RSS FeedJune 14, 2010
For several years of my life, I boldly inhabited the wonderful world of trying to sell screenplays, so I’ve had more than a few conversations with screenwriters, almost all of whom, regardless of their personal gifts or lack thereof, are happy to heap praise on Paddy Chayefsky’s theatrically unbridled script for “Network,” a blistering satire of America’s obsession with television that’s simultaneously as brilliant and maddening as any movie you’re likely to see.
I have some problems with “Network,” and I don't think they're unfounded. There are moments when Chayevsky’s dialogue - and, regardless of several award-winning performances, the dialogue is the ultimate star here - swings like a pendulum between profound insight and the kind of blathering you might hear from a loquacious communications professor who thinks he’s the only person alive who’s recognized that the world may very well be fucked beyond repair.
A big stink was made at the time "Network" was originally released about Chayefsky’s iron-clad contract, which said not one syllable of his script could be changed without his consent. If you’re not a writer-director, such worshipful adherence to the text is virtually unheard of in modern movies; most writers’ work is trampled by committee before the cameras even roll.
The problem is, if ever there was a brilliant screenwriter who needed somebody to occasionally say, “Okay, enough already,” it was Chayefsky. Surely, director Sidney Lumet, who’s made some terrific movies over the years, would have dumped one or two of Chayefsky’s more abundantly verbose diatribes in favor of something that more closely resembles life here on earth. But he couldn’t.
As it stands, “Network” is wall-to-wall with characters who unfailingly employ the exact adjective or simile that shoots what they’re saying into the black comedy stratosphere, where it hangs suspended among the twinkly stars and really, really smart people who have the schooling and aggression to become verbal astronauts. Virtually no one in “Network” is ever stumped for an answer, and I think the picture would have benefited had Chayefsky included a periodic breather from the endless bada-bing-bada-boom, the way your supposed to when you’re balancing out the components of a script.
That said, there are stretches of dialogue here that are as effectively caustic as anything this side of “Dr. Strangelove,” the cast is uniformly superb, and Chayevsky’s predictions of where the boob tube was heading were at least 25 years ahead of the game when he was putting them down on paper. On a manual typewriter.
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I can remember watching “Network” for the first time in 1980 and thinking Chayefsky’s vision, though enormously compelling, verged on science fiction. A national television network pandering so vigorously to the lowest common denominator it turns its news department into a lunatic fringe freak show featuring a screed-delivering zealot who’s convinced he’s a mouthpiece for God was so far removed from the mere news-hour sensationalism that was taking hold at the time, it hardly stood as an authentic fear. And following a bunch of communist radicals with network cameras in the hope that they’ll do something sufficiently sociopathic to garner a fat rating was way, way beyond the pale. Wasn’t it?
Well, it's amazing what Fox News and an onslaught of reality programming will do for an over-the-top “satire.”
Since its release in 1976, “Network” has morphed into one of the more staggeringly prescient films ever made. The degree with which Chayefsky nails programming trends that weren’t even a glimmer in a money-grubbing producer’s eye back in the 70s is beyond eerie...that is, when you aren’t choking on rueful laughter.
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Peter Finch (who won a posthumous best actor Oscar for his charmingly unhinged performance) stars as Howard Beale, a longtime anchor for the “UBS Evening News” who finally cracks from the pressure of being a modern human being. Howard’s best friend, Max Schumacher (William Holden, looking like a craggy monument to old-school cigarettes, steaks, and booze) is the president of UBS, and he’s expected to take the reigns and figure out what to do with poor Howard after the newscaster makes a rather unexpected announcement at the top of his show one evening. (Due to Warner Bros. moronic policy of not allowing bloggers to promote their back catalogue via embedded clips, you’ll have to click here to watch the scene.)
Howard, of course, needs professional help. But when a beautiful programming executive named Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway, who also won an Oscar for her work) sees her chance to climb the network ladder by promoting Howard’s colorful insanity on the air rather than encouraging him to seek out a therapist, UBS sees its viewing numbers rise. Max, a happily married man who will find himself caught up in a ridiculous affair with Diana, attempts to be the voice of reason and protect his old friend. He even has Howard sleeping on the couch in his living room to keep him from hurting himself, but Howard quickly goes missing.
