Dutton Peabody, photo linked from Weary Sloth
Occasionally, when journalists at a party or on social media ask one another our favorite newspaper (or journalism) movies, I will answer, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
Of course, no one thinks of “Liberty Valance” as a journalism movie. It’s a Western. But the whole movie is told through an interview between Ransom Stoddard and Charlie Hasbrouck, a reporter for the Shinbone Star. One of the key characters, Dutton Peabody, is editor and publisher of the Shinbone Star.
I thought about “Liberty” as I was writing an accompanying post about journalism scenes in three recently released movies. What I want to do here is share some favorite journalism scenes from non-journalism movies and ask you about some of your favorites.
Journalists all have our favorite journalism movies (or specifically newspaper movies). Off the top of my head, my favorite non-fiction journalism movie is “All the President’s Men” and “Deadline USA” is my favorite fiction journalism movie. But you might remind me of one I’m forgetting or convince me of another. Or in a different mood I might pick another on my own.
I won’t try to compile my favorite journalism movies or asking you to submit yours. If you’re interested in such a list, check out those compiled by Dan Barry, Robert Feder, Time magazine and John Greco.
What I’m interested in here is movies like “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” Despite its journalism scenes, it’s no more a journalism movie than it’s a law movie (Stoddard is a lawyer) or a politics movie (he later becomes a senator, and a key scene takes place at a political convention) or a restaurant movie (much of the action takes place in or right outside the restaurant run by Peter and Nora Ericson and Valance derides Stoddard as a “hash slinger” for working in the restaurant). It’s a Western.
Of course, it might not always be that clear what is a journalism movie. Is every Superman (and Spiderman) movie a journalism movie because Clark Kent and Peter Parker were a reporter and a photographer? Or were those all super-hero movies and every journalism scene counts for our discussions here?
And I’m not going to get into all the movies that used newspaper headlines (often whirling) to advance a story that’s not about newspapers or all of the movies with scenes with a pack of reporters and photographers hounding the character who’s in the news. Those are all too plentiful, though they do underscore my point that journalism is a universal part of life (made in the accompanying post).
This isn’t an attempt to be comprehensive at all, just to share a little journalism fun on a holiday.
Let’s start with “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” since I’ve admitted that it’s not a newspaper movie. In this clip, Valance beats up Peabody and leaves him for dead. Peabody’s offense was to report on Valance’s defeat in his effort to be named a delegate to the statehood convention.
In an earlier scene, the drunken Peabody spotted his typo in the headline:
This clip near the end of the movie is a great line but journalistic BS:
Alas, I could not find on YouTube a clip of Peabody’s great speech about journalistic independence. Stoddard has ordered the bar closed for the election of Shinbone’s representative to the territorial convention. And Peabody is nominated. While I couldn’t find the video clip, Dictionary.com has the dialogue:
Dutton Peabody: No. I’m a newspaperman not a politician. Politicians are my meat. I build ’em up. I tear ’em down. But I, I wouldn’t be one. I couldn’t. It’d, it’d destroy me. Gimme a drink.
Tom Donophon: The bar is closed.
Peabody: Good people of Shinbone, I, I, I’m your conscience. I’m the still small voice that thunders in the night. I’m your watchdog that howls against the wolves. I’m, I’m your father confessor. I, I, I’m, what else am I?
Tom: The town drunk.
One other journalism tidbit from “Liberty Valance,” but it relates to film editing, not newspaper editing: When the Shinbone Star reporter is asking Stoddard for the interview, he grants the interview because Dutton Peabody once fired him. But apparently the scene where Peabody fired Stoddard was cut from the movie. We never see it.
Here are a couple more great journalism scenes from non-journalism movies:
In “Bull Durham,” Crash Davis teaches Nuke LaLoosh the art of the cliche:
And here Nuke shows that he was listening to the master:
I couldn’t find the scene I wanted from another Kevin Costner baseball movie, but when I saw the “Nebraska” scene at a small-town newspaper office (mentioned in the accompanying post), I thought of the visit Ray Kinsella (Costner) and Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones) made to the newspaper office in Chisholm, Minn., as they research the past of Archibald “Moonlight” Graham in “Field of Dreams.”
Some of the journalism in movies is more a detail than a scene: “Back to the Future” sets up the attack of the Libyan terrorists with a TV newscast playing in the background in the opening scene and uses a discarded newspaper to confirm for Marty McFly that he’s gone back in time to 1955.
I may add other scenes as I think of them. And I welcome your suggestions of other great (or funny or ridiculous) journalism scenes in non-journalism movies.
Twitter responses
@stevebuttry Hope you mention “It Happened One Night” whenever such chats arise. http://t.co/rDSCbJ5CiT Fletch, too.
