Broadcast News

After the success of the Academy Award-winning Terms of Endearment (1983), writer/director James L. Brooks spent a few years researching and writing what is possibly his most personal film to date: Broadcast News (1987). Drawing from his years in television, including a stint at CBS News, he took a spot-on look at the ethics of journalism and filtered it through a love triangle between people who work at a network affiliate T.V. station. In short, Brooks’ film is the Bull Durham (1988) of journalism films – smart, funny, insightful and even poignant in the way it looks at the people who deliver us the news on our T.V. screens every night. In some ways, Broadcast News anticipated the dumbing down of televised news so that now there is a whole generation of people who prefer The Daily Show, satirizing today’s top stories, over watching the real thing on the major networks or CNN.

Tom Grunick (William Hurt) is a slightly dimwitted hunk that aspires to be a hard-hitting investigative journalist but is clearly suited to be a news anchorman. Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) is a super-smart news reporter that lacks on-screen charisma – basically the polar opposite of Tom. The object of their affection is Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), an intelligent control freak and T.V. news producer. She finds herself attracted to Aaron, her intellectual equal, but drawn also to Tom’s hunky good looks. At some point, she must make up her mind and decide who is worth loving and who isn’t right for her.

I like how we see these people at work, like the scene where Jan edits Aaron’s newstory under a tight deadline. With only a few minutes left she wants to insert a Norman Rockwell painting into it with a new voiceover. While this is going on Joan Cusack’s co-worker is freaking out because she has to deliver the finished video tape to the control room. With seconds to go she makes a mad dash through the studio that is simultaneously tense and hilarious. It is all worth it when the story airs and everyone gets a sense of satisfaction because it worked and their co-workers let them know. This sequence shows the comradery that exists between these people. They care about the stories they’re trying to tell and really want to make a difference.

Broadcast News is a film of its time, capturing the state of flux that network news was in. Early on, Brooks lays out his views of what’s happening to T.V. news at a conference Jane is speaking at. While she warns of their profession being in danger, people talk amongst themselves or get up and leave forcing her to skip over topics, like trends involving magazine shows and news as profit. Her biggest reaction comes from showing a clip of an elaborate display of dominoes that all the networks showed in favor of an important government policy change. This scene warns of a future that has now happened, making Brooks’ film quite prescient.

As is customary with Brooks’ films, there are some spot-on observations about relationships, like when Aaron says to Jane at one point, “Wouldn’t this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If needy were a turn-on?” It’s funny because it’s true. In addition to witty dialogue, Broadcast News also has its moments of hilarious physical comedy, like the classic scene where Joan Cusack races through the newsroom to get a taped news story to the control room seconds before it is supposed to air. There are little moments as well, like, en route, where she accidently bangs into a water fountain that makes this sequence so funny to watch.

In a wonderful bit of then casting against type, William Hurt plays a good-looking blank slate of a person. Tom means well and really tries to understand the things Jane and Aaron say but he just doesn’t get it and is unable to articulate himself properly. I love the scene early on where he admits his short-comings to her: “I can talk well enough and I’m not bad at making contact with people but I don’t like the feeling that I’m pretending to be a reporter. And half the time I don’t get the news that I’m talking about.” Hurt does an excellent job in this scene as Tom tries to articulate his flaws as a reporter. He’s confident and well-paid while also showing a refreshing self-awareness of his flaws. He just doesn’t know how to fix them. Hurt could have easily played his character’s shallowness for laughs but there is an earnestness there that is endearing but this disappears as he becomes more savvy in his profession.

Fresh from her hilarious turn in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona (1987), Holly Hunter is ideally cast as the chatty Jane, a person who says exactly what she means even if it hurts someone else’s feelings. She is the kind of person that picks up five different newspapers during her morning power walk (and you know she reads them all before work). She’s an obsessive micromanager, which hides her insecurities tied to her love life. She’s the best at what she does for a living but her love life is a mess, pining for clueless pretty boy Tom while oblivious to how much Aaron loves her. Yet, Hunter also shows Jane’s vulnerable side – her awkwardness when it comes to personal relationships.

