Journalism In the Movies

(Reviews of Films Featuring Journalists)

written by
PAUL SCHINDLER

Paul Schindler, an IJPC associate,has been collecting journalism movies, as he defines them, since 1980. He maintains a journalism movie page and a blog. He currently is an 8th grade U.S. history teacher in Moraga, Calif. A 1974 graduate of MIT, he worked for AP, UPI and the Oregon Journal. His freelance work appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines including Daily News Tonite and the San Jose Mercury. He appeared on public television's The Computer Chronicles for a decade and spent more than two decades in computer journalism. He is married with two grown daughters and two middle-aged cats.

Last Update: 6-2009

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
(released in April 2009)

4 stars out of 5

Does this sound like the cast of a direct to video production to you? Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon, Angela Bassett, Alan Alda, Vera Farmiga, David Schwimmer, Courtney B. Vance and Noah Wyle. Heck, Floyd Abrams, the famed first amendment lawyer who frequently represents the New York Times, even has a cameo as the judge. No, my friends, this is Oscar-bait. Except that Yari Film Group, the production company, went under in the bad economy and took a lot of pretty classy looking films with it. At least this one (unlike, say, Accidental Husband) actually got a U.S. release as a DVD.

I won't spend a lot of time beating a dead horse, but it is difficult for me to characterize this as a journalism movie. Yes, the main character is a journalist. Yes, the film's central dilemma is one of the most important issues in serious investigative journalism: the need to protect your sources. But there is precious little journalism on display here. Lots of human drama, lots of angst, lots of moral ambiguity. But precious little journalism.

The film makes it clear with an announcement before the title that this film is not based on any story or character. That is, of course, because it is so obviously based on the story of Judith Miller of the New York Times, and her jail term for civil contempt for refusing to give up her source for a story she never published about Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent.
Yes, they change her name, and move the story to a Washington, D.C. newspaper (actually the Memphis Commercial-Appeal). They put her in jail for 18 months, rather than the 85 days Miller actually served. And although there was speculation that Patrick Fitzgerald would do to Miller what he does to Kate " Rachel Armstrong" Beckinsale in the film, Miller just walked away at the end of her term.

In fact, writer/director Rod Lurie changes just enough of the facts to make the case even more ambiguous than the fairly ambiguous real-life case it was based on. It's a weird feeling to watch the film if you followed the Miller/Plame case. If you're like me, you'll find youself saying to the person watching with you, "That really happened," "that almost happened," "something like that happened," and "that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen." Which is, of course, the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

But I'm not fact-checking the film (at least not in detail), I'm reviewing it.

To summarize the plot: an attempt is made to assassinate the President. The finger is pointed at Venezuela, which is bombed in retaliation. Armstrong gets word that a CIA agent went to Venezuela and could find no evidence of its involvement (shades of Plame's husband, Ambassador Wilson, finding no trace of the yellowcake Uranium that was never sent to Iraq). She obtains the name of the agent. We don't see this even at first, and I can't say anything about it without spoiling a major plot point. Suffice it to say you'll be surprised.

The use of the agent's name rings false to me; the newspaper story doesn't need the name of the agent. Which means the whole film hangs on an unnecessary revelation.
Matt " Patton Dubois" Dillon is appointed special prosecutor. He tells Armstrong she's going to jail--not prison, jail--until she talks. She doesn't talk and goes to jail (shades of Judith Miller).

Frankly, she's a wee bit sanctimonious for my taste. The judge offers her a day or two to think about it, she says, "I'll never talk," which results in her being whisked instantly to jail without so much as a toothbrush. We see her miserable life in prison, her marriage dissolve, her relationship with her son deteriorate, and her face get messed up in a jailhouse fight.

Actually, I can't say a lot more about the plot without spoiling the film. It's complicated and interesting, however. At one point, the agent, Vera "Erica Van Doren" Farmiga, is told she wasn't the only CIA agent sent to Venezuela, just the only one who didn't find any evidence of involvement. The vice president's chief of staff is shown (shades of "Scooter" Libby in the Plame case). Alan "Alan Burnside" Alda, playing the paper's outside first amendment counsel (Floyd Abrams in the Judith Miller case) notes that, at some point, journalists "went from being the white knight to being the dragon."

Despite that pessimistic note, for the most part the characterization of print journalists in this film is as hard-working, noble and principled protectors of the republic. Celebrity TV journalism gets a dusting, as a somewhat Barbara Walters-like Angelica "Molly Meyers" Torn is depicted as shallow and crass.

And, in a refreshing change of pace (probably because of the film's long gestation period), there's not a single reference to the collapse of the newspaper industry. In today's world, that makes it look like a fairy tale.

