Scene Unseen: Broadcast News: Time Off

"I'll meet you at the place near the thing where we went that time."

Film  When was the last time you watched a film and as well as thinking 'Great dialogue' you thought 'And that's how human beings talk'. It's an exceedingly difficult tightrope, because for most of us, the things that we say are generally rather banal -- its the message which is interesting not the way that its presented. In a film, both need to be serviced otherwise the audience will become a bit twitchy by the second act. So the writer and director are generally left with a choice -- produce something hyper-stylised (see Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino) or so called hyper-real (think Dogme 95 or Mike Leigh) or something in between (see everything else). The trouble with both approaches is that no one talks like that and those of us who do generally get stared at.

Broadcast News is one of a handful of films which I've come across which somehow manages to have interesting dialogue and sound like real people talking. This quote is one of many in James L Brooks' script which is something we might say every day. How often have you asked a friend, 'Do you want to go for a coffee later?' and both known when and where that engagement will take place? The real magic here is that the information being passed isn't about location it's about character. In other words, the easy option might have been "Do you want to meet at the Starbucks on Fifth Avenue' or whatever. Instead we don't really find out where the place is, what the thing was or when it happened. What we get instead is another titbit about the friendship or relationship which has developed between these two characters. But it also gets the people together for an important conversation.

But the film as a whole is littered with moments which feel utterly real, a startling thought in story which concerns itself with the packaging of news for a local station in the US. When Holly Hunter finally goes out on a date with William Hurt she breaks off for a while to go and visit her best friend Albert Brooks at home to find out how his first shot at reading the weekend news went. Now we might do this in the toilet on a mobile phone, but it still feels like something that might happen in the real world -- if only because no dates ever go perfectly. There is a great moment in that same scene when Holly and Albert have a row then after a few seconds become quite reasonable so that they can discuss something else. This is something I've seen happen with my parents quite a lot -- and me if I'm being honest. You'll be arguing about something but break off briefly to decide what to have for tea. In another film, Julia Roberts would have walked out on Hugh Grant and the tension would have gone unresolved. But real life isn't like that. Or is it?