Probably Unanswerable Questions
Did Holly Hunter's character die alone? What is the best movie of the 1980s?
In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 01:24:39Read transcript
- Did Holly Hunter die alone in this movie? She says there's a guy, which one host thinks she made up and others put at two or three dates, since a woman who will not show a man tying his shoes unless he is really tying them would not lie about a relationship; she is successful, beautiful and smart, and the whole institution of marriage is driven by crazy people; leaving the correspondents' dinner is called crazy behavior by one host while the others disagree and say many people are drawn to that energy.
- One host holds that she is a little too crazy, cannot sign up for the correspondents'-dinner exit, and would have been really mad if his date left the biggest night of the year in DC before they even went in. — Bill Simmons
- The holdout is told this is a weird run after also disliking Troy from Reality Bites, and answers that he liked Troy as a character but would not have liked him or Holly Hunter's character in reality; he is teased as threatened by her and told to put on his suit of armor.
- The best movie of the 80s splits into two strands, Die Hard, Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. versus Broadcast News, Raging Bull and The Color of Money; this movie exemplifies the best of 80s movies with its zippy Bill Conti score, great performances, pitch-perfect writing, a solid two hours and five minutes and stakes that are high without anyone diving off a skyscraper; one host would answer Bull Durham or Aliens on other days but, forced to pick one, says Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Broadcast News is called a better movie than Raiders, but personal taste cannot drive the answer, and media people are as biased toward it as archaeologists would be toward Raiders; the 80s was the video-store decade of watching fifteen movies a hundred times each, Goonies, Ferris Bueller, Aliens, Predator, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard; the decade was weird, with Oscar winners that baffle now, and the first half of Full Metal Jacket is the best movie of the 80s but the second half is not.
- The framework used for The Social Network is reapplied: how well made, acted and original the film is, what it meant culturally and whether its meaning changed, and how it aged, all of which Broadcast News passes; the 80s are called the weakest film decade of the last thirty years of the century, behind the 70s and the 90s with its independent boom, full of sequels and canonical films like Tootsie and Gandhi that seem bad now, so a top ten of the 80s is hard to fill with anything but personal favorites or films that dated immediately, because producers took over and sanded off the edges.
- Empire's best of the 80s list is read: Raiders, The Empire Strikes Back, Raging Bull, Blade Runner, Back to the Future, Die Hard, Aliens, E.T., Spinal Tap, Evil Dead and The Shining, all big popular movies; Back to the Future is a good candidate that aged nicely and mattered; When Harry Met Sally is a specifically 80s mass-screen sitcom; Broadcast News was cribbed from every year after, in its love triangle, its distinct characters and its dramedy mix; Do the Right Thing is the most culturally significant film of the decade, left out of the conversation.
- Hollywood runs a thirty-year cycle of down periods: the 50s studio musicals and melodramas, the 70s boom that producers then monetized, the 80s with Gandhi, Out of Africa and Chariots of Fire winning Best Picture, and now franchises and comic-book movies with The Shape of Water and Green Book winning while Black Panther or Get Out will be remembered; the purpose of the Oscars may be to be wrong in the present tense, since Citizen Kane losing is still meaningful and the right calls, like Gump, are forgotten.
- The case for Broadcast News as best of the 80s gains support because every imitation since has gone down in flames, including James L. Brooks's own, each piece having to work like Jenga; Airplane is a dark-horse candidate, though 1980 films like The Shining, Raging Bull and Airplane feel like 70s movies, while Fatal Attraction and Die Hard define the 80s movie; decades start late, the 80s in music running 1983 to 1991 and the 80s in film from Fast Times to Reservoir Dogs, which is why The Silence of the Lambs feels less 90s than The Matrix.