Chasing the Reels: Brian Frye on 'Our Nixon'

2013-01-25

Rotterdam Film FestivalTFI Documentary Fund Our Nixon Our Nixon began twelve years ago, on a drive from New York City to Amherst, Massachusetts. In 2001, I was a visiting professor at Hampshire College, teaching an introduction to filmmaking class. Often, I caught a ride with Bill Brand, whose class I was covering. During one such drive, Bill told me that he was working on a project for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), creating a preservation copy of 204 reels of Super-8 home movies filmed by Richard Nixon’s closest aides. The films had been confiscated from John Ehrlichman’s office during the Watergate investigation and deposited with NARA, but were largely unknown and unseen. Unlike the well-known secret White House tapes, they shed no light on Nixon’s abuse of power, so they were ignored. As an amateur film buff, I was intrigued, and Bill offered to show me some of the films. The following week, I went to his loft and he showed me rushes of several reels. I was entranced. The films were straight-up home movies, but reflected such an unusual perspective on an iconic, infamous presidency. I immediately resolved to get copies of the films and make something from them, when the preservation was complete. Unfortunately, events intervened. The following year, I decided to start law school. But I kept thinking about the Nixon Super-8 films. They were not readily accessible, as NARA did not make any video transfers, but I hired a researcher to videotape a few from a Steenbeck. In 2006, shortly after I finished law school, Cineaste published my article, “Three Great Filmmakers: Haldeman, Ehrlichman & Chapin, or Nixon’s Home Movies,” which told the story of the Super-8 films, based on contemporary press accounts.

In the summer of 2008, I met Penny Lane at the Flaherty Film Seminar and told her about the Nixon Super-8 films. She responded that if I didn’t make a movie with them, she would, so we’d better collaborate on it. I enthusiastically agreed, and Our Nixon began in earnest. Eventually, we negotiated an agreement with NARA to make video transfers of the Nixon staff Super-8 collection and paid Colorlab to make the transfers. Penny began watching and cataloging the films. And in December 2010, we spent two weeks at Yaddo, creating a rough sketch of a film. After paying for the video transfers, we were broke. So in March 2011, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to finish the film. The campaign was a roaring success. But more importantly, Kickstarter introduced us to our indispensable executive producers Dan Cogan and Jenny Raskin, who helped us see the film we wanted to make. We had planned to make an esoteric art film for a select audience. Suddenly, we understood how many people were fascinated by the Super-8 films, and realized that those films could enable us to tell a richer, more complex story about responsibility, betrayal, and culpability, set against one of the most transformative presidencies in American history. With the help of Tribeca Film Institute, Cinereach, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, IFP and UnionDocs, we made that film. The first step was hiring our visionary editor, Francisco Bello, who worked with Penny for months to create Our Nixon. We scoured dozens of archives and culled through hundreds of hours of archival footage to unearth the interviews, news clips, secret White House Tapes, White House Communications Agency recordings, audio diaries, and more that Penny and Francisco incorporated into the final film. In 2012, we discovered that Haldeman’s family had donated his original Super-8 films to the Nixon Library. The original NARA collection consisted largely of copies of the Haldeman films. So we immediately arranged for Jeff Kreines of Kinetta to make 4K scans of the Haldeman collection, which dramatically improved the quality of the image, revealing the beautifully detailed grain and colors of the original films. Over the course of the last several months, Our Nixon has benefited immensely from the tender ministrations of a series of consummate professionals. Seth Ricart and his team restored the lusciously saturated color of 70s Super-8 film and created fantastic title sequences. Hrishikesh Hirway contributed an amazing score. And Tom Paul and his team created an amazing soundscape from our incredibly challenging archival recordings. Now, we’re honored and super-excited for the international premiere of Our Nixon at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and we can’t wait to share it with audiences in the United States.