Broadcast News

**Broadcast News** is a 1987 film starring William Hurt, Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter, directed, written and produced by James L. Brooks.

## Plot

The film revolves around three characters who work in television news. Jane Craig is a talented, neurotic producer whose life revolves around her work. Jane's best friend and frequent collaborator, Aaron Altman, is a gifted writer and reporter, ambitious for on-camera exposure and secretly in love with Jane. Tom Grunick, a local news anchorman who advanced from sports anchorman, is likeable and telegenic, but lacks news experience. He knows that he was hired only for his good looks and charm. He is attracted to Jane, although he is also intimidated by her skills and intensity.

All three work in the Washington, D.C., office of a national television network. Jane is drawn to Tom, but resents his lack of qualifications for his new position as news anchor. Aaron also is appalled by Tom's lack of experience and knowledge, but accepts his advice when finally getting an opportunity to anchor a newscast himself. Unfortunately, he lacks Tom's poise and composure in that seat, and his debut as an anchor is a failure.

Aaron acknowledges to Jane that he is in love with her, while trying to dissuade her from pursuing a romantic relationship with Tom. As a massive layoff hits the network, resulting in many colleagues losing their jobs, Aaron tenders his resignation, and tells Jane he plans to take a job in Portland, Oregon. However, before he leaves, he briefly tells Jane of an interview Tom had conducted with a victim of date rape in which Tom appeared to be crying out of sympathy. Aaron says that this was not authentic, then leaves. Jane looks at the footage herself and realizes that Tom staged his tears.

Meeting Tom at the airport for a romantic getaway, she angrily confronts him, saying that his actions were a breach of journalistic ethics and that she cannot in good conscience become personally involved with him. She no longer has either man in her personal or professional life, at least until the three of them reunite several years later.

## Trivia

* Broadcast News was not the first time James L. Brooks created a female news producer. He in fact was previously the lead creator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which featured Mary Tyler Moore Moore as Minneapolis-based assistant WJM news producer Mary Richards. However, he had more production credit for Broadcast News.
* The film was released a year before Murphy Brown, which also was centered around the life of television news, debuted as a tv series. It was also released before the April O'Neal-featuring children's cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles transitioned into a regular television series after its first five episodes completed their broadcast as part of a miniseries the same day Broadcast News was released into theaters.
* Ironically, Portland. Oregon, where Aaron transfers to, is the hometown of *Simpsons* and *Life In Hell* creator Matt Groening, who at the time of the film's release was creating Simpsons shorts for *Broadcast News* Producer, Director and Writer James L. Brooks' Tracey Ullman Show. Brooks would continue to work with Groening as a Simpsons co-producer when the shorts became a regular series in December 1989.