Broadcast News (1987)

Live and Let Chy-ron

And we’re live in 3 … 2 … 1 … “Welcome back to I’d Like To Blank The Academy, we’re your hosts Ellen and Tyler. Our main story tonight is the 1987 Best Picture nominee Broadcast News, starring Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks, and William Hurt. The trio navigate their differing personalities and career aspirations in a Washington, D.C. network news studio. Let’s turn it over to the Previews to tell us more about this story. Previews?”

The Three Musket-tears (Source)

Previews

What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?

Ellen: My familiarity begins and ends with Gilmore Girls, as it so often does. Lorelai at one point calls Rory her “little Holly Hunter in Broadcast News.” Is that an apt comparison? Something aspirational? An insult? Let’s find out!

Tyler: I’m not sure what I’m more impressed by: the density of pop culture references in that show, or your ability to remember them all. Anyway, I get this movie (which I haven’t seen) and Network (which I have seen) confused with each other all the time and I’m ready for this madness to hopefully end. To the studio!

Plots & Feelings

This one’s pretty self-explanatory.

Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): Take two rival television reporters: one handsome, one talented, both male¹. Add one producer, female. Mix well, and watch the sparks fly.

Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):

• In Kansas City, Boston, and Atlanta, we meet the child-version of our protagonists, Tom, Aaron, and Jane, respectively. Tom is a pretty kid, but his report card boasts three C’s, two D’s, and an incomplete. Sounds like a future Network Anchorman to me! Meanwhile, Aaron graduates as the valedictorian of his high school class … at 14 years old! His speech revolves around the idea that he got to where he is because when no one likes you, what else is there to do but study? He’s unsurprisingly beat up in the parking lot after the ceremony, and he yells that none of them will ever make more than $19,000 a year²! That’s our future Network News Reporter. Lastly, a precocious young Jane is up late working on a letter to one of her many international pen pals, but scolds her dad for calling her “obsessive” when his precision of language really ought to be better. The trio is complete with a future Network News Producer.

  

  Realizing you’ll have to get by on your looks (Source)

• At a conference of network news employees and enthusiasts, Jane gives an impassioned but awkward speech on the importance of reporting and the dangers of the trend of “soft news.” Her morning pep talk phone call with Aaron, her best friend and a very talented reporter, does not appear to have borne fruit, but her hyperventilative crying seems to have been merited! She closes her talk with the absolute horror of several networks playing a video of intricate domino patterns falling rather than covering changes to nuclear disarmament negotiations, and the crowd cheers for the dominos³ and leaves. Jane dutifully sits for a post-speech Q&A in an empty room, but what ho! In walks hottie Tom Grunick. He was fascinated by her talk, actually, and the two go to dinner and talk all night. In her hotel room, Jane is trying to get down, but Tom kind of just wants to keep talking about the news business? He confesses that he got his job as a fluke, and he feels like he’s just pretending to be a reporter. No, it’s not a confidence problem - just a no education, no experience, no writing skills problem! Jane is like “cool cool, you’re not even trying to get qualified, and you personify the lack of substance I abhor.” This cuts Tom deeply, and he leaves. Later, he calls her, explaining that it hurt not just because she was right, but because he just got a job at her network. See you in the office, Jane!

  • Ellen: It is this character’s entire deal that he gets by on looks and charisma… I found him neither particularly hot nor particularly charming, which isn’t a great start.

  • Tyler: We may need some of our older more mature readers to weigh in here.

What’s that smell? Oh, yeah - ya burnt! (Source)

• At (net)work, Tom shadows Jane like a little lost puppy while she frantically gets some last-minute production changes into a segment she and Aaron put together. Fellow producer Blair has to comically race through the office with the final cut, getting it on air just in time, and we’ve all earned a smile from national anchorman Bill (Jack Nicholson) in New York. Jane and Aaron take a break from being annoyed by Tom, who to his credit is trying to learn, to cover the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. As shooting begins, Aaron laments that he’s about to risk his life for a network that tests his face with focus groups (which is pretty rich for a company with Jack Nicholson as The Face, in this author’s opinion). Back in DC though, Bill calls Jane to tell her what a great job she did on the Nicaragua story, but hangs up when she tries to give Aaron his well-earned credit. When Tom does his first story on a five billion dollar tank that doesn’t work, he chooses Jane as his producer, and despite being fairly dismissive to him, she helps him create a solid segment, much to Aaron’s dismay.

  • Ellen: Look, Joan Cusack (Blair) is funny, but this slapstick run through the office is just cartoonish, and not in a way I enjoy.

  • Tyler: I get the impression this movie thinks it’s more clever than it actually is.

