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Film Comment Archive
Film Comment Selects
Cronenberg’s take on the American way
Murrow, McCarthy, and TV before the fall
The J-Word
Plus, an ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: An interview with Grant
Heslov
The studio that gave us both Ozu and Oshima
Plus, an ONLINE EXCLUSIVE SIDEBAR
The iconclast’s iconclast
Hollywood’s summer slump explained
A remarriage at gunpoint
The Japanese master rediscovered
Plus, an ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: The uncut article
Vietnam flashback
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What was your agenda? The media, right
wing demagoguery…
George and I had tons of discussions. We wanted
to illuminate a moment of history. We weren’t
doing a biopic. This isn’t about the life of
Edward R. Murrow. This really was about a specific
period of time and a guy who was a hero. George’s
father was a newsman, has been one for 30 or 40 years,
mostly in Cincinnati, and still writes a column.
Murrow was a hero in George’s household growing
up, and was referred to all the time. He was probably
a pretty flawed guy, but as a journalist, he was
amazing.
We spent a bunch of time with his son, Casey. And
Milo Radulovich, who lives in Lodi, California and
is a fantastic older guy. He’s retired and is
very politically active. Before we started shooting,
we did a table read and we brought everybody in—Casey,
Milo, etc., we wanted them all there. We wanted to
make sure it was as accurate as possible.
As we got working, the parallels became so obvious.
[We said] “Let’s be simple in this.” We
didn’t want to hit anything over the head.
So there was a lot of pulling back as well. The model
for us was The Crucible, which 50 years
ago was a not-so-thinly veiled stab at what was going
on politically. This is our Crucible. That’s
how we thought about it. It’s a brilliant play,
but I certainly didn’t “get it” in
high school. The more you research about that period
of time, the more interesting it is. It’s different
today but certain things are equally scary. It now
has to do with civil liberties and the media.
The real McCarthyism is now abetted
by the right wing talk shows… Did you
mean to talk about those people by showing the
contrasting world of Murrow?
Not overtly. The Ann Coulters of the world are an
extension of the political tone that starts at the
top. I’ve been speaking to a lot of journalists,
and the one thing that everybody says is that it’s
amazing how little access they have. This Administration
has done an amazing job of controlling the media.
That’s all wrapped up in what was going on with
this film.
Why did you opt for no music? Perhaps
this is Hollywood’s first Dogme 95 film…
Except for the stuff Diane Reeves sings. Our intention
all along was to score it with a live band. George
really wanted to play a lot of the silences in this
piece. A lot of power would come out of the silences.
We’re in the middle of mixing right now and
there’s a tendency for people to fill it all
up with [sounds from] a busy newsroom in the background.
We wanted to be selective about that sort of stuff.
The band and the singing is all live. It all had to
be timed out, no lip-synching at all.
Why did you choose to have Joe McCarthy
play himself?
That was an easy decision for us. That was something
we decided a long, long time ago. We felt if we had
an actor playing that role everybody would say it
was way over the top. And that was it. We just couldn’t
think of a person who could do it better than McCarthy
did and said, Let’s just use the real footage.
What clear statement did you want to
make about the present moment?
The political aspect of the film was secondary to
us. We knew that there would be a lot of political
hay out of this. That really wasn't our goal. For
us it was strictly about the state of journalism.
That’s why I ask, since it seems
quite clearly directed at the journalism community…
It wasn’t to say, “You suck,” it
was to hold up a hero, a gold standard. Look at what
happened at CBS…
We’ve been talking to CBS about doing something
on 60 Minutes about Murrow and the state
of journalism, which I think would be smart for them,
personally. To address what’s going on at CBS
News. They were known for their news division, now
they’re talking about revamping the division
to hip it up.
There was a time when the news wasn’t about
making money. The networks got their license based
on doing so many hours of news, public affairs programming,
children’s programming, etc. Since deciding
they could make money off the news, we’ve suffered
for it. That’s really what we were addressing.
We wanted to hold something up and say “Here
is where it started . . . Here's something that was
powerful.” And now we literally have a journalist
locked up in jail for not revealing her sources.
Pretty amazing.
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