Network (1976)

Starring: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall, Peter Finch, and Ned Beatty
Grade: Classic

In any discussion of the greatest screenplays ever produced, Network will always be included.

Summary

This is the story about Howard Beale (Finch), a network news anchorman for UBS-TV. Despite a hut rating of 16 and a 28 audience share during his prime, things started to change in 1969. He fell to a 22 share, and the following year his wife died. By then, he had an 8 rating and a 12 share. This is when he started to become dejected and began to drink heavily. On September 22nd, 1975, he was fired, and it became effective in two weeks. The news was broken to him by his friend and colleague Max Schumacher (Holden), president of the news division at UBS. As the two talk on the street afterwards, a drunken Beale talks about how he was on CBS with Ed Murrow in 1951 and Max brings up when he was working as an associate producer for NBC and the morning news when he was 26. After he talks about a story when he was told late about how he had to be at the George Washington Bridge for a segment and a cab driver thought he was going there to commit suicide, the two share a laugh. At the bar, the news of being fired starts to settle in with Beale who talks openly about killing himself on air right in the middle of the 7PM news. Max entertains the idea and tells him he’d get a 50 share easily to comfort him, and they could make a series out of it called “Suicide of the Week” or “Execution of the Week”. Beale even chimes in with “Terrorist of the Week”. Max starts to get into it and talks about all the things they could do during this “Death Hour” with mentions of mafia hitmen, mad bombers, automobile smashups and the like and how it could be a “great Sunday night show for the whole family”. By then, Beale passes out at the bar. The next morning at work, everything goes on like a regular workday. Beale and his team go through the format, he takes a shot, and heads into the studio to do his part of the show.

Once the camera is on him, he announces to the viewing audience he will be retiring from the show in two weeks “because of poor ratings”. Since the show is the only thing that he had going for him in his life, he reveals he has decided to kill himself and he will blow his brains out on this program a week from the day. He tells everyone to tune in next Tuesday because it will give the public relations people a week to promote the show, even reiterating Max’s words about how they’ll do a 50 share easy. No one in the production room notices what he’s saying at first because they are so preoccupied. Then, a couple of people get the others’ attention, so a studio head calls to the PA to ask Beale what is going on because they’re about to come back from commercial in 11 seconds. Beale acts like he can’t hear them, so the studio guy orders Beale to be taken off. A bunch of workers grab him, and he tries to fight them off which makes air for a few seconds until they cut to a “technical difficulties” graphic onscreen. Head executive Frank Hackett (Duvall) enters the office, tells Lou (Bernard Pollock) to clear the downstairs lobby of the hundred or so people because he could barely get in, and marches right into the news division. The place is a madhouse, fielding calls from complaints all over because of what Beale said. Frank walks into a private office where Beale is seated, along with Max and a couple of others. Immediately, Frank lets Beale know he’s off the air as of now. Max lets Frank know they’re flying Jack Snowden up from Washington to replace Beale. As the others in the office watch a few news programs at once covering the Beale story, Frank wants to know how they are handling it. Max reveals that Holloway will make a brief statement at the end of the show about how Beale has been under a lot of personal stress and such. After Frank gets off the phone, he tells everyone there they have a stockholders meeting tomorrow. There, he will announce a restructuring of management plan, and he doesn’t want this incident with Beale interfering with that.

He suggests Ed Ruddy (William Prince) open with a short opening statement to sweep things under the rug, and he wants Max to come up with answers for the guys at the stockholders meeting. As Max tries to calmly bring up Beale being under great professional and personal strain, Frank loses it on him, Max’s news division, and its annual $33 million deficit. When Max gets serious and reminds him that they are “responsible to corporate level, not you”, Frank seems to take it as a personal challenge until they are interrupted by another studio head who calms things down. Knowing all the reporters in the lobby, Max takes Beale to stay with him at his place for the night to avoid the media. The next morning, Max is on a call and says he wants Snowden there by noon, for Lester to cover the CIA hearings, and for Doris to cover the White House. He is told he is late for his screening, so he cuts the conversation short and tells his secretary that if John Wheeler calls to switch him to projection room seven. Max has a private meeting with West Coast Special Programs Department head Bill Herron (Darryl Hickman) who lets him know Diana Christenson (Dunaway) is there to sit in on the meeting. Bill is there to show him some footage on an interview with Laureen Hobbs, a member of the U.S. Communist Party. In the middle of it, Max gets a private call that Beale left Max’s house 20 minutes ago, so he calls Harry to let him know when Beale has arrived at the office. Getting back to the footage, Bill just wanted the interview to be a precursor to what he really wanted to show Max. He talks about how terrorist group the Ecumenical Liberation Army robbed the Flagstaff Independent Bank of Arizona and filmed the robbery themselves. Diana asks if this is the same group that kidnapped Patty Hearst, but Bill assures her that incident was perpetrated by the Symbionese Liberation Army. The Ecumenical Liberation Army is the group who kidnapped Mary Ann Gifford three weeks ago. As Bill points out their leader “The Great” Ahmed Kahn (Arthur Burghardt) and how he got the footage from Hobbs who was his contact, Max gets a phone call. Beale is there and is put on the phone. Beale wants to go on the air for a farewell statement and turn the show over to Snowden. He doesn’t want to go out like a clown after 11 years and even says Max and Harry (Jordan Charney) can check the copy. Harry is also on the line and argues that it would take the strain off the show.

Max agrees but tells Beale to not drink today, which he agrees to.