Albert Brooks nails the smug, smartass qualities that Aaron possesses and how it masks his insecurities when it comes to his romantic feelings for Jane. He clearly loves her but can’t find a way to get past that “best friend” stage of their relationship. That’s really how they work best – chatting with each other on the phone first thing in the morning and again before they go to sleep at night. Brooks excels at playing a brilliant reporter that lacks interpersonal skills and is publicly humiliated twice during the course of the film. The first time is minor – the national news anchor (played with perfect smug condescension by Jack Nicholson) calls Jane to compliment her on a story she and Aaron worked on together without acknowledging him. Brooks plays it for a significantly uncomfortable beat and this foreshadows the second, more memorable time when Aaron reads the news on air and is stricken with the most extreme case of flop sweat (one co-worker comments dryly, “This is more than Nixon ever sweated.”).

Aaron resents Tom for several reasons. He doesn’t like how success comes easy to the good-looking man while Aaron has to work his ass off and still doesn’t get recognized. Mostly, he’s jealous of Tom’s relationship with Jane because he loves her and doesn’t think this other guy, who just waltzes in and dazzles her, is right for her. Aaron is bitter because he is always second choice in his personal and professional lives. He resents this as he’s smarter than Tom but has a whiff of desperation when talking to women and doesn’t have the unflappable charisma needed to read the news on air. He may be smart but he also makes sure that those around him know it. Then, just when it seems like he’s the most unlikable character of the three, there’s the scene where Aaron all but tells Jane that he loves her and the vulnerability he conveys in that moment is touching.

Brooks does something very unusual with Broadcast News: he manages to get us to care about three unlikable people – a bossy know-it-all, an arrogant prick, and a shallow pretty boy. There are all kinds of throwaway scenes where the three characters are called on their overbearing traits in hilarious/semi-serious fashion, like when the head of the news division (Peter Hackes) disagrees with Jane over having Tom read the national news on air for the first time. She confronts him and says that Tom is not read as if it is fact and he replies, “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.” Her response is unexpected. Instead of a witty comeback or angry retort, she quietly and sadly says, “No, it’s awful.” That we care about these characters at all is due in large part to the charisma of Brooks, Hunter and Hurt as well as the superb writing that fleshes out and gives dimension to these characters so that we understand what motivates them and sheds light on their behavior.

From 1964 to 1966, James L. Brooks had been a reporter for CBS News in New York City. He met CBS Evening News senior producer Susan Zirinsky at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco where the idea for Broadcast News was born. He had originally wanted to make a romantic comedy but attending the convention inspired him to have politics in the background of the film. He came up with three lead characters but “didn’t want the movie to declare its hero. All our effort was to have three characters as co-equals.” He also noticed the technological and stylistic changes in the way T.V. news covered the 1984 convention and saw it as a symptom of the changes in American business.

He spent most of 1985 and 1986 in Washington, D.C. doing research, hanging out at the CBS and NBC news bureaus. He showed up at the Gridiron dinner, the White House Correspondents dinner and the Washington Journalism Review awards and took notes, becoming a reporter again. He also spent weeks hanging out with Zirinsky who started as a technical consultant on the film before becoming an associate producer. In addition, he also hung out with the CBS News employees and it clearly influenced him as the budget cuts and firings in the film mirrored what happened in real life, although he denied it at the time. In doing his research Brooks discovered “this new kind of driven, professional woman out there that fascinated me as much as the changes in the television business.” When he started writing the screenplay he “didn’t like any of the three characters. By the time I was finished, I thought I could enjoy having drinks with all of them.”

In 1985, James L. Brooks told Albert Brooks that he wanted him to play one of the male leads in a romantic comedy about broadcasting. As a result, the comedian had input on the script early on. For example, the scene where Aaron suffers from flop sweat on the air came from real life. Brooks was watching CNN late one night and saw a news anchor sweating profusely. He called James L. Brooks and told him to turn on the channel and check it out. The director ended up putting it in the film.

William Hurt was Brooks’ only choice to play Tom and admitted, “frankly, if he’d said no, I would have canceled the picture,” but he had limited time available for the project and the filmmaker began to worry that he wouldn’t find his leading lady in time. Brooks had spent six months looking for the right actress to play Jane. With the sets built and rehearsals about to begin on Monday, he still hadn’t found the right person. The script found its way to Holly Hunter who read it on Friday, auditioned with Hurt on Saturday and got the part on Sunday, starting rehearsals on Monday.

