‘The Paper’ at 30: A Nostalgic Journalism Classic That Still Feels a Little Bit Current

The much-debated headline story at the center of Ron Howard’s journalism dramedy The Paper relates to the murder of two businessmen in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. In the 30 years since this movie was released, the journalism business has irrevocably changed, the stars at its center have irreversibly aged, and this kind of mid-budget human-scale drama has largely disappeared from the big-studio purview. (It’s a lucky break that Universal, the studio that released it, is still in business and, recently anyway, thriving.) But that news story is the most immediate sign of The Paper’s age. Two businessmen murdered… in Williamsburg? Are you sure they didn’t die of old age, or a rare Bank of America allergy?

Even in 1994, the details of the case aren’t adding up to Henry Hackett (Michael Keaton), the fast-talking and quick-thinking metro editor for the New York Sun. (His reasoning does not, however, does not cover a prescient sense of just how gentrified Williamsburg will become less than a decade later.) But the story still must compete for his attention on a particularly eventful day for Henry and his coworkers, the kind of contrived 24 hours where everyone’s ongoing subplot has come to a momentous turning point or two. These life-changers includes Henry’s possible job offer at a rival paper; the imminent birth of his first child with his wife Martha (Marisa Tomei); the financial travails of managing editor Alicia (Glenn Close) as she implements cutbacks while advocating for herself to her bosses; a crucial family reconnection for editor-in-chief Bernie (Robert Duvall), who has just been diagnosed with cancer; and an ongoing tiff between rabble-rousing columnist McDougal (Randy Quaid) and the New York City parking commissioner.

Some aspects of these intersecting plotlines feel like self-consciously colorful filler, designed to give Howard cross-cutting fodder as the clock ticks on Henry’s growing conviction that the Sun is about to get a major story wrong. Two Black teenagers are arrested for the Williamsburg shooting, but Henry and McDougal are hearing rumblings that the case against them may be thin to nonexistent. (Howard, in a half-measure that doesn’t quite work, occasionally cuts to the kids without quite making them into actual characters, making it clear that they’re innocent.) The nasty gloat of a headline (“GOTCHA!”) that the Sun is prepping for that evening’s print run may be par for the course in the world of tabloid-y commuter-friendly papers, but Henry – who loves working at the paper just as much as the job loves to wear him out – grows increasingly impatient. Today, he insists. He wants to be right today, not tomorrow, especially if his growing family might necessitate switching jobs.

There’s plenty about The Paper that feels accidentally nostalgic three decades after its release: Its bustling print-journalism milieu (where the desks crowded together in a noisy, rambunctious newsroom are supposed to be homey and excitingly ramshackle, rather than a harbinger of open-office hell); the characters’ nascent, sparing use of cell phones; the decidedly pre-9/11 advice that anyone can gain access to just about any building with nothing more than a clipboard and a confident wave. But if the 1994 details now feel a little quaint, the movie’s whole deal was already something of a throwback in then-modern drag; as Howard has noted, the newspaper picture was not so much in style at the time he made this one.

It’s not exactly in style now, either, though we do get the occasional movie about the nobility of journalistic tenacity, like Best Picture winner Spotlight or the less successful likes of She Said. There’s a place for those descendants of All the President’s Men, but part of what makes The Paper so entertaining and ticking-clock exciting is that it doesn’t have a lot of time to lionize its profession. The New York Sentinel, the classier uptown paper courting Henry, is a clear imitation of the standard-bearing New York Times, while the Sun is pretty clearly modeled after the likes of the New York Daily News and the New York Post (the latter being the owner of this website). It’s not a question of making the Sun look like the scrappy heroes to the Sentinel’s well-dressed snobs, though Spalding Gray does render the Sentinel editor as a vaguely effete tool; instead, the movie wrings suspense from the ongoing worry that the ground-level job Henry loves may not be able to offer pay commensurate with his hours, skills, or stress levels – and that same job that Martha also loves isn’t especially kind to the demands of parenting without affordable childcare. Sound familiar?

That’s the area where The Paper has managed to stay current, even if the details have shifted. The packed Sun newsroom, overflowing with bits and pieces of overheard grievances, jokes, collaborations, and frustrations, may seem robust – an entire fiscal year’s worth of digital-media layoffs in a single bullpen! – but Alicia still offhandedly mentions that the Sun “almost folds” every six months or so. In another striking scene, Bernie counsels the social-climbing Alicia that journalists will always be clearly, even devastatingly separated from the oft-monied, powerful people that they cover – a more philosophical approach to woefully under-par media salaries, to be sure, but not altogether untrue, either.

Duvall, Close, Quaid, and Tomei all have their moments, but this is really Keaton’s movie. He wasn’t far removed from his stint as Batman at the time, and reuniting with his Night Shift/Gung Ho director Ron Howard felt like a chance to revisit some of his youthful live-wire energy in a more grown-up context. It’s a best-of-both-worlds performance – one of his best – where he gets to be smart, grounded, watchful, while also throwing in some absolutely vintage Keaton outbursts. The most famous is a phone call where he explodes at the editor of the Sentinel (despite having stolen a tip right off the man’s desk); other, smaller moments, where you can see his thought process echoing across his face and body. His work also makes a neat complement to his performance two decades later in Spotlight, a more sober-minded but perhaps less compulsively rewatchable journalism movie.

The Paper was well-reviewed in its day, and did reasonably well at the box office, but it wasn’t any kind of big hit or awards contender, and it’s easy to understand why, say, Entertainment Weekly compared it to a lavish television pilot (even while giving it a positive review). It introduces a bunch of characters, gives them all neatly interwoven Dramatic Situations mingling the professional and the personal, and leaves off with plenty of room for more. Yet the very fact that The Paper doesn’t continue past its 24-hour time frame – that as much as it sensationalizes its own subplots, it doesn’t fully neatly resolve most of them either – makes it feel like an even stronger piece of studio entertainment today. Howard, along with writers David Koepp (a go-to pro) and Stephen Koepp (his journalist brother) reproduce and amplify the buzz of the movie’s busy, jittery environment, and exit without overstaying their welcome. The movie isn’t popular enough to receive a legacy sequel or a universe of spinoffs, and that’s perfect for its workaday crises – struggles that are glimpsed, then continue on, largely unseen. What made The Paper an entertaining day-the-life in 1994 makes it look more like a classic 30 years later.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.