunting.

No concept of remorse.

You want the tapes to get out. You want them to see you at your worst.

- You're drunk. - Oh, yeah!

No one'll ever see those tapes, including you.

And what would I find out that I haven't known for years?

[Stone] See the destruction cycle. Six crises, 15 crises.

You destroy, rebuild. Destroy, rebuild.

there's a worthlessness at the center of it. A sense of worthlessness.

- that's what's amazing to Pat. - They're not "yours." They are you.

You should burn them.

[Stone laughs]

Tony is famous for having had his share of drinks in the '70s.

Only he could do that look. It scared me when I first saw it.

I jumped out of my seat.

But Tony has a great sense memory of being drunk

and drinking too much and has been in AA for many years.

And goes faithfully and is a very sober man.

Like other actors who've been there, he remembers it well

and does a funny but human job of it.

I believed him when he's looked at that ghost and jumped.

- What, do you think? - I never said this.

- Seven times, ten times. - Ten times.

- You think people like that gave up? - Never.

Castro. These guys went after Castro.

[Stone] Watch this, watch this. All these weird angles.

this is a shot I like.

One eye. [laughs]

this is an interesting montage. A reverse time montage

that we used, as if he could put it all back in time.

We've all wished that at some point in our lives.

Whoever killed Kennedy came from this thing we created, this beast.

[Stone] "this beast."

that's imagined dialogue that we put into this 18 1/2-minute tape.

[man] In the latest bombshell, the president's lawyers revealed

that there is an 18-and-a-half-minute gap

in a critical Watergate tape.

Reactions of disbelief and anger are being heard across the country.

[Stone] Around this time, Nixon had a major phlebitis attack and almost died.

It seemed like he was dying when he went to the hospital.

Had a very close call. Blood clot in the leg.

But it can travel up to the pulmonaries, the lungs.

that's why bleeding comes out of the mouth.

It was a real serious blood clot and lead to the medication

that he was taking, which people don't seem to understand that when you

mix some medicine with one or two drinks of Scotch,

you can slur without being drunk. You're just slurring.

It's a physical reaction.

People misunderstood the point. We hardly were trying to draw

a man who's an alcoholic. He was not. He was a man under too much stress.

Nixon didn't have the right outlets for stress.

Maybe he needed to be more of an exercise freak or something.

Or laugh freak, something. All he did was sit around and read

and talk and think. He was living too cerebrally,

without soma. there has to be some soma in your body. It can't all be cerebral.

I put him in this fantasy position, dreaming of his tapes.

this is one of my trips here with the tunnel. I wanted to play with it

this cheap tunnel we built. I wanted to try red and blue light.

As if, when you die, there's all this talk

of near-death experiences of people who die and travel down tunnels

and see light, weird images from their lives,

things you remember as you die.

that's my son, Mikey. [laughs]

that's young Nixon. Old Nixon.

Something brings him back, the rebirth, the Christ image.

[man] Vice President Agnew has resigned today pleading no contest

to charges of income tax evasion.

[Stone] He almost died, which is true.

But on the way back, you hear all the mundane shit coming down on him now.

Poor guy is coming back to this world. He got better, had to go back to it.

He was a tough guy, tough fight.

Because the media would constantly cover it. Everything was buried

except for... Like the Clinton scandal. It was about eating ourselves to death.

He's got an acute viral pneumonia and a very serious phlebitis.

[Stone] Bill Bolander, the doctor, a wonderful actor.

Oh, no.

[man] The president has returned to the White House.

But Archibald Cox has declared war by issuing a subpoena

- for nine of the president's tapes. - [Stone] Exposure changes

on the White House, which we shot with an old camera to show the lack

of stability, the light coming and going.

This could trigger the impeachment. They'll go to the Supreme Court.

I appointed three of those bastards. I'll never give them my tapes.

Can the president afford to ignore a subpoena?

Who the hell does Cox think he is? I've never made a dime from public office.

