Between The Lines (1977)
Bekkah:
Knowing this movie was directed by a woman is really important because I think she was trying to expose the sexism in the publishing industry, not excuse it. But it’s not a great movie. Some really dated acting styles and just filled to the brim with toxic masculinity. Jeff is pretty much the least shitty man in the movie, maybe tied with Daddy Pope from Scandal, but he doesn’t really have much of a role.
We watched this movie because WBUR was doing a discussion about the movie the following day. The discussion was two garbage white dudes talking about how sympathetic they were to the shitty men in the movie, and constantly excused their sexist behavior. You can watch the discussion here. Skip to 15:42 to watch them get extremely uncomfortable when I submitted a question about sexism.
Danya:
UGggggh… just Uggg. The acting seems stiff and unbelievable, but maybe that’s the 70s? The plot meanders, and all the men in this movie are insufferable. The 70s outfits are on points, and I appreciated the absurdity of 10 minutes of people jerking around on a dance floor for no real reason in the middle. I do hope the sexism was a comment on what it was like to work on weekly newspapers in boston (yes! Phoneix, I remember you and circling shows on The Middle East and TT the Bears in college. How else would I know what was cool?) and not just a sad by product. The discussion with WBUR mentioned “boys club” too often, and the highlight of this whole movie experience was the 10 seconds of discomfort when Bekkah called them on their sexism. Are things different now? At least seeing old school Boston in the 70s was worth something.
Movie: 4 /10 Goldblums
Discussion: 1/10 Goldblums
Story of an underground newspaper in Boston about to be taken over by big business.
Director: Joan Micklin Silver
Writers: Fred Barron (screenplay), Fred Barron (story)
Stars: John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Jeff Goldblum