Meanwhile, Diana calls her own meeting in her office with Bill following. She calls in George Bosch (John Carpenter) Tommy Pelligrino (Michael Lipton), and Barbara Schlesinger (Conchata Ferrell) as well. She talks about Bill’s special on the “revolutionary underground” and stuff revolving around Laureen Hobbs, but she kind of shoves this aside because she’s actually more excited about the raw and authentic bank robbery footage and how Mary Ann Grifford is with the group shooting off machine guns. She thinks they can make a series out of this by utilizing the footage and hiring some writers to write something behind it, along with potentially new stuff about the terrorist group. The others don’t take the proposal seriously at first, and Barbara jokingly suggests calling it The Mao Tse-Tung Hour. However, Diana is open to the idea. She brings up the concept analysis reports she sent to all of them yesterday but none of them read it. To sum things up, Diana thinks the American people want someone to articulate their rage for them. Since Diana took this job six months prior, she’s talked openly about wanting angry shows. She doesn’t want conventional programming on this network. She wants counterculture and antiestablishment. Closing the door to her office, she tells the group that when she took over this department, they had the worst programming record in television history. The network doesn’t have one show in the top twenty, and the network as a whole is an industry joke. She wants a winner by September, and she wants a show developed based on the activities of a terrorist group. Lastly, she tells them they better read the audience research report she sends them the next time, or she’ll fire all of them. Next, she asks Bill to set up a meeting for her with Laureen Hobbs. At the stockholders meeting, Frank talks about how at the time CCA took control of the UBS television network, they were floundering with less than 7% of national television revenues. Most of the programs were being sold at station rates. Frank has a new plan he’s submitting to the board of directors for the coordination of the main profit centers, with the specific intention of making each division more responsive to management.

His first point is that the division producing the lowest rate of return has been the news division, with its $98 million budget and its average annual deficit of $32 million. Max and his colleague look over at Frank since they’re sitting next to the podium and are in disbelief. Going on, Frank knows news divisions historically lose money, but he sees this as a “wanton fiscal affront to be resolutely resisted”. The new plan calls for local news to be transferred to owned stations’ divisions. News radio will be transferred to the UBS radio division, and the news division will be moved from being an independent division to a department “accountable to the network”, taking all the power away from Max. During this speech, Max stares holes through Ruddy, who avoids eye contact entirely. After the meeting is over, Max approaches Ruddy to ask why he wasn’t told about this and was publicly humiliated because of it, especially because he talked to John Wheeler that morning who assured him the news division was safe. He threatens to resign, but Ruddy doesn’t want to talk about it until their regular morning meeting the following day. During the evening news, Max sits in production to watch Beale’s last broadcast. Beale brings up how yesterday he talked about committing public suicide and refers to it as an act of madness. Unfortunately, things go south right after. He relays this madness to the fact that he has just “ran out of bullshit”. They try to cut the feed, but Max stops them and lets Beale continue. Beale is even surprised he’s still on the air, so he doubles down and continues to talk about the bullshit in life. A fed-up Max gets a call from Tom and takes Beale’s side by agreeing how life is bullshit. As Beale rants about God, Max hangs up and refuses another call. The other workers start to laugh at Beale’s rant, which infuriates the other studio head in the room. He reminds Max they’re live on 67 affiliates, but Max refuses to cut the feed. As Beale talks about his marriage, Max is told Frank wants to talk to him, but he relays to the messenger for Frank to go fuck himself.

Later, Ruddy and Max have a private meeting. Ruddy knows Max is primarily responsible for what happened, and Max confirms it. Despite Ruddy implying Max is to be fired, Max still changes the subject back to why things were kept secret from him about the debasement of the news division since they go back 20 years. Max took the job in the first place because of Ruddy’s personal assurance that he’d back Max’s autonomy against any encroachment. However, ever since CCA acquired control of UBS systems 10 months ago, Frank has been taking over everything. Knowing this, Max demands to know who is running the network. Is it Ruddy or the CCA conglomerate? Ruddy is president of the systems group and Frank is basically nothing but a “hatchet man” for CCA. Nelson (Wesley Addy) is the president of the network, and he doesn’t have a damn thing to say about anything anymore. Ruddy says he was going to explain everything in the morning like he said at the stockholders meeting. Frank has “precipitated”, and the reorganization of the news division would not be executed until everyone had been consulted and satisfied, referring specifically to Max. Instead, Max jumped the gun because he was pissed, and it messed everything up. With this, Ruddy states that Max’s position was no longer tenable, regardless of how management was restructured. He wants Max’s resignation by 10AM the next day, and they will coordinate their statements to the least detriment of everyone. Bob McDonagh (Lane Smith) will take over the news division until they can sort things out. Once Max exits, Ruddy asks Nelson to get Beale. Nelson is calling people, but they don’t know where Beale is. In the lobby, Beale is actually talking to all the reporters about how he just wanted to say how he really felt after all these years. Watching Beale’s comments at her home is Diana. Her boyfriend Arthur (Mitchell Jason) is trying to get intimate with her, but she is fixated on Beale and tells Arthur to stop. The next day, Diana grabs the newspaper in the lobby of the building and goes to her office while asking a worker for the overnight ratings and the ratings of the day before.

