Q&A; WITH DAVID FROST : Marketing ‘Timeless Truths’

David Frost has built an international conglomerate by asking questions of famous people, maintaining a staff of 10 in Los Angeles and another 10 in London, along with a rich Rolodex of researchers everywhere.

In London, his weekly TV interview show is “Frost on Sunday.”

In America, it’s “Talking With David Frost”--the first Friday of the month on PBS.

Then there are his specials, such as the vice presidential candidates last month, the presidential guys next week on PBS.

And there is the portable Frost, the home video version. He dabbled with video earlier with his PBS interviews with Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Ross Perot. Now he’s going for a major package deal with MCA Home Video--seven-plus hours of his landmark 1977 television interviews with Richard Nixon, the first public utterances from the former President three years after leaving office.

The Nixon project, due out Nov. 4, the day after Election Day, is another example of Hollywood’s great gift at recycling. But for MCA, documentaries are a relatively new field.

Surprisingly, in a depressed economy, special interest videos have become revenue producers. Sales of these videos will reach an estimated $785 million this year, up from last year’s $735 million, with documentaries expected to produce $120 million in sales this year, also up from last year.

What Nixon/Frost’s contribution to this new Hollywood wealth will be is uncertain--just who will buy seven-plus hours of this particular history?

Question: What prompted you now to come out with videotapes of your 15-year-old interviews with Nixon?

Answer: Over the years I’ve had many requests for copies of that 1977 interview, which originally was planned as four 1 1/2-hour broadcasts but grew to be seven. The broadcasts came from 28 3/4 hours of interviews with the former President near his home in San Clemente. MCA Home Video people approached me, saying they were looking for something with historic value, to see if there would be an audience for timeless but historic material in my many interviews. The conversation turned to the Nixon interviews. These, of course, could never be repeated since Nixon has not consented again for this type of in-depth examination of Watergate and his years as President. Never again. MCA agreed and said they would do it.

Q: Who do you think would want to buy these videos? Where’s the market?

A: I would think they would be a resource for schools and universities and for people who want to possess a particular event in history. Beside history, these tapes are television texts. The drama in them is undiminished, timeless truths about the most controversial President in United States history, a period that has passed but had never been examined before in the first person.

Q: Are the individual tapes duplicates of the original broadcast or have they been edited?

A: It’s all there, in the same order of the broadcasts. Volume 1 is Watergate, then two is “The World,” big power dealings and the opening to China. The fifth album is from our fifth broadcast, which actually was made up of outtakes from the first four. That’s where we take up the missing 18 1/2-minute gap in his office recordings.

Q: What were the toughest parts of the interviews for you?

A: Watergate. At first Nixon stonewalled. He wouldn’t admit anything. I had been prepared well by four researchers and a year of study. I persisted with my questions. The second day on that subject he began to admit some mistakes. He used the word mistake. I asked him to go further than that word. He asked what I would suggest. I talked about the abuse of his oath of office. Then he apologized. For the next 20 minutes he addressed himself directly to a set of demanding questions about Watergate. Near the end he said he had let down everyone’s set of expectations of him. It was his mea culpa . He had gone further than he had expected. At the end, I was drenched and wrung out, as much as he was. I sensed that at that moment he was more vulnerable than he had ever been.

Q: When you see the tapes now, do you have second thoughts about what you might have discussed with him?

A: No. I had a terrific team. We asked every pointed question except who he thought Deep Throat was and of course he wouldn’t have known that. But even now, looking at that interview, it still takes me by surprise at some of his answers, the electricity, especially, of the Watergate subject.

Q: What are your perceptions now of Nixon?

A: I would have to go back to the Watergate tape when he said he could never serve in office anymore but maybe he could give advice. When he said that in May, 1977, even the words, “maybe I can give some advice,” seemed like an impossible dream on his part, so unlikely. In that sense, his eventual reinstatement through his occasional public appearances and the advice he has given in his books have turned that idea into reality when once it seemed an impossibly optimistic hope.

You could argue that he did confront Watergate and other issues of his presidency in the forum I provided, one in which he had no controls. It could have been a catharsis, made possible his later re-emergence. He had faced up to those issues in our conversation.

Q: Have you seen Nixon since the interviews?

A: I visited him briefly after the final editing of the television tapes, shortly after the broadcast of the second interview. Our agreement was that he would not know the questions before the interviews nor be involved in the editing. We had a pleasant visit. A few years later we met briefly once again at a New York restaurant. We exchanged pleasantries.

Q: What is the financial arrangement with Nixon?

A: Our agreement then and now was that he would receive 20% of our net earnings. In 1977, the costs were extremely high. The three networks would not pay for the interviews so we had to create our own network through independent stations, through syndication. It was an expensive enterprise that cost about $2 million to do. We did come out of it in the black, though, but profit was secondary. The interviews carried such a privilege and responsibility that just balancing books would have been a joy.

Q: Will Nixon and his library receive copies of the videos?

A: Certainly. We have also made available to the library the full 28 3/4 hours of tape that were produced in the interviews.

Q: Do you have plans for additional productions for home video?

A: We have one definite project and it’s different, of course, from the Nixon tapes. It’s a John Cleese special that we will market first in England and then decide if we will bring it out in the United States. It’s typically Cleese, called “How to Irritate People.”