Brooks hadn’t seen any of Hunter’s previous work. The audition with Hurt began as one scene and ended up being two hours of going through the entire script like a rehearsal. Both Albert Brooks and Hunter researched their roles at the CBS Washington bureau with the latter studying with Zirinsky. In addition, the two actors hung out together to give their on-screen friendship an air of authenticity.

The first cut of Broadcast News ran three hours and twenty-four minutes with Brooks trying to get it down to around two hours. He previewed the film for several audiences with different endings to see what worked best.

Broadcast News received mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “The tricky thing about Broadcast News – the quality in director James L. Brooks’ screenplay that makes it so special – is that all three characters have a tendency to grow emotionally absent-minded when it’s a choice between romance and work.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “the film’s most brilliant and sobering touch is the brief epilogue that gives it the perspective of time.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby praised Hurt’s performance: “Mr. Hurt, a most complicated actor, is terrific as a comparatively simple man, someone who’s perfectly aware of his intellectual limitations but who sees no reason for them to interfere with his climb to the top.” However, The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson wrote, “James Brooks is a tricky kind of talent. He’s smart about little things…But when you get right down to it, his insights about television news coverage…aren’t particularly original observations. Brooks is excellent at taking us inside the world of television, but not terribly good at analyzing it.”

Not surprisingly, the film’s depiction of T.V. news divided its real-life counterparts with CBS’ Mike Wallace finding Tom to be an “implausible” anchorman but found the film itself, “very realistic – the ambiance, the egos, the pressure,” while ABC’s Sam Donaldson objected to the film’s view that “good people are pushed out, bubbleheads get rewarded and management are all venal wimps.”

Of all Brooks’ films, Broadcast News is the most successful at merging his T.V. sitcom sensibilities with his cinematic aspirations. His film is not only chock full of truisms about network news but is also an incredibly entertaining and witty romantic comedy that is unafraid to sprinkle moments of compelling drama throughout. Brooks not only manages to say something about the relationships between men and women but also how it intertwines with their work in a way that escapist fare from the 1980s, like Baby Boom (1987) and Working Girl (1988), didn’t quite zero in on as well.

Partway through Broadcast News, Jane and Aaron realize that their way of reporting will eventually be replaced in favor of people like Tom who represents style over substance. This is addressed in a scene where Aaron semi-seriously compares Tom to the Devil:

“He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit.”

History has proven Aaron right as the Tom Brokaws and Dan Rathers have been replaced by less reliable people. Thanks to the Internet and social media, news reporting has become more immediate and sometimes reported before it can be properly verified, taking the old maxim, “if it bleeds, it leads,” to an extreme. Brooks’ film saw it coming and people used to clickbait headlines and TMZ sensationalism must look at Broadcast News like ancient history. Looked at now, the film is a snapshot of a bygone era.

SOURCES

Gussow, Mel. “James Brooks Launches a Star.” The New York Times. December 13, 1987.

Hall, Jane and Brad Darrach. “The News about Broadcast.” People. February 1, 1988.

Scott, Jay. “Brooks Gives Acerbic Account of TV News.” Globe and Mail. December 4, 1987.

Shales, Tom. “A Hollywood Director Who Loves Washington.” Washington Post. December 13, 1987.

Siskel, Gene. “James Brooks’ Plan? He does it his way.” St. Petersburg Times. January 10, 1988.

Tobias, Scott. “Interview: Albert Brooks.” The A.V. Club. January 18, 2006.

Raising Arizona

"Every time I put on a lens, Joel and Ethan would ask, 'Does it look wacky enough?'"

– Barry Sonnenfeld, cinematographer, Raising Arizona

The Coen brothers have an incredible knack for creating rich, detailed films with snappy dialogue and little nuances that make them a real joy to watch. Raising Arizona (1987) is no exception. Fresh from their independent success with Blood Simple (1984), the Coens shifted gears rather dramatically, going from a straight-faced thriller to this gonzo screwball comedy about southern white trash and child rearing. Inspired by the writings of William Wordsworth and the films of Preston Sturges, Raising Arizona was made with four times the budget of Blood Simple and released by a major studio, but under the protective eye of Ben Barenholtz, an unsung hero of American independent cinema (responsible for getting David Lynch’s Eraserhead distributed), which allowed the Coens control over their film.