If you are, or ever have been, a journalist, the film may well affect you as it did me: get you to ask yourself if there was any principle worth doing relatively hard time for. If you can get bast the fundamental implausible moment of the plot--naming the officer who wrote the report instead of simply describing the report--this film can be engrossing as entertainment. Or, if you are cursed with too much knowledge of the real events, as an ongoing effort to separate the fact from the fiction. Either way, it's worth renting.

THE SOLOIST
(released in April 2009)

3 stars out of 5

In order, this is a film about homeless cello player Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.), mental illness, homelessness, friendship, and, both last and least, journalism. If Steve Lopez had been a social worker, this wouldn't be a journalism film at all.

Sadly, it seems you can't do a newspaper movie in 2009 without at least passing reference to the disaster which is the financial state of the industry. Catherine Keener, who plays Lopez's ex-wife and editor, chats with him about the relationship between layoffs and a falling stock price. In the background in one scene, a reporter is scene leaving, accompanied by security guards. In another, Keener is in a layoff meeting, when she looks out the window and sees Ayers.

There are a few nice touches. We get some shots of the running press, followed by a zoom into the front page of a bundle of newspapers--shots we have been seeing for 80 years that I know of. Delivery of the papers--a thrower in the back of a pickup truck--reflects modern practice and is a shot I haven't seen before. It will make a nice documentary touch someday when papers are no longer delivered.

The messy newsroom shot echoes a thousand others as well; if not for the substitution of good chairs, florescent lights and computers for broken-down chairs, lousy lighting and Royal typewriters, it could be 1929. Add up all the newsroom banter, and the newspaper content amounts to about 10% of the film.

Lopez's house is about right for a Los Angeles Times columnist. He certainly drinks like a newspaper reporter, and has a reporter's bad attitude about stories in which he is disinterested. He dresses down for a modern reporter, in my experience. I don't expect a coat and tie, but I do expect at least business casual wardrobe, rather than "Sunday softball in the park." It's one thing to dress that way for a visit to skid road, another entirely to dress that way on a day in the newsroom.

Speaking of skid road, please tell me the affect of the area was heightened for the movie. God forbid there is any place in America, much less Los Angeles that looks like the Hell on Earth depicted in the film's scenes of low-rent LA.

One could argue that the whole film is about journalism, because it consists entirely of Lopez researching his column. I don't buy that argument. Lopez and his job are merely a framing device for a story about Ayers.

Ayers was a child cello prodigy. His unmedicated mental illness made him homeless. Lopez writes a column about him, and then, unprofessionally, becomes his friend. The film explores issues of mental health--in particular, it offers, cinematically, the best explanation I've ever seen for why the mentally ill homeless prefer the distracting outdoors to the quiet indoors. It explores issues of responsibility for a fellow human, the nature of friendship, and the professional requirement for distance from subjects in journalism.

This is a film to see if you're a fan of Downey or Foxx, or interested in a moving depiction of the nexus of homelessness and mental illness. It deals tangentially with the issue of journalism ethics with regard to source relations. It deals only casually with the practice of journalism.

All movies that feature a character identified as a journalist contribute in some way to the public image of journalists. This film will lead the public to think that writers who profile specific homeless people befriend them and try to help them get off the street. Lopez apparently did this. Most reporters don't. Deciding whether this public image of journalists is good or bad for the profession is a choice that's made above my pay grade. On the upside, at least the reporter is not depicted as a heartless (albeit professionally ethical) bastard.

STATE OF PLAY
(released in April 2009)

4 stars out of 5

Cards on the table; the closest I ever came to blowing the lid off something was when I revealed the sneaky rehiring of a disgraced former power company executive, who was re-fired after my article appeared--and all I had to do was read the footnotes in the proxy statement.

I'm going to divide this review into two parts: about the movie qua journalism movie, then a few words about the movie as an entertainment.

By my ranking, it falls short of five stars on both fronts. As a journalism movie, it offers a few howlers, and a basic plot hole. As entertainment, it's fast-paced and entertaining, but not exactly thought-provoking or artistic.

There are two scenes in this film which guarantee it a place in the pantheon of journalism movies, both of which could be said to be paying homage to the past. The montage of the newspaper being printed which plays out under the end credits recalls the similar black and white montage which opened Frank Capra's 1928 classic black and white film The Power Of The Press, but of course this time the scene is in color and features modern equipment, including a newsprint delivery robot.

