The Death Of Movie Journalists?
State of Play—a political thriller about a dogged reporter uncovering… a conspiracy—may be the last Hollywood movie to feature a hero journalist. Because, you know, that industry is dying.
That’s what Reason editor Matt Welch considers today in a biting little think piece. Russell Crowe’s character in the flick is one of those beloved newsboys of old—the one bound by integrity to dig up the dirt and do what’s right. Real meat and potatoes, rock-moving journalism. It was once such a vibrant, heroic genre in the movies, from All the President’s Men to noble Denzel in The Pelican Brief.
And State of Play is archetypal of that. Reporters who see the film are actually bursting into applause when they watch the characters go about the business of reporting the news—lots of furrowed brows and pit stains and paper flying. And of course they’re ecstatic; the media loves to look at (and aggrandise) itself and just overall lovingly navel gaze to the point of myopia. As Welch puts it, “There is more than enough incestuousness in this feedback loop to remind non-newspaper employees anew why big-city journalism can be so off-putting.” Heh.
Welch actually figures that this self-importance is so strong that State of Play probably won’t, in fact, be the last movie of its kind. Rather, a whole new genre of swollen pride let’s-save-newspapers movies might come storming into your multiplex as the real-life industry yaws and keels over: “Think of it instead as the first of many movie treatments about the long, tedious, and over-publicised death of a business that only occasionally resembles its noble cinematic self.”
Oh Ron Howard. You were just fifteen years early.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
You just wait until Gus Haynes hits the big screen in "The Wire: Out for Justice" movie. Which will both suck and make me regret coming up with this idea.
Darrone
The Paper was so fun to watch in school j-class. Batman! Fatal Attraction! Randy Quaid!
Cecil's Wielder
The real start of this trend was "Lou Grant," the hourlong newspaper spinoff of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" -- which ran for five years and managed to finish both first and last in the ratings at different times.
Oh, yeah, and that Watergate movie, too.
@Cecil's Wielder: Col. Kilgore and his prostate the size of a pineapple!
Sproing
Russell Crowe cannot save the movie journalist. The movie journalist can only be saved by Kate Hudson, Katherine Heigl, and any romcom starlet whose character needs a profession that could, conceivably, plant her in the middle of a ridiculous social situation and require her to see it through -- to earn a headline, a paycheck, and eventually Matthew McConaughey.
Sproing
Speaking of newspapers, can someone please let us know how Amanda from The Paper is doing at NYU?
Shouldn't Sandra Bullock be in this somehow?
So does this mean we're not too far removed from having the first blogger-hero?
Denby must love the thought of that.
CablinasianDem
Of course there will be more of these. What else are those unemployed journalists going to do except work on their screenplays?
i still love the origianl bbc miniseries. it was so dense, and about so much more than the good-for-the-journalist pathos that this version seems to be about.
@sharpshinyclaws:
What, no one wants to write the great American novel anymore?
Kitten_Witawip
@Cecil's Wielder: And don't forget My Cousin Vinny!
badass-boi
@Kitten_Witawip:
Who would read novels in the Time Of Twitter?
rudi_freude
well yeah, Jurassic Park was big too...
iamjustjules
Just cut to the scene where ben cries his eyes out...What, wait, he doesn't cry in this film? Really?
Well, he's not from Boston either. No shit. He was Born & Raised in LA...His dad was a two bit actor and he only spent time up here on school vacations....Another phony Boston Kid...And his punk-ass Brother too.
I wonder, did he use that terrible, affected Boston accent when he came up here for visits? William Devane playing JFK in a bad TV Movie can effect a better Boston accent than this clown! What a joke!
stanhalen