  • Tyler: I’d also like to call attention to two lines by Jane, each savage in their own way. First, she tells Tom that she’s “not here to teach remedial reporting” which is just a brutal burn, albeit still a bitchy and smug thing to say to someone’s face. Later, in Nicaragua, she tells a cameraman “It's not too dark, just go!” while he’s trying not to get shot at. Is this supposed to be endearing us to her by showing us how committed she is to her job? Because it’s doing quite the opposite.

  • Ellen: One thing I actually think this movie does really well is convince you of Jane’s lack of social skills. A lot of movies with a cute female protagonist will just tell you “but she’s sOoOoOoO awkward!”, whereas this one really sells it.

Alexa, play Entry of the Gladiators (Source)

• At what appears to be a brunch-based work party at someone’s home (okay?), Jane is confused about her feelings for Tom, because while he is dreamy, she does not respect him. Reporter Jennifer suggests Jane figure it out, because she would like to move in on that, please. The merrymaking is interrupted by the news that a Libyan plane bombed a U.S. military base in Italy! It’s all hands on deck, but ohhh, awkward, not you, Aaron? The higher-ups make the decisions that Jane will executive produce and Tom will anchor, over Jane’s objections since Aaron has extensive knowledge and history on the subject. The segment airs, with Jane producing the daylights out of it, Aaron tipsily calling in with additional information, and Tom killing it, incorporating all of the inputs seamlessly. Jane opts to see Aaron before going to the bar to celebrate with everyone else, and he kind of comes onto her, but they laugh it off before she returns to the bar in search of Tom. He’s canoodling with Jennifer, of course, and they leave to go hook up while Jane gets a burger alone.

Me, staring at The Move to-do list (Source)

• The next morning, Jane completes her daily cry at her desk, seemingly inconsolable one moment and completely put together the next. She still looks pretty rough, sleepwalking through a meeting where her boss says they have to cut 24 million dollars from the budget, although she perks up for long enough to send Jennifer on assignment to Alaska. Tom and Aaron continue to butt heads over the former’s lack of knowledge and the latter’s tendency to be a jerkface. Tom and Jane, however, plan to go to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner together! Tom also completes his first story without outside assistance about date rape, and though it’s not how Jane would have done it, a reaction shot of Tom tearing up at a survivor’s story really works. Meanwhile, Aaron is informed that he’s on the chopping block for the impending layoffs, but he can have the chance to anchor the weekend news while everyone else is at the Correspondents’ Dinner. He reluctantly goes to Tom for presenting help, and though he’s initially reluctant to buy into the idea that he has to sell himself, they eventually make a lot of progress!

  • Ellen: After they’re all done watching Tom’s piece, the TV stays on in the background as the scene continues, and if you keep watching, you’re treated to seeing Jennifer comically bundled up as snow swirls around her. Good bit!

• It’s the big night! Jane struts on screen in a dress that made both of your authors say “whoa” out loud, though it works for Aaron when he stops by for fashion advice. They make a plan to meet at Aaron’s place after the dinner to watch the tape of his anchoring. Before they part ways, Jane rips the shoulder pads out of her own jacket to help make Aaron’s look better.⁴ At the dinner, Tom compliments her “outlaw dress”, but she loses her nerve when it’s time to go through security for fear of everyone seeing the condoms she has in her bag! They take champagne out to the Jefferson Memorial instead.

  • Ellen: I will say, by the time the night was over, the dress worked for me too.

Get it girl! (Source)

• At the same time, Aaron has his beautifully-written copy ready to go, and he begins anchoring. Nerves get the better of him, however, and he sweats profusely and noticeably - it is a hot mess⁵. Jane ditches Tom when she remembers she promised to see Aaron, who thinks anchoring went so badly it was funny, and it made him realize he doesn’t really want to just introduce the people actually reporting the news. It all turns into a big ole tomato though when Jane says she’s falling for Tom, and Aaron says he’s falling for her, and oh yeah - he thinks Tom is the Devil. Jane calls Tom to try to get back together tonight, but he blows her off, but not before joking that Aaron’s sweating isn’t unprecedented if you count Singin’ In The Rain. Not a great night for anyone!