I'm honest. My dad died broke. Jesus.

That son of a bitch Cox, he went to the same law school as Jack Kennedy.

[Stone] One of my favorite scenes.

We constructed it from conversations with different people

around this time. But he did say these words

in various places to different people. But we cobbled it together here.

My God, we would've changed it so they couldn't have changed it back in years.

Yeah.

[Stone] It's interesting. He sniffs the flowers that make him feel like death.

Sort of a reversal there.

Sir, Congress is considering four articles of impeachment.

- Yeah. For what? - They're very serious charges, sir.

[Stone] this is George Plimpton, a New York character actor,

literary figure. Nice man. Gentleman.

He kept blowing his lines. [laughs] He was so nervous.

He had to list all these things as a lawyer, but it took a few takes.

But George finally got it.

- Fred, they sell tickets. - It's Ron, sir.

[Stone] Ron. He's got everybody mixed up now.

John Wayne at the end. He can't remember names,

where he is, who he's supposed to talk to.

It's very funny, actually. Avery dark humor

that Hopkins brings to this and the script does too.

Jeez, I got half of 'em elected.

OK, so I got the South and, uh, Goldwater and his boys.

I'll take my chances in the Senate.

[Stone] Nixon would alternate. Some days he'd want to fight it,

go all the way, others he realized the damage impeachment would do.

there was a concept of what he would have to reveal.

Would he fall on his sword or not?

Like ancient Romans. Or would he reveal secrets?

In that regard, he never did reveal anything. Could call him a good Roman.

What I know about this country, I could rip it apart.

If they want a public humiliation, that's what they'll get.

- Yes, they will. - I'll never resign this office.

[Stone] You heard. "the secrets I know could bury this country."

I really believe that next to Richard Helms, he was a great keeper

of the secrets of this country.

qrom the Dewey association all the way through

the Lanskys, '50s, '60s, '70s, and then he was out.

But he had an effect on the '80s too,

- when he had an influence on Reagan. - May I echo my concern?

- Then tell Richardson to fire him! - Well, Richardson won't do that, sir.

- He'll resign. - The hell he will. Then fire him too.

If you have to go down to the janitor at thejustice department

fire that son of a bitch.

Mr. President, may I just say something, sir?

I think that you should welcome this subpoena.

- Why? - Well, sir,

the tapes can only prove that Dean was a liar. Right?

[Stone] Yes, of course. the tapes implicate Nixon.

One of my favorite speeches here. He said it during this time period.

There's more than just me.

You can't break, my boy.

Even though it's ended.

You can't admit, even to yourself, when it's gone.

Do you think those P.O.W.s in there did?

Now, there's some people, and we both know them, Al

think you can go stand in the middle of a bull ring

and cry "mea culpa, mea culpa,"

while the crowd is hissing and booing and spitting on you.

Well, a man doesn't cry. I don't cry.

You don't cry. You fight.

[applause]

OK.

[man] Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States!

[cheering, applause]

Good evening. We interrupt this program for a special report from NBC news.

The country is in the midst

ofwhat may be the most serious constitutional crisis in its history.

[Stone] We interviewed Richardson, who told us this great line

I used in the movie later, I gave it to Kissinger. "He had greatness

within his grasp, but he had the virtue of his defects."

that is actually Robert Bork. that's not a fake beard.

He was almost made Supreme Court justice years later.

But it was turned back by Congress.

Bork fired everybody in the Justice Department. It's very ironic

that he was put up for the job of Supreme Court justice by Reagan.

And it became a cause celebre. He fired everybody in the Justice Department.

Because of his views he was rejected.

- Look. This. Nixon can't say that. - Well, you did say it, sir.

Never! I never said that about Jews.

- Makes me sound like an anti-Semite. - [Stone] Richardson was a Brahmin

who was a totally ethical and honest man, the most you've met in your life.

Spoke like a Brahmin from Boston.

Always a Republican, but a real straight-laced Republican.

