‘Page One: Inside The New York Times’ At Cable Car
8:19AM ON
07/25/2011
BY
Beth Comery
The New York Times had to call in a ringer to review this movie — Michael Kinsley, a senior editorial adviser at Bloomberg News. Kinsley isn’t that crazy about the film which “flits from topic to topic, character to character, explaining almost nothing.” Even worse,
The unlikely hero of “Page One” is a media columnist and reporter named David Carr. . . widely admired for his reporting, his intelligence and his Tough Old Coot routine.
The movie swoons for Mr. Carr. We are told again and again — at least twice by Mr. Carr himself — that he used to be a cocaine addict and a single parent on welfare and has seen some things in his day. He smokes, and he says gnomic things like, “If you work for the media long enough, eventually you’ll type your way back to your own doorstep.” The only flaw in this act is his inability to be cynical about his employer. As he freely admits, David Carr loves The New York Times.
The insufferable Mr. Carr was a recent guest on ‘Real Time With Bill Maher’ and he was not good company. Also showing this week is ‘Queen to Play’ starring Kevin Kline. Check the Cable Car website for times.
$9, through Thursday, Cable Car Cinema, 204 South Main Street
Write a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
July 25th, 2011 at 10:39AM
Jack Says:
I’m sick and tired of people romanticizing newspapers like they were something great. Print is dying and will be a niche media outlet very soon.
Thanks for calling out Carr on his schtick. He couldn’t form a coherent thought on Real Time and sucked in general.
July 25th, 2011 at 5:15PM
kath Says:
Agreed that too much of the film focuses on Carr. In my experience great newsrooms are filled with outsized personalities like his. Also that the piece could use more focus. What I think the film DOES convey well is the amount of care and questioning that great newsrooms put into a story. Is it a story? Are our sources right? Is it more important than another story? Are we being fair? That might not make for compelling cinema, but it is what differentiates a great news organization from a single blogger, so I for one was glad to see it.
July 26th, 2011 at 9:57AM
Zack M Says:
Look, so the movie jumped from topic to topic as it chugged forward at a fairly regular pace. Can we agree on that?
…because that sounds to me like a newspaper. Most documentaries would choose a narrative lens and view the film through it. And it did do this to an extent with Carr. Still, the stream-of-consciousness feel of Page One to me reflects its content exactly. If you were making a newspaper with the big stories of the Times over the past few years, what would you put on the front page? On page one? The decline of the newspaper industry. The rise of social media. Wikileaks. Iraq.
The movie *reports* the New York Times, it doesn’t editorialize it. Or is the latter what you wanted?