The other scene which guarantees the film immortality is a pale echo of Humphrey Bogart's, "That's the sound of a free press, baby," from Deadline USA, and William Conrad's, "and it only costs a nickel" speech from -30-. Universal has cleverly removed all trace of the script from the Internet, so I'll have to wait for the DVD to transcribe the speech, but Russell Crowe, as Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey lectures Ben Affleck as Rep. Stephen Collins with a speech that begins, "Why, because people don't read newspapers any more?" and ends with "printing the truth." It's a pale echo because it's short, both in terms of length and soaring rhetoric.

Also pale is the echo of the slammed doors that faced Woodward and Bernstein (or Hoffman and Redford, if you will) in All The President's Men. In this case, Rachel McAdams, playing Internet columnist Della Frye, conducts "real" reporting, in the face of slammed door after slammed door, hang up after hangup. While not as relentless as the cinematic original, it marks the first time in years a journalism movie has spent much quality time showing reporters doing actual reporting. Which is kind of amazing, since there is no sign of journalism in the résumés of screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray--except that Billy Ray did write another excellent recent journalism film, Shattered Glass, about the downfall of the New Republic's Stephen Glass (reviewed here).

Many of the old familiar journalism movie memes are on display here. One is the messy newsroom, with the messiest desk belonging to the protagonist. In an era when most screen heroes are middle or upper middle class--as are most journalists-Crowe plays McAffrey as an affable Irish drunk. The kind of person who couldn't get a job at a daily newspaper in any market larger than Waco, Texas, and certainly not at the Washington Post clone which is the Washington Globe in this film. The recent corporate takeover may seem "ripped from the headlines," but it too is venerable, most visibly in Deadline USA, where the new owners are shutting the paper down, as opposed to merely emasculating it, as they are in this film. The crusty managing editor is a journalism movie trope older than sound pictures, with the twist that it can now sometimes be a woman. It was Glenn Close in The Paper, and now it is Helen Mirren as Cameron Lynne in State Of Play, turning in another first class performance, in which she ravages the reporters in private and defends them in public, just like a real ME. And, when the story is hot enough, she tells the accountant to buzz off when he reminds her that holding the presses costs $20,000 an hour. OK, it's true only an idealized managing editors would ever do that, and almost none today, more's the pity.

On the other hand, the movie introduces at least two features that I have not seen before in a Hollywood journalism film: an Internet desk (whose columnist Della Frye is an equal partner in the reporting of the big story), and frequent references to the imminent collapse of the newspaper--not from a sale or merger, but just from the end of newspapers in general.

The engine that runs the story, alas, is a conflict of interest that would not be tolerated at any newspaper larger than a weekly shopper: Crowe, the central reporter on the story is best friend of and former roommate of the central figure, Affleck, and the managing editor knows it. A reporter might get away with this if he kept his management in the dark, but that's not how it's played here. In fact, R.B. Brenner of the Washington Post, who served as a journalism consultant on State of Play, says he told the filmmakers this was unrealistic. They decided the story was, with reference to this element, more important than fidelity to real-world journalistic practice. (Check out an audio interview with Brenner at the Washington Post site)

Strictly from the entertainment point of view, State of Play is a bit pat, but with a few nice twists. A young man is shot to death in an alley. A young woman jumps in front of a train. Turns out the murder and the suicide are related. The police don't want to talk, but as always, the reporter runs rings around the detectives. The woman is an aide to the senator, who admits, early on, that he was having an affair with his intern. But it turns out the reporter (is having? Once had?) an affair with the senator's wife as well. There are mercenaries, and they are certainly all more noble than most mercenaries I've ever heard of, and more cooperative with reporters. The reporters work hard to find the truth (even though the police tell them to lay off), and have the story put to bed when there is a sudden last minute twist. I don't do spoilers, so aside from telling you that the film doesn't end when it seems to, I won't tell you exactly what happens.

When it rains it pours; after months of no mainstream Hollywood journalism movies, State of Play opened April 17. The Soloist opens April 24; it features Steve Lopez, of the Los Angeles Times (Robert Downey,Jr,) writing about, and saving, a homeless but musically talented Jamie Foxx, and will be reviewed here as soon as possible.

KIT KITTREDGE: AN AMERICAN GIRL
(released on DVD October 2008)

3.5 stars out of 5

Hello Sweetheart! Get me a ticket to the 1934 depicted in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. You know, the one where the fictional Cincinnati Register newsroom is neat as a pin and cute as a button and where the copy boy is good looking and smart. The city editor of this most wonderful of never-existent newspapers is a screamer with a heart of gold, who delivers a freelancer's first published article to her house personally, on Thanksgiving Day no less. His paper looks like one swell, prosperous place from the outside--I'm sure the building we see is houses prosperous commercial businesses in Ontario, where the film was shot (hello runaway production!) No doubt, in the land where such an editor runs such a paper, there is no Internet and Sunday papers will weigh five pounds.

