'I'm a human being, God damn it! My life has value!'

May 21, 2011 6:49 AM

Notes of a Screenwriter, Mad as Hell - The New York times on Paddy Chayefsky's notes for his screenplay of Network. I don't have to tell you things are bad...
posted by fearfulsymmetry (30 comments total)

Wow. Network is one of my favorite movies of all time. Looking forward to reading this; thanks!
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:54 AM on May 21, 2011

> You wish Chayefsky could come back to life long enough to write ‘The Internet.’ ”

"So I want you to sit down now. I want all of you to sit down in your chairs. I want you to sit down right now and go to your laptop. Open it, and type, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to sit down right now, go to your computer, turn it on and put your hands on the keyboard and type - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to type, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first sit down in your chairs, open the laptop, stick your fingers out, and type, and IM it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:58 AM on May 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

Great article, not surprised that Sorkin and Colbert are fans of the movie.
posted by octothorpe at 7:02 AM on May 21, 2011

Also one of my favorite movies of all time, and the among the best works of science fiction of the 20th century. (think about it for a second, you know that's right).
posted by empath at 7:04 AM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Man, Chayefsky was brilliant.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:17 AM on May 21, 2011

Mad Groove
posted by airguitar at 7:21 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised that Colbert thinks of Beale as some sort of precursor of modern commercial pundits like O'Reilly and Beck.

I thought Beale was great because he was sincere and because he dared to rebel against his own medium; success wasn't something he strove for, it was something he found himself saddled with. Beale urges his viewers to stop being afraid and to find some self-respect.

All of that seems quite different from the likes of O'Reilly, Beck, Limbaugh, et al., who are as far as I can tell shallow, insincere, and thoroughly, graspingly commercial. They're not rebelling against the system that spawned them, they're out-and-out products of that system. Beck tells his viewers there they have even more to fear than they ever imagined.

But who am I to argue with a satirist as ingenious as Colbert? If he sees something there, maybe I've just missed it. Maybe I misunderstood Network from the get-go.

Or perhaps I'm just upset because I like Beale very much but I don't like those other guys. At all.
posted by Western Infidels at 7:43 AM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Beale's message to the public changes considerably after he has his meeting with Ned Beatty though, right? You describe his initial demeanour and message; Colbert perhaps refers to the later corporate-friendly Beale?
posted by stinkycheese at 7:52 AM on May 21, 2011

I'm surprised that Colbert thinks of Beale as some sort of precursor of modern commercial pundits like O'Reilly and Beck.

I thought Beale was great because he was sincere and because he dared to rebel against his own medium; success wasn't something he strove for, it was something he found himself saddled with. Beale urges his viewers to stop being afraid and to find some self-respect.


Beale is clinically insane. He hears voices. Ironically, despite being a reporter/anchor for god knows how long, he has a very shallow understanding of the world. ("I don't want you to write to your congressman; I wouldn't know what to write. I don't know what to do about the Arabs and the depression and the inflation...") His sincere convictions are pretty shallow, too--it only takes one meeting for Ned Beatty to convert him into a corporate propaganda machine.

I think he has a lot in common with O'Reilly and (especially) Beck.
posted by equalpants at 7:58 AM on May 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

Another Chayefsky film well worth seeing is 1971's The Hospital with George C. Scott in the lead as a suicidal doctor; it's basically a Network for the medical industry in the U.S.
posted by stinkycheese at 7:59 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I agree with what you're saying equalpants, but I think Beale's conversion comes less from a lack of conviction than from the idea that Beatty is revealing a secret truth (of course Beatty's monologue is one of the most prescient pieces of dialogue in the film); if you look at how that whole sequence was shot, Beatty comes across almost like a holy vision or something, a burning bush of Old Testament conviction and rage.
posted by stinkycheese at 8:05 AM on May 21, 2011

Yeah, but that's just because you're in Beale's point of view, and he's suggestible.
posted by empath at 8:15 AM on May 21, 2011

How can you like Beale and not like Glenn Beck? By the way, one should note that it's not just Colbert making the comparison; Beck himself has expressed admiration for Howard Beale's character, and I think it's clear that he's consciously modeled his show and even his demeanor after Beale. The resemblance is actually uncanny: a raving madman ranting in obscene caricatures about the modern world and the people in it, posturing as a doomsday prophet crying in the face of Armageddon, all the while tossing in just enough charisma and apparent regard for humans as humans to efficiently draw the sympathy of the masses. The only difference is that Glenn Beck encapsulates both Howard Beale and the producers who exploited him; Glenn Beck knows that what he's doing is worth money, and he's keen to get it. But it always seemed as though Howard Beale was a few steps from that realization himself, particularly in light of how the movie ends.
posted by koeselitz at 8:15 AM on May 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

Maybe it's been a long time since I saw Network in it's entirety. And maybe I imagine I know more about Beck et al. than I really do.

