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Chuck Ross

Still Mad as Hell: Why the Movie ‘Network’ Still Resonates Today–And What It Says About Charlie Sheen

Feb 16, 2011

It’s been 35 years since Howard Beale, in one of the most famous scenes in the history of movies, instructed us to shout out of our windows, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Yet it was only a few weeks ago that Keith Olbermann, in his exit speech on his last show on MSNBC, referenced that scene. Most of us would be hard-pressed to remember any lines from a movie we saw this past weekend, let alone having one still resonate 35 years later.

The Howard Beale scene is from the 1976 movie “Network,” and with its debut on Blu-ray this week I took another look at it. The movie was both a critical and a popular hit upon its release.

One of the first things that strikes you about the movie is the opening credits. The main stars are listed, then the title of the movie and then the credit “By Paddy Chayefsky.” Very few writers have had the clout to receive a movie credit so high up in the credits. But it’s what Chayefsky demanded–and deserved.

Chayefsky, one of the most famous writers from the early days of TV, when the medium was mostly live, won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay three times: For the 1955 movie version of “Marty” (adapting his own TV production for the big screen), for the 1971 movie “The Hospital,” and for “Network.”

“Network” tells the story of Howard Beale (Peter Finch), the primary news anchor at the fictional TV network UBS, which competes with ABC, CBS and NBC. (Fox did not exist at the time.) Near the top of the movie Beale, who has been told that he’s been fired because of low ratings and will be leaving the network soon, announces, on-air, that in the next week he will commit suicide during his nightly national newscast.

From there the movie continues as a thrilling, rollicking, funny-as-all-get-out, spot-on satire of the business of TV, from the conflicts between news and entertainment, and those who work in each, to who owns the networks, to the mantra of “ratings, ratings, ratings,” and where that can lead.

When the movie was first released, many in Hollywood TV circles were not pleased. Wrote Time magazine: “In Los Angeles, network executives watching a screening of the movie were on the edge of their seats, almost clawing at the armrests with indignation. In New York City, the film was a three-martini lunch topic along Sixth Avenue–‘Network Row’–and NBC angrily barred [‘Network’] director Sidney Lumet from a screening of one of its own TV movies. ‘It’s a piece of crap,’ huffed an NBC vice president. ‘It had nothing to do with our business.’ ABC’s Barbara Walters was more delicate. She said that while the movie was entertaining, she was afraid audiences would think the movie was not satire but the truth.”

Chayefsky–who died of cancer at age 58 five years after “Network” was released–maintained that while yes, the film was a satire, one of the points is that it was also indeed the truth.

A wonderful extra included in the Blu-ray release is a rare TV appearance by Chayefsky on Dinah Shore’s daytime talk show on March 2, 1977, promoting “Network.”

Shore asked him, “Most of the people who maintain that ‘Network’ is a brutal attack on television are only looking at the tip of the iceberg, aren’t they really?”

Chayefsky replied, “It’s not a brutal attack at all. It’s a satire about television. It’s a very funny picture. … It’s not a brutal attack–it’s murderous, but not brutal.”

He continued by insisting that what’s in “Network” is “true. If anybody tells you it’s not true, it’s true. Every bit of it is true. That’s what [some inside the TV business] say–they say it isn’t true–it is true.”

Then Chayefsky made the point that ratings are money, and that the TV business is a multimillion-dollar business. “Right now it’s an industry dedicated to one thing. Profit. And the only responsibility [the networks] have is to their stockholders. And that, I think, is worth knowing. That what you see on television is getting money for the network.”

He added, “If you follow the desire to make profit, which is the desire to get a better rating than the network opposite you–to get a bigger share, which means you then charge a hell of a lot more for your commercial moments, I tell you we will pursue this right into Colosseum ’77. We will throw the Christians to the lions every Saturday night, believe me.

“This is what the picture, essentially, was about. When do we say hold it, human life is a hell of a lot more important than your lousy dollar?”

To Time magazine Chayefsky expanded on his point: “Television coarsens all the complexities of human relationships, brutalizes them, makes them insensitive. The point about violence is not so much that it breeds violence–though that is probably true–but that it totally desensitizes viciousness, brutality, murder, death so that we no longer actively feel the pains of the victim or suffer for the mourners or feel their grief.

“When the [dirigible] Hindenburg blew up, the reporter [witnessing it live] broke down on the radio [as he described it]. I can’t imagine anything like that happening today. I imagine a detached, calm description of the ship going up in flames: ‘I do believe there will be no survivors.’ We have become desensitized to things that are usually part of the human condition. This is the basic problem of television. We’ve lost our sense of shock, our sense of humanity.”

Talking about some of the events Chayefsky created in “Network,” TV producer George Schlatter, in another article, told Time magazine when the film came out, “People say there will never be such a show business approach to the news. But think back to the Symbionese Liberation Army shootout in Los Angeles, where there was live camera coverage and a carnival atmosphere as a group of people were burning to death. Try to separate show business from broadcast journalism in that instance.”

The Time article continues, “In a macabre underlining of Schlatter’s words, TV newsmen were already begging Utah prison officials last week to be allowed to film the execution of convicted killer Gary Gilmore. If prison authorities refuse, said a Salt Lake City TV man, seemingly desperate for blood, ‘We are considering using paragliders, long lenses, helicopters–maybe even a dirigible.’ ”

Though we have yet to televise executions of any type with regularity on TV, reality TV has become a staple.

But what I find even more interesting in Chayefsky’s concept of “anything for ratings” is some of the other recent scenarios we’ve seen.

