The Paper is a 1994 comedy-drama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, and Glenn Close. The movie depicts 24 hours in a newspaper editor's professional and personal life.
Plot
Henry Hackett is the metro editor of the New York Sun, a fictional[1] New York City tabloid. He is a workaholic who loves his job, but the long hours and low pay are leading to discontent. He is at risk of experiencing the same fate as his editor-in-chief, Bernie White, who put his work first at the expense of his family.
The paper's publisher, Graham Keighley, faces dire financial straits, so he has Alicia Clark, the managing editor and Henry's nemesis, impose unpopular cutbacks. Henry's wife Martha, a reporter on leave and about to give birth, is fed up because Henry seems to have less and less time for her, and she really dislikes Alicia Clark. She urges him to seriously consider an offer from Paul Bladden to leave the Sun and become as an assistant managing editor at the New York Sentinel, a fictional newspaper based on The New York Times, which would mean more money, shorter hours, more respectability...but might also be a bit boring for his tastes.
A hot story confronts Henry with tough decisions, deadlines and personal crises. He literally has to yell "stop the presses" to correct an injustice, while his star columnist, McDougal, is threatened by an angry and drunk city official named Sandusky that McDougal's column had been tormenting for the past several weeks. Their drunken confrontation in a bar leads to gunfire. And Henry's wife is rushed to the hospital at the end of a wild 24 hours.
Cast
Production
Screenwriter Stephen Koepp, a senior editor at Time magazine, collaborated on the screenplay with his brother David and together they initially came up with "A Day in the Life of a Paper" as their premise. David said, "We wanted a regular day, though this is far from regular."[2] They also wanted to “look at the financial pressures of a paper to get on the street and still tell the truth.”[2] After writing the character of a pregnant reporter married to the metro editor (that Marisa Tomei ended up playing in the movie), both of the Koepps' wives became pregnant. Around this time, Universal Pictures greenlighted the project.
For his next project, Ron Howard was looking to do something on the newspaper industry. Steven Spielberg recommended that he get in touch with David Koepp. Howard intended to pitch an idea to the writer who instead wanted to talk about how much he loved the script for Parenthood. The filmmaker remembers, “I found that pretty flattering, of course, so I asked about the subject of his work-in-progress. The answer was music to my ears: 24 hours at a tabloid newspaper."[3] Howard read their script and remembers, “I liked the fact that it dealt with the behind-the-scenes of headlines. But I also connected with the characters trying to cope during this 24-hour period, desperately trying to find this balance in their personal lives, past and present.”[4]
To prepare for the film, Howard made several visits to the New York Post and Daily News (which would provide the inspiration for the fictional newspaper in the film). He remembers, “You'd hear stuff from columnists and reporters about some jerk they'd worked with...I heard about the scorned female reporter who wound up throwing hot coffee in some guy's crotch when she found out he was fooling around with someone else."[5] It was these kinds of stories that inspired Howard to change the gender of the managing editor that Glenn Close would later play. The casting of Michael Keaton also injected more humor into the screenplay.
Howard met with some of the top newspapermen in New York, including former Post editor Pete Hamill and columnists Jimmy Breslin and Mike McAlary (who inspired Randy Quaid’s character in the movie). They told the filmmaker how some reporters bypass traffic jams by putting emergency police lights on their cars (a trick used in the movie). Hamill and McAlary also can be seen in cameos.
Howard wanted to examine the nature of tabloid journalism. "I kept asking, 'Are you embarrassed to be working at the New York Post? Would you rather be working at the Washington Post or the New York Times?' They kept saying they loved the environment, the style of journalism.”[5] The model for Keaton’s character was the Daily News' metro editor Richie Esposito. Howard said, “He was well-dressed but rumpled, mid-to-late 30s, overworked, very articulate and fast-talking. And very, very smart. When I saw him, I thought, that's Henry Hackett. As written."[3]
The director also was intrigued by the unsavory aspect of these papers. "They were interested in celebrities who were under investigation or had humiliated themselves in some way. I could see they would gleefully glom onto a story that would be very humiliating for someone. They didn't care about that. If they believed their source, they would go with it happily.”[5]
In addition to being influenced by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s famous stage play The Front Page, Howard studied old newspaper movies from the 1930s and 1940s. Howard said, “Every studio made them, and then they kind of vanished. One of the reasons I thought it would make a good movie today is that it feels fresh and different.”[6]
One of Howard’s goals was to cram in as much information about a 24-hour day in the newspaper business as humanly possible. He said, “I'm gonna get as many little details right as possible: a guy having to rewrite a story and it bugs the hell out of him, another guy talking to a reporter on the phone and saying, 'Well, it's not Watergate for God's sake.' Little, tiny - you can't even call them subplots - that most people on the first screening won't even notice, probably. It's just sort of newsroom background.’”[7]
Reception
In his review for the Boston Globe, Jay Carr wrote, "It takes a certain panache to incorporate the ever-present threat of your own extinction into the giddy tradition of the newspaper comedy, but The Paper pulls it off. There's no point pretending that I'm objective about this one. I know it's not Citizen Kane, but it pushes my buttons."[7] Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “In the end, The Paper offers splashy entertainment that's a lot like a daily newspaper itself -- hot news cools fast.”[8]
However, Rita Kempley wrote, "Ron Howard still thinks women belong in the nursery instead of the newsroom. Screenwriters David Koepp of Jurassic Park and his brother Stephen (of Time magazine) are witty and on target in terms of character, but their message in terms of male and female relations is a prehistoric one." Kempley wrote this even though the paper's managing editor is a woman, one of its top reporters is a woman and the editor's pregnant wife continues to work on the paper's breaking story.[9]
Janet Maslin was also critical of the film. "Each principal has a problem that is conveniently addressed during this one-day interlude, thanks to a screenplay (by David Koepp and Stephen Koepp) that feels like the work of a committee. The film's general drift is to start these people off at fever pitch and then let them gradually unveil life's inner meaning as the tale trudges toward resolution."[10]
References
- ^ The real New York Sun closed in 1967, but the film version shares the same masthead. Since the film's release, a new incarnation of the Sun has appeared, also using the masthead.
- ^ a b Schaefer, Stephen (March 27, 1994). "New edition competes with small screen, too". Boston Herald.
- ^ a b Arnold, Gary (March 27, 1994). "Tabloid press gets the Ron Howard touch in The Paper". Washington Times.
- ^ Uricchio, Marylynn (March 25, 1994). "Opie’s Byline: Paper Director Ron Howard was drawn to Keaton’s Style, Newsroom’s Buzz". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
- ^ a b c Kurtz, Howard (March 27, 1994). "Hollywood's Read on Newspapers; For Decades, a Romance With the Newsroom". Washington Post.
- ^ Dowd, Maureen (March 13, 1994). "The Paper Replates The Front Page for the 90’s". New York Times.
- ^ a b Carr, Jay (October 10, 1993). "Director Ron Howard goes to press with The Paper". Boston Globe.
- ^ Stack, Peter (March 25, 1994). "Extra! Extra! Paper Really Delivers!". San Francisco Chronicle.
- ^ Kempley, Rita (March 25, 1994). "Stop the Presses! Roll The Cameras! It's The Paper". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/thepaperrkempley_a0a41b.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
- ^ Maslin, Janet (March 18, 1994). "A Day With the People Who Make the News". New York Times.
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