Network (film)

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Network

theatrical poster
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Produced by Howard Gottfried
Written by Paddy Chayefsky
Starring Faye Dunaway
William Holden
Peter Finch
Robert Duvall
Ned Beatty
Beatrice Straight
Music by Elliot Lawrence
Cinematography Owen Roizman
Editing by Alan Heim
Distributed by USA: MGM (theatrical), Warner Bros. (through Turner Entertainment) (DVD)
non-USA: United Artists (theatrical), MGM (DVD)
Release date(s) November 27, 1976 (premiere)
Running time 121 min.
Language English
Budget USD$ 3,800,000 (est)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Network is a 1976 New Hollywood film about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System (UBS), and its struggle with poor ratings. It was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, and stars Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty and Beatrice Straight. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Network has continued to receive recognition, decades after its initial release. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2002, it was inducted into the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame as a film that has "set an enduring standard for American entertainment."[1] In 2006, Chayefsky's script was voted one of the top ten movie scripts of all-time by the Writers Guild of America. In 2007, the film was 64th among the Top 100 Greatest American Films as chosen by the American Film Institute, a ranking slightly higher than the one AFI gave it ten years earlier.


Contents

[edit] Plot

The story opens with long-time "UBS Evening News" anchor Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) being fired because of the show's low ratings. He has two more weeks on the air, but the following night, Beale announces on live television that he will commit suicide during an upcoming live broadcast.[2]

UBS immediately fires him after this incident, but they let him back on the air, ostensibly for a dignified farewell, with persuasion from Beale's producer and best friend, Max Schumacher (played by William Holden), the network's old guard news editor. Beale promises that he will apologize for his outburst, but instead rants about how life is "bullshit." While there are serious repercussions, the program's ratings skyrocket and, much to Schumacher's dismay, the upper echelons of UBS decide to exploit Beale's antics rather than pulling him off the air.

Howard Beale (Peter Finch) delivering his "mad as hell" speech
Howard Beale (Peter Finch) delivering his "mad as hell" speech

In one impassioned diatribe, Beale galvanizes the nation with his rant, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" and persuades Americans to shout out their windows during a spectacular lightning storm. Soon Beale is hosting a new program called The Howard Beale Show, top-billed as a "mad prophet of the airways." Ultimately, the show becomes the highest rated (Duvall's character calls it "a big fat, ... big-titted hit!") program on television, and Beale finds new celebrity preaching his angry message in front of a live audience that, on cue, repeats the Beale's marketed catchphrase en masse. His new set is lit by blue spotlights and an enormous stained-glass window, supplemented with segments featuring astrology, gossip, opinion polls, and yellow journalism.

Parallel to the story of Beale is the tale of the rise within UBS of Diana Christensen (played by Faye Dunaway). Beginning as a producer of entertainment programming, Diana acquires footage of terrorists robbing banks for a new television series, charms other executives, and ends up controlling a merged news and entertainment division. To advance this, Christensen has an affair with the long-married Schumacher, but remains obsessed with the success of the network, even in bed.

Upon discovering that the conglomerate that owns UBS will be bought out by an even larger Saudi Arabian conglomerate, Beale launches an on-screen tirade against the two corporations, encouraging the audience to telegram the White House with the message, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more" in the hopes of stopping the merger. Beale is then taken to meet with Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty), chairman of the company which owns UBS, who explicates his own "corporate cosmology" to the now nearly delusional Beale. Jensen delivers a lecture - almost a sermon - beginning by declaring to Beale, "You have meddled in the primal forces of nature" before describing the interrelatedness of the participants in the international economy, and the illusory nature of nationality distinctions. Jensen ultimately persuades Beale to abandon his populist messages. However, audiences find his new views on the dehumanization of society to be depressing, and ratings begin to slide.

Although Beale's ratings plummet, the chairman will not allow executives to fire Beale as he spreads the new gospel. Obsessed as ever with UBS' ratings, Christensen arranges for Beale's on-air murder by a group of urban terrorists who now have their own UBS show, "The Mao-Tse Tung Hour," a dynamite addition to the new fall line-up. This mirrors a drunken and sardonic conversation between Beale and Schumacher at the start of the film, that they should have a show featuring suicides and assassinations.

[edit] Cast


Cast notes

  • Kathy Cronkite (Walter Cronkite's daughter) appears as kidnapped heiress Mary Ann Gifford.
  • Lance Henriksen has a small uncredited role as a network lawyer at Ahmet Khan's home.

[edit] Production and transfer of rights

The script was written by Paddy Chayefsky, and the producer was Howard Gottfried. The two had just come off a lawsuit against United Artists, challenging the studio's right to lease their previous film, The Hospital, to ABC in a package with a less successful film. Despite recently settling this lawsuit, Chayefsky and Gottfried agreed to allow UA to finance the film. But after reading the script, UA found the subject matter too controversial and backed out.

