A-List: Five Best Movies About Journalism
By J. Don Birnam
December 1, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The rules for this are trickier than you may think. There are many movies that feature journalists in some capacity or another, though not all are about the art and profession of journalism itself. The movie Philomena, for example, is a solid tale with a reporter as one of the leads, but the story isn’t about what it means to be a journalist, or the challenges inherent in the job. One could say the same about the 1980s duos The Year of Living Dangerously and The Killing Fields, which chronicle the atrocities of the Indonesia and the Khmer Rouge regimes, respectively. In both, journalists are reporting in a volatile country as things deteriorate, and are forced into dicey situations and tough choices. Both movies are very good, but they are just enough about the regime and less enough about the journalists themselves, as to force us to leave them off the list for today.
So we will try to focus on movies that are really about the core of what it means to be someone who reports and/or investigates the truth. La Dolce Vita, Roman Holiday, His Girl Friday - romantic comedies with correspondents or reporters as characters - are unfortunately out of the running today.
Even when being strict about what counts, there is an embarrassment of riches in this type of movie. We have already discussed my liking towards Good Night, and Good Luck, which is most definitely a movie about journalism and how a journalist can take an important, principled stand against a system and a tyrant. Had I not already listed it and felt the need to give space in this crowded category, it would surely be at or near the top. The same goes for Reds, which I listed in the same column as Good Night. There is, indeed, something about actors turned directors making movies about journalism. Robert Redford, no less, plays Dan Rather in the aforementioned Truth. The movie Wag the Dog also stands out as a brutally honest examination of the media at least vis-à-vis other systems of power and governance, and is a worthy mention.
I’ll give one last shout-out, to the 1980s analysis of a newsroom and its interpersonal intrigues, Broadcast News. For sure a movie about television and how the personalities behind it shape the content of what we watch, the movie is also a tender exploration of fictional characters - well portrayed by William Hurt and Holly Hunter - without being overly saintly. It is a solid movie about reporters, but it is mostly a romantic comedy.
5. Nightcrawler (2014)
Shamefully ignored by the Academy Awards after landing in several critics’ groups list, last year’s Nightcrawler is already one of the all-time best movies about reporters and what the news has become. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a creepy police-car chaser who films sensationalistic videos of people in peril and then sells them to the highest bidder morning TV show, in a race-to-the-bottom type scenario that exposes the cruelness of the human morbidity for the pain and suffering of others.
The movie is thus overt while being smartly critical of that culture of reality TV, paparazzi, and yellow journalism that pervades the world of social media. Eerily prescient of shocking events like the live shooting of two TV reporters in 2015, Nightcrawler forces us to evaluate our relationship with these darker aspects of our cultures and examine why it is that we contribute to these tragedies (both figuratively but, in the movie, directly), by supporting them.
Add on true comeback performances by both Gyllenhaal and an-on-the-money Rene Russo as the ruthless but somewhat conflict-torn news producer, and you have a great movie about the darker side of the fourth estate.
4. Frost/Nixon (2008)
Long after Anthony Hopkins mostly bored us with the three-hour long Nixon biopic of the same name, Frank Langella and Michael Sheen wowed us with their pointed portrayals of the disgraced former President and David Frost, the British reporter to whom he granted a tell-all interview in the years that followed, and who struggled mightily to discover and dissect Nixon’s humanity.
The movie is almost entirely a back-and-forth, adversarial conversation qua interview between the two men, and as such turns into an acting clinic for the ages. But the movie is as much about the humanism of the journalist himself and his relationship to the subject matter of his investigation. Like Spotlight this year, the interesting and well-developed aspect of the movie is the way in which the stories shape the journalist as much as the converse occurs. The moral and ethical obligations that reporters have to society, to a free democracy, and to accountability, are obligations that they owe first and foremost to themselves. It’s not a matter simply of journalistic integrity, but of journalistic empathy and humanity.
3. A Gentleman’s Agreement (1946)
Speaking of empathy, the 1946 Best Picture winner is definitely one of the best movies about how a reporter can become a part of the story.
