Secret Honor

After resigning in disgrace, Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) sits at a desk in his study late at night, dictating his memoirs. Taking one drink, then another, he rants about Eisenhower, Castro, Khruschchev, Kissinger, the Kennedys, and any number of other people, some real, some imagined, finally ...more

Tellingly subtitled A Political Myth, Robert Altman's film version of Philip Baker Hall's one-man show Secret Honor (1984) intriguingly imagines a disgraced Richard Nixon as he spends an evening raging against his dying political light. Smoothly framing Hall's actions through the two media that were the bane of Nixon's career (unflattering TV and even more unflattering tape recordings), Secret Honor mixes fact and fiction in a rambling yet compelling monologue suggesting Nixon was the victim of ...more