Considered by the Coen brothers to be the second part of their “hayseed trilogy," Raising Arizona follows the misadventures of H.I. ("Call me, 'Hi.'") McDunnough (Nicolas Cage), an inept, but well meaning hillbilly fugitive with a habit of robbing convenience stores and getting caught, each time being sent back to the same prison. He is booked again and again by a female police officer named Ed ("Short for Edwina."), whom he eventually falls in love with, and marries once he is finished his last prison term. H.I. gets a boring 9 to 5 job at Hudsucker Industries, which is a clever little nod to their future film, The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), written by the Coens with long time friend Sam Raimi. This was the first time that the Coens alluded to a future project. They would do this again in Miller's Crossing (1990), by calling the building that the main character, Tom Reagan lived in the Barton Arms, a reference to their next film, Barton Fink (1991).

H.I. wisely observes that his job isn't much different from prison, except for the paycheck at the end of every week, and tries to settle down to calm, suburban life, "the salad days," as he calls them. Ed (Holly Hunter) wants to have a baby, but as the couple find out, "her insides were a rocky place where my seeds could find no purchase," and so they decide to steal one of the famous Arizona quintuplets: five babies belonging to local unpainted furniture king, Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson). And so begins a grand adventure that has the babysnatchers cross paths with two dimwitted escaped convicts ("We felt the institution no longer had anything to offer us.") who are just too stupid to ever pull off a really successful heist, and a vicious mercenary, Leonard Smalls ("Friends call me, 'Lenny,' but I got no friends.") who looks like a reject out of The Road Warrior (1981), a biker from hell interested in retrieving the baby at all costs.

The Coens keep things brisk and fast paced, with the occasional calm interlude. In most respects the film is akin to a Road Runner cartoon on fast forward with its wild, how-did-they-do-that camera angles and cheery, hillbilly banjo music (courtesy of long-time collaborator Carter Burwell) forever playing in the background. Perhaps the best example of this technique is the exhilarating pursuit for a package of Huggies. What could have been a simple, mundane task of picking up some diapers is raised to a mock epic level as H.I. frantically tries to elude the initial clerk he robbed, the cops who are now in gun-blazing pursuit, the neighborhood dogs he disturbed, and a burly manager of the supermarket he entered in attempt to lose this large group. The Coens use quick cuts and several clever point-of-view shots to set a frenetic pace that never relents until the chase is over. They also mix in some quirky dialogue and the catchy music, complete with yodeling for good effect. In addition, there are little touches here and there that add to chase. For example, when H.I. enters the supermarket the chase music switches to a muzak version of the same banjo music to fit in with, and poke fun at the stereotype of grocery stores. It is these nuances and attention to detail, plus the innovative camera angles, that elevate this film above your average comedy.

Stylistically, Raising Arizona can be seen as an homage, of sorts, to the films of their long-time friend, Sam Raimi. For example, the Coen brothers applied his most famous technique – the “Shakycam,” a camera nailed to a plank, which is then carried by two people who run as fast as they can with it. This produces a jarring effect where you feel like you a part of the action and it was put to good use throughout the film, This worried the studio who debated selling public shares in the film after seeing dailies. Where Raimi’s films are often criticized for merely being exercises in breathtaking camera techniques and flashy style, the Coens also include insanely quotable dialogue (the kind of which cult films are made of), a strong plot, and colorful, memorable characters. Raising Arizona showed that the Coens had clearly surpassed their mentor.