For example the entire Conan/Leno debacle at NBC was born of this. It all came about because NBC decided it had to keep both Conan AND Leno–that’s the reason it promised Conan “The Tonight Show” in the first place: the fear of the damage Conan could have done to NBC’s ratings if he had left at that time back in 2004 or so and competed against them.

Or take what’s going on with Charlie Sheen and “Two and a Half Men.” Because of the fact information travels virtually instantaneously today, we learn the minute details of Sheen’s off-air destructive and self-destructive behavior seemingly the minute after he engages in these behaviors. Clearly it’s not a healthy situation for Sheen, and often, for those around him.

And is there anyone among us who would be truly surprised if the next t
weet we receive is that Sheen has overdosed or for some other reason due to his excesses, has died? Or that someone close to him or part of his entourage at the time has died?

Yet he’s the highest-paid actor on TV, on a popular sitcom whose ratings seem to have no limits, so who at CBS or Warner Bros. would have the guts to say “no more.”

What’s that again, Paddy? You say this is the basic problem of television? That we’ve lost our sense of shock, our humanity?

Watch “Network” again–or for the first time–and see if you don’t find some tears welling up behind your laughter.

Because, as Paddy said, the movie was, is, and will forever be about “when do we say hold it, human life is a hell of a lot more important than your lousy dollar?”#

10 Comments

  1. Great Movie for then and now! And I do believe we are approaching the time when we will hang out of our windows OR march on Washington and yell, ” I’m fed up with all the sh*t that’s happening and I am NOT gonna take it anymore.” I can’r wait for the day! I’ll be yelling with the rest!!!

  2. Well done, Chuck. It’s a great movie, ahead of it’s time; worth seeing again now.
    And speaking about the worth of a human life, I wrote this about my concern for Charlie Sheen –
    http://www.digitaldads.com/2011/02/who-will-save-charlie-sheen/

  3. This movie really kills me (in a good way). There are so many poignant solo moments of dialogue. Everyone has seen a clip of Howard Beale screaming at the camera about just how mad he is, and how much longer he’s willing to take it. But it’s completely taken out of context and by now has been reduced to a screaming comic interstitial. Newsman Beal’s on-air speech against paranoid consumerism, and realization that he contributes to it make the moment he gets to that BIG LINE so much more relevant, both to the movie and to our modern life. As such, it’s also much more rewarding.
    Ned Beatty’s rant about the “one holistic system of systems” is also a memorably fun one that seems to predict the future.
    I’m not sure if this movie was amazingly prescient or if these are just subjects we’ll always have to deal with as people in the mass media age.

  4. Thank you for saying/writing out loud what so many of us have had glancing thoughts of: the end of Charlie Sheen’s sad life. Perhaps if his sitcom wasn’t centered on celebrating his destructive behavior, he wouldn’t be quite so enabled by his producers, network, and fans.

  5. “Network” was rather stiff and overwrought when I saw it in the theater during its initial release. Some was good; other parts were not. Wm. Holden’s scene when he packed up his office after being let go was silly and predictable. Peter Finch was good. But it wasn’t a GREAT film. It did portend the coming news-as-entertainment paradigm, which has reached the point of being nearly pointless. How many stations across the country employ a couple who go back and forth reciting the news–just like Donald Duck’s nephews do; a phrase from the one on the left, finished by the talking head on the right, or continues by the one who began the “news” story. It’s maddening, which is why I read the newspaper and online news rather than the local or network news.

  6. I’m still ‘mad as hell’ that you are even making an association between The Network and Charlie Sheen.
    I feel bad saying it, but I have read many of your blog posts, and I find your ideas are a bit simplistic.
    The Network is about the cold-heartedness of the TV ratings machine and how an innocent man with a mental illness can be exploited for its purpose. Charlie is a self-made druggie who makes millions of dollars and abuses those who employ him.
    I could go on about the differences, but it’s a real shame that you over-simplified such a strong, seriously dark, and complex satire by equating it with a selfish diva star like Sheen.

  7. I agree that trying to associate Charlie Sheen and Howard Beale is a mistake, a leap of logic too far.
    Glenn Beck and Howard Beale — now THAT’s a comparison that makes sense to me.
    For that matter, Glenn Beck and Charlie Sheen also makes a good comparison. How much is actual crazy, and how much is just playing a lunatic on TV?

  8. The movie was way ahead of it’s time !
    Many have accepted the crap that is thrown at us by the tube. Best exapmple is the new Fiat commercial with Charlie Sheen. Fiat and their ad men must be out of their minds. Or is ti just my values ?
    After all most have accepted Clinton’s escapades as a norm.

  9. Spooky how the movie was spot on about the direction TV, news, entertainment and the media were going and would take us. The movie doesn’t seem dated at all, if anything it’s fresher, more poignant and more relevant today than it was forty years ago; maybe crystal balls do exist and maybe fortune tellers are for real.

  10. Replace every instance of the word “television” in this film, with the word “capitalism”. What Chayefsky rails about TV is the way all of capitalism works. While reality TV & garbage news was a correct, albeit obvious, prediction, if a corporation could raise its profits by killing people they will, in fact, it’s happened many times (Bhopal, India, et.al.). Where’s the outrage there, other than the passing “dehumanization” Beatty speech and the subsequent Beale monologues? Either this film was a subtle dig at the entire system (unlikely), or a bit of hypocrisy about the movie industry, which necessarily (to preserve their profits) obliterated the Hays Code with violence & sex just a short decade prior to the release of this film.

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