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Network

Network
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DVD Release: Network [WS/P&S]

  • Release Date: 1998
  • Never-before-available widescreen format
  • Trivia and production notes
  • "Hidden Menu Page" with history of the Neilsen Ratings System
  • Interactive quiz game
  • Original theatrical trailer

DVD Release: Network [WS/P&S]

  • Release Date: 2000
  • Interactive game quiz
  • Hidden menu page with the history of the Neilsen Ratings System
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Trivia and production notes

  • Rating: StarStarStarStarStar
  • Genre: Comedy Drama
  • Movie Type: Black Comedy, Media Satire
  • Themes: Work Ethics, Suicide, Members of the Press
  • Director: Sidney Lumet
  • Main Cast: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy
  • Release Year: 1976
  • Country: US
  • Run Time: 121 minutes
  • MPAA Rating: R

Plot

A trenchant satire of "trash TV," Network seems to grow only more relevant with each passing year. Howard Beale (Peter Finch), the dean of newscasters at the United Broadcasting System, is put out to pasture because he "skews old." Network executive Max Schumacher (William Holden), Howard's best friend, is forced to deliver the bad news. Beale can't stomach the idea of losing his 25-year post as anchorman simply because of age, so in his next broadcast he announces to the viewers that he's going to commit suicide on his final program. Network head Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) is all for kicking Beale out then and there, but when it looks as though the UBS is going to have its greatest ratings ever on the night of Beale's self-destruction, ambitious programming exec Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) talks Hackett into treating that fateful final telecast as a special event. Naturally, Beale doesn't go through with it -- but he does begin rambling about the horrible state of the world in general and television in particular. He concludes his tirade by admonishing his viewers to "Go to the window and shout as loud as you can: 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!'" With that, Howard Beale becomes the hottest TV personality in America, and Diana becomes the network's fair-haired girl. She draws up plans to treat the nightly news broadcast as garish entertainment (complete with a psychic), all built around the rants of Beale, billed as "The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves." Max is disgusted at seeing his old friend turned into a freak; even so, he finds Diana fascinating and begins an affair with her. Eventually, Schumacher realizes that Diana is merely a ratings machine with legs and returns to his wife (Beatrice Straight). Meanwhile, the owner of the network (Ned Beatty), in his own way as loony as Beale, convinces the anchorman to begin preaching to the public a "You can't win, so why try?" philosophy. Network won Oscars for Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay as well as for three of four acting categories -- Dunaway for Best Actress, Peter Finch for Best Actor (in the only posthumous Oscar yet awarded), and Beatrice Straight for Best Supporting Actress, in one of the shortest-screen-time performances ever to win an Oscar. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Review

Part of a cycle of 1970s conspiracy films and a sharp satire of the TV business, Network bitterly critiques corporate culture's impact on the spread of information and the resulting cult of the TV guru. As directed by Sidney Lumet and scripted by Paddy Chayefsky, Network takes a relatively straightforward approach to its outrageous acts, even those of Faye Dunaway's ambitious programmer, lending a disturbingly matter-of-fact tone to the corporation's most venal and dehumanizing machinations. The mad ravings of Peter Finch's messianic Howard Beale become an almost sane response to the systemic rot, but the corruption is too deep and the TV audience too fickle. A popular and critical hit, Network was praised for wittily yet somberly tapping into the mid-'70s mood of cultural disaffection, providing the perfect catch phrase for any and all frustrations, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Nominated for ten Oscars including Best Picture, Network won four awards, including Best Screenplay, and three out of the four acting awards: Best Actress for Dunaway; Best Supporting Actress for Beatrice Straight as William Holden's bitterly wronged wife (at that time, the briefest Oscar-winning performance in history, since bested by Judi Dench's role in Shakespeare in Love); and a posthumous Best Actor for Finch. While journalists in 1976 howled about the film's inaccurate absurdity, the continuing conglomeration of the media and resulting excesses of infotainment ensure Network's continuing sting. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Cast