When Diana and her boss, an even more vicious careerist named Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall, in a domineering, giddily despicable turn) finally put the screws to Max and wrestle the news department into the entertainment division of the network, the real fireworks begin. (Click
here.)
On the same day that Max is dumped from his long-time post, Howard wanders in a daze into UBS’s studio, soaked from a downpour and ready to appear on the news. But he’s not so ready to deliver a newscast. Instead, he launches into an audience-galvanizing tirade against the ills of contemporary life that won Finch his Oscar and has become one of the genuinely iconic scenes of 1970s commercial cinema. (Click here.)
The “I’m as mad as hell” speech is indicative of what Chayefsky does best throughout “Network.” The most effective scenes are the ones where he doesn’t necessarily have to worry about character development or advancing the plot. Instead, everything comes to a standstill for a set piece that allows a certain character, or a group of characters, to act like absurdist archetypes, products of the pressure to maintain an even keel in a society that values humanity less and less in favor of power and the almighty dollar.
They’re soul-poisoned, and Chayefsky gets a palpable kick out of letting them parade their sickness for our amusement. This is more the work of a playwright than a screenwriter, when you get right down to it. But Chayefsky is so entertainingly pissed off, I’m willing to accept that he’s left the movie behind again in favor of yet another full-bodied rant.
A prime example of this is a corker of a contract negotiation involving the communist revolutionary group that Diana has decided deserves its own weekly TV show. A sprawl of agents and note-taking lawyers fill a beat-up living room and spittle flies as a group of radical insurrectionists debate how many points they’re going to receive on the back end of a network deal.
This is the scene where Chayefsky really whipped out the crystal ball. Sure, we’ve yet to see a reality show that encourages people to commit crimes for the benefit of a camera. But does it truly seem impossible at this point? How far will our voyeurism have to be pushed before enough is finally enough? Is there really a limit to what the masses will tolerate?
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But that’s the bombastic stuff. Character interactions that are supposed to be intimate too often sound “written” in "Network," to the point of outright absurdity, and Holden is usually the victim of Chayevsky’s inability to stop delivering a new Gettysburg Address every 5 minutes.
The scene in which Max tells his devoted wife, played by Beatrice Straight, that he’s leaving her for a younger, much dimmer woman is famous for being Straight’s only significant appearance in the movie, yet she won a best supporting actress Oscar for it. Straight is certainly intense, and I don’t fault her work at all— she’s very good; the pain on her face is almost too deep to look at directly. But my God, Holden has a handful of lines dissecting his relationship with Diana – stuff like, “She’s television generation; she learned life from Bugs Bunny” – that sound like rejected leads from a “New Yorker” magazine article.
Again, though, the high points in “Network” are so ridiculously elevated, the satire so wounding, it’s well worth showing some patience and rolling your eyes periodically while you wait out the missteps. Ultimately, I think Lumet deserves far more credit than he usually gets for keeping it all together.
It’s instructive to at least scan through “The Hospital,” another balls-out Chayefsky blab-fest that was directed by the much less gifted Arthur Hiller, after you watch “Network.” It'll illuminate just how deftly Lumet maintains momentum, even when Chayefsky is making characters state things that many people would have trouble spitting out if they were written on a cue card, and at such length you can just about make yourself a margarita before they’ve said their piece.
Lumet, like Chayefsky, got his start in live TV when the medium was still in its infancy, and he’s always retained a nuts-and-bolts method of filmmaking. That direct approach to storytelling usually keeps “Network” from seeming like an extended reading of a scroll and makes you feel these phonies are at least speaking from damaged hearts when they enter into their monologues. Lumet and his magnificent cast manage to make it seem like the characters genuinely believe their own self-serving bullshit. Isn’t that the real key to American life?
Paul Tatara
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