— Joey Kulkin (@incrediblekulk) January 1, 2014
Actually, I think of both of those as journalism movies (but haven’t seen either in years).
@stevebuttry Fletch, sure, but IHON is not a "newspaper movie." It’s a ’34 rom-com thru and thru, emphasis on comedy.
— Joey Kulkin (@incrediblekulk) January 1, 2014
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Steve – I think the best journalistic movie quote/scene comes from His Girl Friday when Walter Burns complains to Hildy that she didn’t mention the newspaper in her story, and she replies that it’s right there in the second paragraph. Walter looks at her with disdain and replies: “Who’s gonna read the second paragraph?”
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Great line, even if it comes from a full-fledged newspaper movie (and one of the best).
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“The Bourne Ultimatum” involved a reporter for The Guardian, and “Three Days of the Condor” ended in a showdown between Robert Redford and Cliff Robertson on the sidewalk outside The New York Times. When Redford says he told the Times everything, Robertson has the chilling line, “How do you know they’ll print it?”
In the horror movie “The Ring” and it’s sequel, Naomi Watts plays a newspaper reporter. It has a nice feel for small-town newspapers, even though it’s not about that.
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Reblogged this on When we get to where we're going.
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re the liberty clip: I just want to know how that oil lamp didn’t fall over with all that rumpus going on and create an explosion!! Does the scene symbolize a typical day at the newspaper office ?.
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Well, the oil lamp usually falls over in my newsrooms.
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Reblogged this on Journalism, Journalists and the World and commented:
Always a joy to see how other journalists look at our profession as represented in the movies. And I never would have thought of Liberty Valance. To me it is just a Western, But it is all “based” on a newspaper interview.
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One of my favorite newspaper pictures is “The Day the Earth Caught Fire” (1961), directed by Val Guest, who co-wrote it with Wolf Mankowitz.
The premise is pure science fiction:
“When the USA and Russia test atomic bombs at the same time, it knocks the Earth out its orbit and sends it spiraling toward the Sun.”
Half the action takes place in the newsroom of the Daily Express, London, and Leo McKern has a great role as an older science reporter who understands the importance of the information that the hero, a younger reporter, has had leaked to him.
This is a partial summary from IMDb:
“Journalists of the London Daily Express investigate reports of strange phenomena occurring all over the world, such as flooding in the Sahara, unseasonable blizzards in New York, and violent tornadoes in the Soviet Union. All over England, temperatures are on the rise, girls in bikinis are everywhere, and wonderful special-effects mists are blanketing the Thames River. Top scientists at the Meteorological Center refuse to give any official explanation, which makes the newspaper editor suspicious. He orders science reporter Bill Maguire and alcoholic columnist Peter Stenning to dig for information. When Peter begins a romance with Met Center secretary Jeannie Craig, he learns from her certain clues that there has indeed been a cover-up.”
The final scene is beautiful. This is not exactly a spoiler. The superpowers detonate new H-bombs to put the Earth back in orbit. In the idle press room of the Express, the camera pans. Two front pages have been prepared: WORLD SAVED and WORLD DOOMED. Fade….
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The IMDb link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054790/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl
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Steve, maybe I missed it up above, but the best journalism line in “Valance” is during the convention scene, when John Wayne is enforcing the closed bar, and Peabody says (I quote from memory): “No exceptions for the working press? That’s carrying democracy too far!”
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Great line!
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One of my favorite moments about journalism in a non-journalism movie is in “Roman Holiday.” Ann, the princess (Audrey Hepburn) is getting to know Joe, the reporter (Gregory Peck), who’s trying to get an excloo interview with her, and doesn’t want her to know it. They have this exchange.
ANN What is your work?
JOE Oh, I’m er, in the selling game.
ANN. Really? How interesting.
JOE. Uh-huh.
ANN. What do you sell?
JOE Er, fertilizer.
Also, kind of an opposite thing has been a favorite topic of mine, or a pet peeve: The complete absence of journalism in movie situations that would, in real life, be crawling with reporters. I’ve never collected them so I can’t think of an example, but it sometimes jumps out at me: How is it that this person wouldn’t have the media beating down their door? The answer is usually: Because the screenwriter didn’t think of it or didn’t want to deal with it. .
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And if the screenwriter did think of it, it’s a ridiculously large horde (and sometimes not a situation that would draw such a horde).
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Re “The complete absence of journalism in movie situations that would, in real life, be crawling with reporters”:
i thought of it while watching the start of a ninja movie. Much mayhem in a Los Angeles park. After the 20th or so body went flying, then lay inert, I was amazed that no outside noise intruded. No cops, no copters, no reporters….
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