Barbara enters Diana’s office and brings up four outlines submitted by Universal for an hour series. The first one is set in a large eastern law school (presumably Harvard) entitled The New Lawyers. The characters are a “crusty but benign” ex-Supreme Court justice, a beautiful girl graduate student, and a district attorney who is brilliant but sometimes cuts corners. The second one is The Amazon Squad and it’s about lady cops. The characters are a “crusty but benign” lieutenant who gets heat from the commissioner, a hard-nosed and hard-drinking detective who thinks women belong in the kitchen, and a female cop who is fighting the feminist battle on the force. The third one is an investigative reporter show. When she goes on about the main character being yet another “crusty but benign” managing editor, Diana cuts her off and brings up the Arabs jacking up the price of oil by 20%, the CIA getting caught looking in Senator Humphrey’s mail, civil wars in Angola and Beirut, New York City still facing default, and Patricia Hearst being finally caught, but the front page of the daily news is Howard Beale’s firing. With this in mind, she has her secretary set up a meeting with Frank. As soon as Diana walks into Frank’s office, he says KTNS-Kansas City refuses to carry their network news show unless Beale is taken off the air. Bypassing this, Diana gives him the overnights on the network news. It has an 8 in New York, a 9 in LA, and a 27 share in both cities. She brings up how Beale said “bullshit” for two minutes and tonight’s show could get a 30 share at least. She wants Beale to be on the air tonight and to keep him on, bringing up the press coverage they’ve been getting for this incident. The show jumped 5 rating points in one night. Tonight’s show could do at least 15. They’ve increased their audience by 20 or 30 million people in one night. Beale is articulating the popular rage, and the American people are responding. Diana wants the show because she believes she can turn it into the biggest show on television. Frank says it’s a news show and it isn’t in her department, but Diana goes on about seeing Beale as a “prophet” or “messianic figure” discussing the “hypocrisies of our times” and how it could be a strip show that sells for $100,000 a minute.

This show could pull this network out of the hole by itself, and she doesn’t want them to blow the opportunity. Intrigued, Frank agrees to think it over. Diana continues and tells him to not go to committee on something like this. She wants Frank to act now because they can’t lose the momentum and that they should want Beale there by the evening. They both acknowledge Beale is a complete wildcard at this point, but Frank can’t help but smile at the idea. Still, he needs to talk with legal affairs at the very least, along with Herb Thackeray (Pirie MacDonald) and Joe Donnelly (Ed Crowley) in standards and practices. Plus, he will have to meet with Ruddy on this and wants some backing going into it. With all of this being said, he tells Diana he will get back to her. Later, Frank meets with the top brass of the network for lunch. He talks about how they are a bankrupt network with projected losses of close to $150 million, but Nelson balks at the Beale-centered show, despite the others at the table being intrigued by it. Nelson brings up the FCC and how the affiliates won’t carry it, but Frank argues the FCC can’t touch them and the affiliates will kiss their ass if they hand them a hit show. Even so, Nelson is adamant that this idea violates every canon of respectable broadcasting, but Frank doesn’t think they are a respectable network. In fact, they are rather a “whorehouse network” and they have to take whatever they can get. Nelson stands up from the table offended because he doesn’t want to be the president of a whorehouse, but Frank tells him to sit down. He acknowledges his indignation and says he has the option to resign tomorrow. Getting back to business, Frank talks the logistics of the show. They are merely trying to add editorial comment to their network news show. All of the other anchors have this, so he suggests they give Beale a shot at it tonight. One executive says he doesn’t want to be the one to tell Max about this, but Frank reveals to him that Ruddy fired Max last night, and Bob McDonagh is running the news division now.

Meanwhile, Max is packing up his office and Beale comes in with an old picture of their CBS crew to reminisce. They laugh and talk about the good times and eventually the rest of the office joins in to hear their stories, with Max retelling the George Washington Bridge one from the opening. Suddenly, Bob walks in straight from Frank to relay the message about them wanting to put Beale back on the air that night because his “angry man” shtick was huge in the ratings and they think he can be a latter-day prophet. Beale laughs and sees it as a good idea, but Max is skeptical and asks who is “they”. Bob says there was Frank, Nelson, the legal affairs guy, and Diana. He didn’t like the idea either and tried to stand firmly against it to the other executives while speaking on the behalf of Max and Beale, but Beale interrupts to say Bob is turning down his job. Knowing he’d go nuts without any kind of work, Beale considers being an “angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our times” and asks Max what he thinks in front of everyone. Max asks if he’d like it, and they both start laughing with everyone else once he realizes he would. With this, Max encourages him to take it. Later, Ruddy has a private sit-down with Max in Max’s office and brings up how Nelson told him about Beale going on the air later that evening, which Max confirms. Ruddy is convinced that Frank has overstepped himself with such a decision and sees this as some sort of corporate maneuvering, and Frank is forcing a confrontation, which would make sense of what happened at the stockholders meeting. He thinks the CCA will be upset with the Beale stuff and so will Arthur Jensen (Beatty), so he will allow it to go through so Frank crumbles. With this in mind, Ruddy wants Max to reconsider his resignation. Ruddy has to assume Frank wouldn’t take such steps without some support on the CCA board, and he’ll have to go directly to Jensen. When that happens, Ruddy will need every friend he has. Plus, he doesn’t want all of Frank’s men in all the divisional positions. So, he wants Max to stay on. It doesn’t take long for Max to accept the offer considering their history.