He was much admired.

- We could write "expletive deleted." - Cut all these "goddamns"

and "Jesus Christs" out. Jesus.

Mr. President. Don't you see that all these deletion marks in the transcript

make it look as though you... you do nothing but swear?

[Stone] "Expletive deleted" became a joke at the time.

Comedians would go on. When the transcripts were released,

so many "expletive deleteds," it became part of the language.

We could start again, sir, but we don't really have the staff to do that.

Then start over! Just start over!

The world will see only what I show 'em!

From page one, Al. Page one, Ron!

Ron, get in there and do something.

All this stuff.

Five seconds, Mr. President.

And four, three, two...

[Stone] the last pathetic gasp.

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

Tonight I'm taking an action

unprecedented in the history of this office.

I had no knowledge of the cover-up till John Dean told me about it

- on March 21st, a year ago. - I think I'm going to throw up.

...no payment to Hunt or anyone else be made.

[Stone] these TV appearances were boring and repetitive

and pleading to stay in office. they were disgusting, shameless.

He's the kind of guy who said, "I earned every penny. I never profited."

that's true. Who knows? But he lived well.

In all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice.

It's a tragedy because he had greatness in his grasp.

- I welcome this examination. - But had the defects of his qualities.

- I made $250,000... - [Haig] They'll crucify him.

[Kissinger] Does anybody care anymore?

...which many of you were good enough to purchase.

And what happens after?

[Nixon] ...every year.

When I, in 1968 decided to become a candidate for the president,

I decided to clean the decks and to put everything in real estate.

So, that's where the money came from. That's all I own.

That's what we have, and that's what we owe.

Because people have got to know whether or not their president...

...their president is a crook.

Well, I am not a crook. I've earned everything I have

...doesn't have a mink coat.

She does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.

And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything.

[Stone] It occurred to me when making the movie and it was clear

that Watergate begging was straight out of Checkers speech.

I thought it would be nice to go to Pat as a connector.

She would remember the past vividly and see the repetition of the character

flaw in her husband. At the same time, realize how wasted her life was,

that in his lie, she was wrapped up.

[man] ...has voted 27 to 11 to recommend impeachment to the House.

[Stone] We're rushing towards the end here with all the charges being...

...all the unrolling of events we don't have time for,

as the two men go to see him. they saw him separately

and the resignation was done under different circumstances.

But I think for purposes of this movie,

I combined the two men, Haig and Kissinger into one meeting.

...and thejustice department.

It denounces the plumbers and it raises the question

ofwhether the United States had a valid election in 1972.

[Stone] Nixon was a fan of Victory at Sea by Richard Rogers.

So was my father. I used to hear it a lot as a kid.

It was a famous TV show with clips ofWWII.

[music playing]

Come in.

Victory at Sea, Al. Henry. The Pacific Theatre.

Christ, you can almost hear the waves breaking over the decks.

[Stone] Nixon was a naval officer in the Pacific, a rear echelon administrator.

I'm afraid we have another problem, Mr. President.

Excuse me, gentlemen.

June 23rd, '72, sir.

Your instructions to Haldeman regarding the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.

So?

Your lawyers feel that it's the smoking gun.

Totally out of context. I was protecting the national security.

Sir, the deadline is today.

- Can we get around this, Al? - [Stone laughs]

It's the Supreme Court, sir. You don't get around it.

[Stone] We're also kind to Haig. I don't think Haig was this kind

and empathetic an individual, but you don't wanna paint everybody bad.

If you resign, you can keep your tapes as a private citizen.

You could fight them for years.

[Stone] I don't know why. Haig got off easy here.

I don't know, maybe it's my own fear of if I make everybody a bastard

or dastardly dark,

it would look like a cabal of cutthroats here.

But they weren't. they were more disorganized than that.

the Lincoln Room.

- That was civil war. - [Stone] Civil war.

How do you see this?

Oh, God.

