Independent Films, Film Profiles

Broadcast News (film)
by James_L._Brooks

Broadcast News is a 1987 romantic comedy film written, produced and directed by James L. Brooks, about a virtuoso television news producer (Holly Hunter), who has daily emotional breakdowns, a brilliant yet prickly reporter (Albert Brooks) and his charismatic but far less seasoned rival (William Hurt). It also stars Robert Prosky, Lois Chiles, Joan Cusack, and Jack Nicholson in an unbilled role as the evening news anchor.The film revolves around three characters who work in television news. Jane Craig (Hunter) is a talented producer who tries to conceal how important it is for her to be found sexually attractive by a handsome man who epitomizes everything about television news that appalls her. Jane's best friend and frequent collaborator, Aaron Altman (Brooks), is a gifted writer and reporter ambitious for on-camera exposure, who is secretly in love with Jane, and embittered by her rejection of him. Tom Grunick (Hurt), a local news anchorman who was up until recently a sports anchorman, is charismatic and telegenic but denied self-respect due to his intellectual limitations, of which he is all too aware. He is attracted to Jane, although he is also intimidated by her skills and intensity. The emotional triangle formed by these three disparate people and their different career paths form the basis for the film's storyline.The film contains bits of business that are a send-up of TV journalism's egos on the one hand, and a tribute to the immediacy with which the medium can infuse news events on the other. Many of its detailed observations of public affairs TV are extremely accurate.