From: Westword (Denver) 0216/06
Tube Time
A columnist's latest dirty secret? He watches TV to get his news.
By Michael Roberts
Article Published Feb 16, 2006
Kobe redux: Back in 2004, filmmaker Brian Malone created a surprisingly poignant portrait of a figure known principally to locals: Blinky the Clown. For his latest project, however, he takes on universally recognized subjects. Breaking News, which debuts at 6:30 p.m. Friday, February 17, as part of the Boulder International Film Festival (visit www.biff1.com for details), examines today's media through the prism of court cases involving Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson. Even so, Malone feels the film "isn't only about Kobe or Michael or even celebrity trials. It's about how the forces of profit and big corporate broadcasters have contributed to the erosion of good journalism."
Sequences shot outside the Jackson trial in California effectively advance this theory, and footage from a slew of Bryant hearings in Eagle are even more damning. Malone stumbled on a scoop when his camera caught onetime tabloid bottom-feeder Jeffrey Scott Shapiro exiting a restaurant with the woman who'd accused Bryant of rape, Katelyn Faber -- a meeting that directly violated a judge's orders. As a bonus, he captured some terrific scenes starring Channel 31 reporter Heidi Hemmat, whom Malone calls "the hero of the film" because of her surprising forthrightness. On several occasions, Hemmat gripes that there is a lack of genuine news coming out of Camp Kobe -- but she has to keep pretending otherwise.
During Malone's visit to this year's Sundance Film Festival, Films Transit, a Montreal firm, purchased Breaking News's broadcasting rights for everywhere other than the United States. He expects an hour-long version of his opus to screen in as many as forty countries by year's end, and folks worldwide will almost certainly adore it, since it makes lots of American media types look terrible.
Clearly,
Malone has a gift for working with clowns.
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