Unfortunately, the initial response to the new Howard Beale show was not the success they were hoping for. The press was hostile, and the industry reaction was negative. The ratings for the Thursday and Friday shows were 14, but Monday’s rating dropped a point, which suggested the novelty was wearing off. As Max sits by his lonesome after hours at the office and turns off the show, Diana drops by and opens the conversation talking about how there are a number of psychics working as licensed brokers on Wall Street and they counsel their clients by use of tarot cards. They’re pretty successful, and she met one of them herself. Her name is Cybill. Diana wanted to do a show around her. If Cybill’s tips were any good however, she could wreck the market, so Diana asked if Cybill could predict the future. Cybill stated she is “occasionally prescient” and predicted Diana to be in an office with a middle-aged man where she is or will be emotionally involved. While sitting down near him, Diana subtly points out how this moment is exactly that. She goes on about this woman uses parapsychology rather than Tarot cards, and she can be very useful to Max because she could be used to predict tomorrow’s news for him. Diana pitches Max to have Cybill on for two minutes at the end of each Friday show, and everyone could tune in the following week to see how accurate her predictions are. Max sarcastically suggests she can do the weather, but Diana ignores him and talks about how his show is going to need help if it’s going to hold. She doesn’t think Beale is angry enough and is more curmudgeonly, which doesn’t fit the role of the prophet moniker she wanted. She wants him to be more “apocalyptic doom”. She even thinks Max should take on a few writers to “write Jeremiads for him”. Max laughs things off because he doesn’t think she’s serious, but Diana is, and she argues she can make Max’s show the highest-rated news show on television if he’d let her have a crack at it.

What she means is for her to program it and develop it. She wouldn’t interfere with the actual news itself, but she thinks the show could use her ideas of showmanship. Max leans forwards once he realizes she is serious, and she pushes further by pointing out how she watches the show, and they just do straight tabloid stuff. She’s going to bring it up at tomorrow’s network meeting, but she doesn’t like network hassles and was hoping her and Max could work this out between them which is why she’s here. Max thought she was there to get emotionally involved with a middle-aged man, mentioning her words from before, but she admits she’s not ruling that out entirely. Max gives her the go-ahead to bring up the ideas at the meeting tomorrow. If she won’t, he will. Max thinks Beale is making a fool of himself and so does all those who are close to the both of them in the industry. He passes off this whole thing as a fluke that didn’t actually work. Tomorrow, he wants Beale to go back to the old format and to end this whole debacle officially. Diana goes to leave, but Max stops her and questions why she waited at the office until 7:30PM to pitch her showbiz ideas knowing he’d turn them down. He knows there’s more to it and wants to know why. Diana considered her pitch as a gesture for his stature in the industry and because she has personally admired him since she was a kid majoring in speech at the University of Missouri. Regardless, Diana is confident she will take over his network news show sooner than later and with or without him. She figured she would just start tonight. Walking over to her, Max recalls a lecture he did at her university, and she was there, admitting a schoolgirl crush she had on him for a couple of months. Max asks her out to dinner that night, so Diana calls Arthur on the spot and says she can’t make it tonight.

Next, Max and Diana go on a date to some restaurant. There, they talk about failed past relationships. Diana was married for four years and “pretended to be happy” and “had six years of analysis and pretended to be sane”. Her husband ran off with his boyfriend, and she had an affair with her analyst who told her she was the worst lay he ever had. Apparently, many men have told her she was a lousy lay on account of her “masculine temperament”. She arouses quickly, consummates prematurely, and can’t wait to get her clothes on and get out of the bedroom. Diana sees herself as inept at everything except her work. She loves it too.

“All I want out of life is a 30 share and a 20 rating.”

Max has been married for 25 years, he has a married and six months pregnant daughter living in Seattle, and a younger daughter starting at Northwestern in January. Diana starts to flirt a little bit more, but Max brings up how a gossip column referred to Diana as Frank’s “backstage girl”, which she denies. She describes Frank as a corporation man, “body and soul”. He has no loves or allegiances that are not tied to becoming a CCA board member, so why should he bother with Diana if she isn’t even a stockholder? Once Max asks about her loves and lusts, she responds by asking if Max’s wife is in town. He confirms this, so she takes him back to her place instead. Meanwhile, Beale wakes up in bed at around 2AM and has a vision of a higher power telling him what to do. The next day at work, Max tells Harry he’s pulling the plug on the “angry prophet” thing with Beale. Even so, Harry assures Max on a phone call that Beale has been sharp all day and had everyone laughing at the rundown meeting. Just then, they cut to Beale to start the show, and he talks about what happened the night before and how this faceless figure and voice told him to tell the people the truth and to not worry because he will put the words in Beale’s mouth. On the phone still, Max is given the option from Harry to do something if he wants, but Max lets the speech continue. Beale goes on about how the voice wasn’t God and that Beale was chosen because he’s on television and is reaching 40 million Americans, potentially 50. After the show, Beale, Harry, and Max have a meeting where Max tells Beale he’s taking him off the air because he thinks Beale is having a breakdown and he requires treatment. Beale insists he’s not having a psychotic episode but rather there is a burst of energy and renewed passion he has, though he sounds crazy while saying it. He continues to rant about how he feels “connected to all living things”, how this isn’t a religious experience, how he’s feeling something similar to prana within the Hindu religion, and how he’s on the verge of a great ultimate truth.