Business formal in Houston (Source)

• Gather ‘round, children: it’s layoff day! Bill stalks the offices, his mood not improved by someone pointing out he could make it all less painful by knocking a couple million off his own salary⁶. Producer Blair is gone, and she tells Jane that she’s her role model, except socially… Aaron is out as well, though he pulls a “you can’t fire me, I quit!”, and Jane is now going to be head of her department! Tom is being sent to London, aka being groomed to take over Bill’s job down the line. He and Jane decide to take a week together for a tropical vacation, because girlfriend has 14 weeks of vacation saved up! Aaron and Jane meet for coffee, and it’s clear he’s mad at her for not being in love with him, but they’re both hoping their friendship will survive his planned move to Portland. He leaves her with one last zinger - there was only one camera with Tom for the date rape piece, so logically, he had to fake and shoot his reaction after the fact. At the airport the next day, Jane yells at Tom about journalistic ethics, and he wants to know why she won’t just come so they can disagree and get a tan at the same time?? He leaves, and she stays.

  • Tyler: Jane’s “I know the best way to get everywhere, I better tell my taxi driver” schtick is infuriating. And here I was thinking she’d grown out of that as she is driven away at the end, but she just couldn’t help herself.

Probably not the reaction he was looking for (Source)

• Seven years later, the gang is back together! Tom is giving a speech about now being national anchorman, Aaron is visiting with his young son from Portland, and Jane is set up to move to New York to take a managing editor job. The scene fades out as Tom walks away and Aaron and Jane discuss their lives.

  • Tyler: Any and all character development happens seven years later and off screen, cool cool cool.

Tom on a recent season of “Love Is Blind” (Source)

Intermission

Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”

This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … a good cry!

Ever need to just let your emotions out after a long day? Or even before a long day? Try a good ole’ fashioned cry! Weep those toxins right on out your eye holes and hit the refresh button on your body. Science has proven the benefits of crying for things like self-soothing and dulling pain. What, do you hate science?

Part of a healthy morning routine (Source)

Don’t ask why, just give it a try! Say hi to a good cry from the eyes and wave goodbye to those sky high sighs.

Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?

Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.

Broadcast News’ Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:

• Broadcast News was written, produced, and directed by James L. Brooks. After dropping out of NYU, he worked as an usher and host at CBS then became a writer for CBS News broadcasts. After being laid off, he wrote for and produced different TV shows and went on to create or co-create Room 222, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (plus its spin-offs Rhoda and Lou Grant), and Taxi. He also co-developed The Simpsons.

• While writing the screenplay for Broadcast News, Brooks apparently didn’t like any of the main characters. After a couple months, he changed his mind and hoped audiences would go on a similar journey, saying:

  “You're always supposed to arc your characters and you have this change and that's your dramatic purpose. But what I hope happens in this film is that the audience takes part in the arc. So what happens is that the movie doesn't select its own hero. It plays differently with each audience. The audience helps create the experience, depending on which character they hook onto."

  • Ellen: I appreciate that Brooks felt the same way I did about his own characters. I found things I enjoyed about them by the end, but I wouldn’t want to hang out with any of them…

• Debra Winger, who Brooks had previously directed to acclaim in Terms of Endearment, was originally supposed to play Jane. (In fact, Brooks wrote the role specifically for her.) However, she became pregnant shortly before production, and Holly Hunter was given the role just two days before filming started. Other actresses considered for the role include Sigourney Weaver, Jessica Lange, and Elizabeth Perkins.

  • Tyler: My brain read “Debra Winger” and thought “Debra Messing” so I was very confused for a bit after reading that.

• The character of Jane Craig was based on journalist and producer Susan Zirinsky, who served as an associate producer and technical advisor for Broadcast News. Hunter shadowed Zirinsky, cut her hair in a bob, and even wore some of Zirinsky’s clothes to get into character. It clearly paid off, as Hunter was nominated for the OScar for Best Actress for the role.

• In 2019, Zirinsky became the first female President and Senior Executive Producer of CBS News. She was actually offered the job eight years earlier, but declined so she could focus on her true love of producing the news.

• The musicians who comically pitch a new theme song for the news program were actually Emmy Award-winning composers Glen Roven and Marc Shaiman.

  • Ellen: This scene was such an obvious “get a load of these guys!” bit that if it were shot today, I think it would have been Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake (which, to be fair, would work on me).

Oscar NomNomNomz

Since we all know a movie is nothing without the food and drink it incorporates.

It’s now time to award the Oscar for Best Snacktor in a Supporting Role⁷. And the nomnomnominees are:

• A sad, lonely burger from Caps Bar

• Straight vodka from Aaron’s liquor cabinet

• Stolen champagne from the Correspondents’ Dinner

And the Oscar goes to … the stolen champagne from the Correspondents’ Dinner! Unfortunately, we drank it all toasting our last week in Houston, so Basil will accept this award on its behalf.

Fill In The Blank

How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?