We can't survive this, sir.

They also have you instructing Dean to make the payoff to Hunt.

There's nothing in that statement the president can't explain.

[Stone] You could argue that Haig was, at that point, a younger man

and wasn't as confident as he was later in the Reagan administration

when his manner offended people. So perhaps at this time

he was more the loyal military aid, which is what he was,

who acquired a position only because everybody else had been lost around him,

Ehrlichman, Haldeman. People were disappearing.

these were the people leFt in the inner circle.

So you could argue Haig is drawn more innocently than he was later

as a person.

They might if there was another recording.

[Stone] this was never said by Haig that we know of,

but this is a theory of ours.

I know for a fact that it's possible.

I've spoken to Ford.

There's a very strong chance that he'll pardon you.

I don't need a goddamned deal, for God's sake. I...

This is something that you will have to do, Mr. President.

I thought you'd rather do it now.

I'll wait outside.

Sir.

May I say, sir, that if you stay now,

it will paralyze the nation and its foreign policy.

You always had a great sense of timing, Henry.

When to give and when to take.

How do you think Mao and Brezhnev will react?

[Stone] this is something he asked Kissinger.

...after all the great things you and I did together,

as some kind of... of crooks?

They will understand. To be undone by a third-rate burglary

is a fate of biblical proportions.

[Stone] this is, I believe, a Kissinger line also. Very well said.

And very fawning and praising of Nixon, which he was.

Kissinger owed his career to Rockefeller and Nixon.

No question that Kissinger hurt Nixon with some of his leaks.

I'm not a quitter, never have been.

But I'm not stupid either.

A trial would kill me. That's what they want.

- They won't get it. - [Stone] Interesting how Nixon

turns it around from a defeat into victory. "Retreat,

we're advancing backwards." Nixon saw it as,

"they wanna kill me, put me on trial," which would have been a painful thing

with his phlebitis. He went through hell anyway aFter the resignation,

fighting prosecution and civil prosecution.

What we wanted to do in the resignation was flip it, like he was defying them

by resigning.

If they harass you, I too will resign, and I will tell the world why.

Don't be stupid. The world needs you, Henry.

You always saw the big picture.

You were my equal in many ways.

You're the only friend I got, Henry.

Do you ever pray?

You know, believe in a supreme being?

Not really. You mean on my knees?

My mother used to pray a lot.

It's been a long time since I really prayed.

Let's pray, Henry.

Let's pray a little. Just you and me.

I hope this doesn't embarrass you, Henry.

No. Not at all, no.

- This is not going to leak, is it? - [Stone] I just love the idea,

in the middle of this solemn moment, which is true by all accounts.

How do we know? Leaked by the only person in the room.

Kissinger. Nixon didn't talk about it.

We couldn't resist the impulse to go in and have Kissinger

make a joke. "this isn't gonna leak?" Which would have been appropriate.

[Nixon sobbing]

How can a...

How can a country come apart like this?

[Stone] Hiding his tears from Kissinger. Hard scene for Tony to play.

He did a great job, very emotional.

I opened China. I made peace with Russia.

I ended the war.

I did what I thought was right.

God, why do they hate me so?

It's unbelievable. It... It's insane.

[Stone] Don't know what he prayed about, but we put words in

because they were the most important things we could have done

and he couldn't understand why he'd been cursed.

Tony ad-libbed those words. they have broken meanings,

but they came from his heart very suddenly. And we used that take.

It was a broken personal message perhaps to his relative or mother.

It just was really sad. It evoked body gestures.

Strong. I love this scene, too. the walk-out scene.

In the darkened sort of Citizen Kane White House.

They smelled the blood on me this time, Al. I got soft, you know?

A rusty, metallic smell.

- I know it well, sir. - It came over from Vietnam.

[Stone] I wanted to do a wrap-up scene where Nixon states his final position.

I mean, everyone suffered so much.

Their boys killed.

They need to sacrifice something.