Once he notices Harry’s uncomfortable look and Max’s concerned stare, he yells at the both of them and refuses to be taken off the air until he faints. Max takes him back to his house to watch over him. While staying on Max’s couch that night, Beale wakes up to the thunder outside, rants about how people think he’s crazy, and wanders out into the night. In the morning, Max’s wife Louise (Beatrice Straight) wakes up and sees that Beale is gone, so she wakes up Max before making him some coffee. At work, Frank is livid at Max for losing Beale because his show yesterday was a hit. As he points out an editorial on The New York Times detailing Beale’s “call to morality”, Max retorts that Beale could be jumping off a building for all he knows because he’s insane and needs care and treatment. Diana argues that it’s possible Beale is in fact “imbued with some special spirit”, but Max yells that he is supposed to be the romantic and she is supposed to be the hard-bitten realist. Diana explains how it doesn’t matter because they can get a 50 or 60 share and be bigger than The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but he refuses to put Beale back on the air. Finally, Diana reveals that it’s not Max’s show anymore. It’s hers. Frank chimes in and says it was his decision and he’s putting the network news show under programming. On top of that, Ruddy has had a mild heart attack and is not taking calls. In Ruddy’s absence, Frank is making all network decisions. With this, he fires Max officially and wants him out of the building by noon, even threatening to bring in security if he’s still there by then. Max threatens to be forced out kicking and screaming along with his whole team, but Frank doesn’t buy that they would all quit with him considering the recession. When Max brings up Ruddy coming back and going after Frank, Frank reminds him the show is a hit and Ruddy doesn’t count anymore. Frank rants about how Ruddy was hoping he’d fall on his face with the Beale show but he didn’t, and he dares Ruddy to go to the CCA board to argue to take their one hit show off the air.

Diana smiles as Frank talks about going to the annual CCA management review meeting, how he’s going to announce the projected earnings of the network for the first time in five years, and how Jensen is going to tell him to keep it up. With this, he wants Max now out of the office before noon, or he will have Max thrown out. Feeling betrayed, Max asks Diana if she’s going along with this, but she reminds him how she didn’t want the network hassle and wanted it to be worked out between the two of them. After Max says, “Fuck you” to her as well, he goes on about how Beale is his best friend, but he will put him in a hospital before they exploit him “like a carnival freak”. Frank isn’t worried and says Max can get his psychiatrists, but he’ll get his own just as well. On the way out the door, Max makes it clear he will make a lot of noise about what’s going on in this network, but Frank dares him too because he wants all the press they can get. As Frank picks up the phone, he asks Diana if anything was going on between her and Max to which she responds, “Not anymore”. Later that evening, Beale walks to the studio straight from the rain and is put on the air seconds after arriving. Following a story about how the 13 nations of OPEC still have not been able to decide by how much to increase the price of oil, they cut to Beale at his desk who rants about life being at its worst and encouraging Americans to get angry over how things have become. He gets up and starts walking directly to the studio camera telling everyone to open their windows and shout to the heavens, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”. Diana is ecstatic at the performance and starts making calls to see if everyone is responding. Apparently, all the major cities are. A concerned Max watches the program with his family, and his daughter opens the window to see several citizens going out the window and onto their fire escapes to shout the words Beale told them to in the thunder and lightning. Max peers out and shakes his head.

The phenomenon of Howard Beale is sweeping the nation. Despite Beale’s mental state deteriorating and those close to the situation knowing it, Frank and Diana are going to ride this thing until the wheels fall off. Sadly, that may just happen.

My Thoughts:

Newtork might be one of the best satires ever produced. With a concern in mind regarding the deterioration of society and how the reckless programming in television has contributed to it, Sidney Lumet’s Network is as powerful and relevant today as it was in 1976. Due to the extensive research and all-timer screenplay from three-time Academy Award winner Paddy Chayefsky, the outrageous black comedy works to expose the reality surrounding the intentions of the executives behind the scenes that produce television to the masses, the lack of morality or ethics in doing so, in favor of money-driven decisions or getting a promotion and looking good for those in power as a result, and doing anything humanly possible to pop a rating.

If a movie feels pretentious or self-righteous, I’d be the first to point it out. Some have argued that Network slides into this territory due to Paddy Chayefsky’s outspoken beliefs in real life and it sometimes spills onto the page with some of his characters and their long-winded monologues. However, it never feels like it’s self-serving. Really, it’s a shockingly accurate exposé on America’s most popular and influential medium. Sensationalist news sells, outlandish programming is talked about more than anything, and controversy creates cash. For those who do know this, television’s positives and negatives can be seen from a mile away, and these people can differentiate between what’s real and what’s not. Sadly, most don’t realize it and are unfamiliar with the value of media literacy. Even if there is truth to some content put out there, the crazier stuff sells even if people don’t agree with it. This content is loud, and it forces your attention. When it hooks you in, you can respond to it and make it a topic of discussion. There are researchers hired to make programming purely to shape it into something that invites engagement. It’s no secret that the more internet traffic there is, the better for the content provider because advertisers follow who is trending and who is getting people talking the most, as they just want eyes on their products to make a profit and will give money to the content provider in helping. With Network, we see it with Howard Beale himself. He’s supposed to be delivering the “real” news to people, so people take it at face value. However, the news division moves to the programming section of the company under Frank Hackett, which allows for them to meddle with the product and change the regular fact-telling of a news program into a new format focused on exciting, opinionated rants from the charismatic but legitimately mad Beale. By the time his final days on air come to be, he’s not doing any news. He just turns into an incoherent televangelist. The public aren’t privy to the meddling behind the scenes that changed their outlook on the news and what it stands for, but the transition to programming was pivotal. Without anyone telling them what Beale and the show turns into due to a lack of media literacy from most of the general public, the people just followed the voice of someone they have known for years and followed it blindly into the abyss.

