The movie takes place during about 24 hours in the life of a New York daily called the Sun, but clearly modeled on the Post. It's a scrappy tabloid that has teetered for years on the brink of bankruptcy, and its headlines scream sensationally in the biggest type (or "wood") the page will hold. But the Keaton character, whose name is Hackett, can truthfully say that it has never knowingly printed anything that was untrue. Until tonight, maybe.
A big story is breaking. Two men have been shot dead in a parked car. Two young black kids have been seen fleeing the scene of the crime. We know (because the movie tells us) that the kids are innocent. But there's political pressure to find the killers, and when the kids are arrested, every paper in town goes with the story, big. It's just that one of Hackett's reporters has overheard information indicating that the police themselves think the kids didn't do it.
A big story - if anyone in authority will go on record.
Meanwhile, the minutes are ticking away toward the deadline, and Hackett's superior, a managing editor named Alicia Clark (Glenn Close) wants to go with the story they have on hand, and then fix it tomorrow. To delay will cost thousands of dollars in pressroom overtime and drivers' wages. But going with the easy story sounds all wrong to Hackett, and also to his star columnist McDougal (Randy Quaid), and they go on a desperate odyssey through the night to try to get the quote they need. While meanwhile, of course, the wife and the in-laws get stood up.
All of which makes "The Paper" sound like a film noir set in a newspaper office. It is, in a way. But it's very perceptive about the relationships among its characters - how they talk, how they compete, what their values are. And Howard has cast the movie with splendid veteran actors, who are able to convey all the little quirks and idiosyncrasies of real people.
Robert Duvall, for example, plays the paper's editor with such depth that he turns an essentially supporting role into the man's life story - a story of broken marriages, estranged children, nightly drinking and hidden desperation, all contained in a package of unbending journalistic integrity. I don't know if the Duvall character is based on an actual man in New York, but I have known three or four Chicago editors who could have inspired this guy, right down to his patience with strangers in a bar.
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