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.

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.