John Cusack does a meanly funny cameo as Richard Nixon in “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” but the man nicknamed Tricky Dick was a much more complex character than the paranoid drunk Cusack portrays.

A more nuanced picture of the only president to resign from office emerges in Penny Lane’s clever documentary, which is getting a brief theatrical run after its recent showing on CNN.

Lane remixes excerpts from the famous Watergate tapes recorded by Nixon’s hidden Oval Office surveillance system with little-known home movies shot by top aides like H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin, all of whom would do jail time after their boss was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

Seized by Watergate prosecutors, sent to the National Archives and forgotten, the mundane movies of events like the president’s daughter’s wedding and his groundbreaking trip to China are juxtaposed with Nixon’s rants about his enemies and the “homosexuals” he believed were leading the US into decline.

“Our Nixon” uses this collage to provide insight into the incredible hubris of a president headed for a landslide re-election — who went to great lengths to cover up a break-in, all of which tarnished his reputation forever.