You know, appease the gods ofwar.

Mars, Jupiter.

I am that blood, General.

I am that sacrifice.

In the highest place of all.

[Stone] He once said that...

Yeah. All leaders must finally be sacrificed.

Things won't be the same after this.

No, I played by the rules. Rules changed right in the middle of the game.

There's no respect forAmerican institutions anymore.

[Stone] I believe he also said this in another context.

But the actual speech is cobbled together from various sources.

People spit on soldiers.

Government secrets mean nothing.

I pity the next guy who sits here.

Good night, gentlemen.

Mr. President.

[Stone] It was an important move, dolly around, reveal the competition.

the bookmark of his life. Kennedy, Nixon. Two bookmarks.

It's from '60 to '74, 13 years, a lot about American history.

A man of class and leadership and distinction

and another man of great ambition.

Great intelligence and, ultimately, tragic flaw.

the defects of his virtues.

When they look at you, they see what they want to be.

When they look at me, they see what they are.

Dick, please don't.

I can't.

I don't have the strength anymore.

[Stone] this is a dramatized scene. We don't know if this happened.

Tom Wicker of The New York Times reported the line

about the portrait of Kennedy. Whether he said it to the portrait,

I don't know. I think we'd heard he was talking to portraits

according to Woodward and Bernstein, The Final Days.

I wouldn't know if he talked to the Kennedy portrait, but it was

a strong, strong anchor for him.

Very sad scene.

...my mother gave me this stuff and she made me swallow it.

It made me throw up all over her.

[Stone] He needs to egress from his mother.

He has to throw up his mother to be free of his mother.

Now he can be free of his burden of goodness, of obligation,

duty, whatever.

I'm so afraid.

There's darkness out there.

[Stone] We got very high up here. We pulled out the ceiling.

I really wanted a high shot, high as we could go.

We went with this as the finale 'cause of the lighting.

Inside the ending, you'll find another kernel of thought,

which is important.

We duplicate his speech from his farewell speech,

one of the most powerful speeches he gave. It was emotional

and felt, in spite of his mask.

And it reveals to us that although the words are the same,

about the mother and father, and it relies on cliche.

Cliche, in this case, is emotionalized and dressed up in a new form.

It's not to say I forgive Nixon or some people said

I get sentimental about Nixon. Not at all.

this is actually the speech and what it meant.

To those people in that room, it was a great patriotic speech. they loved it.

they were crying. People who don't like him say, "Terrible speech.

He was lying." But I think he meant it.

But partly do we end this movie on a note of hagiography.

...my old man.

I think that they would have called him sort of a,

sort of a little man, a common man.

Well, he didn't consider himself that way.

You know what he was? He was a streetcar motorman first.

Then he was a farmer.

Then he had a lemon ranch.

It was the poorest lemon ranch in California, I can assure you.

He sold it before they found oil on it.

Then he was a grocer.

But he was a great man

because he did his job.

And everyjob counts up to the hilt

regardless ofwhat happens.

Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother.

[Stone] At the resignation speech he never mentioned his wife, Pat.

My mother was a saint.

And I think of her two boys dying of tuberculosis

[Stone] Very crisp black and white photography by Bob Richardson.

Yes, she will have no books written about her.

But she was a saint.

Now, however, we look to the future.

I remember something Theodore Roosevelt wrote

when his first wife died in his twenties.

He thought the light had gone from his life forever.

But he went on, and he not only became president

but as an ex-president, he served his country

always in the arena, tempestuous, strong,

sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

But he was a man.

And as I leave that's an example I think all of us should remember.

See, we think sometimes when, things happen that don't go the right way;

we think that when someone dear to us dies,

when we lose an election,

or when we suffer defeat that all is ended.

Not true. It's only a beginning, always,

because the greatness comes, not when things go always good for you,

but the greatness comes when you're really tested,

when you take some knocks, some disappointments

when sadness comes.

