Best Journalism Movie Ever

TCM is showing Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" tonight, my favorite among all journalism movies over "The Front Page," "Deadline USA," "All the President's Men," "The Paper," "Broadcast News" and "Absence of Malice," all fine films about fallible human beings reporting the news.

In an era when journalists are routinely reviled by political ideologists, it's easy to forget that, from A. J. Liebling on, they have always been their own severest critics in a calling that usually attracts young people interested in doing good in the world beyond doing well for themselves.

In 1951, I had just started working on newspapers and magazines when "Ace in the Hole" hit me hard with Kirk Douglas' portrayal of a down-and-almost-out reporter who sees a man trapped in a mine as his ticket back to the big time and ends up killing him by exploiting and stretching out his rescue.

Journalists as seducers and betrayers of their sources is a theme that runs through modern culture, from Janet Malcolm's "The Journalist and the Murderer" through the recent movies about Truman Capote and the making of "In Cold Blood."

When it appeared in the what-me-worry postwar era, "Ace in the Hole" was a commercial failure and, when released for TV, was given the more palatable title of "The Big Carnival." But it was and is a mordant reminder that there can be people in life-and-death situations behind the collection of words and images we call news.

Bush's "Sunset Boulevard"

It’s beginning to look like Billy Wilder’s classic about the aging movie queen with a loose grip on reality in scenes staged by her faithful retainer.

Karl Rove is no Erich von Stroheim, but he is directing an alternate reality for George Bush. This week the locale was the Naval War College, where extras in dress uniform watched in awe the Commander-in-Chief, with maps and illustrations, giving a presentation about how well things are going in Iraq.

Back in Washington John Warner, Dick Lugar and other Senate Republicans were telling the White House staff that July 15th, when a Congressionally mandated, preliminary report on progress in Iraq is due, will be pivotal.

The cameras are set to roll. Will George Bush be ready for his close-up?