If You Can’t Get Enough of ‘The Paper,’ Check Out This Michael Keaton Look at the News, Directed by Ron Howard

Critics have hailed the recent Peacock series The Paper as a strong spiritual successor to NBC’s The Office. Like the popular Steve Carell series, producer Greg Daniels’s latest single-camera sitcom captures the light-hearted absurdity of the colorful characters within the context of the struggling newspaper business. But just 31 years ago, director Ron Howard depicted the controlled chaos of the industry in the New York-centric dramedy ironically titled The Paper.

Unlike the current Peacock hit show, the 1994 film starring Michael Keaton takes on a 24-hour narrative, highlighting the rising tension of a high-strung editor trying to nail the accuracy of an important news story. Tackling multiple angles of a tabloid publication, from the reporters in the office to the managing editors dealing with corporate politics, The Paper was widely praised by critics, holding an 89% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. With an all-star cast featuring Marisa Tomei, Glenn Close, and Robert Duvall, The Paper is not only Howard’s most underrated directorial effort but also a true throwback to the Hawksian comedies of the 30s and 40s.

‘The Paper’ Was Michael Keaton and Ron Howard’s Most Mature Collaboration

The Paper follows the ensemble of staff writers and editors at the fictional New York Sun, where metro editor Henry Hackett (Keaton) is faced with multiple crises of conscience. He’s drawn to the story of two African American teens arrested for murdering a pair of white businessmen in Brooklyn, which Sun columnist Michael McDougal (Randy Quaid) suspects are innocent. At the same time, Henry has to contend with his pregnant wife, Martha (Tomei), over a better opportunity at rival publication New York Sentinel, which would help him avoid the kind of personal issues that have taken a toll on his editor-in-chief Bernie White (Duvall), who has recently been diagnosed with cancer.

Using every resource and personnel at the Sun, Henry gets to the bottom of the murder case as the deadline to get the story to print draws near. But new information that corroborates the teens’ innocence puts Henry’s job on the line when he has to stop the original version of the story from playing up the guilt factor from hitting the street. This puts him into an intense showdown with the Sun’s self-centered managing editor, Alicia Clark (Close).

The Paper was the last of three pictures that featured the collaboration between Howard and star Keaton. In previous films, they took on a comedic slant with the hijinks of turning a city morgue into an escort service in Night Shift and the international conflict within the context of an auto factory in Gung Ho. The Paper, however, was their most mature collaboration due to the Oscar-caliber talent involved, as well as the social commentary aspect surrounding a story of black teenagers wrongly accused of a crime with a police cover-up involved. This is far from the fact-based depiction of journalists getting to the truth as seen in procedural dramas like All the President’s Men or another news publication drama starring Keaton, Spotlight. The audience is given a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of the way journalists chose the most sensational side of a news story and twisted it up for the sake of selling newspapers, even at the expense of potentially innocent boys’ lives.

‘The Paper’ Is an Underrated Ron Howard Film

Not only does The Paper succeed in its messaging about journalistic integrity through Keaton’s performance as a tabloid editor, but it also has a perfect tone full of high tension mixed with trivial humor, aided by Howard’s constantly fluid camerawork. Whether it’s Quaid firing a gun in the office to stop staffers from interrupting a heart-to-hear conversation between Keaton and Tomei or Keaton losing his cool on the phone with the owner of the rival paper, the heightened reality of each scene not only matches the fast-paced enviroment of news outlets but also echoes a more nuanced take on classic screwball comedies such as His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story. The mix of witty high-brow humor and high-stakes drama is best exemplified in The Paper’s most memorable sequence: a wild fight scene between Keaton and Close over the former’s efforts to stop the next day’s edition from going to print. It’s physical and unnecessarily bloody. However, it is what’s beneath the surface that makes the scene so significant: the power struggle between reporting the truth and generating profit regardless of moral consequences.

The Paper is an underrated gem in Howard’s career because it’s a simple, down-to-earth story like Parenthood and lacks the epic scale of Backdraft, Apollo 13, or Solo: A Star Wars Story. No one star stands out above the rest because the ensemble portrays their respective characters as living in a closed environment with personal and professional complications. Howard’s doc-style approach to the film may not have translated to a show as satirical as the Peacock sitcom. But recent films such as Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night recreate this chaotic 24-hour narrative style almost unintentionally, with the pressure of the characters often at a high.