Undeterred, Chayefsky and Gottfried shopped the script around to other studios, and eventually found an interested party in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Soon afterwards UA reversed itself and looked to co-finance the film with MGM, who for the past several years had distributed through UA in the US. MGM agreed to let UA back on board, and gave them the international distribution rights, with MGM controlling North American rights.

The film premiered in New York City on November 27, 1976, with a wide release following shortly afterward.

In 1980, UA's then-parent, Transamerica Corporation, put the studio up for sale following the disastrous release of Heaven's Gate, which was a major financial flop and public relations nightmare. Transamerica had become very nervous about the film industry as a result. The next year MGM purchased UA, and consequently gained UA's international rights to Network.

Then, in 1986, media mogul Ted Turner purchased MGM/UA. Without any financial backers, Turner soon fell into debt and sold back most of MGM, but kept the library for his own company, Turner Entertainment - this included the US rights to Network, but international rights remained with MGM, who retained the UA library (or, at least UA's own releases from 1952 onward, plus a few pre-1952 features, as other libraries which had been acquired by UA - such as the pre-1948 Warner Bros. library - were retained by Turner). Turner soon made a deal with MGM's video division for home distribution of most of Turner's library, allowing MGM to retain US video rights to Network for 13 more years.

In 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner. Consequently, WB assumed TV and theatrical distribution rights to the Turner library, with video rights being added in 1999.

Today, WB/Turner owns US rights to Network, while international rights are with MGM - which was recently bought by a consortium led by Sony & Comcast . MGM has also assigned international video distribution rights to 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

[edit] Critical reception

Vincent Canby, in his November 1976 review of the film for The New York Times, called the film "outrageous...brilliantly, cruelly funny, a topical American comedy that confirms Paddy Chayefsky's position as a major new American satirist" and a film whose "wickedly distorted views of the way television looks, sounds, and, indeed, is, are the satirist's cardiogram of the hidden heart, not just of television but also of the society that supports it and is, in turn, supported."[3]

In a review of the film written after it received its Academy Awards, Roger Ebert called it a "supremely well-acted, intelligent film that tries for too much, that attacks not only television but also most of the other ills of the 1970s," though "what it does accomplish is done so well, is seen so sharply, is presented so unforgivingly, that Network will outlive a lot of tidier movies.[4] Seen a quarter-century later, Ebert said the film was "like prophecy. When Chayefsky created Howard Beale, could he have imagined Jerry Springer, Howard Stern and the World Wrestling Federation?"; he credits Lumet and Chayefsky for knowing "just when to pull out all the stops."[5]

[edit] Awards

[edit] Academy Awards

Network won three of the four acting awards, tying the record of 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire. Along with Reds, Network is the last film as of 2007 to have received acting nominations in all four categories.

Won:

Finch died before the Academy Awards ceremony was held, and as of 2008 is the only performer ever to receive his award posthumously. Straight's performance as the wife of Holden's character featured only five minutes and 40 seconds of screen time, making it the shortest performance to win an Oscar as of 2007.

Nominated:

[edit] Golden Globes

Won:

Nominated:

[edit] BAFTA Awards

Won:

Nominated:

  • Best Film
  • Best Actor - William Holden
  • Best Actress - Faye Dunaway
  • Best Supporting Actor - Robert Duvall
  • Best Director - Sidney Lumet
  • Best Editing - Alan Heim
  • Best Screenplay - Paddy Chayefsky
  • Best Sound Track - Jack Fitzstephens, Marc Laub, Sanford Rackow, James Sabat, & Dick Vorisek

[edit] Miscellany

  • Technically, there is no incidental music score for this movie, however, the music for the "Network News Hour" by Elliot Lawrence serves as the film's original music.
  • Henry Fonda, John Chancellor, Walter Cronkite, and George C. Scott each turned down the role of Howard Beale.
  • James Stewart was offered a role but turned it down, objecting to the film's strong language.
  • The Mary Ann Gifford character was inspired by that of real-life Patty Hearst, and Laureen Hobbes by real-life communist activist Angela Davis.
  • Coincidentally, Warfield's warning expletive "Don't fuck with me!" is echoed (in context and voice-impression) by actress Faye Dunaway, five years later, in Mommie Dearest.
  • Similarly, the Max Schumacher character appears to have been inspired by Edward R. Murrow, Howard Beale by Walter Cronkite, Edward George Ruddy by William S. Paley, and Nelson Cheney by Frank Stanton, all of CBS. Coincidentally, CBS was the first network to air this film (in 1978).
  • Actors Holden and Dunaway appeared together two years earlier in the film The Towering Inferno.
  • According to author Shaun Consadine's biography of Paddy Chayefsky, Holden and Glenn Ford were suggested for the role of Max Schumacher, but Ford considered the role too hysterical.
  • Many aspects of the story share similarity with the real-life on-air suicide of Christine Chubbuck, which took place two years before the film's release.

