Broadcast News

Please god forgive me I’m about to get sincere on the internet. As the product of two tv news producers, when I watched this earlier this year it felt like a movie that was already encoded into my dna. I grew up occasionally going to work with my parents at the tv station. I would spend my time playing club penguin at whatever computer was left unattended whilst sitting next to some sleep deprived 20 year old editing a story about a murder. In retrospect it was an odd place to spend as much time as I did when I was a kid but my parents made it feel like home. I’m gonna be real, I lucked out with my parents. I’ve had enough conversations with friends about their parents to know I had a pretty unproblematic childhood. My parents however, did do more than just get me to 18 mentally unscathed (minus the adhd genes I guess). They’ve raised me to be informed and educated and critical and really think about the way I see and move through the world. So much of me is from them and so much of them is in this movie. When I told my dad that I watched this movie his eyes lit up. My parents generally hate movies about journalism. Anytime I bring up Nightcrawler to my mom she audibly gags. It’s just one of those things where you’re too close to the material that any tiny inaccuracy turns the entire thing into unwatchable nonsense. I mean I’m sure if I watched Cocktail or whatever bartender movie I would break the world record for eye rolls per second. However this movie is one of the few that as my dad said “just gets it.” He even told me that he recommends it to his favorite students. I watched this movie for the first time over the summer in the middle of a 3 day long road trip with just me and my dad. We probably killed about 3 hours just talking about the movie and everything that it gets right. I thought the race to get the tape on tv felt like a pure movie magic addition to add a little action to a largely talkie movie but he proceeded to tell me about the countless times he had cut it unbelievably close on a broadcast. He even told me about those heartbreaking days when the layoffs hit and how the industry can crush you. I probably learned more about what my parents actually do in those 3 hours than I did in the preceding 23 years of my life. I tried to make myself interested in journalism when I was in middle school but I just couldn’t get there. It’s a shame because I’m very willing to benefit from nepotism. I still have a lot of appreciation for the craft as well as some strong opinions on the current state of larger network news. It’s just something I couldn’t get my heart into. When I watched it tonight all I could do was think about my parents. I’m sure this is a shock to anyone who has actually read this far down. I’m just glad this movie exists and that I have a movie that is just as warm and lovely and funny and biting and smart and sentimental and just as good of a fucking hang as my parents are. Love you mom. Love you dad. Thanks for making me, me.