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.

Spanglish

There are films for every moment in your life. On a Sunday afternoon after brunch and a stroll you don’t want to watch a Lars Von Trier film. Why is it that you can almost always find Terms of Endearment (1983) or As Good As It Gets (1997) on television on Sunday afternoons more than any other day? People want to spend a lazy weekend watching a James L. Brooks or a Woody Allen film because they offer a comforting vibe that is perfect for these times. Brooks is a curious sort of auteur. His cinematic output is quite small but distinctive. For someone who makes such popular crowd-pleasers, he remains largely anonymous. He is never mentioned in the same breath as other contemporaries like Woody Allen. Perhaps it is because Allen is influenced by Ingmar Bergman and other art house favorites while Brooks comes from a popular T.V. background. He is the rare auteur who listens to and uses audience test screenings to fine-tune his films. Sometimes this backfires on him as it did with a disastrous screening for his musical I’ll Do Anything (1994) that prompted Brooks to take out all the musical numbers. The result was a commercial and critical failure – a rarity for the filmmaker who has won three Academy Awards (a hat trick for Terms) and four additional nominations, including three out of his five films garnering Best Picture nods.

Brooks’ films exist in a strange place. They are not low-brow fare, like Adam Sandler’s raunchy comedies and they are not art house darlings like the Coen brothers films. Perhaps his lack of serious critical attention or cultish adulation from cineastes is a result of his background in mainstream T.V. and his popular sensibilities. Jonathan Rosenbaum’s review of Spanglish (2004) in the Chicago Reader takes on a confused tone as he does not quite know what to make of Brooks’ films. Rosenbaum writes, “Sometimes Brooks’s ideas are legitimate, but his way of putting them across is dishonest. Sometimes the ideas are dishonest, but his way of putting them across is legitimate.” Judging from the countless interviews Brooks has given over the years it is obvious that he is all about conveying a truthfulness in his work. Obviously, a certain amount of emotional manipulation plays a part but Brooks is never dishonest about it. He is the rare Hollywood player with a conscience. Like one of his protégés, Cameron Crowe (he produced Say Anything... and Jerry Maguire), Brooks believes in the underdog protagonist who may not always succeed by the film’s conclusion but has taken the worst that life can dish out and keeps plugging away.

Spanglish seemed to fly right under the critical and commercial radar despite the presence of Adam Sandler. Perhaps it was the misleading trailers that pegged the film as some kind of goofy Sandler comedy. This could not be farther from the truth as the film’s story is told by a young Mexican girl named Christina (Shelbie Bruce) about her mother, Flor (Paz Vega) and their misadventures in America. Flor gets a job as a housekeeper (in true sitcom fashion we never actually see her do any housework) for the Clasky’s, an affluent family in Los Angeles. They spend a summer in Malibu and bring Flor and her daughter with them. This sets the stage for ensuing drama as John (Adam Sandler) and his wife Deborah (Tea Leoni) drift farther apart while Christina becomes seduced by the Clasky’s lifestyle.

John Clasky was inspired by an unconventional figure from popular culture: Dagwood Bumstead of the long-running comic strip, Blondie. “Dagwood showed up every day, got knocked down, never got to eat his sandwich ... the kids and his wife were always giving him a hard time. [But] he showed up every day and did his deal,” said Brooks in an interview. There is a scene in Spanglish where John makes a sandwich (not quite as impressive as Dagwood’s but delicious looking nonetheless) and is unable to eat it because Flor confronts him about an issue with her daughter.

All of this may seem like a standard sitcom set-up, and it is, but Brooks handles this all with a deft touch, never making these characters too severe. They are quirky in a comic way but with their moments of seriousness. He plays around with archetypes in his films. There is the good character that embodies kindness and selflessness – Debra Winger’s sympathetic character in Terms of Endearment, Helen Hunt’s protective mom in As Good As It Gets and Sandler’s easy-going dad in Spanglish. There is the zany character: Jack Nicholson’s wily ex-astronaut in Terms, Cuba Gooding’s flamboyant agent in As Good and Cloris Leachman’s show business mother in Spanglish. Finally, there is the antagonist, an A-type personality who eventually shows some humanity: Shirley McLaine’s acerbic mother in Terms of Endearment, Albert Brooks’ smugly superior reporter in Broadcast News (1987) and Tea Leoni’s frantic mother in Spanglish.

Brooks’ films straddle the line between comedy, drama and romance but he describes them as comedies “because they won’t live unless we clock a certain number of laughs.” It is this T.V. sitcom aesthetic that often draws scorn from critics and endears him to mainstream audiences. Brooks has a knack for creating engaging, three-dimensional characters and some of the most insightful dialogue in any mainstream studio film. To be fair, his films wear their influences on their collective sleeves. With their melodrama mixed with manic, comic interludes, they feel like feature-length sitcoms, right down to the same cadences and rhythms.

