April 8, 1999

Announcements:

Lecture Notes:

I.  The Candidate:  Issues vs. Image

• Robert Redford plays an aspiring politician who is following in the footsteps of his father
• In the beginning, he believes that he can run his campaign solely on debate issues
• By the end, he gives in to running his campaign based on image management
• He ends up winning the governership, but he can't remember what he stood for
• This movie was made around the time of the Kennedy/Nixon election where TV played a huge role in emphasizing image
• Politics was a game of selling oneself as a product to the public

II.  TV and News

    A.  Network (1976):  Public Interest vs. Tabloid News

• An old TV news anchor, Howard Beal, is going to be fired for poor ratings
• On his last day, he gets on camera and says that life is all messed up.  He encourages the people watching to go outside and yell, "I'm mad and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"
• Howard Beal is so insane that people tune in to watch him
• When his ratings sink, he is assassinated on the air
• Unlike A Face in the Crowd, this movie suggests that tabloid journalism is much more popular.  People don't really care about the truth anymore, they just want to be entertained
• By the mid-70s people didn't question what they saw on TV - it was a window to the world

• Written by James Brooks, who is sympathetic to TV news
• Jane Craig is a crusading news producer, who plays by the rules
• She finds out that a deceptive reporter, William Hurt, had cut in footage of him crying during an interview of a date rape victim
• At the time the movie came out, FCC was deregulating TV
• The film suggests that we don't need regulation, because there is people like Jane Craig out there to make things right

III.  TV's Impact on Movie making

• Movie directors were now TV-trained and considered how movie images would play on a small screen when making their movies
• In 1965, the movies would first play in the theater, then on TV
• In later years, the movies would go onto home video, then onto cable, and finally onto TV
• This avenue of exhibition impacted movie making
• With the rise of blockbuster film making, costs of making movies were increasing
• Studios needed directors for these movies that had experience making TV movies, because they were low budget

IV.  New Technologies/Delivery Systems

• Companies that had advertising plugs in movies would influence the content of the movie
• For example, if Pepsi had their product in a movie, they would want that movie to have a happy ending
• In Risky Business, the Porsche Tom Cruise drives becomes its own character; it is the product of Cruise's achievement
• High concept movie making came about:  Movies needed to be summarized in 25 words or less
• Because of this, most movies were the same, but with a slightly different twist
• There was a thin plot, driven by sensationalism
• Rising and falling moments of action
• Steven Spielberg's Jaws was really a reproduction of a B movie with better production values