Despite Beale telling the audience directly that if executive Ruddy dies, CCA and someone like Frank will take over and who knows what bullshit they will peddle for truth, they cheer him on because he’s just angry and extremely charismatic. He explains that “TV is not the truth” and how they are in the “boredom killing business”. If people do want truth, they should go to God, their gurus, or themselves because they won’t get any truths from Beale or the station. He passes out in front of the audience after urging them to turn the show off! Does the message matter at that point? Not really because it is stated by Frank at the meeting how they’ve made $21 million because of The Howard Beale Show and they could reach $45 million by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter. It’s about the money. Beale stood on his ground to talk about how detrimental TV is because people don’t read and they get most of what they know from TV, echoing the criticisms of today’s political climate in doing so. They watch TV every day and trust it because our lives are tied to it, but because of how important it has become to us, the wrong people see a chance to manipulate this fact to make money. They don’t care about you. It’s only about the money, and this film is next-level engrossing with how it explains every facet of this. Television can be the most awesome thing in the world, but it could also be the most destructive in the wrong hands. Considering what the world of TV at the end of Network turns into, Beale’s cautionary words stay with us and make us realize how easy it is for the wrong people to influence society.

This is just one of the many reasons why Network has the legacy it does. Part of it is because of how people relate to Howard Beale, a news anchor who becomes popular because of how mad at the world he has become and his fearless rantings on each subject he brings up. At the time and even now, citizens feel as if they are being lied to from every angle. They are weary of anyone they come across because they assume bullshit before the truth. Whether it be from the media, the government, salesmen, or whoever else, everyone has become cynical because society isn’t what they want it to be. Prices are higher, people can barely afford to live or eat well, and the job market isn’t what it used to be. At least now, people aren’t afraid to talk it about it anymore. Unfortunately, the cynicism still persists, as those in power use these noted topics of discussion to their advantage by speaking on them to get elected or placed in a position where they can make decisions, though it ultimately is revealed that they just want the job or status because very little is done in the end. Back in the 70s and before that, the “anger” that Diana speaks on that is more relatable to the “angry” society they live in is why she wants this type of content on the network. The counterculture and antiestablishment projects were becoming all the rage because a lot of people were tired of the old guard acting like everything around them was fine. With assassination attempts, Vietnam, and a series of other controversial events happening, people were tired of the real problems being ignored. Like I previously mentioned, some productions are created purely to incite anger because it drives engagement. It can be seen from controversial takes on sports analysis shows, political debates, and even on pages on social media. Today, the more impressions videos get because of controversy, the more similarly themed content these companies produce because people feel the undying need to comment on the matter. Because of this, more and more negative content has spilled into the modern era because the formula does work. Now, it’s a majority of what we see today because it’s become too powerful to stop.

Nobody cares about the impact. They only want the attention it brings.

All the way back in the 70s, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky foreshadowed this through his use of Howard Beale bringing people in to acknowledge their anger, hatred, and contempt for how things are and then later using it to influence any opinion he sees fit. Though Beale may not have ill-willed intentions as his mental state deteriorates, one can’t help but notice how public figures today use this formula to influence their positioning up the ladder because they know how to speak to certain demographics. It’s all a game for profit and one-upping the opponent, and it’s the reason why Network will outlive most movies in general. From the intentions of characters to how certain plot points turn out, each aspect of the story can still be analyzed and related to the world of media today.

Just like how we see with Diana Christensen’s pursuits with where she wants to take the programming of UBS-TV, the film basically acknowledges this increasing resentment towards the government or mundane television content in general and why there was a serious increase and interest in the need for more gritty, grimy, negative, and realistic projects. It’s seen in this era of Hollywood at the time, which is why the 1970s is looked at by many as a groundbreaking era of cinema that a lot of people consider its peak. It was a no-holds barred response to the “cookie cutter” 1950s style of film that bled a bit into the early 60s. Network is one of these movies that pushed the boundaries by putting the spotlight on entertainment’s biggest and most influential medium in television and how it has impacted society and why it will continue to do so. Diana and these television executives start to figure out how people were responding to “angry content”, so UBS-TV decides to join in on the craze to finally gain a profit. It’s not to compete necessarily with the other networks and stake their claim in the game, it’s a political war within the corporation itself. If the rating-obsessed Frank Hackett and Diana Christensen turn a profit, they’ll be untouchable. When it comes to that stockholders meeting, whoever is in charge that actually pulls off the miracle for a network that regularly loses money will be considered a king. With this in mind, human decency is out the window. They know the goal, and they will do literally anything in their power to achieve it. If people are responding to counterculture programming, violence, murder, sex, and any kind of subject considered taboo, they will give it to them tenfold and will push the boundaries until things plateau, decline, or more importantly, their money is affected. For example, Howard Beale’s manic ranting about random topics, and personal deterioration while doing so, was considered fine because of how well the show was doing and how many people were responding to his antics. At a UBS Affiliates meeting, the then VP in Charge of Programming in Diana talks about how they are the number one show on television and by next year, they will look to be the number one network.

