John Meroney

[NSFW] Tom Braden launched CNN’s political talk show Crossfire and inspired the father figure on the TV show Eight Is Enough. In the 1950s, Braden also launched a CIA mission to use modern art to fight communism:

Braden’s operation was a success. One of the world’s most famous and influential painters, Gerhard Richter, would later attribute his defection from East Germany to his viewing of abstract expressionist art. In 1959, at documenta II, an art show started in 1955 by a West German artist and professor to display modern artwork suppressed by the Nazis, Richter viewed work by artists including Pollock. Afterward Richter realized, “There was something wrong with my whole way of thinking…expression of a totally different and entirely new content.” In a letter to his former art teacher in East Germany, Richter explained why he risked his life: “The reasons are largely due to my career.… When I say cultural ‘climate’ in the West offers me and my artistic endeavors more, that is more compatible with my way of being and my way of working than the East, I am pointing out the main reason behind my decision.”

“We filmed it almost entirely in sequence. We even broke up the newsroom scenes just so we could shoot the picture in sequence. And that means we kept informing ourselves. That means we woke up and these things happened with people in the sequence they’re supposed to happen. So that’s ‘process,’ as you say. But keep in mind—we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about this movie if Holly [Hunter] hadn’t walked in. I also waited six months for William Hurt to become available. He almost didn’t do the picture. And I don’t think we’d be talking about ‘Broadcast News’ if I hadn’t waited those six months for him.”