What separates his films from other comedy/drama/romance hybrids is that they have a humanistic streak that is never preachy or sappy. There is a truthfulness to them that resonates. This is an important aspect for Brooks who believes that comedy should “reflect real life because to me it’s more reassuring that we’ll get through.” The characters in his films should face some of the same problems that we all do and in doing so we relate more to them on some level.

What separates Brooks’ films from other romantic comedies is their ability to go effortlessly from comedy to drama in the same scene. He did this most effectively in As Good As It Gets with Greg Kinnear’s character as he recovers after being savagely beaten. In Spanglish, there is a scene where Deborah buys her daughter Bernice (Sarah Steele) clothes that are too small, on purpose, in what she thinks is a subtle way of telling her child to lose weight. She does this in front of the entire family and Flor, humiliating Bernice. The girl is not fat; she’s just a normal kid. It is an uncomfortable scene and we hate Deborah for what she’s done and share John’s frustration. Brooks explores the cruelty that people are capable of but in subtle ways. In As Good As It Gets, Nicholson’s character has a myriad of prejudices but the script tempers them with humor and sensitivity.

Those expecting Spanglish to be a typical Sandler film will be disappointed. Brooks prolongs his first on-screen appearance for as long as possible and when it does happen it is done in a subtle, understated way with no fanfare. For the first half of the film, Sandler plays a supporting role, allowing the other actors room to do their thing and then in the last half he comes to the foreground as the drama between him and Leoni’s character comes to a boil. As brilliant as he was in Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Sandler is even better in Spanglish, dropping most of his usual shtick by playing a nice, normal guy who loves his family. He hits all the right comedic beats but in a quiet, restrained way and ably handles the serious moments too.

Cloris Leachman is the surprise scene-stealer as Brooks gives the veteran actress some of the film’s funniest lines. She teaches her grandson Georgie (Ian Hayland) old jazz standards to get over his nightmares. Leachman also gets the film’s climactic speech, a valuable life lesson for Deborah. The one weak link in this impressive effort is Tea Leoni’s character. Why would a nice guy like John ever marry and stay with such an insensitive flake like Deborah? She treats her daughter like crap and is always condescending towards her. The film never answers this question in a meaningful or satisfying way. Leoni certainly has a gift for broad comedy, delivering one of the most enthusiastically awkward sex scenes in recent memory. The only problem is that her performance is constantly at a manic level. There are no nuances, just a shrill, one-note performance.

Spanglish received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “And yet the movie is not quite the sitcom the setup seems to suggest; there are some character quirks that make it intriguing.” Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, “You're in for a treat with this sweetheart of a romantic comedy. Director James L. Brooks (As Good as It Gets, Terms of Endearment) doesn't just write comedy, he crafts it. With his unerring eye for characters, even their hidden dark corners, Brooks makes Spanglish a rich blend of humor and heartbreak.” In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Thomson wrote, “And what a joy it is to see Leachman given room to maneuver. As Evelyn, she's a pistol, carrying that over-filled glass of wine in one hand, but never spilling or missing a comic beat.” USA Today’s Mike Clark wrote, “Sandler is the best he has ever been playing the best chef in Los Angeles”

However, in his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “Mr. Sandler has a solid, fumbling likability, without which Spanglish would be not merely annoying but despicable in its slick complacency.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “D” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “This is a deeply unpleasant movie masquerading as a heartfelt social commentary on life in these United States (or at least in the wealthy republic of Beverly Hills).” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, “Brooks creates rich, quirky roles—Cloris Leachman is a hoot as Leoni's alcoholic live-in mom—but the discrepancy between the sizzle of his writing and the flatness of his camera work has never been so noticeable. Spanglish feels hemmed in, visually monotonous.”

It is Flor’s relationship with her daughter that is the ideal image of parenting that Spanglish presents. She uses compassion and kindness but is firm when she has to be. It is this compassion that attracts John to her. They share the same values and views on marriage and parenting. Brooks understands people’s idiosyncrasies. There is always the danger of being too melodramatic or too cutesy. The screenplays of his films are well-balanced and insightful. They fly in the face of the current trend by giving characters a big speech. “The only reason it doesn’t happen so often is because, a lot of times, writers are re-written, and speeches aren’t gonna survive that. Writers having authority over their own work is not an everyday thing. Writers like speeches,” he said in an interview. All of the characters in Spanglish are well-spoken, which is rather ironic considering the language barrier between Flor and the Clasky’s plays an important role.

Ultimately, Brooks’ films are about tolerance and optimism in a time when our society is so cynical and jaded. His films happen in spite of the world outside. Very few mainstream American films deal with class differences and Spanglish tackles it head on as Flor and her daughter’s Mexican heritage clash with the Clasky’s upscale world. With Brooks due for a new film soon, it is high time for this underappreciated effort to be re-discovered and re-assessed. In a time when the Hollywood dramedy is rife with lousy writing and stock characters, we need Brooks’ films now more than ever.