Scoop opera

In the last two decades, media has been the favourite theme on celluloid, writes Ervell E. Menezes

Ever heard of Mad City? It is one of the lesser-known films and made by one of my favourite European directors, the Frenchman Constantin Costa-Gavras, which I caught accidentally on HBO while switching channels recently. Gavras’ other films include Z, State of Siege, Missing and Betrayed and I met this docu-drama wizard (he is Oliver Stone’s mentor) when he was in Mumbai`A0for IFFI in 1984 with his film Hanna K.

Mad City is about how the sensational media reacts to a human drama in which a laid-off security guard (John Travolta) holds a group of children hostage`A0in a museum in small town in United States. Dustin Hoffman is the freelance TV journalist covering the event.

Made in the early 1990s, it graphically projects the various conflicting interests that come into play in the rat race media world`A0and scant respect shown to the protagonist.

There is anchorman Alan Alda trying to get a piece of the action, which means professional jealousy comes into play. But what about social purpose and consciousness? Is everything that happens in life a`A0prospective story? What about the individual lives involved? Does no one think of them or do they all go out of the window?

It is a subject as today as tomorrow’s newspapers and isn’t`A0the recent killing in Mumbai`A0of young Adnan Patrawalla, by his teenage friends,`A0also a case of media blitz.

The sooner these issues are addressed, the better. But my mind at once flashed back to other media-centric films and how they were dealt with. In the`A0last two decades, the media seems to be a favourite theme on celluloid.

Bertrand Tavernier’s Deathwatch (1980) is another spine-chilling drama which deals with the invasion of one’s privacy. Set in the future, a TV documentary producer has a cameraman with a lens implanted in his eye so that he can follow every movement in the life of a dying woman. An unusual subject in those`A0days. Romy Schneider plays the dying woman and Harvey Keitel the cameraman and the knife-edge on which the film treads has to be seen to`A0be believed. The questions it raises and the suspense it evokes is in the best traditions of European cinema. It was released at the Sterling in Mumbai but not surprisingly it didn’t have too many takers.

Sidney Lumet’s Network is another devastating drama of the mayhem that is caused by television. It won for Peter Finch a posthumous Best Actor Oscar as a network news commentator who in a period of utter honesty begins to say what he thinks about the world at large and almost overnight becomes a new messiah of the people but an embarrassment to his sponsors. The public is all with him, virtually eating out of his hand.

The drama snowballs into the man`A0threatening to kill himself "on the show." It is TV at its most ruthless, thanks to an Oscar-winning screenplay by Paddy Chayevasky that captures every little nuance of TV journalism. Well-etched`A0cameos by William Holden and Faye Dunaway in her prime,`A0contribute`A0to the overall impact.

Where does one draw the line in one’s quest to get a good TV story is again the issue at stake and Lumet shows that he can compete with the best of the Europeans filmmakers.

Then there’s`A0Sydney Pollack’s Absence of Malice which zeroes in on the nitty-gritty of the journalistic world, the power of the press and its misuse or`A0abuse. It is well meaning but probably overwritten as it traces the path`A0of a longshoremen’s union leader who disappears. Paul Newman is the union leader and Sally Field the woman journalist who throws an unfair spotlight on an innocent suspect. There’s as much of trade unionism in it as there was in Norma Rae in which Sally Field plays the union leader of the title and picked a Best Actress Oscar in the process.

James Brooks’ Broadcast News takes a mildly satirical look at the world of TV journalism but later steps into a romantic comedy. Starring William Hurt`A0and Holly Hunter, it isn’t in the same league.`A0 Hurt, after his role in Kiss of the Spider Woman, seems to be`A0a grossly overrated actor.

But the one that really set the trend is All the President’s Men (1976). It is about how President Richard Nixon fell from grace and power because two fairly junior reporters were able to expose the break in`A0and the bugging of the Republican Convention Centre. It took place on June 17, 1972. Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) were the reporters who steadfastly followed their clues and even their seniors couldn’t spike their heavyweight story. The rest, as they say,`A0is history.

But the point it raises is that one should maintain one’s contacts without giving in to them. Your contacts should respect your independence and threading the tightrope is no easy task. It is one of the most challenging tasks in journalism. Integrity is the bottom line.

Apart from unseating President Nixon it reiterated, even rewrote the principles of journalism. That’s what made the Watergate break in so vital. After that the journalist became a key cog in the socio-political`A0wheel and it opened the floodgates for journalism in the celluloid world.

HOME