This is an all-female production, and as such, may have been aimed to just one side of my demographic. All seven executive producers (including Julia Roberts) are women, as was the writer Ann (Chronicles of Narnia, Nights in Rodanthe) Peacock and the director, Patricia (Mansfield Park) Rozema. Not to mention the precociously talented Abigal Breslin as the eponymous Margaret Mildred 'Kit' Kittredge.

The film is set in the Depression. Kit wants nothing more than to be published in the local paper. She visits the newsroom and is rejected out of hand, twice, but with the pluck that can often only be mustered by a character based on a popular line of dolls, she keeps at it, writing on a typewriter and taking pictures until she gets the story that's big enough to break into the business.

By the way, Abigail Breslin says she was a little baffled by the lack of a screen on the typewriter. When my daughters say that, they're joking, but they're 24 and 27; I suppose it is likely pre-teen children in non-journalist homes have never seen a typewriter in person and possible they've never seen one in a movie or TV show. She does something you rarely see depicted; she often gets two keys stuck together.

Kit's obsession with journalism is a framing device for the film; her narration comes in the form of stories, letters to her father (who loses his business and has to go to Chicago to try to find work) and journal entries. The newspaper scenes are concentrated at the beginning and end of the film; in the middle is good, simple melodrama. The movie offers a deft mix of the serious and humorous. Homes are foreclosed, eggs are sold, dresses are crafted from feed bags, and hobos turn out to be people just like you and me. The police seem to be bigoted dolts at first, but turn out, like the city editor, to have hearts of gold.

The cast is breathtaking, and everyone turns in a realistic performance--although I think the villain, Stanley Tucci, would have enjoyed twirling his moustache if it had been long enough. Chris O'Donnell appears briefly, but the bread and butter work is done by an ensemble cast which included Jane Krakowski, Wallace Shawn (as the city editor), Max Thieriot, Willow Smith, Glenne Headly, Zach Mills, Madison Davenport and Joan Cusack (is there nothing that woman can't do?)

A lovely family film with a conscience and one eye on being educational and informative, Kit Kittredge is an entertaining piece of fluff that doesn't explore journalism issue in any serious way, but doesn't do the image of the journalist any harm--except possibly making people think it can be practiced credibly by 10-year-olds. Of course, I'm sure there are a few potential journalists who will be scared off by the quoted rate of a penny a word for freelance, just as I'm sure there are still places that pay that rate...

This review is a week later than it might have been, because I recently obtained a Blu-Ray High Definition DVD player, and was determined to watch the film in that format. Not for me the dubious pleasures of watching a rented copy of a movie on an iPod or PC. Alas, while the two local Blockbuster stores had floor to ceiling displays of Kit DVDs (guaranteed in stock), they had exactly one copy each of the Blu-Ray version, which was instantly rented by the kind of person for doesn't know the meaning of due dates or common courtesy. So, I waited as their leisurely perusal of the film stretched out. It was worth the wait. If you haven't seen a Blu-Ray DVD of a movie, check it out in the store and then go buy one--assuming you already have a high-def TV.

CHANGELING
A JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVE

3.5 stars out of 5

You can find a more traditional review of Clint Eastwood's film, The Changeling at my blog. This brief note is about the aspects of the film that touch on journalism, along with questions of historical accuracy.

The film makes an interesting (and, I am sure, inadvertent) comment on the vast changes in the image of the journalist between the 1920s and the present. In the silent films of the 20s, most journalists were depicted as noble fighters for the underdog. A few stole pictures of dead loved ones (just as Hearst employees and other yellow journalists did in real life), but for the most part, at least when they were massed in packs, they were reasonably polite. "Press packs" in modern films are scary, ravenous, shouting, pushy hordes, especially the photographers. I wondered as I went into this film, whether the media scenes would be period-appropriate or projections of the modern image back in time. Apparently, Eastwood's reputation as a stickler for period detail extends to his portrayal of the media. For the most part, the questions came one at a time, and bore a reasonable relationship to the issues at hand. The press packs were large, which was appropriate because LA, like most major cities, had a lot more newspaper at that time.