I’m cheating a bit, I suppose, by including this movie on the list, because, arguably, the movie is about the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in America. In the film, Gregory Peck plays (what else) a morally upright reporter who is interested in analyzing and perhaps debunking discriminatory attitudes in American society towards Jewish people. To do so, he passes himself off as Jewish in various social, professional, and political circles. What begins as skepticism that there is a problem turns into the shocking realization, through this process of investigative journalism, that the prejudicial attitudes are everywhere. Opportunities of all sorts begin to close for him left and right, and he is left with the tragic view that he himself had been a part of the problem with his naiveté and acquiescence.
The end result is a tell-all exposure of anti-Semitism that redeems both the journalist and the story, and that, while trite in the way it makes Peck the boy scout-type hero, reminds us of the importance of journalists in discovering and bringing to light topics of great importance that can be too easily forgotten.
I have now listed three of the smartest movies of any subject you will say, but they are made to look like kindergartners by the next two.
2. Network (1976)
It is somewhat of an oxymoron to say that this movie and the one that follow are either better than the other. They are unarguably the two best movies about journalism ever made, and no one is even close. In Network, the brilliant screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky takes us into the fictional world of a TV network struggling to remain relevant in modern times, and the comical and disturbing extremes they’d go to do so.
Before Nightcrawler explored sensationalism, before Truth explored what could go wrong in reporting, Network brought to light all of the anxieties of the 1970s and the deteriorating trust in the media, the government, and each other, in ways that were at the same time timely and timeless, ahead of their time and precisely in the key of the moment. Network predicted the rise of entertainment/opinion-based journalism a la Fox and MSNBC news, foresaw our obsession with terrorism, and saw the writing on the wall regarding profit-driven, corporate-owned newsrooms. What Chayesfky wrote as an anxious, urgent parody, has become the stunning and tragic reality of our news cycles.
Network, on top of that superb screenplay, features a half-dozen acting performances for the ages, with five nominations and three wins, including a posthumous win for Peter Fincher and his moving portrayal of the manic news anchor Howard Beale (who also gave us the now timeless “Mad as Hell” line), and for Faye Dunaway, in an almost slapstick, sarcastic, but ruthless performance.
And, what can I say about the direction of genius Sidney Lumet, the subject of an A-List column a while back. If you haven’t seen Network, stop reading now. This movie can be seen dozens and dozens of times, as you will always discover something else brilliant about its overall message and crafting.
1. All The President’s Men (1976)
It turns out that, before we had 2015 and two big award contenders about journalists, we had 1976 and two huge award contenders about journalists. It also turns out that in 1976, there was also a popular boxing movie, which has resulted in a sequel in 2015. That boxing movie, of course, was the crowd-pleasing Rocky, which vanquished both journalism movies at the Academy Awards. For shame, if you ask me, although Rocky has obviously stood the test of time as an American classic, regardless of my own thoughts about the movie.
In any case, on to the more deserving film. In it, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play the now famous Washington Post reporters who helped bring down (who else?) Richard Nixon with their investigation of the break-in into the Watergate Hotel. Long before Spotlight borrowed and faithfully applied the technique, All the President’s Men is a strict but tense journalistic procedural about how the sausage is made, why it is made the way it is, and, of course, the brutal importance of journalists as a check and balance on government in our system.
The movie itself was made meticulously, faithfully recreating the Post’s newsroom and featuring a tingly soundtrack to punctuate the drama. And it was made under the most challenging of conditions, only two years removed from the events in question, testing the public’s desire to revisit the tense chapter in our history. Like a lot of good values about journalists themselves, movies that deal squarely with controversial topics in the midst of these topics developing are a rarity today, and when they do come out, they are mostly ignored by a public that is more interested, full-blown Network style, in what Kim Kardashian is wearing or in who Snookie is dating. Not to sound too much like Paddy Chayefsky, but they simply do not make the journalists, or the movies, like they used to.
But Bob Woodward did risk career and even safety to investigate the highest office in the land, the Post did publish the story, and movie moguls did decide to make this movie and risk the money involved with that project. Then, nearly 40 years later, not one but two more such projects have graced the screen, and both are based on instances of journalists either getting it very right, or of something gone horribly awry.
So maybe there is hope after all.