Network
1976 · 122 min
Directed by Sidney Lumet. Written by Paddy Chayefsky. Starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall.
When veteran anchorman Howard Beale is forced to retire his 25-year post because of his age, he announces to viewers that he will kill himself during his farewell broadcast. Network executives rethink their decision when his fanatical tirade results in a spike in ratings.
Critics 90% · audiences 93% · 10 Oscar nominations, 4 won
What they said about Network
- 1976
outrageous ... brilliantly, cruelly funny, a topical American comedy that confirms Paddy Chayefsky's position as a major new American satirist
— Vincent Canby, The New York Times - 1976
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.
— Vincent Canby, The New York Times - 1976
a very funny movie that takes an easy target and giddily beats it to death.
— Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune - 1976
The cast of this messianic farce takes turns yelling at us soulless masses
— Pauline Kael, The New Yorker - 1976
the movie is too sternly, monotonously preachy for either persuasion or casual amusement.
— Gary Arnold, The Washington Post - 1976
slick, 'adult', self-congratulatory, and almost entirely hollow
— Chris Petit, Time Out
How it got made
Network came only two years after the first on-screen suicide in television history, of television news reporter Christine Chubbuck in Sarasota, Florida. The anchorwoman was suffering from depression and loneliness, was often emotionally distant from her co-workers, and shot herself on camera as stunned viewers watched on July 15, 1974. Chayefsky used the idea of a live death as his film's terminating focal point, to say later in an interview, "Television will do anything for a rating... anything!" However, Dave Itzkoff's book (Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies) allows that whether Chayefsky was inspired by the Chubbuck case remains unclear, that Chayefsky's screenplay notes on the week of the live death have nothing about the incident in them, and grants it is an eerie parallel. It was to be months later that actual direct reference was made, Chayefsky writing for Beale to bray that he "will blow my brains out right on the air ... like that girl in Florida", which was later removed. Sidney Lumet made the categorical statement that the character of Howard Beale was never based on any real-life person.
Before beginning his screenplay, Chayefsky visited network TV offices. He was surprised to learn that television executives did not watch much television. "The programs they put on 'had to' be bad, had to be something they wouldn't watch," he remarked. "Imagine having to work like that all your life." According to Dave Itzkoff, what Chayefsky saw while writing the screenplay during the midst of Watergate and the Vietnam War was the entirety of America's anger being broadcast in everything from sitcoms to news reports. He concluded that Americans "don't want jolly, happy family type shows like Eye Witness News" ... "the American people are angry and want angry shows." When he began writing his script he had intended on a comedy, but instead directed his frustration at the content being broadcast on television—which he described as "an indestructible and terrifying giant that is stronger than the government"—into the screenplay. It became a "dark satire about an unstable news anchor and a broadcasting company and a viewing public all too happy to follow him over the brink of sanity." The character of network executive Diana Christiansen was based on NBC daytime television programming executive Lin Bolen, which Bolen disputed.
Chayefsky and producer Howard Gottfried had just come off a lawsuit against United Artists, challenging the studio's right to lease their previous film, The Hospital, to ABC in a package with a less successful film. Despite this recent legal action, Chayefsky and Gottfried signed a deal with UA to finance Network, until UA found the subject matter too controversial and backed out. Undeterred, Chayefsky and Gottfried shopped the script around to other studios, and eventually found an interested party in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Soon afterward, United Artists reversed itself and looked to co-finance the film with MGM, since the latter had an ongoing distribution arrangement with UA in North America. Since MGM agreed to let UA back on board, the former (through United Artists as per the arrangement) controlled North American/Caribbean rights, with UA opting for overseas distribution.
At the box office
The film became one of the big hits of 1976–77, earning $23.7 million at the box office on a $3.8 million production budget.
Afterwards
In 2000, Roger Ebert added the film to his Great Movies list and said it 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." Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin wrote in 2011 that "no predictor of the future—not even Orwell—has ever been as right as Chayefsky was when he wrote Network." The film ranks at number 100 in Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.