Without, I hope, offering too many spoilers, let me say I had hoped that the traditional crusading journalist would play a role in revealing the corruption and venality of the LA Police Department. Alas, because the story was true to life, the hero was John Malkovich's character, Rev. Gustav Briegleb. [In real life, he did not have a radio pulpit, but was friends with another minister who did. The radio station on which he is shown broadcasting was licensed in Pomona but never went on the air.] According to the LA Times, many of the headlines in the movie are actual headlines from newspaper of the era, part of the meticulous research of screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski (a former LA Times and LA Herald-Examiner reporter). If you are in tune to such nuances (or, perhaps, over-sensitive to them), you can be saddened by the apparent fact that, then as now, newspaper reporters for the most part are simply stenographers. That is, they preserve for posterity the version of reality presented to them by official sources (Judith Miller anyone?) rather than probing for the truth. The first draft of history is usually dictated.
A final note: researching the historical accuracy of the film was a time-consuming task. Why isn't there a website devoted to the systematic fact-checking of "fact based" movies and novels? I don't have time to do it, but surely someone has the time and skills to create such a useful site.

How may people come home from a movie like Changeling wondering what parts are true? It could be as big as IMDB or Snopes. If only I didn't have a real job...

QUID PRO QUO
(released on DVD August 2008)

2 stars out of 5

First, let me begin by noting that IJPC Director Joe Saltzman and I disagree on the definition of a journalism movie. For Joe and the IJPC, if there is a journalist in the film, it is a journalism movie. For me, the journalist must be a central character and must spend a reasonable portion of the film actually practicing journalism. In short, I prefer journalism movies that are about journalism. I will try to bring up this dispute only once a year, although I may link to it from other reviews.

The protagonist of Quid Pro Quo is about a person with disabilities (PWD) who is a reporter for New York Public Radio (NYPR), a stand-in for National Public Radio. He tells stories on the radio. As a regular NPR listener, I would characterize him as a cross between John Hockenberry (a PWD) and Ira Glass (who tells stories on This American Life), or perhaps, to reach farther back in radio history, to Jean Shepherd on WOR in New York in the 60s and 70s.

This film seems as if it is a two-person play opened up. The vast majority of the scenes feature only Isaac Knott, played by Nick Stahl and Fiona, played by Vera Farmiga (aka Ancient Chinese Lady). Most of the time, they are talking, with occasional interludes of soft-core sex. That's OK for an art film, when the conversation is thought-provoking. I like art films and watch them regularly. But this was not, for me, a thought-provoking film, it was a stomach-churning film. And as far from a mainstream film as it is possible to get.

Isaac receives an e-mail tip that a doctor was offered a quarter-million dollars to cut off someone's perfectly healthy leg. At first, it appears to be a hoax, then it appears it really happened. Ancient Chinese Lady sends him another tip, which leads him to a meeting of wannabees, able-bodied (AB) people who want to be wheelchair bound. You think that is what the film is going to be about. It's a McGuffin. The film is really about Isaac and Fiona. The writer/director, Carlos Brooks, says wannabees really exist. It seems unlikely, but he certainly does not offer any sustained or interesting insight into their psychology. He depicts them, and that's about it.

Isaac actually makes use of the tools of the trade of a radio reporter, for about five minutes. Interestingly, they are not the tools of a radio story teller, which are a studio microphone and a computer on which to write. The script does not suggest he is a radio news reporter, but he uses the tools of such a reporter, a directional microphone with a windscreen and a digital mini recorder. (Real professional digital minirecorders do not have built-in speakers, but I quibble). We also see him sitting in studio wearing headphones (in the trade, we call them cans). The NYPR office is small, spartan office and contains relatively few people crowded together. Based on my experience, this is the reality of most public radio.

The other 77 minutes of the film is two people talking, interspersed with wannabees who want to be paralyzed and in wheelchairs, and about 30 seconds of actual radio work. This is not enough for me to characterize it as a journalism movie, but it does have a journalist protagonist. One whom, I might add, gets involved with a source in a highly unethical way. Real professional journalists should not sleep with their sources and seldom do.

I will give this movie credit for thinking outside the box. As I have noted from time to time at my blog, The vast majority of American movies in the last 20 years have depicted life at the top. If you think back to the films of the 30s through the 50s, they frequently featured "real" people, and made some effort to depict actual working-class and middle-class life. Those classes have disappeared into a haze of architects, doctors, lawyers, bankers and college-educated upper-middle class journalists, not to mention the legions of movie protagonists with no visible means of support who, apparently, never go to work. So, it was refreshing to see working class life depicted. And I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of films I have seen that show a person on a chair, a PWD. The indignities of such a life are limned with precision. So, at least Quid Pro Quo is a breath of fresh air.

This is an art-film character study, in which the profession of the protagonist is an afterthought, a ruse that allows him to roll around and ask questions.