Network [Screenplay]

by Paddy Chayefsky (screenwriter)

A TV network cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor's ravings and revelations about the media for their own profit.

Genres: Film

120 pages, screenplay

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky , was an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay.

He was considered one of the most renowned dramatists of the so-called Golden Age of Television. His intimate, realistic scripts provided a naturalistic style of television drama for the 1950s, and he was regarded as the central figure in the "kitchen sink realism" movement of American television.

Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky continued to succeed as a playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). Marty was based on his own television drama about a relationship between two lonely people finding love. Network was his scathing satire of the television industry and The Hospital was considered satiric.

Chayefsky's early stories were notable for their dialogue, their depiction of second-generation Americans and their sentiment and humor. They were frequently influenced by the author's childhood in the Bronx. The protagonists were generally middle-class tradesmen struggling with personal problems: loneliness, pressures to conform or their own emotions.

Chayefsky died in New York City of cancer in August 1981 at the age of 58.

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20...

Wiki plotting: Howard Beale, the longtime anchor of the Union Broadcasting System's UBS Evening News, learns from friend and news division president Max Schumacher that he has just two more weeks on the air because of declining ratings. The two get drunk and lament the state of their industry. The following night, Beale announces on live television that he will commit suicide on next Tuesday's broadcast. UBS fires him after this incident, but Schumacher intervenes so that Beale can have a dignified farewell. Beale promises he will apologize for his outburst, but once on the air, he launches back into a rant claiming that life is "bullshit." Beale's outburst causes the newscast's ratings to spike, and much to Schumacher's dismay, the upper echelons of UBS decide to exploit Beale's antics rather than pull him off the air. In one impassioned diatribe, Beale galvanizes the nation, persuading his viewers to shout out of their windows "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Diana Christensen heads the network's programming department; seeking just one hit show, she cuts a deal with a band of radical terrorists for a new docudrama series called The Mao Tse-Tung Hour for the upcoming fall season. When Beale's ratings seem to have topped out, Christensen approaches Schumacher and offers to help him "develop" the news show. He says no to the professional offer, but not to the personal one, and the two begin an affair. When Schumacher decides to end Beale as the "angry man" format, Christensen convinces her boss, Frank Hackett, to slot the evening news show under the entertainment division so she can develop it. Hackett agrees, bullying the UBS executives to consent and fire Schumacher. Soon afterward, Beale is hosting a new program called The Howard Beale Show, top-billed as "the mad prophet of the airwaves". Ultimately, the show becomes the most highly rated program on television, and Beale finds new celebrity preaching his angry message in front of a live studio audience that, on cue, chants Beale's signature catchphrase en masse: "We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore." At first, Max and Diana's romance withers as the show flourishes, but in the flush of high ratings, the two ultimately find their way back together, and Schumacher leaves his wife of over 25 years for Christensen. But Christensen's fanatical devotion to her job and emotional emptiness ultimately drive Max back to try returning to his wife, even though he doesn't think she'll agree, and he warns his former lover that she will self-destruct at the pace she is running with her career. "You are television incarnate, Diana," he tells her, "indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality."

When Beale discovers that Communications Corporation of America (CCA), the conglomerate that owns UBS, will be bought out by an even larger Saudi Arabian conglomerate, he launches an on-screen tirade against the deal, encouraging viewers to send telegrams to the White House telling them, "I want the CCA deal stopped now!" This throws the top network brass into a state of panic because the company's debt load has made merger essential for survival. Hackett takes Beale to meet with CCA chairman Arthur Jensen, who explicates his own "corporate cosmology" to Beale, describing the interrelatedness of the participants in the international economy and the illusory nature of nationality distinctions. Jensen persuades Beale to abandon the populist messages and preach his new "evangel". However, television audiences find his new sermons on the dehumanization of society depressing, and ratings begin to slide, yet Jensen will not allow UBS executives to fire Beale. Seeing its two-for-the-price-of-one value—solving the Beale problem plus sparking a boost in season-opener ratings—Christensen, Hackett, and the other executives decide to hire the Ecumenical Liberation Army to assassinate Beale on the air. The assassination succeeds, putting an end to The Howard Beale Show and kicking off a second season of The Mao Tse-Tung Hour.

Jeepers: scary content when viewing this as a backdrop to Trumplandia.

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oscar-winning, prophetic masterpiece of a screenplay - jumps off the page at you, hits you between the eyes and leaves a lasting impression, indelibly linked to the performances of Faye Dunaway, William Holden and Peter Finch.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paddy Chayefsky chose his nickname well. He was one lucky leprechaun in possessing a modicum of talent that satisfied popular tastes while spouting pseudo-profundities, championing the common man in MARTY, expounding a shallow pacifism in THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY. He was also that rare screenwriter who rated a name above the title of the films he wrote, in this case "Paddy Chayefsky's NETWORK". This is not the radical manifesto against the corporate media behemoth most people take it to be. Howard Beale's cri de coeur, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" is an empty gesture, a Seventies rewind of genuine Sixties rebellion now cast in the politics of despair. Beale, his audience, and we the television viewers know in advance that, per saint Paddy, nothing in this world will change the morning after Beale's spiel to the nation. TV is also an easy target for any half-with it writer. Who could defend the medium Fred Allen called "chewing gum for the mind"?. Chayefsky's stand-in for the ills of modern America, the mad TV exec Diana, "television incarnate" got that way because as a child of the boob tube she knows no other reality. Are we to blame her for first casting Beale, "the mad prophet or the airwaves", and then killing him? NETWORK equate the forces of the far-left, "the Ecumenical Liberation Army" and corporate America, the banks and multinationals who own the fictional UBS Network, in being equally responsible for America's decline, with the public, burn-out zombies sitting in front of their screens, cheering its own demise. NETWORK is cynical and sophomoric when Chayefsky thinks he's being provocative and astute. Those who praise this script for foreshadowing the rise of infotainment better be prepared to accept the bleak conclusion: the future has been canceled.

[abdellah]

i reread this mervellous script i begun with it last night before sleep... it took me frankly deeply to another world wich is really mysterious , business greedy men , competition among companies ruled by usa, arabs. the third world; fraud; blackmailing ..... in the conclusion i may say i sponge up various words within this script, hence my skills has known a giant expendation .