The Mean Season

1985 film by Phillip Borsos

The Mean Season is a 1985 American thriller film directed by Phillip Borsos, and starring Kurt Russell, Mariel Hemingway, Richard Jordan, Richard Masur, Joe Pantoliano, Luis Tamayo and Andy García. The screenplay, written by Christopher Crowe under the pseudonym Leon Piedmont, is based on the 1982 novel In the Heat of the Summer by John Katzenbach. The film was named after the term of the same name that refers to a pattern of weather that occurs in Florida during the late summer months. In order to achieve accuracy for the scenes that take place in the busy newsroom, the filmmakers used Miami Herald reporters as on set consultants and extras and shot in the actual newsroom as opposed to recreating it on a soundstage.

Malcolm Anderson is a reporter for a Miami newspaper, who is burned out from years of covering the worst crimes in the city. He promises his girlfriend Christine that they will move away from the city, but he ends up covering a series of grisly murders by a serial killer who calls him telling the reporter that he will kill again. The lines between covering the story and becoming part of it are blurred.

Veteran crime reporter for the Miami Herald John Katzenbach wrote the novel In the Heat of the Summer, based on his years of experiences and of stories told to him by fellow reporters he knew. He tried to examine what he described as “the nature of reporting and the ambiguity and ambivalence of the job. There's a fundamental dilemma in, on the one hand, thinking 'How can I intrude on these people at the moment of exquisite agony?' and, on the other hand thinking 'My God, I'm sitting on a terrific story! '”

Producer David Foster, who was also a graduate of the journalism school at the University of Southern California, was given Katzenbach’s manuscript and agreed to bring it to the big screen along with fellow producer Lawrence Turman. The film was named The Mean Season after the term of the same name that refers to a pattern of weather that occurs in Florida during the late summer months. Hot mornings with sticky weather lead into violent thunderstorms that blow in from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico in the afternoon. However, the rain doesn't alleviate the heat and only makes things hotter that evening. This cycle repeats every day for a month. Foster and director Phillip Borsos spent time studying the way people worked in the Herald. Borsos said, “I wanted to know what goes on at 3 p. m., at 5 p. m. There's a wonderful flow of traffic at different times of the day. Gradually, the room fills up. Later, there's a ferocious attack at the computer terminals. A lot of newspaper movies have 10 people in the background, or 50, but there's always the same level of action. If the script said 3:10 p. m., and the first edition was an hour off the streets, I wanted to know what would be happening.”

In order to prepare for the role, Kurt Russell followed around veteran Herald crime reporter Edna Buchanan and photographer Tim Chapman. At first, he couldn’t figure out "how they justify what they do. But I found out that these are very caring people. They may be callous about how they do their jobs, but they're not callous about people. That allowed me, from a reporter's point of view, to have the truth of why Malcolm was able to press on when some people thought he shouldn't."

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote that the film "has a brisk pace and a lot of momentum. It also has a few more surprises than the material needed, since Mr. Borsos, who for the most part works in a tense, streamlined style, likes red herrings." Jack Kroll in Newsweek wrote "This movie has the weather of Body Heat, the moral stance of Absence of Malice and the perverse plot angle of Tightrope. It's also not as good as any of these". In her review for The Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote "Overall the film seems a little flat, a little stale. The clouds roil and the thunder claps like a gun report". On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 64% from 22 reviews with the consensus: "A thriller that plays at social commentary, The Mean Season fumbles with its weightier themes, but does so in a generally watchable way."