Private Parts

Private Parts follows Howard Stern from his childhood ambition to work in radio through his rise as a provocative on-air personality. His wife, Alison, supports him as he moves between small stations, and in Washington he meets Robin Quivers, who becomes his longtime collaborator. When the pair move to New York and join NBC, they run into resistance from executives uneasy about Stern's frank, unruly style of broadcasting. The film is based on Stern's own autobiography, and Stern plays himself, with Quivers, Mary McCormack, Fred Norris, Gary Dell'Abate and Paul Giamatti among the cast.

Betty Thomas directed, working from a screenplay by Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko, with Ivan Reitman producing. The film was Thomas's second feature as director, arriving between The Brady Bunch Movie and Doctor Dolittle. Its reported budget of 28 million dollars was matched by a worldwide box office take of about 41 million, a modest return. On IMDb the film holds a 6.3 rating from critics, and on TMDB audiences rate it 6.5 from 397 votes, so viewers and critics are broadly in agreement about it.

Its account of Stern's career is affectionate rather than investigative, tracing how his willingness to say on air what others avoided turned him into a radio phenomenon, while showing the strain that openness placed on the people close to him.