What’s Aged the Best?
The theme of an unkillable media institution starting to die; Aaron as a proxy for the internet and his devil theory; Albert Brooks's heart-clutch on the correspondents' dinner balcony; Nicholson's reaction to the salary line; Joan Cusack's 'except for socially' line; the Holly Hunter character and the too-smart/not-smart dynamic of all three leads; the news as a daily appointment rather than a constant presence; Albert Brooks's lookalike son; the kaleidoscope gift; Lois Childs's arc (as transcribed)
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:43:27Read transcript
- The theme of an unkillable media institution starting to die has held up, lived through twice since; it is called the central problem of working in media, and it surprises one host that Brooks wanted to write a romance but also to grapple with a problem that still exists; Aaron is read as a proxy for whatever the internet would become ten years later, angry and clever.
- Aaron's devil theory, the devil as someone we would not recognize who lowers our standards piece by piece, is a solid theory; Brooks's acting when he looks up at Jane waiting on the balcony at the correspondents' dinner and does the mock fall-back and heart clutch; Nicholson stopping and turning when told he could knock a million off his salary; and Joan Cusack's 'except for socially, you're my role model', played as a clip.
- The Holly Hunter character in general has held up because anyone who has worked in media has met that person, from either sex, the one you want to tell to calm down and have a drink; all three characters hold up through the idea of the guy who is too smart to succeed and the guy who succeeds because he is not that smart, which happens over and over in life.
- The sudden instability of media institutions is both what aged best and what aged worst; the real change is the centrality of news in life as a daily rather than constant presence: the staff gathered around the television for the Rockwell soldier-coming-home segment recalls a family oriented around the national news, local news then Dan Rather or Peter Jennings at 6:30, even as the movie treats Entertainment Tonight as something ominous; the news was something you waited for, which set the day's agenda, not a constant nattering in your ear. — Chris Ryan
- The Libya special report, where everyone has to be pulled in from a dinner party, feels quaint now that network news always has someone ready; the hosts compare family news habits, Peter Jennings and ABC for one, Dan Rather for another, and Live at Five with Sue Simmons and Chuck Scarborough in Connecticut, a polished show from which one host learned a lot, better than the Boston versions.
- Smaller items: how much Albert Brooks's son at the end looks like him; a kaleidoscope as the gift for a kid you no longer know; and Lois Childs (as transcribed), the anchor Hurt has the affair with and the lead woman in Moonraker, whose arc has her hook up with him and turn up in Alaska the next time we see her, after the great conversation asking Jane whether they are together.
- Asked whether the film captures the 80s popularization of therapy, people articulating what they want in a way unlike the whiskey-soaked, cutthroat world of Network, the answer is that Brooks's humanizing writing makes you forget these are successful, erudite, upper-class people at the height of their industry, for whom Portland is a huge step down from Washington; they communicate in sophisticated ways because they are sophisticated people, which is easy to lose sight of when they seem like basket cases inside the workplace.
- In eight years at newspapers and magazines, one participant found a large share of the married people in the office were married to each other, because when your identity is tied to your job there are things you can only talk about with people who do what you do; the scene where a third person asks whether anything is happening before asking someone out rings true, though now you are not really supposed to date anyone you work with.