Talk Radio (1988)
Oliver Stone makes complex movies underpinned by simple ideas. Nixon, JFK, Platoon and Wall Street are great technical feats aided by stellar performances and biting scripts, but their messages are very clear as soon as they begin. Platoon is anti-war, Nixon is a neurotic tragedy, JFK is plea for truth, Wall Street is a warning against ‘greed is good’ capitalism. Talk Radio is different. Given Stone’s didactic style, I expected his radio movie to be a devastating takedown of conservative radio hosts and the propagandistic bigotry that they dress up in populist working class clothing. I thought this would be Oliver Stone vs Rush Limbaugh. I was wrong.
Talk Radio is a character piece based on a play written and performed by Eric Bogosian, who also stars in Stone’s movie. Bogosian plays Barry Champlain, a Dallas shock jock with a hit controversial radio talk show. He has no clear politics or ideology other than the inalienable right to offend absolutely everybody. He has equal hatred for bleeding heart liberals and dumb redneck hicks. He chastises women, patronises black callers and ignores all advice about his own personal well-being. Targeted by neo-Nazis for his Jewishness, Barry continues to accept their calls, challenging their prejudices on air before brutally insulting supportive fans purely for the thrill of doing it. Courting danger is his compulsion.
Barry thrives on the idea of total personal freedom. He can say and do what he wants, whenever he wants. He can place himself in danger, he can alienate his loved ones, he can break every taboo, he can risk opening a potential letterbomb. When the opportunity for national syndication comes around, Barry accepts the offer on the condition that the tone of his show stays the same. He has to have the unrestricted freedom to take calls from nutters and psychopaths, to invite unstable weirdos into the station for interviews and to risk his own death. We see that Barry is an immature man, an irreverent adulterer who chafes against all rules and every code of behaviour. His show is a kooky libertarian safe space, the only arena where he feels liberated.
Stone’s movie follows Champlain over the course of four fateful days. Stepping outside of his studio, the shock jock is forced to confront an outside world groomed to either hate him or worship his toxicity. He sees that his most ardent fans are drugged up teenagers who get a kick out of the show’s anarchic contempt for good taste. If the movie were made today, these teenagers would be the alt-right internet trolls who worship at Elon Musk’s feet. His other fans are lonely shut-ins and active criminals who see Barry as their only friend and contact. The only other listeners are neo-nazis plotting murder. We see that Barry has cultivated a dysfunctional cross-section of the most desperate and dangerous elements of American society.
What’s the movie’s point? What are Stone and Bogosian trying to say? I think the movie is about the concept of freedom. By offending absolutely everyone and wrecking every taboo going, Barry considers himself completely free. He shuns his ex-wife, the only woman that truly loves him, and he keeps his new girlfriend at a distance. He insists on the show running by his rules and he rages against any corporate presence in his studio. What the movie reveals is that Barry’s tactics don’t bring him freedom: they trap him. His toxic personal conduct leaves him stranded and his radio persona brings him a rabid fanbase who won’t leave him alone. Barry thinks he’s the master of his own destiny, but he’s just another corporate stooge feeding a market of his own creation.
As Barry becomes more venal and hateful, his show grows in popularity. For the purpose of securing independence, Barry contorts himself into a circus freak, endlessly raving for the masochistic enjoyment of his listeners. He serves the radio company and his audience, not himself. Towards the end of the film he realises it. Talk Radio is the spiritual successor to earlier American films about the dangers of mass media: Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole and Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd. These are movies about charismatic men who use communication technology to unleash the dark, atavistic tendencies at the heart of American society and find themselves unable to hold back the tide. The target isn’t a political group, it’s the medium itself and our relationship to it.
A few years after the release of Talk Radio, Oliver Stone made Natural Born Killers. This later movie carries on some of Talk Radio’s ideas, indicting America’s sensationalist tabloid media as the irresponsible aiders and abettors of violent crime. The heroes of Natural Born Killers are mass murderers who unexpectedly become international celebrities thanks to the fawning coverage of their crime spree. It’s one of Stone’s more thoughtful films, a thrill-ride think piece that indicts its own audience for their complicity. If you watch Natural Born Killers you’re likely to have a ghoulish interest in true crime. You’re the market that the tabloid media serve.
Talk Radio doesn’t directly indict its audience, but it does warn us. Barry Champlain’s self-sabotage is only half of the movie’s message. The rest of it is the suggestion that broadcast media is only going to grow increasingly confrontational, merciless and violent. America saw the rise of Fox News and conservative talk radio. Reality TV saturated the media landscape, preying on the very weakest and most vulnerable to feed a national appetite for cruel spectacle. Remember the Jeremy Kyle show and its bear-pit of Daily Mail hate figures. Then there’s social media and the endless anger that feeds it. As always, the people who benefit are the corporate bosses, the media barons and the tech billionaires. Stone and Bogosian’s warning came true.