A good friend of mine (ok, Sledman’s wife) teaches at our local middle school. She is doing a section on newspapers and is trying to find an entertaining movie to give the kids a little break from her boring teaching.
I checked the IMDB with no real success, and she checked Amazon with limited success (she did find an A&E Documentary about Newspaper Moguls, but it didn’t give much of a description).
The kids she teaches are LD (learning disabled) 9th graders, so it needs to be somewhat entertaining in order to keep their attention.
Any ideas? Fiction, documentaries, comedies, anything?
There’s the Front Page. I believe this may be a remake, I know it’s been remade a couple times. I can’t think which one the original is. The version I’m familiar with was directed by Billy Wilder and stars Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.
The only other movie I can think of is The Paper. This one is a little more recent, stars Glenn Close and Michael Keaton and was directed by Ron Howard.
Oh yeah, the middle school kids will be riveted to that one. Christ, that movie would put me to sleep if I was hopped up on 10 cups of coffee and a bottle of speed.
Yeah, my first two thoughts were “Citizen Kane” and “All the Presiden’t Men,” too. But, as Crunchy Frog mentioned, I don’t think these kids will find them exactly captivating.
Kepp those ideas rolling, I’ll pass all the suggestions along.
To be totally honest with you. A field day would be appropriate. I got to visit my city newspaper when I was in grade 7, I still remember everything. It was awesome.
I’ll second Enderw23 & Homer’s suggestion of Newsies. I never saw it, but kids – especially girls – seem to really flip over it.
Nitpick: Homer, it takes place at the turn of the century, not the 1930’s. And it is very loosely based on a real life newsboy strike that took place in NYC at that time.
Snooooopy:
That’s Paul Newman, and Absence of Malice is a pretty terrible movie (but that’s just MHO). I suppose, if nothing else, you could show the kids that movie, after saying, “Kids, the cute one’s Sally Field. To be a good reporter, you’re going to want to write down everything she does in the movie, and do exactly the opposite.”
Without a doubt, His Girl Friday: it’s short and moves like a bullet, it’s hilarious without being dated, and it does bring up some issues about journalism that you can use as a springboard discussion (especially in an election year).
A second would be All the President’s Men because it does have more familiar actors, it explores the minutae of newspaper work, it’s got some cloak-&-dagger elements, and it may also play well in an election year–though it might be too talky for the class as described in the OP. The Paper, while not all that good a movie, has even more familiar actors, a lot of momentum (for those short attention spans), and does bring up more issues that may better connect with your students if you live/teach in an urban setting.
As for Newsies, it’s an awful movie–one that gives the movie musical a bad name (who’d want to bring back that much missed and beloved genre if they were all like this?). The film has an inexplicable following so some people out there must love it, but I would like to think the kids in the class deserve better. Heck, I’d even recommend The Ghost and Mr. Chicken first.
Definitely the best idea given is a field trip, if you can pull it off.
One of my top ten films of all time is *His Girl Friday * which is a remake of *The Front Page *. Fast paced, very funny and good for all ages.
Another remake of this, not about newspapers, but reporters ( IIRC) is *Switching Channels * which was about a 3 our of 10, staring Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Reeves. This one is probably the only one suitable and available at the video store.
For some reason the movie *The Year Of Living Dangerously * just popped into my mind, but I think that movie would be too …well…adultish for kids to see. I haven’t seen it since it was in the theater. It does, however, feature, my next husband, Mr. Mel Gibson.