This is all because of the success of Beale shouting his opinions the way he sees fit and inspiring the masses to listen and shout alongside him. No one cares about the content anymore because it’s a success and people are tuning in. Considering the later success of popular trash-focused, controversial, shock value shows like The Jerry Springer Show, The Howard Stern Show, Geraldo, Opie and Anthony, reality television in general, and countless other examples, the screenplay of Network proves its value in contemporary society every day. Who cares about the content? They’re making money, right? When Max was against Frank’s efforts to exploit Beale in the first place and brings up how a recovered Ruddy can go to the CCA board to put a stop to the madness, Frank dares the action because they’d be arguing to take their only hit show off the air. He’s right. It wouldn’t fly. They’re finally a success. Why throw it away because ethics got in the way? Nevertheless, they were forced to make a move once the money was affected. During one of Beale’s rants on his show, he exposes the deal CCA might be doing with a Saudi Arabian conglomerate and how “The Arabs are simply buying us”. Like the messianic prophet the executives wanted him to be, he calls to the viewer to send telegrams to the White House stating, “I want the CCA deal stopped now”, even having the crowd chant it. It was all fun and games up until this point, but as soon as the money is being fucked with, NOW they take Beale’s breakdown seriously. Privately, all the executives meet, and Frank admits the truth behind the CCA deal with the Saudi Arabians, how they have $2 billion in loans to the Saudis, how they hold every pledge they’ve got, and how badly they need the Saudi money. With this stunt alone, Frank thinks he’s done. Nelson thinks they’re overstating Beale’s reach to the public, ironically something they used to prop up to convince themselves to do the show in the first place. Unfortunately for them, it’s revealed that telegrams flooded the White House just like Beale asked. With this much attention, the government could potentially stop the deal. Now, the all-powerful Jensen will have a word with everyone because in a way, Beale may have cost them $2 billion.

Being the number one show on television suddenly may not matter anymore and his position is officially threatened because this group of executives have finally seen his mental state as a problem, as it’s effecting their profit. This results in a private meeting between Beale and Jensen. Sitting at the head of the table once he closes the curtains to further intimidate the crazed news anchor, Jensen is spotlighted within the darkness, as he speaks to Beale like he is a benevolent and omniscient presence in a way to relate to Beale’s way of speaking and thinking. In doing so, Jensen reveals the reality of the behind-the-scenes nature of network programming to not only him, but the viewer as well. Beale stares in a trance to the intensity in which Jensen shouts at him about how it’s only about money, how “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale!”, and how there is no America, only corporations. He talks about how these corporations are the nations of today and that, “The world is a business, Mr. Beale”, with currency determining the totality of life. This is no longer a nation of independent individuals with their own ideologies. It’s about the corporations, their stocks, and making profits. Beale has been chosen to preach this word. Why? Well, it’s because he’s on television. Though this depressing and darkly cynical rant on society has Paddy Chayefsky written all over it, the points he is making through Jensen still stands. The scariest part of his outlook is that there is a lot of truth to it. It may sound preachy and self-indulgent due to Chayefsky’s own disdain for the many topics presented in Network, but it’s grounded in a lot of truth. Does it scare you? It should. This scene is one of the best of the film, and it’s most riveting. In just a six-minute sequence that garnered an Oscar nomination, Ned Beatty tears the house down with his iconic “You will atone” speech that inspires the further downward spiral of Howard Beale, resulting in a full momentum shift for his show and his tenure as host.

William Holden’s professional and classy portrayal of Max is almost forgotten in the amidst of such incredible performances by his co-stars, but he brings it just as much as they do. This cast acts as if they see each other as competition, and everyone rises to the occasion to outdo the other to magnificent results. Considering the work done by Chayefsky and a filmmaker like Sidney Lumet helping bring this production to life, they wouldn’t settle for anything less either. Despite having troubles of his own, Holden’s Max captaining the picture was a great choice as possibly the only “honorable” man left in television, though I have to put that in quotations because of his sobering choice to cheat on his loyal wife Louise (played by Beatrice Straight, who crushes her five-minute of screen time en route to securing her sole Oscar win). Leading the news division, Max represents the old era of television, holding onto the purity of what they do in light of the changing of the guard to a younger, hungrier, obsessive new generation that will do anything to get ahead. News divisions historically lose a lot of money and rarely turn a profit, but what they do is a considered a public service, so in a lot of cases they are left alone, which is why they are in a separate division supposedly untouched by corporate. This is where Max resides, as he leads the money pit but works to serve the news as is. Sadly, when everything is restructured and they are moved to programming, they have to finally answer to the losses they are projected to have to an executive in Frank who already doesn’t like Max or respect what they do. With this, everything is turned on its head. With a few choice words, Frank’s stance on Max and the news is clear and the sharp divide on their philosophies is immediately apparent. Just as Max wants to calm things down because his friend and colleague in Howard Beale is showing signs of insanity (“And all you graverobbers think about is that he’s a hit!”), Frank wants to push forward as much as he can and exploit it because it’s all about profit and making himself look good for those higher than him.

Max, bless his soul, is the only one questioning what in the blue hell they are doing, but he’s looked at as out of touch and someone who is saddling the progression of the network when they are on the cusp of making a profit for the first time. Initially, Frank is willing to let them all go because he thinks it’s a waste of time and Max’s attitude isn’t worth the headache, but Diana is the one who changes everything with her pushing for extreme and rousing content that the viewer can’t look away from. Beale is the start, but the pushing of additional stuff like the coverage of the Ecumenical Liberation Army and their own filming of their bank robberies only adds to what she wants to turn programming into. When she meets with Laureen Hobbs, she talks about their potential weekly show of the Ecumenical Liberation Army and how she wants to open each episode with “an authentic act of political terrorism”, requesting Hobbs to get the Ecumenicals to bring in the footage since the network can’t deal with them directly since they are technically wanted criminals. This is how far Diana is willing to go to get a rating and get this outlandish content for attention. Even Hobbs is tested. She talks about how “The Great” Ahmed Khan and his group’s ideals don’t align with the Communist Party and that she doesn’t want her show “celebrating historically deviational terrorism”. However, she too is convinced of pushing the evils of the idea because the show can be seen by 30-50 million people and help her cause a lot more than “handing out pamphlets on street corners”. With this, she agrees to undermine her own ideologies to promote the volatile one she doesn’t agree with just because the views will give her a lot of attention. Read that back for a second. Again, do you see how relevant this still is today? It’s amazing what Chayefsky foretold. Just like Frank, Diana craves success in the TV industry and wants to move up the corporate ladder by any means necessary. In the dinner she has with Max, she basically details how her personal life means nothing to her. The selfish Diana admittedly can’t hold a relationship but doesn’t care too much either. All she cares about is the ratings and the shares she can get, something she says directly to him.