[edit] References in popular culture

  • Erykah Badu sampled the "mad as hell" speech on the song "Twinkle."
  • Hardcore act The Effort used Howard Beale's speech as part of the intro track "Transmit" on their debut album "Iconoclasm" in 2008
  • The film spawned the popular phrase "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore," though the actual quote in the film, as uttered by Howard Beale, is "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" However, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore" was uttered by some of Beale's viewers. It is frequently parodied, and used by the New York Mets and the Florida Marlins to rev up the crowd. It placed 19th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American movie quotes.
  • In October 2005, actor George Clooney was said to be planning to produce a live made-for-television remake of the film, just as he did with Fail Safe.[6] As of 2007 the remake has not yet been produced.
  • The pseudonymous correspondent who covered television network skulduggery in "The Webs" column of Spy Magazine was named "Laureen Hobbs," after the radical black activist who is corrupted by television in the film.
  • William Holden only received the full text of his famous long speech the day before it was shot.
  • The television show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip referred to this film in the pilot episode, having a similar on-air breakdown on the show-within-a-show in this episode. The opening scene involved the executive producer having an on-air rant regarding television, leading to his firing. Network executives explicitly referred to Network as they discussed this outburst.
  • The first issue of the The Nightly News, a comic similarly themed on the subject of media abuse, is entitled I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.
  • Alternative metal act System of a Down re-enacted a part of the movie in the opening of the music video for their song "Sugar".
  • UK Indie band Travis used part of Howard Beale's "I'm as mad as hell" speech as an introduction for their gigs on a tour in 2008.
  • Howard Beale's famous speech serves as part of the introduction track for Era of Diversion, an album by the Drum and Bass trio, Evol Intent.
  • Clips from the movie can be heard after commercial breaks on The Richard Syrett Show, a talk radio show broadcast on CFRB in Toronto
  • The documentary Zeitgeist, the Movie (2007), about conspiracy theories take two clips from this film, one of them is the "I'm as mad as hell" speech
  • Portions of Howard Beale's rants were sampled in the track "Television" by seminal cut-and-paste hip-hop artist Steinski
  • A slightly different version of the rant was used by Al Pacino in the film Two for the Money.
  • The film was made reference to in the television series Boston Legal in the episode 'Tabloid Nation'.
  • In the Weird Al Yankovic movie UHF, Michael Richards' character Stanley Spadowski shouts "These floors are dirty as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" on the final episode of "Uncle Nutsy's Clubhouse," which would become "Stanley Spadowski's Clubhouse"
  • In the episode "I Only Have Eyes For You", Buffy the Vampire Slayer character Xander Harris parodies the famous line when he describes a ghost: "This was no wimpy chain rattler. This was 'I'm dead as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!'"
  • In the trunk scene in Out of Sight, Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) and Jack Foley (George Clooney) discuss Network, leading Foley to misquote Howard Beale's speech, saying "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take anymore of your shit!". On the DVD commentary, Steven Soderbergh and Scott Frank claim Clooney ad libbed the misquoting.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Producers Guild Hall of Fame - Past Inductees from the PGA website
  2. ^ Because Chayefsky started writing the screenplay during the same month that newscaster Christine Chubbuck committed on-air suicide, some, including Matthew C. Ehrlich in Journalism in the Movies (ISBN 0252029348), have speculated (p. 122) that the scene was inspired by Chubbuck's manner of death.
  3. ^ Review of Network from the November 15, 1976 edition of The New York Times
  4. ^ Review of Network by Roger Ebert from the 1970s
  5. ^ Review of Network by Roger Ebert from October 2000
  6. ^ Clooney Breaks His Own Big Story, A Live Network, an October 6, 2005 article from The Washington Post

[edit] External links

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v • d • e
Films directed by Sidney Lumet

12 Angry Men (1957) • Stage Struck (1958) • That Kind of Woman (1959) • The Fugitive Kind (1959) • A View from the Bridge (1961) • Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) • The Pawnbroker (1964) • Fail-Safe (1964) • The Hill (1965) • The Group (1966) • The Deadly Affair (1967) • Bye Bye Braverman (1968) • The Sea Gull (1968) • The Appointment (1969) • King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis (1970) • Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970) • The Anderson Tapes (1971) • Child's Play (1972) • The Offence (1972) • Serpico (1973) • Lovin' Molly (1974) • Murder on the Orient Express (1974) • Dog Day Afternoon (1975) • Network (1976) • Equus (1977) • The Wiz (1978) • Just Tell Me What You Want (1980) • Prince of the City (1981) • Deathtrap (1982) • The Verdict (1982) • Daniel (1983) • Garbo Talks (1984) • Power (1986) • The Morning After (1986) • Running on Empty (1988) • Family Business (1989) • Q & A (1990) • A Stranger Among Us (1992) • Guilty as Sin (1993) • Night Falls on Manhattan (1997) • Critical Care (1997) • Gloria (1999) • Strip Search (2004) • Find Me Guilty (2006) • Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)