The Art of the Fake Newscast

Friday, 13 September 2013 | by Pat's Picks

Don’t believe everything a television anchor says. That advice, from the Wall Street Journal, is accompanied by a picture of my face. After a close read, however, I decided not to be offended as the article is a good one about how film makers use fake newscasts as a “quick and dirty plot-exposition device.”

Writer Don Steinberg goes through some of the classics of the genre, from 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead” all the way to my turn behind the fake camera in “4:44 Last Day on Earth.”

(Fake newscasts are a topic the New Yorker touched on awhile back, and guess what—I was used to illustrate that story as well. Check it out here.)

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Congrats to my friend Doug Flynn, a financial planner whose frequent TV appearances as a live guest led him to get into a new business. He and his partners have started Garden City Studios. It’s a TV studio on Long Island, New York available by the hour for people asked to appear as a remote guest on television. With fiber and satellite connections to the world, Doug says it saves him about four hours compared to the typical time to travel into Manhattan to make a guest appearance.