Broadcast News

Criterion Collection, $29.95

On the commentary track for Broadcast News, writer/director James L. Brooks recalls that, when he lost the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the victor rubbed it in his face. Brooks doesn’t name names, but it takes about 12 seconds to search-engine your way to the answer: John Patrick Shanley, the hot-tempered playwright who wrote Moonstruck. This gossipy bit about bad behavior isn’t the interesting takeaway, though: It’s the realization that two of the sharpest romantic comedies since screwball’s heyday debuted not only in the same gassy decade, but in the very same year, 1987. Moonstruck is the sentimental favorite – for one thing, the girl actually gets the guy – but Broadcast News has more meat on its bones. Presciently set at the tipping point when hard news soft-boiled into something more like entertainment, it hangs on the love triangle between fast-talking network TV producer Jane Craig (Holly Hunter); correspondent Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), terribly smart and terribly besotted with Jane; and new hire Tom Grunick (William Hurt), a kinda-dumb lug with a pretty mug. What startles most about Broadcast News, two decades on, is how little Brooks coddles the audience, or cudgels us to pick sides. And what an advanced plot kink, to have the leading lady suffer a tricky crisis of conscience (simply put: can you still respect yourself if you fall for someone you don’t respect?). Tom’s quick ascension at the network infuriates Jane, but all that Midwestern masculinity gets her motor running, too. Aaron just gets her, but an almost-telepathic understanding of how your inamorata ticks rarely gets you the girl. Aaron gets that, too; just listen to his sardonic slow-bang-of-the-head-against-a-wall: “Wouldn’t this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If ‘needy’ were a turn-on?” Funny thing, in the hands of Brooks the actor and Brooks the writer/director, it totally is.

This article appears in January 28 • 2011.

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A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...