Two years ago, a newspaper movie, Spotlight, won the Academy Award for best picture. This year, another one, The Post, was nominated. There's been a surplus of great journalism movies of late, but that's hardly new, and it should come as no surprise. We journalists tend to be dashing creatures, boiling over with ambition and consumed by a righteous hunger for the truth. Either that or we're the enemy of the people. In any case, the world of news media has rarely been more newsworthy.
Ink-stained wretches and gleaming anchors will take center stage in my new Screening Room repertory series, The Media Goes to the Movies, kicking off March 20 at the Angelika Dallas. You'll find some inspiring heroes and some dastardly villains, some dogged fact-digging and even a little fake news. Some of the best journalism movies present us with ethically challenged scoundrels, a treat both for those who hate the media and for the vast majority of up-and-up journalists who take pride in doing things the right way.
For instance, take Chuck Tatum, the opportunistic scribe played by Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder's scabrous 1951 newspaper movie Ace in the Hole (showing April 17). Once a hotshot big-city reporter, Tatum drifts into Albuquerque and finds the story of a lifetime when a man gets trapped in a cave. But that's not enough for Tatum. He needs the guy to stay trapped in the cave if the story is to have legs. A good ol' media circus ensues. Wilder shows why he was among cinema's most acerbic chroniclers of the human condition. Note to present and future journalists: Don't follow Tatum's example.
While we're at it, don't be like Stephen Glass, the subject of the 2003 film Shattered Glass (showing Aug. 21). Glass was a fine, fine reporter for a novelist, meaning he fabricated story after story, mostly for The New Republic. In the movie, he's played by Hayden Christensen, offering a glimpse of what he could do when free from the burden of those abysmal Star Wars prequel scripts. The hero is Peter Sarsgaard's Charles Lane, the editor who wanted to believe Glass but tenaciously tracked down his lies. Which just goes to show, we all need a good editor.
Rest assured, not every movie in the series doubles as an ethics seminar. The series opener is a rowdy, flavorful chunk of pulp called Park Row (1952), the story of a classic newspaper war between competing 1880s New York tabloids. Back then, a newspaper war didn't mean mergers and buyouts. It meant fists and dynamite. The filmmaker, Sam Fuller, cut his teeth in the tabloid trenches, and Park Row, like most of his movies, conveys the in-your-face energy of a blaring headline. As rough as the going gets, the film takes a sentimental view of an older newspaper world thick with sweat, cigar smoke and whiskey.
You may note a bias toward print journalism in the above selections. What can I say? I am what I am. But we'll also give the boob tube its due, which isn't to say we'll let it off easy. Network (showing June 19) is one of the great movie satires regardless of subject; the fact that it puts TV news in its crosshairs just makes it tastier. The rantings, ravings and ratings of Howard Beale (Oscar winner Peter Finch) and the carnivalesque news hour he spawns feel more like the stuff of documentary with each passing day, 42 years after Network hit the screen.
On a slightly lighter note, we'll also show Broadcast News (July 17), James L. Brooks' acute love triangle about a driven network news producer (Holly Hunter) and the two reporters (William Hurt and Albert Brooks) smitten with her. Broadcast News is one of the great "have your cake and eat it, too" movies, a romantic comedy that asks pointed questions about the distinction between substance and image, ratings and ethics (there's that E-word again).
No, we're not forgetting the big one. All the President's Men (showing May 22) spawned a whole generation of young reporters enthralled by the possibility of speaking truth to power. But that's not why it's a great movie. This is the journalism film as thriller, with Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) playing reporters as detectives sifting through clues. It fits right into the wheelhouse of director Alan J. Pakula, who made an art of paranoia with films like The Parallax View and Klute.
We'll also throw in a surprise for September, one of my personal favorites that we're waiting to confirm. We'll stop the presses when we can officially add it to the schedule. Until then: Keep reading. The Fourth Estate is just getting started.
Plan your life
The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas VideoFest present Chris Vognar's Screening Room: The Media Goes to the Movies. All screenings are at 7 p.m. at the Angelika Dallas, 5321 E. Mockingbird Lane. Admission is free, but RSVP is required (first come, first served). RSVP at dallasnews.com/film; RSVPs open for each film after the previous film has shown. Please arrive at the theater by 6:45 p.m.
The schedule:
March 20: Park Row
April 17: Ace in the Hole
May 22: All the President's Men
June 19: Network
July 17: Broadcast News
Aug. 21: Shattered Glass
Sept. 17: Surprise screening
