Broadcast News (1987)

 In his long, illustrious career, James L. Brooks, most famous for developing The Simpsons, has only directed six movies.  He actually has one of the stranger careers I've seen.  He started out as a television writer, jumping from show to show until he apparently developed a knack for selling TV shows. 

By the time he directed his first movie, Terms of Endearment, he had gotten a "created by" credit from eight different TV shows, all of which were off the air by that point.  He seemed disinterested in actually writing anything - of those eight shows, he only wrote for Mary Tyler Moore Show beyond the pilot and that was still just six total episodes.  He had also written one movie, which was decently reviewed but nothing special.

And then with Terms of Endearment, he got a chance to direct his own written work.  It was nominated for 11 Oscars and won five of them, including Best Director and Best Picture.  Four years later, he wrote and directed his follow-up, Broadcast News.

I liked Terms of Endearment quite a bit.  It wasn't nominated for 11 Oscars good, but it was a pretty good movie.  Broadcast News is better.  

Broadcast News has a lot going on.  It's a love triangle between a handsome, but dull anchorman and a brilliant, yet prickly news reporter.  Having to navigate these two options is a workaholic producer, who has constant breakdowns.

... But that's not really what the film is about.  It's about the fight for news itself.  On one side is Tom Grunick, played by William Hurt, who represents news as entertainment.  On the other side is Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), who thinks of news as some higher calling, that they should report the news without regard to ratings.

In the middle is Jane, played by Holly Hunter, who agrees more with Altman.  She doesn't want news to become entertainment.  She wants news to be compelling because the news is so compelling.  But the problem is Altman kind of sucks.  She's not attracted to him.  She is attracted to Grunick, but she also sort of hates everything he represents.

Grunick is charismatic, aware of his faults and seems to be trying to be better.  But, in this parable of the news, he also dumbs down his viewership.  Everyone in the news is trying to do their best to actually report the news, but ratings is king.  Grunick wants to be better, but he also understands what makes compelling television and that's ultimately what's going to win out.

Conversely, Altman is dying to be an anchor.  He's a very good on-field reporter, but when he gets his chance to anchor on a day where most everyone else is at a party, he fails miserably.  He'll certainly report exactly what we need to hear, but it won't be compelling television.

Broadcast News was made 34 years ago, and the fight represented in this movie has been lost, so much so that modern viewers may not even perceive what exactly Grunick is doing wrong.  (And in fact, I believe his "ultimate sin" was already standard practice at the time, something I am completely willing to overlook because of what it symbolizes).  The dull, handsome anchor is what we get.

The three leads were all nominated for an Academy Award and, while I haven't seen that many 1987 movies, they all deserved it.  I have seen Moonstruck though, and Holly Hunter deserved it over Cher.  I'll say that.  Hunter was amazing in this movie.  She's the glue holding this movie together.

I'll also give some credit to Brooks, who by all accounts should be the guy the audience is rooting for.  He has the more honorable symbolic position to news after all.  But Brooks can be mean.  He responds to a rape survivor's tearful story with a sardonic quip (he's watching her on TV, not like face to face thank god).  It certainly complicates matters that Altman is nothing but mean to Grunick, and Grunick couldn't be a nicer, more humble guy.

Hurt meanwhile gets to play the extremely rare self-aware dumb guy.  He knows he's dumb.  He knows he only has the job for his looks and charm, and not for any news-related reason.  This is all stuff that in 2021, we would probably scoff at.  A news anchor got the job for his looks and charm?  Well aren't those the only requirements?  Evidently, once upon a time, they actually had to be respected newsmen.

What makes the movie good is that while it clearly seems to lean towards the side of news for the sake of news and not entertainment, Grunick IS better at being a news anchor.  When he does his thing with Hunter screaming in his ear half the time, he presents a clean, successful broadcast.  Grunick knows what a good news broadcast is.  There's a place for this.  It just shouldn't be the only thing.

I make it sound like this is a lesson, but these are themes that are naturally revealed through its characters.  It is not a movie for the sake of lecturing the audience, Brooks created complex characters where their actions felt natural.  The fact that it also works as a commentary on the state of journalism is nothing short of amazing to me.

The third thing that works for this movie is that it's just a fun, seemingly accurate look at how making a news television show happens.  There's an early scene that helps capture the thrill and terror that makes you understand why these characters have dedicated their lives to it.  I am not really a fan of the man's work, but there's no way Aaron Sorkin wasn't heavily influenced by this movie.  Just to give you an idea.