Ned Beatty - Arthur Jensen; Beatrice Straight - Louise Schumacher; Arthur Burghardt - Great Ahmed Kahn; Bill Burrows - TV Director; Kathy Cronkite - Mary Ann Gifford; Darryl Hickman - Bill Herron; Roy Poole - Sam Haywood; William Prince - Edward George Ruddy; Marlene Warfield - Laureen Hobbs; Lee Richardson - Narrator; Jordan Charney - Harry Hunter; Ed Crowley - Joe Donnelly; Jerome Dempsey - Walter C. Amundsen; Todd Everett - Reporter (uncredited); Conchata Ferrell - Barbara Schlesinger; Gene Gross - Milton K. Steinman; Stanley Grover - Jack Snowden; Lance Henriksen - Lawyer (uncredited); Mitchell Jason - Arthur Zangwill; Paul Jenkins - TV Stage Manager; Ken Kercheval - Merrill Grant; Ken Kimmins - Associate Producer; Michael Lombard - Willie Stein; Lane Smith - Robert McDonough; Fred Stuthman - Mosaic Figure; Michael Lipton - Tommy Pellegrino; Russ Petranto - TV Associate Director; Bernie Pollack - Lou; Lynn Klugman - TV Production Assistant; Pirie MacDonald - Herb Thackeray; Sasha von Scherler - Helen Miggs; Theodore Sorel - Giannini; John Carpenter - George Bosch

Credit

Theoni V. Aldredge - Costume Designer; Fred Caruso - Associate Producer; Paddy Chayefsky - Screenwriter; Howard Gottfried - Producer; Lee C. Harman - Makeup; Alan Heim - Editor; Sidney Lumet - Director; Owen Roizman - Cinematographer; Philip Rosenberg - Production Designer; Fred Schuler - Camera Operator; John Alese - Makeup; Elliot Lawrence - Composer (Music Score); Edward Stewart - Set Designer; Juliet Taylor - Casting; James J. Sabat - Sound/Sound Designer; Richard Vorisek - Sound/Sound Designer

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Wikipedia: network (film)
Network
Networkmovie.jpg
Network
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Produced by Howard Gottfried
Written by Paddy Chayefsky
Starring Faye Dunaway
William Holden
Peter Finch
Robert Duvall
Ned Beatty
Music by Elliot Lawrence
Cinematography Owen Roizman
Distributed by USA: MGM (theatrical), Warner Bros. (DVD)
non-USA: United Artists (theatrical), MGM (DVD)
Release date(s) 27 November, 1976 (premiere)
Running time 121 min.
Language English
Budget USD$ 3,800,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

Network is a 1976 satirical 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 both Best Actor and Best Actress.

Network has continued to receive recognition, decades after its initial release. In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2002, the film 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.

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. The following night, Beale announces on the air 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.
Enlarge
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!") 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, supplanted with segments featuring polls and astrology.

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. The chairman of the company that owns UBS then explicates his own "corporate cosmology" to the now nearly delusional Beale, ultimately persuading 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.

And 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.

Cast

  • Jordan Charney as Harry Hunter
  • Lane Smith as Robert McDonough
  • Cindy Grover as Caroline Schumacher
  • Marlene Warfield as Laureen Hobbs
  • Carolyn Krigbaum as Max's secretary
  • Lee Richardson as Narrator (voice)

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]

Awards

Academy Awards

Network won three of the four acting awards, tying the record of 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire.

Won:

Finch died before the Academy Awards ceremony was held, and as of 2007 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:

Golden Globes

Won:

Nominated:

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

Trivia

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 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • 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 reenacted a part of the movie in the opening of the music video for their song "Sugar".


Films directed by Sidney Lumet

12 Angry Men • Stage Struck • That Kind of Woman • The Fugitive Kind • A View from the Bridge • Long Day's Journey Into Night • The Pawnbroker • Fail-Safe • The Hill • The Group • The Deadly Affair • Bye Bye Braverman • The Sea Gull • The Appointment • King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis • Last of the Mobile Hot Shots • The Anderson Tapes • Child's Play • The Offence • Serpico • Lovin' Molly • Murder on the Orient Express • Dog Day Afternoon • Network • Equus • The Wiz • Just Tell Me What You Want • Prince of the City • Deathtrap • The Verdict • Daniel • Garbo Talks • Power • The Morning After • Running on Empty • Family Business • Q & A • A Stranger Among Us • Guilty as Sin • Night Falls on Manhattan • Critical Care • Gloria • Strip Search • Find Me Guilty

References

  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

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Movies. Copyright © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Movie Guide ® , a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Network (film)".  Read more

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