Because only if you've been in the deepest valley

can you ever know how magnificent it is

to be on the highest mountain.

So, I say to you on this occasion,

we leave, proud of the people who have stood by us and worked for us

and served this government and this country.

They want you to continue to serve in government

if that is what you wish.

Remember, always give your best.

Never get discouraged. Never be petty.

Always remember, others may hate you.

But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them.

[Stone] It's as if he's talking about himself and doesn't know it.

[laughs] But whatever the reasons, we cut to the real President Nixon

at the end just to, out of the spirit of an homage, to Anthony Hopkins,

to remind people it was an actor who did this.

And also to show people who don't know his face the real man.

I didn't feel it would destroy the credibility.

Some worried about that. I didn't think so.

It was the right thing to do.

And only then will you find what we Quakers call "peace at the center".

He gave of himselfwith intelligence and energy and devotion to duty.

[Stone] We pushed it to the funeral.

I tried to give a neutral reading of the last years of his life.

Misunderstood by some people as sentimentalizing Nixon.

I find it ironic that Nixon was so honored on his death

by the attendance of five presidents. It's amazing.

Clinton's words were generous. But Clinton was close to Nixon,

went to him for advice.

The second half of the 20th century will be known as the age of Nixon.

[narrator] In his absence, Russia and the United States returned to a decade

of high-budget military expansion and near war.

Nixon, who was pardoned by President Ford,

lived to write six books and travel the world as an elder statesman.

For the remainder of his life, he fought successfully to protect his tapes.

The National Archives spent 14 years indexing and cataloging them.

Out of 4,000 hours, 60 hours have been made public.

[Stone] Of course, more have been made public since then

through the work of the historian Stanley Cutler and others.

I ended with a shot of Nixon as a young man

out of empathy, as I said, for what he started as.

We must remember what he finished as, young man becomes the old man

and what happens in between.

Again, as with my other films, I wanted to thank the actors

by showing the audience who they were.

What a magnificent cast. they worked so hard.

And I thank them.

Shenandoah would be something Nixon would appreciate like Victory at Sea.

Civil War tune, of course.

the healer. He saw himself as the healer, doesn't mean he was.

It's the way he saw himself.

He was perhaps a divider.

E.G. Marshall has passed on.

A great fighter for human rights.

J.T. Walsh has passed on. Young. Too young.

Joan Allen was nominated for an Oscar, as was Tony Hopkins, the screenplay.

there he was, the bewildered, puzzled thinking man, Mr. Cerebral.

Always worrying. What a way to live your life.

Like that opening salesman at the beginning, the used car salesman.

He never learned that lesson which is project confidence.

that first actor in that first industrial reel

was more confident than Nixon.

In his whole presidency, never learned to project calm

and confidence and serenity. He was never serene.

He was always in a contradiction. that's why it was popular,

people would buy masks of Nixon. the idea was he wore a mask

because his face was in contradiction to what he was thinking or feeling.

You felt when he talked, they were at odds.

the face didn't fit the words.

Didn't do much at the box office. We hurt ourselves with, who knows,

the poster, the concept of Nixon turned off a lot of people.

the darkness of the poster didn't help us.

the look on his face was a scowl, perhaps too much.

the public just never bought Nixon, never have.

Even the ratings on the TV movie that jumped out ahead of us,

they had no ratings either.

the interest in Nixon was never there to begin with. It is in the media.

It is in the History Channel. It is as a president.

Real life, spectators don't wanna spend time with Richard Nixon.

they find him to be a monster or somebody who scares them off.

It's a very interesting psychological underpinning.

It was a huge production. We did it in 65 days, 60 days.

Worked our butt off.

It came out nicely in the end. Cinergi was a great company to work with.

Andy Vajna did a great job for us. Really backed us.

We came in very close to budget.

Doesn't matter to me. I'm glad I made the movie. I'm sorry they lost money.

I did too. But at the end of the day, I think it's one of my best movies.