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Back to the ’80s
Last night, I watched Broadcast News for the first time in nearly 30 years. What a trip down memory lane! Those clothes! That hair! VHS tapes! Brought me right back to high school.
The movie lacks a plot line, but the characters are likable and believable. The dialog was honest and engaging. The thing as a whole was funny and touching and sweet. But the main thing that stood out to me was its shocking moral innocence—naiveté, almost.
I was about 20 when it appeared and very religious in the Catholic-evangelical mode. So, to me, then, morality was all about no sex, no drugs, no drinking, no swearing. The rest—things like kindness and honesty and integrity—I took completely for granted. I don’t think “innocent” would have been my prime impression of the movie in 1987. The female lead is clearly “sexually active.” She drinks. She swears. I wouldn’t have approved at all.
Now what stands out is how kind she is, how considerate toward her friends and colleagues. She’s ambitious for success, but she’s completely principled—utterly dedicated to the integrity of journalism. She’s brainy and gutsy and tough, but totally feminine at the same time. All the characters come across as incredibly decent and well-meaning.
That kind of moral goodness seems to me to have practically disappeared from our common life in the decades since. A broadcast news station full of sincere, kind, mutually considerate and respectful people committed to journalistic integrity is almost unthinkable today, isn’t it?
Image Credit: “Broadcast News“. Via Wikipedia.
Published in General
During a meeting with my daughter’s middle school English teacher, one of her students who was staying after school approached her desk. I didn’t say anything, but the teacher must have seen a look of surprise on my face because she quickly said, “Some of our students roll out of bed and come to school in whatever they were sleeping in.”
This student was wearing a very torn and stained T-shirt.
As I left her classroom, I remembered that just three short years earlier, we had “relaxed” the dress code to allow the boys to wear shirts other than buttoned-down Oxfords and the girls to wear jeans.
I realized that it is impossible for the people clamoring for change to imagine how the world will look and feel when it has been fully implemented.
And in that vein, when “woman’s lib” came about and the moms went to work outside their homes, they were leaving bustling neighborhoods. But a few short years later, it seemed that all of the adults were gone. I worked out of my home, and it grew quieter and quieter. Not a safe environment for school-aged, latch-key kids.
Funny. The scene that comes to mind as I think about that movie from so many years ago, is when Holly Hunter and William Hurt are going to a presidentlal reception and she realizes as her purse is about to be searched that she had thrown some condoms in the purse in case she or Hurt (depending on your perspective) got lucky. She walked away to avoid embarrassment and didn’t want to have to explain it to Hurt. As a guy who agonized severely before taking a pack of condoms to the check-out counter for far too many years, that was funny.
Funny you say that because that movie came out the year we got a t.v. without an antenna, cable, and our first vcr.
It would be hard to do a comedy routine about condoms these days. People wouldn’t understand. When I was a young man almost a half a century ago, I would surreptitiously pick up some Trojans from the display case, that was always placed next to feminine hygiene products, and casually wait until no one else was checking out, while pondering whether I should go to the register operated by a young girl or the old lady. There was never a man at those check-out registers. Talk about flop-sweat.
Yup, that’s pretty much the only scene that redeems the movie for me. They could have easily written the William Hurt character as a “right-wing opportunist” who fakes news stories, as a counterpoint to the “good and noble” lefty Brooks and Hunter characters, but they didn’t do that.
In those days the only thing worse for a young man to buy at the drugstore was a Playboy magazine. Buying both was a bridge too far.
It seems to me one would need one or the other, but not both, at least for one session.
Has no one seen Captain America: The First Avenger?
Nope.
katievs
Say, Scrubb, do you identify with the post or pre-dragon Eustace?
It’s a day to day, hour by hour, minute by minute judgment call.
…and they both had dials.
That was one of the movie’s greatest charms. Brooding anti-heroes are fine, but having them all the time is like sitting in a dark bar for Sunday brunch. Sometimes you want a little sunlight and some fresh squeezed orange juice.
Nope, and now Thess has made me sorry I missed it.
One session of use, but there could be benefits in getting both at the same time. Only one embarrassing session of buying them that way.
Oh, yes, I did – twice. I told my friends it was better than a 4th of July parade!
Broadcast News was one of my favorite movies at the time. In fact, it probably helped fuel my desire to become a journalist; I went so far as to earn a master’s degree in the subject before deciding on a different career. It’s a great movie in part because it doesn’t clearly take sides; it shows people with different viewpoints (all of whom are likable) and lets you decide how you feel.
My favorite exchange is when somebody sarcastically says to Holly Hunter’s character, “It must be great to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.” To which she responds, sincerely and without a hint of arrogance, “No, it’s awful.”
Great line and great acting — she looked like she was about to break into tears, if I recall correctly.
Mis – Then you’ve overlooked some wonderful material from the film. Albert Brooks’ character is ultimately very conservative. He is all about competence, as opposed to appearances. And his explanation of the Devil is spot on: (I paraphrase) “The Devil is good-looking, dresses well, is nice to old people, and little by little he lowers our standards.” There has never been a more spot-on description of Bill Clinton.
My wife and saw the movie in the theater. At that very moment, she jabbed me so hard with her elbow it nearly broke a rib. Apparently, I think I’m right most of the time.
Adam Carolla, a podcaster beloved by many Ricochetti, says that his wife sarcastically asks him why he’s always right when they argue. His answer is, he doesn’t argue unless he’s right.
Does anyone argue if they don’t think they’re right?
Have you never come across someone who loves to play devil’s advocate just to have an interesting conversation?
I have never encountered such a low form of life. Never, ever, ever.
;-)
Amy Schley:
katievs:
Al Sparks:
Songwriter:
Oh THAT kind of argument. Sure. But I didn’t mean that kind. I was thinking of a real disagreement.
One of my fav movies too!