The crowning touch of Raising Arizona is its excellent cast. With his out of control, Woody Woodpecker hairdo, huge side burns, and cheesy mustache, Nicolas Cage is the epitome of southern white trash. He makes H.I. a comic, yet tragic figure wrestling with his own inner demons. He wants to lead a good life, but the lure of robbing convenience stores seems too strong to resist. Holly Hunter plays Ed with a ton of spunky charm, complete with the thickest southern accent of any of the characters as the finishing touch. The way she delivers some of her lines, you almost need subtitles as her accent is so thick. The Coens are clearly poking fun at the stereotype of such accents. John Goodman and William Forsythe, as the two escaped convicts Gale and Evelle, almost steal the film from Cage and Hunter. Goodman and Forsythe seem to enjoy playing their roles to the hilt, reveling in their dumb crook characters destined to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. Forsythe, who went on to play mostly villains and tough guys in various films and television, shows what an untapped comic resource he is, playing so well off of Goodman, as evident in the scene where they rob a bank. I would love to see these guys team up again for another comedy.

An informal company of cast and crew that would become regular additions to many Coen brothers films, begins to emerge with Raising Arizona. Character actor, M. Emmet Walsh, who was so effective as the trashy private detective in Blood Simple makes a cameo as H.I.'s obnoxious co-worker (complete with Hudsucker logo on his outfit), while actress Frances McDormand, who also starred in the Coens’ debut film, makes an appearance in Raising Arizona as an abrasive white trash housewife (“l just love biblical names. If I had another little boy, I'd name him Jason, Caleb or Tab.”). This film was the first of several memorable collaborations with John Goodman who has become a favorite of the Coens. Behind the camera saw the return of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld and composer Carter Burwell, both of whom would continue to work with the Coens on subsequent projects.

Like many of the Coen brothers’ films, Raising Arizona is steeped in classic literature. For example, critic, Rodney Hill found references to John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men. The biker from hell is named Leonard Smalls and the big, mentally slow man in Steinbeck's novel is also named Lennie Small. In addition, William Faulkner wrote a series of stories about the Snopes family and the brothers who break out of prison in the film are Gale and Evelle Snopes. The works of Flannery O'Connor have also been cited as an influence on Raising Arizona. Joel said in an interview that the term, “warthog from hell,” comes from a short story of O’Connor’s, entitled, “Revelation.”

In terms of casting, they wrote the role of Ed with Holly Hunter in mind but only as they worked on it and not during the initial stages. According to Ethan, the character of Ed "wasn't a reflection of who Holly is so much as a part it'd be fun to see her play.” For the ne’er-do-well brothers, William Forsythe came in first and read for the part of Gale but thought he was better suited for the Evelle part. When John Goodman came in to read next, the Coens asked Forsythe to stay so that he could read with Goodman and they tested well together.

The Coen brothers spent ten weeks rehearsing with the actors and running through scenes on various locations. They had a $6 million budget to work with – three million came from Circle Films and three million from 20th Century Fox. The film was shot over ten weeks in Phoenix, Arizona.

Raising Arizona received mixed review from critics. Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “To their old fascination with Sunbelt pathology, to their side-winding Steadicam and pristine command of screen space, the Coens have added a robust humor, a plot that keeps outwitting expectations and a ... dollop of sympathy for their forlorn kidnapers.” In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, “The Coens are coming from the New Left-Field with this zany answer to the alarmist milk-carton-kids campaign, a send-up of endearing dolts, desperation and disposable diapers. They got by with murder in Blood Simple and now they get by with baby rustling in the best kidnapping comedy since last summer's Ruthless People.” The Chicago Reader’s Pat Graham wrote, “The snickering humor that percolated through the Coens' debut, Blood Simple, is the whole show here, and it's damn near hysterical.”

However, in his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised the screenplay but found fault with the direction, which he felt was “without decisive style. “Raising Arizona has the manner of a Jonathan Demme film – say Handle With Care or Melvin and Howard – directed by someone else. Its automobile chases are appropriately frantic, but they've been shot and edited with the kind of clumsiness that television producers try to cover up with laugh tracks.” Amazingly, Roger Ebert gave the film one-and-a-half stars and wrote, “It cannot decide if it is about real people, or comic exaggerations. It moves so uneasily from one level of reality to another that finally we're just baffled. Comedy often depends on frustrating the audience's expectations. But how can it work when we don't have a clue about what to expect.”