But does the current crop of right-wing passion-pushers ever point out to their own audiences what stupid, ill-informed citizens they are? Do they explain how television itself is a shallow, corrupt, manipulative buffet of junk food for the mind? Do they urge their viewers to turn their own shows off?

Late in the movie, Chairman Jensen does try to get Beale to preach a vision of corporate utopia. Beale seems convinced that Jensen is correct about the nature of the world, but he certainly doesn't like it, and he doesn't praise it. Beale's message changes to one of despair and of railing against the larger trend of an emerging materialist dystopia:

HOWARD (ON TV): What's finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being who's finished. It's every single one of you out there who's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. This is a nation of two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter- than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods ... The whole world's people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, wired, insensate things useful only to produce and consume other mass-produced things, all of them as unnecessary and useless as we are ... that's the simple truth you have to grasp, that human existence is an utterly futile and purposeless thing ...

Beale's attempt to say what he sees as the truth, no matter how painful, leads to plummeting ratings and to his assassination.

Regardless of anything Beck may have done to engineer his character to co-opt aspects of Beale's, I don't think they're saying anything like the same things, or that they have anything like the same motivations.

Maybe Network is just complicated enough that different people can read different things into it.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:28 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I agree with what you're saying equalpants, but I think Beale's conversion comes less from a lack of conviction than from the idea that Beatty is revealing a secret truth (of course Beatty's monologue is one of the most prescient pieces of dialogue in the film); if you look at how that whole sequence was shot, Beatty comes across almost like a holy vision or something, a burning bush of Old Testament conviction and rage.

True, but that's because Jensen is a salesman. (They say he can sell anything!) He knows exactly what Beale will respond to. He's done his homework; he's watched Beale's show and heard the prophetic language he uses, the descriptions of hallucinations, etc. Beale is vulnerable to holy visions because he's A. losing it and B. not all that aware of the world around him. Jensen sells Beale on the idea that his future is natural and inevitable; Beale utterly fails to realize that Jensen is not a prophet, not a man who has perceived an inescapable truth, but actually a man of action, trying actively and consciously to bring about that future.
posted by equalpants at 9:51 AM on May 21, 2011

That's a very good point.
posted by stinkycheese at 9:55 AM on May 21, 2011

Jensen just wants a swift end put to Beale's apparent connection with the public, and the threat it poses his interests; I don't imagine he wanted everyone to 'get behind' his stated vision of how things work, it's enough that people turn off Beale when his sermons become cynical about, as Western Infidels quoted, the individual.
posted by stinkycheese at 9:59 AM on May 21, 2011

Western Infidels: “Maybe it's been a long time since I saw Network in it's entirety. And maybe I imagine I know more about Beck et al. than I really do. But does the current crop of right-wing passion-pushers ever point out to their own audiences what stupid, ill-informed citizens they are? Do they explain how television itself is a shallow, corrupt, manipulative buffet of junk food for the mind? Do they urge their viewers to turn their own shows off? ... Beale's attempt to say what he sees as the truth, no matter how painful, leads to plummeting ratings and to his assassination. Regardless of anything Beck may have done to engineer his character to co-opt aspects of Beale's, I don't think they're saying anything like the same things, or that they have anything like the same motivations.”

I think it's very tempting to see Howard Beale as a heroic character, a great man under the weight of an oppressive world, a latter-day prophet who speaks the truth that no one else dares speak.

But for me that's precisely the unsettling thing about Network. I mean, Howard Beale is this character with extraordinary charisma, but the film ultimately makes it utterly impossible (for me at least) to come down on his side, to see him the way we want to see him. His friends – the people who care most about him, people who are not corrupted by the love of holy money or the adherence to ratings, etc – these people look at what he's going through, and they don't revere him; they pity him. They see him as going insane. And I think it's fair to say he is going insane.

Network doesn't romanticize this slip of Beale's, as easy as that would have been. We love the crazy prophet, the terror-mad visionary, the wild man who stands up valiantly against society's ills. It would be easy to paint Beale as "the only sane one in the place!" But Network doesn't do that. It portrays Beale as sick. And he is. The unsettling and depressing thing about Network to me is that it offers no heroic characters whatsoever.

I end up despising Howard Beale, precisely because he's so open to being used by his masters, precisely because his rhetoric which at first appealed to our sense that something must be wrong here ends up simply being a distraction from it, an entertainment, a meaningless blustering show. Nor can I really admire anybody else, even his friends, who blunder through the movie failing to do what they really ought to. Network ultimately portrays a world that is doomed because nobody is really capable of actually speaking the truth openly and valiantly; the only people willing to try are insane, and the only people who understand what's going on are far too timid or confused.
posted by koeselitz at 10:06 AM on May 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

But does the current crop of right-wing passion-pushers ever point out to their own audiences what stupid, ill-informed citizens they are? Do they explain how television itself is a shallow, corrupt, manipulative buffet of junk food for the mind? Do they urge their viewers to turn their own shows off?

