Trailer: OUR NIXON (2011) by Penny Lane and Brian Frye
OUR NIXON (trailer) from Penny Lane on Vimeo.
OUR NIXON
Directed by Penny Lane & Brian Frye
A feature documentary – coming in 2011!
Support this project: visit the Our Nixon kickstarter page: http://kck.st/eK7tjP
“Everyone knows that during the Watergate investigation, the FBI confiscated more than 3700 hours of secret audio recordings from the Nixon White House. But the FBI also confiscated 204 reels of Super-8 film from John Ehrlichman’s personal files. The confiscated films were home movies made by Nixon aides H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Dwight Chapin, and Larry Higby. When the Watergate investigation ended, the home movies were filed away by the government and forgotten.
OUR NIXON presents those home movies for the first time, using them to create an intimate and surprising portrait of the Nixon administration.
Between 1969 and 1973, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Chapin and Higby captured every aspect of their life with Nixon in more than 17 hours of home movies. They filmed the pivotal and the prosaic, from Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao to the bathroom fixtures in the Forbidden City. They filmed White House performances by Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Dionne Warwick, Johnny Cash and Raquel Welch, the historic 1971 May Day Protests against the Vietnam War on the National Mall, and Tricia Nixon’s Rose Garden wedding. But mostly, they filmed each other: Higby standing in front of the Eiffel Tower and waving at the camera, Chapin and Kissinger clowning around at the beach, and a hummingbird sipping nectar from a feeder. Ehrlichman was quite fond of hummingbirds.
Sometimes, stories get lost in their endings. Using these never-before-seen home movies, Nixon’s secret recordings, Haldeman’s audio diary, and the recollections of our four cameramen, OUR NIXON tells the forgotten story that ends with Watergate.”
Penny Lane’s website: http://www.p-lane.com/
Support this project: visit the Our Nixon kickstarter page: http://kck.st/eK7tjP