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'I'm mad as hell' and you know the restThree decades later, 'Network' remains prescient as everBy Todd Leopold Peter Finch as Howard Beale in "Network." ON CNN TVWatch "Showbiz Tonight" on CNN Headline News at 7 p.m. ET weekdays.
SPECIAL REPORTYOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- Voices in the air. Diana Christensen: I've been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network. I want counterculture, I want anti-establishment. I don't want to play butch boss with you people, but when I took over this department, it had the worst programming record in television history. This network hasn't one show in the Top 20. This network is an industry joke. The secret of the best satire is familiarity, roots in recognizable reality. George Orwell didn't need to stretch much to write "Nineteen Eighty-Four": He simply looked at the post-World War II world of 1948 -- with its Stalinist purges, demoralized peoples, propaganda and brewing Cold War -- added a dose of totalitarianism, flipped the last two digits of the year and there it was. Howard Beale: And I said, "Why me?" And the voice said: "Because you're on television, dummy!" In his 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman was less concerned with an Orwellian future -- a future of oppressed, joyless automatons -- than he was of a Huxleyian future, one predicted by Aldous Huxley in his book "Brave New World." In that book, people are so sated by pleasure, from hedonistic pursuits to the ingestion of the drug Soma, that they fail to question the flaws and brutalities of a centrally run society. Postman was worried that our society, with its constant search for distraction, was losing its ability to question, to wonder, to think, that it was being overwhelmed by images and dazzled by facade. And his main culprit was television. Max Schumacher: We could make a series of it. "Suicide of the Week." Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? "Execution of the Week." Howard Beale: "Terrorist of the Week." Max Schumacher: I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hit men, automobile smashups: "The Death Hour." A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It'd wipe that [bleepin'] Disney right off the air. When "Network" came out in 1976, people thought it was outlandish, inconceivable, impossible. "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour"? A network news variety show hosted by a "Mad Prophet of the Airwaves"? Never happen. Who would watch such things? Howard Beale: It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone." Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! ... I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" But writer Paddy Chayefsky, a keen observer of television and society, knew better. In his time, host Joe Pyne already was screaming on his "talk" show, a forerunner of Wally George, Morton Downey Jr. and every indignant commentator that exists in today's 500-channel universe. In his time, the local news was already dominated by the "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy. And Chayefsky knew that humans had once gathered for public executions and lynch mobs -- and still gathered for circuses and car crashes. Oh, they'd watch. Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars. In 30 years, the world has become a different place than it was when Chayefsky wrote "Network," but much of it is still the same, still full of war and violence and corruption and missing puppies. But the packaging has gotten better, and sometimes it's hard to tell real life from "reality," the version that's presented on television and on the Internet. News is showbiz; showbiz is news. And, every so often, it's time for a word from our sponsor. Eye on Entertainment takes a station break. Eye-opener"Network" took its knocks in its day -- Gene Shalit complained that Chayefsky's theatrical, speechifying script sounded like he was hitting six typewriters at once -- but the years have been kind. The film's performers -- Faye Dunaway as the blank, coldblooded network programmer; William Holden as the head of the news division; Robert Duvall as ruthless corporate climber Frank Hackett; Ned Beatty as evangelical executive Arthur Jensen; Beatrice Straight as Holden's pained but forgiving wife; and, especially, Peter Finch as crazy news anchor Howard Beale -- give tremendous performances. Sidney Lumet's direction is, as usual, pitch-perfect. (Both Chayefsky and Lumet were veterans of TV's early days.) The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. Finch, Dunaway and Straight won for their performances -- Finch posthumously, Straight essentially for one great scene ("I'm your wife, damn it!"). Chayefsky also won for his scathingly funny screenplay, the writer's third and last Oscar in a storied career. Because "Network" now looks as much like a documentary as it does a satire, it's fascinating to view the extras on a new 30th-anniversary DVD edition of the film. One is an appearance by Chayefsky on, of all things, "The Dinah Shore Show." When Shore and her guests question the reality of "Network," Chayefsky says he didn't have to stretch much; he simply drew from current events. He also got at least 15 minutes of the hourlong show. Imagine a writer getting that kind of time on a talk show nowadays. Imagine anybody getting that kind of time to talk about serious things. It's the kind of situation that can't help but make you mad as hell. "Network" comes out on DVD Tuesday. It's being released by Warner Home Video, like CNN a division of Time Warner. On screenOn the tubeSound wavesPaging readersVideo center
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