What’s Aged the Worst?
Dating inside the office; sending the Alaska anchor away to keep her from Tom; Aaron's dismissal of the date-rape segment; Holly Hunter's hair and dress at the correspondents' dinner; her outfit and Tom's fiancée in the epilogue
In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:51:23Read transcript
- Workplace dating opens the category, with jokes that in twenty years everyone will work in a suit of armor and that the conversation should be preemptively cancelled for HR reasons; the near hook-up followed by Tom saying he will be working with her would be over in 2019 because she is technically his boss, whereas in the movie it makes the romance and love triangle more interesting.
- With no internet in the 80s you met people at work, at a bar or at a party; a friend from ESPN told Jacoby on Libby's first day that he would marry her, and they did and have two kids; what has changed is not that people meet at work, which will never change, but the sensitivity and intensity around putting things out in the open.
- The film is called less a love triangle than a mental-abuse love triangle; Hurt asking Holly Hunter whether anything is going on with her, yet never asking Albert Brooks, is noticed; sending the anchor to Alaska to keep her away from Tom would now read as a woman working against another woman and draw an HR suit, even though the Alaskan serial killer is a good story, and it is the one case where Holly Hunter's flaws hurt someone besides herself; one participant had not seen the film since about 1989 and had forgotten Nicholson was in it.
- Aaron's dismissal of the date-rape segment, asking where the real news is, would not happen now, though it is what fake news meant in 1987 and Haley writes about the scene well; his own soldier-coming-home piece has syrup on it too, so he is just being a dick, and the hosts relish 'he really blew the lid off of Nookie'; the newsroom standard that you cannot show a guy tying his shoes unless he is naturally tying them means anything happening to one person is almost not news in that world.
- Every iteration of news has a performative aspect: unless you stumble on an event in real time, the people you interview perform their memory and the reporter performs to compel them to speak, and television makes it acute with makeup, editing and music. — Chris Ryan
- The movie is credited with seeing no wide chasm between what Hurt's and Brooks's characters do; the difference offered is motive, Hurt amplifying a story by putting himself and a signifier of emotion in it while Brooks simply wanting people to know what is important, countered by the view that Brooks is the same, insecure and wanting Nicholson to notice him, the lies we tell ourselves; dissolving the Rockwell picture over the returning soldier is called equally manipulative, because it is Hollywood and on screen.
- Holly Hunter's hair and dress at the correspondents' dinner made one host's wife audibly gasp and yell at the television, though the short bob in the next scene looks great; her outfit in the epilogue was not great either; Tom's fiancée at the end puzzled one host while another called it a nice touch, since you can only picture a partner with you until you see them with someone else, and the easy layup would have been a 22-year-old weather lady named Victoria; discussion of the scene sent around is deferred.