The Coen brothers aren't afraid to go after any facet of the south, poking fun at everything from H.I.'s boss and his family, who give new meaning to the term inbreeding, to prison life, and southern hospitality. At times, you can never quite tell if they're making fun of this culture or trying to say something serious, instead they leave it up to the audience to decide. Through the use of an outrageous, satirical style, the Coens are really commenting on parenthood, suggesting that raising a child is no easy task. They do this by taking normal problems and situations and exaggerating them to an unbelievable level of caricature. The Coens also developed their own stylistic camera techniques, incredible attention to details, and clever dialogue that would appear in an even more improved state in their later films. The film made a tidy sum, grossing $22 million. The financial success of the Raising Arizona prompted Warner Brothers to offer them Batman (1989) but they wisely turned the studio down and made Miller’s Crossing instead.

Home for the Holidays

Christmas holiday movies are a dime a dozen but how many Thanksgiving movies are there? Sure, many are set during this holiday but Home for the Holidays (1995) is the Thanksgiving movie. Director Jodie Foster captures the hassle and the horror of traveling during the holidays and presents an instantly relatable premise: going home for Thanksgiving dinner and having to put up with your relatives. Everyone has been stuck next to that annoying person on a long plane ride or have had to deal with a crowded airport or stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Everybody has a Thanksgiving history and stories that go with it. Home for the Holidays collects several of these stories into one entertaining movie.

Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) is having the worst Thanksgiving ever. She has just been fired from her job, made out with her 60-year-old boss and found out that her daughter Kit (Claire Danes) is going to have sex for the first time. To add insult to injury, Claudia is going to spend Thanksgiving with her parents. Her mother (Anne Bancroft) reads Dear Abby and constantly nags her daughter (“Claudia, I can see your roots.”) while her father (Charles Durning) has selective deafness and weaves in and out of lanes of traffic. The antagonists are represented by Claudia’s sister Jo Ann (Cynthia Stevenson), her boring husband (Steve Guttenberg) and their annoying kids. They provide the friction and conflict, exposing Jo Ann and Claudia’s deep-rooted sibling rivalry issues.

The film really comes to life when Robert Downey Jr. as Claudia’s gay brother Tommy arrives with his business partner, Leo “Go” Fish (Dylan McDermott) in tow. Downey’s introduction ranks right up there with Jack Black’s equally memorable first appearance in High Fidelity (2000). He’s the mischievous sibling who knows exactly which buttons to push to drive his sisters crazy and Downey plays the role with obvious glee as evident from the way he works the kitchen, improvising his ass off as he interacts with the cast, most memorably Anne Bancroft (“Spin mommy, spin.”), during his whirlwind introduction. Foster remembers that, “the cast pretty much stuck to the script once we had honed it down. The only person I let make up whatever he wanted was Robert Downey Jr. He just has this incredibly fertile mind.” The scene where Tommy tells the story about how Leo once injured his nose is a brilliant bit of comic acting on Downey’s part that is hilarious and slightly disgusting simultaneously. Only he has the fearless conviction to pull off this kind of throwaway anecdote that typifies the kind of gems that are peppered throughout Home for the Holidays.

Geraldine Chaplin, as the family’s eccentric Aunt Glady, all but steals every scene she’s in with her surreal non-sequiters (“Wanna see a really big boil?”) and matches Downey for memorable comedic moments in the movie. For example, there is a scene where Glady tells a story at dinner that stops things cold as she speaks wistfully about how, one Christmas Eve, Claudia’s father kissed her and for one moment she felt special like how she imagined her sister felt. It’s a scene that starts off funny and then becomes poignant thanks to Chaplin’s heartfelt performance. Foster remembers that she “came up with wonderful choices in Holidays. She was the most eccentric character of the bunch, so I allowed her to push a little bit more some of those strange behaviors. But I didn't want to push the other actors into wacky, campy idiosyncratic levels. These are real people; they're complicated, but they are very real.” David Strathairn even pops up for a memorable cameo as Russell “Sad Sack” Terziak, a guy with the worst hard luck story, ever. It’s a rare comedic turn as the veteran character actor is cast against type. He is able to put a slightly tragic and uncomfortable spin on his scene.