Definitely true--they do not do those things. Well, sometimes they rail against the "media", I guess. But it doesn't seem like there's anyone (on the right, anyway) pushing that message. Stewart and Colbert sometimes get close to it, though.

The thing is, though, that it doesn't even matter that Beale's pushing that message, because his audience doesn't receive it! (Beale gives his passionate speech about turning off the TV, collapses on the floor, and then the audience cheers--once the applause lights go on.) He's not a rebel; the higher-ups at the network don't care what the hell he says, as long as he makes money. Christensen wants angry shows because she knows that the angry demographic is underserved. It's only once Beale actually interferes with a business deal that they decide to redirect him.
posted by equalpants at 10:06 AM on May 21, 2011

I guess my feeling after watching Network is always this: as much as it is tempting to see things differently, the Howard Beales of this world actually come very close to being the central problem themselves. And nothing good can ever come from someone who acts like he does. The final similarity between Howard Beale's charisma and Chairman Jensen's charisma shows just how poisonous this kind of person can be.
posted by koeselitz at 10:11 AM on May 21, 2011

His friends – the people who care most about him, people who are not corrupted by the love of holy money or the adherence to ratings, etc – these people look at what he's going through, and they don't revere him; they pity him. They see him as going insane. And I think it's fair to say he is going insane.

I've quoted this before on metafilter, but it's one of my favorite quotes from the gospels, a wry joke that reveals the humanity of Jesus better than any other:

When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue; and the many listeners were astonished, saying, "Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands?

"Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?" And they took offense at Him.

Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household."

So I think that the fact that his friends don't revere him doesn't really indicate that he wasn't a 'true' prophet.
posted by empath at 10:20 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

That's true. But the fact that he enthusiastically signs up to be on Satan's cheerleading team without even blinking an eye might suffice as proof on that account.
posted by koeselitz at 10:23 AM on May 21, 2011

Jensen just wants a swift end put to Beale's apparent connection with the public, and the threat it poses his interests; I don't imagine he wanted everyone to 'get behind' his stated vision of how things work, it's enough that people turn off Beale when his sermons become cynical about, as Western Infidels quoted, the individual.

I never even considered this, but you're right. Jensen's too smart not to realize that the gospel he has planted in Beale is turning off the audience and torpedoing the entire network. That's his intention! It wouldn't have been enough to just fire Beale -- he'd end up on another network. He has to destroy Beale, even if it means sacrificing UBS, not to mention his golden boy Hackett.
posted by evilcolonel at 10:46 AM on May 21, 2011

(BTW, has Robert Duvall ever made a bad film?)
posted by evilcolonel at 10:47 AM on May 21, 2011

I was just thinking how great Duvall was in this.
posted by zoinks at 11:02 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

> (BTW, has Robert Duvall ever made a bad film?)

Fewer than most, but oh yes indeed.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:18 AM on May 21, 2011

(BTW, has Robert Duvall ever made a bad film?)

My god, you're right - he even avoided Godfather III!
posted by rkent at 11:19 AM on May 21, 2011

koeselitz: "I guess my feeling after watching Network is always this: as much as it is tempting to see things differently, the Howard Beales of this world actually come very close to being the central problem themselves."

Yep. Chayefsky's own stage direction from the article, describing Beale's followers as sounding like "a Nuremberg rally" is perceptive here. Groupthink is dangerous period, whether ostensibly for good or ill. The central theme of Network, in my view, is the tendency of any prophet, no matter how revolutionary, to become a tool for the status quo. Beale's very Christ like in that regard. That's not to say there shouldn't be prophets, or that prophets aren't right much of the time, but that the agent of prophecy has to almost constantly be transferred to ensure it doesn't get appropriated. Better that we all talk and think as prophets then follow one or another blindly.
posted by Apropos of Something at 4:26 PM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

the American people “don’t want jolly, happy family type shows like Eye Witness News”;

Given how rapidly they spread from NYCity, one would have to disagree with that statement.

But I get ahead of myself. His note to himself would appear to be referring not to Walter Cronkite or the national news, but to NYCity's own local Eyewitness News, the father of all upbeat chatty faux friendly news programs ever since. And rather a different animal than the Glen Becks or Limbaughs of this world, whose predecessors seem closer to the likes of Father Coughlin - a throwback even in the early 1970s.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:51 PM on May 21, 2011

Fewer than most, but oh yes indeed.

I was scared one of those was going to link to Newsies.
posted by naoko at 9:13 PM on May 21, 2011