Portrayal Of Journalists In The Movies p. 18

By: Bill Mahon

THIS HAS BEEN a banner year for movies that feature journalists as major characters in their plots and that trend is heating up even more as the fall line up of films begins to appear in theaters across the country.
The Paper and I Love Trouble, released earlier in the year with major stars such as Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts playing the part of journalists, offered light-hearted views of the profession while at the same time showing reporters righting some of society's wrongs. An image most journalists can live with and maybe even feel good about.
At the other end of the extreme is Oliver Stone's controversial new movie, Natural Born Killers.
Killers includes in much of its publicity posters and advertising the journalism-bashing tag line: "The media made them heroes."
The movie is doing big business at the box office ? more than $11 million the first weekend in release ? and it is also generating a great deal of attention in the same media that is a critical target of the film.
Some of the other action you will see in movie theaters during the coming months will also portray the dark side of the profession ? reporters chasing their own fame and fortune with more vigor than the search for truth. Newsroom based movies go back at least 80 years when Thomas Edison produced a silent movie with a reporter character, The Reform Candidate.
Since that time, however, more than 1,000 movies have been made with reporters as central characters in their plots. Most of them are not along the lines of All the President's Men, where heroic (and handsome) investigative reporters go after bad guys in the U.S. government and save the free world. Most journalism movies show reporters with flaws, rough edges, and a disregard for playing by the rules that the rest of society lives by. Sometimes the rule breaking is for a good cause ? the search for truth. But more often real reporters probably cringe at the portrayals offered by actors.
Natural Born Killers stars Robert Downey, Jr., in the role of a tabloid television reporter out to get the scoop on vicious killers Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. The criticism of the media that is offered through the movie's portrayals is played up in the advertising to get the movie-going public interested in the film.
A full page advertisement in the New York Times on August 21, quotes a number of national reviewers in bold headline type proclaiming that Natural Born Killers is an "indictment" of the media.
Moment of Truth: Caught in the Crossfire, a made for television movie that recently aired on NBC, served up a "fact-based" story of a journalist, played by Dennis Franz, who agrees to work undercover for the FBI.
In Blankman, Damon Wayans was a good guy superhero with a bad tailor who, while chasing bad guys, was himself chased by television reporter Robin Givens.
Quiz Show, which opened in theaters this week, is directed by Robert Redford and starring Ralph Fiennes, John Turturro and Rob Morrow, and exposes a scam at one of the hottest television game shows of the Golden Age, Twenty-One.
A number of other movies with journalists as central characters are scheduled to be released between now and the end of the year, and some additional television programs will use newsrooms as backdrops to their stories this fall.
These movies range from lightweight comedies to dark dramas, and they take place at newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations. And if you get tired of watching all this action, you might relax by listening to the sound track to the movie I Love Trouble, where you can find such hit songs as "Everybody Buys the Globe" and "Scoop Du Jour."
Among the upcoming media movies are:
? Radioland Murders Starring Brian Benben, Mary Stuart Masterson and Ned Beatty, this plot is a comedy murder, produced by George Lucas, that evolves around the search for a murderer who interrupts life at a live radio show.
? Love Affair features Warren Beatty playing the part of a TV sportscaster who falls in love with his real life wife, Annette Bening, playing the part of a stress-management consultant.
? Johnny 100 Pesos is a Chilean dark comedy that finds humor in the attention the media give to a failed robbery.
? Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle features Matthew Broderick as legendary newspaperman Charles MacArthur in a look at writer Dorothy Parker and the literary types who took up residence at the bar of New York's Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s and 30s.
? Pret-a-Porter features another ensemble cast from director Robert Altman. The movie focuses on the Paris fashion scene and the reporters and photographers who cover it. Playing journalists are Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Sally Kellerman, Kim Basinger and Stephen Rea.
? Cobb This movie about baseball legend Ty Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones plays the slugger) stars Robert Wuhl in the key role of sportswriter Al Stump, the man who becomes the Cobb's biographer.
? Speechless brings us Christopher Reeve as a network news reporter covering a tough U.S. Senate race. Geena Davis and Michael Keaton star as speech writers for the two opposing candidates. The Davis-Keaton roles may conjure up images of the cross-parry romance of James Carville and Mary Matalin that was a backdrop to the Bush/Clinton presidential race.
? Dolores Claiborne showcases Jennifer Jason Leigh as a New York City magazine reporter in a murderous Stephen King film starring Kathy Bates.
And if there is not enough newsroom action on the big screen to satisfy your appetite, we can all look forward to next year to see how Clint Eastwood plays the part of a National Geographic photographer in the movie version of the hit book, The Bridges of Madison County. Instead of shooting criminals Eastwood will be shooting cover stories for one of the nation's most respected magazines.
There are other sources for the public to watch in order to see what life is like in a newsroom, or at least Hollywood's image of the news business. Television programs, in particular sitcoms, bring reporters into America's living rooms almost every night of the week.
What are journalists really like?
? In Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, on ABC, journalists are faster than a speeding bullet and they are able to leap tall buildings, etc., etc.
On the CBS show Dave's World journalists work out of their house, almost never go to the office, the editor comes to the columnist's home and even babysits the kids from time to time. Journalists in this television show spend a lot of time with their families and are very, very funny people.
In Love and War, Jack, the newspaper columnist on this CBS comedy, spends most of his time out of the office attached to a bar stool complaining about various aspects of the world around him and his life in particular.
In the NBC hit comedy Frazier, the psychiatrist radio talk show host does not really care too much for most of the people who call into his program with personal problems. He often hangs up on them, particularly when they are reaching out to him for help.
In Northern Exposure, aired on CBS, radio dee-jay and town gossip Chris is one of the many oddball characters who inhabit an isolated Alaskan town.
He is also apparently the only employee of the radio station ? nobody else seems to do any other work at the station, except for an occasional person filling in for Chris when he is in the middle of one of his crises.
In Murphy Brown, CBS's big hit, and the current grand-daddy of journalism shows on television, you may have trouble telling the difference between the actors acting like real journalists and the real journalists acting like actors. Some of the same network news people who have interviewed actress Candice Bergen have appeared on the fictional show the stars Bergen, Murphy Brown. Think of it: journalists playing the part of themselves? Any reason to think the public might be a little confused?
In Hearts Afire, a sitcom starring John Ritter, the cast and characters were abruptly moved from a Washington, D.C., settling last year to a small town newspaper office.
In the latest television venture into a newsroom, Madman of the People ? starring Dabney Coleman as newspaper columnist Jack Bruckner ? will serve up yet another image of journalism.
Even the CBS hit, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, includes a recurring character who is the editor of the local newspaper.
So how many real journalists leap tall buildings with a single bound . . . ? How many real journalists go undercover for the FBI . . .? How many real journalists invite their editor over to babysit the kids . . . ?