I had lengthy phone conversations with my son in Chicago, and with an old friend. Then I ate takeout broccolini-pancetta risotto, sipped some cava and watched Broadcast News.
If a time traveler from 2017 went back 30 years and watched that movie (it came out in 1987) they would be perplexed, to say the least. So many elements would never be in a movie today!
-- Handsome William Hurt goes after frumpy Holly Hunter because he thinks she's smart and professionally talented.
-- William Hurt's first solo news report is an expose about date rape (!). It is played like a major feature story, including a long interview with a victim, as if revealing for the first time that such a thing exists. The women in the newsroom watch the TV report with surprise, as if they didn't know it existed, either. Wiliam Hurt's career gets a big boost from the accomplishment.
-- The other reason the date-rape story is significant is because at one point the camera turns to William Hurt who, as he listens to the crying victim, is shedding a tiny tear which, even in 1987, I thought was gross and stupid and nobody would do that. But even Holly Hunter, admitting it's a little over the top, grudgingly allows that it works.
-- William Hurt relentlessly pursues Holly Hunter romantically, but always charmingly, never in a way that's pushy or out of bounds. He doesn't text her a photo of his penis.
-- That tear [SPOILER ALERT if you've never seen this 30-year-old movie but want to someday, you might want to skip the next one] leads Holly Hunter to break up with William Hurt in the airport, just as they were about to leave for a romantic tropical getaway. The reason she does that is that she has discovered the tear was faked (she watches the footage from the interview and sees William stop in the middle to summon a tear). So yeah, that is a definite news no-no.
But what is the visitor from 2017 to make of a world where the worst example of fake news they can come up with is a man falsely shedding a tear while doing a story about date rape!
And I can't even think of a movie where the lead actress is frumpy and not especially beautiful and that's not the whole point of the movie (how will she ever get a man??) but gets involved in a romantic relationship anyway.
I mean, Frances McDormand is frumpy and not-beautiful in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Mo, which I saw earlier in the week, but there's no romance involved.