Robert Altman directed Secret Honor, monologue film written by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone (based on their play), starring Philip Baker Hall as former president Richard M. Nixon.
A disgraced Nixon is restlessly pacing in the study at his New Jersey home, in the late 1970s. Armed with a loaded revolver, a bottle of Scotch whisky and a running tape recorder, while surrounded by closed circuit television cameras, he spends the next 90 minutes recalling, with rage, suspicion, sadness and disappointment, his controversial life and career in a long monologue.
Under the brilliant direction of Altman, Baker Hall did not impersonate or spoofed Nixon, but offered an intensely passionate (and compassionate) look at the president’s psyche in a mode that was both scathing and funny, resulting in mixed feelings of viewers, ranging from sympathy to contempt to pity.
The 90-minute film was shot at the University of Michigan.