Ellen: I’d like to test the Academy’s face with a focus group, just to be sure, you know? Maybe it’s the 80s, maybe it’s watching it on a weeknight⁸, but this one overall didn’t hit for me. As I mentioned in WWW, I felt similarly to the literal creator of the three main characters - we didn’t like them all that much! I’m pretty much always sympathetic to an anxious woman in a male-dominated field, so I was predisposed to root for Jane, but her self-righteous superiority made it tougher than I’d like. To trot out the requisite Gilmore Girls comparison, she’s like Paris Geller without any heart. Aaron especially had a few lines that I laughed aloud at, and Tom was kind of nothing to me. I only bought into his supposed charisma when he was reporting on camera - the rest of it was totally lost. Why this movie did not result in the three-pronged team-up they showed us was possible with the Italian Military Base story is beyond me. Maybe they thought it’d be too “feel good,” but the continuation of this battle with Aaron and Tom, even after Aaron realizes he kind of hates anchoring, was just not interesting to me. At the end you’re supposed to be like “Tom will do anything to get to the top” and yeah he ends up there, but we have no evidence he continued to breach ethics, so what was the point?

Tyler: I’d like to conduct mass layoffs of the members of the Academy who nominated this. Making two-thirds of your main trio insufferable for large chunks of the movie (and throwing in a twist-ish ending to damage the third) is just not a recipe for a good movie. Call me crazy, but I enjoy watching characters who I want to root for, even a little. Jane and Aaron, whose names I could not for the life of me remember throughout the entire movie, were obnoxiously self-absorbed and perfect representations of the movie’s self-righteousness. 

I can’t believe I’m defending the himbo, but Tom (whose name I also couldn’t recall) actually recognized his own shortcomings and asked for help several times, only for those two to be the worst coworkers ever. Given how actually good Tom is at reporting the news (even if he didn’t understand most of it), he certainly did not need to be as humble as he was. Is the movie’s point that reality is more complicated than people like Jane and Aaron think? If so, why throw away Jane’s realization of that nuance at the end? Or, for that matter, why make Aaron such a giant jealous asshole and push his “failing upwards” narrative?

Protagonist assholery notwithstanding, I thought the characters were at least well acted. There’s a lot of subtly awkward physical touching between the three of them throughout the movie that I clocked, which was a fun yet cringey way to demonstrate their odd little love triangle. I also enjoyed the behind-the-scenes … scenes of the studio when the show was taping, kind of like a worse version of The Newsroom. Lifting the hood on things like that will always fascinate me. Unfortunately, it’s just not enough for me to overlook my main gripes with it.

Let The Credits Roll

Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:

• If you have plots and feelings of your own (on the movie or ILTBTA in general), feel free to comment on the post or simply reply to the email. If you liked reading this: tell your friends! If you hated reading this: tell your friends how much you hated it by forwarding it to them!

• If you’re a weirdo like Tyler and use Twitter, feel free to follow us there @BlankTheAcademy for ILTBTA updates, rejected jokes, and other random movie-related musings. Once we reach a million followers, we’ll offer to purchase the @ILTBTA handle from the butthead who snagged it before us.

• If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.

Post-Credits Scene

Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.

In honor of our next post falling on D-Day, we’ll be watching and writing about the 1962 epic war film The Longest Day. Led by a ginormous ensemble cast of American, British, French, and German actors, The Longest Day follows those involved in the D-Day landings at Normandy nearly 80 ago. It is available to rent for $3.99 (pre taxes and fees) from Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, and something called Vudu. And with a runtime of nearly three hours, that’s a bargain at just over a dollar per hour of entertainment.

“Woah woah woah,” you might find yourself saying. “This thing is three hours long? I can’t watch something that long That sounds like a lot of work for you guys!” We appreciate your concerns, so we’re taking this opportunity to experiment with what we’re calling our “Epics” series: movies that are just too darn long to do a full post on, but nevertheless still worth watching. So don’t let the length of these movies scare you off!

Until then, we’re absolutely right, and you’re absolutely wrong.

It’s hell to be the smartest ones in the room (Source)

1. Because it’s impossible to be both!

2. Equivalent to nearly $193,000 today!

3. Like a group of kids at a college party amirite?? 🍕

4. Ellen: This is the kind of moment of genuine friendship I would have enjoyed more of to help endear the characters to me.

5. Sounds like my ex-wife!

6. Tyler: I’m so glad the movie made this point. Jack Nicholson’s character enjoys talking the talk but refuses to walk the walk, like a progressive NIMBY who doesn’t want more affordable housing in their neighborhood.

7. Results tabulated and certified by the accountants at Ernst & Yum™.

8. Tyler: For reasons unknown, I’ve found myself to be more critical of movies we watch on weeknights, so maybe there’s something to this!