Broadcast News

Since the 1970s, the name James L. Brooks has been synonymous with intelligent television comedy—his shows are insightful about work and love and always plugged in to the zeitgeist. He is also a master storyteller of the big screen, and none of his films was more quintessentially Brooks than Broadcast News. This caustic look inside the Washington news media stars Holly Hunter, in her breakout role, as a feisty television producer torn between an ambitious yet dim anchorman (William Hurt) and her closest confidant, a cynical veteran reporter (Albert Brooks). Brooks’s witty, gently prophetic film is a captivating transmission from an era in which ideas on relationships and the media were rapidly changing.