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How ‘Network’ foresaw the future
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PADDY CHAYEFSKY’S Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1976 film “Network” was, and remains, the kind of literate, darkly funny and breathtakingly prescient material that prompts many to claim it as the greatest screenplay of the 20th century. In “Mad as Hell: The Making of ‘Network’ and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies,” Dave Itzkoff, a culture reporter for The New York Times, takes us behind the curtain and shows us why.
Using filming logs, interviews and Paddy Chayefsky’s personal papers, Itzkoff’s almost fetishized reconstruction of the making of this iconic masterpiece gave me chills. Admittedly, a lot of that is due to my love of “Network.” But not all of it. Itzkoff’s engrossing, unfolding narrative contains the perfect amount of inside-baseball moviemaking stories and anecdotes about stars. It is an inspiring, conflict-driven account of the parade of the indignities and happy accidents that are always present when making a movie, even a great one.
If you’ve ever wondered if everyone can equally recognize greatness, Itzkoff quotes Chayefsky’s letter to Paul Newman offering him “any part in this picture you want.” Newman turned him down. When Chayefsky wouldn’t give George C. Scott’s wife the role that would eventually go to Faye Dunaway, he too passed. For the role of the “mad as hell” TV anchorman Howard Beale, Chayefsky wanted either Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gene Hackman, Sterling Hayden or Robert Montgomery. Peter Finch’s agent begged for an audition for his lesser-known client and, facing the imminent start of principal photography, got one. Finch landed the job and won an Oscar, posthumously, after collapsing in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel the morning after his triumphant appearance on the “Tonight Show” in the company of his “Network” director, Sidney Lumet. “Mad as Hell” is rife with anecdotes of actors struggling to handle Chayefsky’s glittering, complex verbiage. Itzkoff quotes the “Network” editor Alan Heim talking to Lumet about the director’s initial disappointment in Faye Dunaway’s performance. “She’s having trouble with the words,” Lumet told Heim. “He was thinking of replacing her,” says the editor. But he didn’t, and Faye Dunaway also won an Academy Award.
The real star of the book, like the movie that inspired it, is Paddy Chayefsky. His prophetic vision of television’s future included draconian corporate oversight, evaporating audience share, dumbed-down escapist fare and shows starring real people. In place of “newscasters,” he saw bombastic, editorializing, divisive, larger-than-life personalities. “Network” had many vocal detractors. But the film touched a nerve, audiences sensed Chayefsky had tapped into something and it began its march to the place it occupies today, on the Mount Rushmore of movies.
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