Castle Rock was originally going to finance the film but canceled and Foster’s own production company, Egg Productions, acquired W.D. Richter’s screenplay. She worked with him on it so that the film ultimately reflects her point-of-view and her own life experience. She spent two weeks rehearsing with her cast before principal photography began in February 1995. Foster used this time to get input from the actors about dialogue – if a scene or speech did not ring true, she wanted to be told. According to Richter, “We all drive each other nuts at holidays like Thanksgiving. I think there is great tragedy and great humor in that. I wanted some sense of a family pulling together in spite of all the problems.”

Holiday movies are like Madlibs: they present a structure and archetypes for you to impart your own experiences. Home for the Holidays contains every archetypal character so that you can identify with at least one if not many of the characters. Richter’s script perfectly captures the dysfunctional family that everyone experiences on some level, like how parents know just what to say to get under your skin. The dialogue is idiosyncratic yet very familiar and memorable, especially everything Downey says. It has a conversational tone that is delivered naturally by the excellent ensemble cast. The film also doesn’t follow the usual beats associated with this kind of movie. For example, early on Claudia’s mother reads to her a Dear Abby letter and the tone of the film shifts to a melancholic one for a few minutes before veering back into comedy.

Foster sets up an idealistic façade but balances it with a realistic depiction of the family dynamic. Richter’s script nails the interplay between retired parents and how they constantly nag each other but really do love one another. And there are the little details that ring true, like how Claudia’s mother makes lists of things to get or do. Sure enough, by dinner time there’s a big blow out argument as old grudges come to the surface. The friction between Tommy and Jo Ann echoes those old arguments that we’ve all had with siblings when one was eight years old and then comes bubbling to the surface whenever you get together with them, no matter how much time has passed. Regardless of all the bad mojo – Tommy having been secretly married to his boyfriend (Chad Lowe), Claudia guilty over being fired and Jo Ann’s bitter resentment with her two free-spirited siblings – coming together for dinner will, they hope, resolve some of these issues. It is a moment where the film gets serious as real issues and true feelings are addressed but it is consistent with what came before and doesn’t take you out of the film. Like real life, some issues are resolved and some aren’t. According to Foster, “At no point did I want the comedy so raucous and exaggerated that you could not believe in it. I wanted people to be able and look at it and say, ‘This is life.’”

The film received mixed reviews but most of the major newspaper critics liked it. In his three and half star review, Roger Ebert praised Foster's ability to direct "the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment," and Downey's performance that "brings out all the complexities of a character who has used a quick wit to keep the world's hurts at arm's length." Janet Maslin, in her review for The New York Times, praised Holly Hunter's performance: "Displaying a dizziness more mannered than the cool, crisp intelligence she shows in Copycat, Ms. Hunter still holds together Home for the Holidays with a sympathetic performance.” However, in her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley criticized some of the performances: "Downey brings a lot of energy to the role, but his antics can be both tedious and distracting. Hunter has a lovely scene with her disgruntled sister, but there's no time for that relationship to develop, what with a romantic interest yet to explore.” USA Today gave Home for the Holidays three out of four stars and wrote, “Home has the usual hellish ritual. They come, they eat, they argue, they leave. It’s the stuffing in-between that makes it special.”

Home for the Holidays is not a straight-out comedy because it does have its moments of reflection and even a melancholic tinge of nostalgia. One of its underlying themes is the old chestnut that the more things change, the more we want them to stay the same. That is what makes this film so good. These characters will always be there for us to revisit and enjoy time and time again. Foster’s film has a timeless quality that allows it to endure and hold up to repeated viewings. No matter how much you’ve changed, you revert to your old self when you come home for Thanksgiving.

SOURCES

Allen, Tom. "Becoming Jodie Foster." Moviemaker. December 2, 1995.

Bibby, Patricia. "Jodie Foster Looks Home to Heal." Associated Press. November 12, 1995.

Hunter, Stephen. "Foster Feels at Home Adding Fun, Meaning to Holidays Clan." Baltimore Sun. November 19, 1995.

Kirkland, Bruce. "Downey to Earth." Toronto Sun. November 6, 1995.

Portman, Jamie. "Home for the Holidays No Ordinary Family Film." Montreal Gazette. October 31, 1995.

Young, Paul F. "Foster Moves Home to Par." Variety. November 19, 1995.

Here's an excerpt from the original short story that the film is based on.