Frost/Nixon to Give Journos a Lift

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJs80eBGYlM[/youtube]

…And judging from the recent firings at the LA Times, they’re going to need it. The Hollywood Reporter’s Steve Zeitchik thinks it’s time to once again elevate the journalist and that Frost/Nixon is just the film to do it

The timing couldn’t be better for such a message of uplift. Journalists, you may have noticed, are taking a beating on all fronts. There’s Sarah Palin, telling us how she’d rather go directly to the American people instead of through pesky and unnecessary filters; they just get in the way. There’s the Tribune Co., the debt-laden parent of the Los Angeles Times, cutting meat and bone and the entire animal. And then there’s all the media themselves telling us, tendentiously, how all the other media are too tendentious to listen to.

Amid all this, what could be more comforting than a reminder — no, a celebration — of a time when journalists mattered, when they didn’t just have the courage of their convictions but used those convictions to topple leaders, and were celebrated as rock stars for doing so? At a media screening on Tuesday, there was knowing, sometimes showy, laughter to many of the media jokes, vocal reminders that the many press in the audience Get It and will happily crow about this movie to show that they Get It.

When “Sideways” made its unlikely run to awards and box-office glory four years ago, it did so on the backs of critics drawn to Paul Giamatti’s inner critic and curmudgeon. Print and broadcast reporters will be similarly enthused to see such glowing versions of themselves.

Saying they will means they probably won’t, however, as now a final hurdle has been thrust into the game – the one that says “I know more than they know I know and I get it, which is why I am not getting it.” Or something.

The article does bring up a good point: why doesn’t matter much what we hear anymore? Have the journalists been sucked into a media beast that is too corporate to matter? Is there just too much sensationalism on the news so that the truly horrifying stuff plays like white noise? Are people so drugged up on anti-depressants they wouldn’t care even if they could care? Yeah, it’s a tough call. What Frost/Nixon should really do is remind us of a time when we cared about the character of the man in the White House.

Beyond that, take a look at this video of Nixon. Does anyone think that George Bush could have spoken so eloquently about his life, his job and his purpose?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_mRNTW4sjc[/youtube]