Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with the Slate's boiler special podcast on Frost Nixon, the new Ron Howard movie from a stage play by Peter Morgan and starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella as, respectively, David Frost and Richard Nixon.

I'm here with John Dickerson, Slate's political reporter who's in Washington, D.C. Hi, John.

Hello. And so we both saw Frost Nixon last night in two separate cities,

and I have a couple questions to ask you about it because you actually saw the Washington premiere

of the movie, which is sort of the spot, you know, to see this very, this movie that's

sort of about the intersection of politics and journalism. So first of all, let's briefly sort of

summarize what the movie's about, the real event that it's based on and so forth. What this movie is based on is a series of interviews that took place.

When Nixon was in exile, he had resigned from office.

Ford had pardoned him.

Many in the country were furious because Nixon had never been called to account for his crimes.

And the interviews essentially, it was the moment when Nixon basically admitted as much as he ever did

that he had participated in a cover-up and that he was at fault and he'd let the American people

down. It was also an incredible media moment, of course, because it was not, this was still in

the age of the three big networks, American television was ruled by, you know, those familiar

names, John Chancellor,

Roger Mudd, and Walter Cronkite. And yet this was an interview by an outsider, you know,

a British entertainer. And so it has both a role in, a crucial role in American history,

but also in sort of American press history. And so it has all kinds of resonances with that. And I guess

the third being that the film is about essentially obstruction of justice, the role of executive

power and the abuse of power. And that, of course, echoes quite loudly in our current debate

over President Bush and whether he has abused executive power. And so it's coming

out really at a perfect time. Oh, I really want to talk about that with you about the parallels that

...