Furthermore, the actual Frost/Nixon interviews were fairly bland fare. There was some mild excitement regarding the initial Watergate questions (Frost's first question of the interview was, "Why didn't you burn the tapes?" and represented the question that was most on people's minds). But Nixon handled those pretty deftly and soon steered the interview towards the minutiae of his China visit.

Which means that in order to amplify the drama of the interviews, they had to create drama where there was none. Nixon's admission that "when the President does it, it is not illegal" was not, as the trailer showed, at the climax of a shouting match. It was delivered as a perfectly logical explanation of the extra-legal activities of his administration. Frost barely reacted to the line in the real interviews, just going along with Nixon's flow. Similarly, the "did you do any fornicating this weekend?" line wasn't dropped by Nixon just before the cameras rolled in a game of one-upsmanship to catch Frost off-guard. It came during a pause in taping while the former president was trying to make small talk--a task he was painfully bad at.

"Frost/Nixon" can be enjoyed and praised only by those who know precious little about the reality of those conversations. For the most part, they are a dry and very boring discussion of foreign policy that don't contain even a fraction of the drama hinted at in the trailers.