I went to see the movie “State of Play” because it was the day before my birthday — and because, whenever I’m depressed, I somehow feel the need to be even more depressed.
There’s a certain age at which you no longer grow older; you’ve simply grown old. I’m not sure what the number is. But, trust me, you don’t need to take one of those online real- age quizzes to help figure it out. You’ll know when you get there.
And so, I went to see “State of Play” not simply because in this age — when it seems all the news about newspapers is bad news — the hero is a grizzled newspaper guy. Or that he’s paired with the young and (of course) beautiful blogger who is untrained in the ways of journalism but who comes to learn the value of “real” reporting. Or even that the phrase “seeker of truth” is used both ironically and, in the very same scene, unironically.
No, I went to see it because Russell Crowe plays the reporter/hero as a long-haired, badly groomed (remind you of anyone?), body-gone-bad, booze-in-the-desk-drawer, job-is- your-life, life-is-your-job reporter — who knows, and doesn’t really care, that he’ll never quite catch on to the new-new journalism. He’s got a desk that hasn’t been cleared since antediluvian days. He’s contemptuous of all authority, and particularly of editors, but contemptuous in that self- mocking way reporters, if not necessarily their editors, value about themselves.
OK, I can hear you asking, “What’s so depressing about this movie?”
It’s not that I know the movie is an unsupportable romance. It’s that I’ve seen this movie before. It’s the Western set around the end of the 19th century, when the Old West was disappearing and so were the gunmen. It’s Butch Cassidy riding a bicycle and needing to go to Bolivia, with the Sundance Kid in tow, in order to make a dishonest living.
Coincidentally, there are two newspaper movies in play. The other one is about a real-life columnist, Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times, who discovered a homeless man who happened to have been a Juilliard- trained musician. I haven’t seen the movie, “The Soloist,” which opens Friday, but I did read Lopez’s columns. They’re why people still pick up a newspaper.
For a time, “State of Play,” which was adapted from a far superior BBC miniseries, tried to be about real newspapering (the Washington Globe standing in for a beleaguered Washington Post). It allowed reporters to work the way they do in real life, following unsexy leads, trying vainly to get sources to go on the record, trying not to get doors slammed in their faces, trying to find a pen when you grab your notebook.
But if this movie tried to invoke “All the President’s Men,” it didn’t try too hard. It devolved quickly into an action movie, even though, if you’ve spent any time in a newsroom, you know how little action there is.
And so, Russell Crowe ends up being shot at, which rarely happens to reporters not in war zones, although I have had the occasional item tossed my way. At one point, Crowe goes into a garage, and I don’t have to tell you what happens, only that it’s something bad. And yet, in my entire career, the most dangerous thing that’s happened to me in a garage is misplacing my car.
Still, I was in for the ride. Helen Mirren is great as the editor who’s facing the tension that comes of running a good newspaper and running a profitable newspaper. (Did you see the quarterly losses at The New York Times? Let’s just say they’re scarier than any Wolverine claws.)
I didn’t go to a movie expecting any deep insights into the emergence of online journalism. I didn’t expect to see the financial crisis facing newspapers resolved in the way the movie’s sex scandal would be. But, in fact, there was a taste of all of that in a fast-moving caper movie, in which the bad guys were just believable enough and the politicians weren’t to be believed at all and the choices facing the reporters felt like the choices we all might face.
Going in, I knew how the movie ended. I don’t mean the mystery part. I mean the ending, after which all the games had been played and the stories had been written. I had read about the closing scene — run during the credits — in which the plates were set onto the presses, and the presses began to roll. It was fantasy stuff — for most newspapers, the presses have been moved to remote locations — but if you heard anyone sobbing, I promise you it was an old newspaper person.
In a perceptive review in Salon, the online magazine, Stephanie Zacherek wrote that the movie was not about nostalgia but about fear — not about losing the printed product (which is going eventually) but about the danger of losing the kind of stories newspapers still do best, the kind that won Pulitzers on Monday.
There’s a line in the movie by the young blogger, who says to Crowe’s character: “When people read this story, they should have newsprint on their hands.”
I didn’t believe a word of it. And yet, I admit I left the theater smiling. It was a birthday present to myself.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