When her and Max go on a trip for the weekend and they make out in the car, she’s still talking about how she can snatch five James Bond movies for cheap for the network, how they are having trouble with the federal government over The Mao Tse-Tung Hour and have been served a subpoena because they want the footage of the bank robbery, and how they are working with the news division to get around it. Max doesn’t respond because they’re still getting intimate later on, but she continues to talk about how she welcomes the government to sue them, taking off her clothes as she says it. During sex, she cums while talking about the press they can get from the situation and it’s over in seconds. Immediately after, Diana talks about daytime programming and a lesbian soap opera called The Dykes before asking what Max thinks. This is Diana to her core. It’s television all the time. That’s it. She is the prototypical young and hungry executive only turned up to a ten. It gets to the point where she goes so far in this direction after severing ties with the sympathetic Max that she loses her own humanity in pursuit of her never-ending goal. At first, she acknowledges her struggle with it but doesn’t care. It isn’t until when the show starts to decline and the pressure is on where she admits her lack of a personal life is bothering her and she doesn’t know how to love, especially because in these moments of despair, a partner is someone who could help her. Unfortunately, her attitude, her lack of compassion, and refusal to show a vulnerability of any kind, even when she does need help, prevent her from saving herself. In turn, she makes a full turn into becoming a disciple of Frank and the corporate mentality of doing anything humanly possible to maintain your position, make the company money, and move up if the opportunity is there (“It’s too late Diana. There’s nothing left in you I can live with. Your one of Howard’s humanoids. If I stay with you, I’ll be destroyed…like everything you and the institution of television has destroyed”). The complete loss of humanity in the final executive meeting (leading to one of the best endings in the history of cinema mind you) was a feather in the cap for what might be the best work of Faye Dunaway’s career.

The ruthlessness of Robert Duvall’s heartless Frank Hackett has to be noted as well. He personifies the evil executive that we tend to imagine leads any corporation. His arrogant, argumentative, in-your-face style in portraying the son of a bitch who spearheads this madness is played annoyingly well by Duvall. Because we’re human, we side with Max on their arguments, but the screenplay teases the viewer because there isn’t a single thing Frank says that is wrong in terms of how they should approach their next step from a business standpoint. Any executive in power watching the movie would agree. Though we know Frank is as an asshole who is morally wrong and doesn’t give a damn how Howard Beale is doing personally, or how this show in the format Diana is proposing could impact general society, you find yourself shaking your head thinking, “Fuck Frank Hackett, but yeah, he’s right”. Why would they drop the network’s only hit show because they feel bad for the star? He’s showing up to work still, so roll with it. When a movie makes you question your own morality as a human being, that’s all the acknowledgement this screenplay needs to prove how good it actually is. Thankfully, we aren’t as desensitized to violence as Frank and Diana are to know how wrong the finale is but considering how often we see violence and death on television every day and simply change the channel, the point Chayefsky is making with this seemingly inexplicable moment is still very much evident.

Network is genuinely funny too. I loved the scene at Great Ahmed Khan’s home and the arguments he has with Hobbs over distribution costs and script approval, with Khan firing his gun before agreeing, “Give her the fucking overhead clause”. It’s so outrageous you can’t help but laugh when the UBS guy says, “No one’s gonna believe this”. The dialogue is just amazing throughout. Another highlight is the emotional conversation between Max and Louise and how Max relates the decisions of episodic television to his life, something he brings up later with Diana in an explosive argument. That’s the underrated part about the movie too. As much as the social commentary and premise powers the film, the characters and the world they encompass that magnifies how the world of TV has affected them is just as moving. It’s about as complete of a production that you may ever see. The final argument between Max and Diana is this thought personified, with dialogue that encapsulates their character arcs (“I don’t need you”; “You need me badly. I’m your last contact with human reality”), what is to come (he predicts it will be a year or two before she jumps out of a window) and what this business has done to all of them. Though the delivery of “and here are a few scenes from next week’s show” was a little corny, it still fit with the overall message well.

A film like this comes once a lifetime. With an intelligent, engrossing, well-researched, original, and detail-orientated script, every actor included knocking it out of the park to an Academy Award-winning level, defined characters who all play important roles in the story, well-placed humor, intriguing subplots, and fantastic direction, Network is a satire with no discernible holes.

Fun Fact: Paddy Chayefsky envisioned Henry Fonda, Carey Grant, James Stewart, Paul Newman, Walter Cronkite, and John Chancellor for the role of Howard Beale. George C. Scott, Glenn Ford, and William Holden himself all turned down the role of Beale too. Glenn Ford was also up for the role of Max Schumacher, as was Walter Matthau and Gene Hackman. Faye Dunaway wanted Robert Mitchum to play Max, but Sidney Lumet disagreed. Chayefsky considered Candice Bergen, Natalie Wood, and Ellen Burstyn for the role of Diana. The studio suggested Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Jill Clayburgh, Kay Lenz, and Marsha Mason. He also refused Lumet’s suggestion of Vanessa Redgrave.