Transcript
Movie Blurbs
March 10, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If the big screen is anything to go by, Hollywood hates the media, especially the news media. Increasingly the movies tell us that the media pander, incite violence and degrade the people who produce it as much as the people who consume it! That was true as early as Citizen Kane, Orson Welles's memorable portrayal of William Randolph Hearst.
ORSON WELLES AS KANE: If the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough. [LAUGHTER]
WOMEN: That's right, Mr. Kane!
ORSON WELLES AS KANE: Now the murder of this Mrs. Harry Silverstone i--
MAN: There's no proof that that woman was murdered--!
ORSON WELLES AS KANE: No proof?!
MAN: -- or even that she's dead!
ORSON WELLES AS KANE: [...?...] just that she's missing and the neighbors are getting suspicious.
MAN: It's not our function to report the gossip of housewives. If we were interested in that kind of thing, Mr. Kane, we could fill the paper twice over daily.
ORSON WELLES AS KANE: Mr. Carter-- that's the kind of thing we are going to be interested in from now on.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But Hollywood seems to reserve particular revulsion for television news. You can see it in countless films like Network and Natural Born Killers and in Robert DeNiro's latest film, 15 Minutes which opened this weekend. It's about two fame-hungry murderers and the TV cameras that love them. David Edelstein is the movie critic for Slate.com. He says that when you take in a Hollywood movie that slams reporters, you should consider the source.
DAVID EDELSTEIN: Well you have to understand the people who make movies are celebrities and millionaires who jealously guard their privacy and they have a real interest in demonizing the media that seeks to expose their workings. Almost every movie that you see nowadays that portrays the press, the, the press is meddlesome, the enemy of truth, the distorter of truth. The first two Die Hard films -- these movies always climax with, in this case, not the hero but the hero's wife punching out the reporter who in his un-savory and unscrupulous zest to cover the story has somehow endangered the hero.
MAN: Mr. McLean - M--Mr. McLean -- now that it's all over and after this incredible ordeal, what are your feelings? [BIG PUNCH] [LAUGHTER]
DAVID EDELSTEIN: These days what you see is a hero or heroine who just wants to be allowed to nail the bad guys and these horrible, unscrupulous reporters are coming in and endangering the public welfare.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:What about the obsession with not just intrusiveness and obstruction but with lurid sensationalism which the movies frequently suggest the press incites and feeds on? Let us go back to Network.
FAYE DUNAWAY IN NETWORK: I watched your 6 o'clock news today -- it's straight tabloid! You had a minute and a half of that lady riding a bike naked in Central Park; on the other hand you had less than a minute of hard national and international news -- it was all sex, scandal, brutal crimes, sports-- children with incurable disease and lost puppies! So I don't think I'll listen to any protestations of high standards of journalism, and you're right down in the street soliciting audiences like the rest of us. Look, all I'm saying is: if you're going to hustle, at least do it right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is a question of encouraging somebody to go crazy on the air in order to-- build ratings.
DAVID EDELSTEIN:This is an old complaint that we've been hearing for, for decades which is that somehow or other the media inspires violence and rewards violence. A very good case in the point is the new film 15 Minutes which I think is an atrocity on so many levels in which the villains are this kind of fabulous construct. I mean they're pure evil. They are two Eastern European tourists who seem to have risen up from the black muck of Communism. They're infected by this, this American Capitalist dream of, of wealth and celebrity. And so they go around killing people and filming the murders--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And the news media, personified by Kelsey Grammer, gets enlisted.
"EASTERN EUROPEAN TOURIST/MURDERER:" Hey Top Story -- are you still there?
KELSEY GRAMMER AS TV ANCHOR: Yeah, yeah I'm here. Look, it doesn't work that way.
"EASTERN EUROPEAN TOURIST/MURDERER:" If you don't want my film, I'll call another show, and they will show it.
KELSEY GRAMMER AS TV ANCHOR: All right. I'll meet you. I need two things from you -- I want exclusivity and you will surrender to me.
"EASTERN EUROPEAN TOURIST/MURDERER:" Bring cash. [HANGS UP]
DAVID EDELSTEIN:Kelsey Grammer is willing, although he identifies himself as a friend of a particular character, when that character is murdered, he thinks nothing of paying a million dollars for the exclusive rights to air this atrocity footage on live TV. Now this is a movie that has absolutely no bones about showing you the blood-drenched, semi-nude body of a prostitute who has been butchered. I mean so what you have is a lurid tabloid movie trying to score points by denouncing lurid tabloids which is the oldest trick in the world.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You have Natural Born Killers and Mad City and now 15 Minutes -- they all suggest that bad things wouldn't happen if the news weren't out there so hungry for them.
DAVID EDELSTEIN: Obviously there is an enormous hunger for celebrity, but you know before we blame the press for this we have to ask what it is in this culture that has created this void in people whereby they don't feel they exist unless they can see themselves larger than life. And that I don't think is the press's fault. In that regard I think the press is following the dictates of Capitalism, which wants to sell things to people!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: David Edelstein reviews movies for Slate.com.