Most movies barely work on one level.  Broadcast News, in my opinion, works on three levels.  It's a love triangle, and and a compelling one with a conclusion that's fit to the story its telling importantly.  It's a fight between old journalism and new journalism.  And it's a fascinating look into high stakes, live television.

4/4 stars

The Soderbergh Experience: Part 3

Intro

Out of Sight (1998)

Once again, I am watching all of Steven Soderbergh movies out of order.  This is a practical matter as not all of his movies are currently available to me, but I decided to make the most of it and get creative with how I watched his movies.  I have a method for how I'm picking his movies, but it's mostly just random, so no need to explain my choices.

When I watched Out of Sight, two movies immediately came to mind.  The first is Get Shorty, the 1995 movie that predates this.  The comparison makes more sense when you see who is behind the movie.  For starters, both movies are based off an Elmore Leonard novel so both have complicated plots, inept criminals, and one man above the fray with a love interest already in a relationship.  Leonard pretty much believes criminals are criminals for a reason and that they will fuck up their plans by their own doing.  You see that here.

The screenplay was also written by the same guy, Scott Franks.  Franks appears to be a very good writer, with an unorthodox amount of well-reviewed movies in his resume.  He does have the good fortune of working with good directors.  He's worked with Kenneth Branaugh, Steven Spielberg, and James Mangold in addition to Soderbergh.  It's possible his movies are good because of the directors but the directors also picked his screenplays.  His lone writing-directing effort appears to be a solid movie so I'm inclined to call him a good writer.  The movie was also produced by Danny Devito, who starred in Get Shorty, and Barry Sonnenfield, who directed it.  (Both produced Get Shorty too)  So it's not exactly a comparison I make that comes out of left field.

The other movie that came to mind was Ocean's Eleven.  This movie almost seemed like a warmup to me.  Now I'm just going by memory, but it seems to me that Ocean's Eleven is a much more polished bank story than Out of Sight.  Here he seems slightly restrained by the tone of Get Shorty.  That's not a bad thing.  I loved Get Shorty and it mimicked the same tone really well.  But it did sort of have the effect that I was watching a lesser Get Shorty and a less fun Ocean's Eleven.  The latter is not fair at all since it came after this movie I admit.

Obviously the main culprit behind the Ocean Eleven comparison is Clooney.  He plays virtually the same character in both movies.  Once again, this seems like more of a warmup to Danny Ocean to me.  Clooney had perfected this style by Ocean's Eleven.  He's far from bad in Out of Sight though.  He goes a long way towards justifying a marshal's decision to essentially forget her duties for him for at least a night.  Don Cheadle is also in this movie, but he definitely plays a different character.  Here he's kind of a stereotype - he's even got a Tupac style bandana on his head when in prison - and in Ocean's, I don't know he's French or something.  I'm really not sure what with the accent he chose to go with for that movie.

The cast is pretty incredible including a surprisingly effective turn by Jennifer Lopez.  I say surprising because I didn't think she was all that good of an actress - in fact when I've stumbled on this movie before I turned it off because I didn't imagine it was good mostly because she was in it.  I am admittedly not basing this off a large sample of movies I've seen in her, but when you form an impression, it's not always fair.  It's also surprising because if you'd describe Karen Sisco as a character to me, Lopez is pretty fucking far from how I'd imagine her.  Carlo Gugino, who later played her in a quickly cancelled TV series called Karen Sisco, is more what I would have imagined. (It actually kind of seems like near perfect casting.  Too bad it got cancelled so quickly)

Clooney and Cheadle are both as great as they usually are, even if they spur in me images of what I think is a better movie.  (Kind of argue to argue Cheadle is better in Ocean's just for that accent, but Clooney is definitely at his best in Ocean's so it's not a comparison that favors this movie).  This is just a movie with a bunch of solid performances from people who usually give them.  Ving Rhames, Catherine Keener, Dennis Farina, and Steve Zahn all play their parts with their usual talent.  I have to confess I didn't recognize Albert Brooks until halfway through the movie which is kind of incredible since it's Albert Brooks!  So I'd say he disappeared in the role (that could just be me of course).

I hate to keep giving every movie of Soderbergh's the same grade, but my main complaint of "it's not as good as two other movies I absolutely love" is not really a complaint, so much as an acknowledgement that it's not going to get the perfect grade.  Three movies, 3 stars for all of them.

3 stars out of 4