Broadcast News

Today, our news shows can be comprised of stories that aren’t news at all, depending on the events of the day.  Just look at the Today show.  The local news usually gets the big stories out first.  A crash on the highway, a building on fire, a robbery, then a segment about the local YouTube star or someones pet raccoon.  This trend in news becoming cheap entertainment, rather than facts on important events, is exactly what the serious reporters in Broadcast News had feared.

We first meet your three main characters as young teens.  Jane is obsessively writing at her typewriter and freaks out at her father when interrupted.  Aaron is the fifteen year old valedictorian high school graduate who just keeps getting beat up for being smart.  And Tom is the good looking boy who tries hard, but just isn’t good at school.  “What can you do with yourself if all you can do is look good?”  They all end up working together in a television news program and form a love triangle.

From their teenage introductions, we understand where each of them will end up.  Jane (Holly Hunter) is the workaholic writer and producer who loves it when everything is in her control.  Aaron (Albert Brooks) is the dedicated, educated corespondent who doesn’t have the looks to hold the world’s attention on TV.  And Tom (William Hurt) just keeps moving up the ladder because he is handsome and a voice that can sell the news.  Tom knows he’s unqualified for his job, sometimes he doesn’t even understand the news he’s reading.  He openly admits these faults, but still runs stories that aren’t real news and gets promoted, leaving Jane and Aaron perplexed and unhappy.  And when the station has to cut the budget, it’s surprising who gets the ax and who is promoted.

On a personal level, Tom is a good guy, and wants to do better at his job, so he tries to learn from Jane and Aaron.  The more Jane and Tom work together, the closer they become.  But Aaron has always had feelings for Jane, yet the two are just very good friends.  As the film progresses, Jane is pulled more and more between the two men and the stress of her job.

The most memorable scene from this film has to be when Aaron gets the chance to anchor the Saturday evening news.  After gaining some confidence using some tips from Tom on how to look good and sounds good, there is one thing Aaron didn’t see coming.  Sweat.  Once the camera goes live, he begins sweating in huge thick drips from his curly haired head.  What’s more hilarious is that every moment the camera is cut away from Aaron, a swarm of people run in to dab his head and have to run off before the camera is back on Aaron.  With all the mayhem, someone bumps into the big hanging map behind the desk, and it’s swinging in the background on live TV.  The whole scene is perfectly hilarious, one of the best moments in the entire film.

You may find Broadcast News under the romantic comedy genera, but it doesn’t feel like one.  It is a surprisingly intelligent film full of witty dialogue and complex characters.  The performances from all three leads are wonderful and worthy of their Oscar nominations, even though Albert Brooks was nominated under supporting actor.  There’s even Jack Nicholson who has a small role as the station’s head anchor who won’t reduce his salary, where in the film he requested not to be paid for the role.  This is the last film James L. Brooks made before The Simpsons started up and it feels like a smart springboard straight into his animated franchise.  At the least, this film was some fuel behind the character, Kent Brockman.

“A lot of alliteration from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts!”

Network

“We could make a series of it. “Suicide of the Week.” Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? “Execution of the Week.” “Terrorist of the Week.” I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: “The Death Hour.” A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It’d wipe that fuckin’ Disney right off the air.”

With that bit of dialogue, I fell in love with this film.  Network tells the story of people working within a television network, how ratings rule their lives and how they try to reflect the world’s views by the shows they decide to air.  The film is full of interesting, fleshed out characters that make us believe that they can be this eccentric and so ruled by their television lives.

First there’s Howard Beale (Peter Finch), an aging news anchorman who announces his retirement and his suicide to take place at the end of next Tuesday’s program.  With the network going into damage control over Beale’s inappropriate newscast, they decide to let him go on the next day to apologize.  Instead, he tells the world that he “just ran out of bullshit.”  The ratings for his blunt honesty are through the roof and soon Beale has his own show as a prophet, rambling and getting people to shout out their windows all over the country.  Together they yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Dianne Christensen (Faye Dunaway) is the young vice-president for UBS and has been looking for some edgy programming to reflect the anger that Americans are feeling.  When Howard yells bullshit, she finds her goldmine.  Dianne is part of the first generation to have television all their lives, and therefore has much different views that her older coworkers, like Max Schumacher (William Holden), a long time friend of Howard’s.  Max and Dianne start a relationship, even though Max is married, but he sees that Dianne is a sub level of human who has been too heavily influenced and desensitized by television.

I believe that is the main point of the film: television has defined how we live our lives.  It’s how we learn to deliver snarky one-liners with perfect timing, how to enter a room with the right presence, how to pause for dramatic effect.  Television shows us what’s in style, how to wear it right and how to walk in it.  It even shows us definitions for love, joy, anger and happiness.  How would we know these emotions if we had not grown up with defining images being flashed before us?

In the end, Network is too dark to be satire, I don’t believe it was meant to be interpreted in a satiric manner.  It seems to serve more as a warning for what television could (and has) become.  Channel surf on a Sunday morning and the images of some television preachers are very similar to Howard Beale’s raving rants just before he collapses into thunderous applause.  We now watch and vote for the next musical sensation and watch young people try to find their true love out of a hand full of contestants.

Network is full of strong language and the ideas that we’re becoming less genuinely human because of television may not be what everyone wants to think about.  But it’s a great movie, the acting is superb and worthy of the three Oscar wins by Beatrice Straight, Dunnaway, and the late Finch.  I strongly recommend Network.

“I’m not sure she’s capable of any real feelings. She’s television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny.”