Meeting John Dean Changes Perspective
TV types who don’t go to the movies much, please note: If you see Oliver Stone’s film “Nixon,” when John Dean appears, don’t stand up and shout, “Hey, there’s Niles!”
Yes, that is Emmy-winning “Frasier” actor David Hyde Pierce playing the ultimate snitch Dean. But the Yale-educated, 6-foot, 160-ish pound actor has an acting life beyond playing the finicky, neurotic psychiatrist brother of Seattle radio psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane.
“Nixon” isn’t Pierce’s first major feature film. Before hitting it big with “Frasier,” Pierce landed film roles, albeit small ones, as Meg Ryan’s brother in “Sleepless in Seattle” and Jack Nicholson’s co-worker in “Wolf.”
Playing Nixon adviser John Dean started with a call from his agent. Pierce was told that Oliver Stone wanted to see him. It was only before a second visit, to read for the part, that Pierce learned he was being considered for the Dean role.
“I was sitting in (Stone’s) waiting room,” Pierce said during a recent phone interview, “and Oliver came out and said, ‘Oh, that’s right, you’re reading today. There’s someone I want you to meet.”’
That someone was John Dean.
“I was so shocked, I couldn’t believe it,” Pierce recalled. “We had a talk then and a couple (more) times after that on the movie.”
Not having seen the completed film, Pierce says the script “has all the potential to be really incredible.”
“I don’t think it’s the kind of what-really-happened-with-Nixon-and-that- woman movie that everyone’s expecting,” he guessed. “Oliver’s very smart. He did that once, that sort of shake-‘em-up-thing (‘JFK’). I think the most shocking thing about this movie will be the three-dimensional portrait of Nixon.”
In August 1974, when Nixon resigned the presidency because of the Watergate scandal, Pierce was a 14-year-old at summer camp in New Hampshire. In the parking lot during intermission of an all-Beethoven concert, Pierce recalled, someone had a TV. That’s where he saw Nixon make his exit speech. “It didn’t mean anything to me, really,” Pierce said.
After meeting Dean, reading his book “Blind Ambition,” and doing other research, Pierce has made up his mind about the man who will always be known as one of the century’s greatest snitches.
“I might have done the same thing in his position,” Pierce said. “I don’t think he only did what he was told. I think he was responsible for some unfortunate choices.
“I think the thing that saved him in my mind is that there came a point when he said, ‘We’ve crossed the line/We can’t do this any more.’
“Historically, a lot of people look at him as a rat for turning everyone in,” Pierce said. “I have to say I don’t see it that way. He certainly made some really lousy decisions and broke some really good laws, but ultimately, I think, it must have been very difficult for him to face those people and say, ‘I’m going to tell what happened.”’