Mad Prophet of the Big Screen
This month Faye Dunaway turns 85 and Robert Duvall 95, making it a fine time to remember Network, the 1976 film in which they starred with Peter Finch, William Holden, and Ned Beatty, all now departed. Directed by Sidney Lumet and scripted by Paddy Chayefsky, both of whom are no longer with us, Network is that rare film that delivers more than it promises. Fifty years later, it’s still delivering.
At the outset, news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) has lost his job at the embattled Union Broadcasting System, UBS, a sly reference to “sister network” CBS. In his last appearance, Beale threatens to kill himself, which boosts ratings. Because of that bump, programmer Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) wants to give Howard his own show and pitches the idea to network boss Frank Hackett, wonderfully played by Robert Duvall.
“I see Howard Beale as a latter-day prophet, a magnificent messianic figure, inveighing against the hypocrisies of our times, a strip Savonarola, Monday through Friday,” Diana explains. “One show like that could pull this whole network right out of the hole! Now, Frank, it’s being handed to us on a plate. Let’s not blow it!”
One night, Howard is awakened by a “shrill, sibilant, faceless voice” telling him, “I want you to tell the people the truth.” Howard wonders, “Why me?” and the voice responds, “Because you’re on television, dummy.” Howard says, “Okay,” and famously tells the people, “We all know things are bad. Worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything’s going crazy.” Howard wants the people to push back.
“I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’” People are yelling all across the land, and the show hits “the motherlode.” Howard then targets the medium that made him famous.
“Television is not the truth!” Howard tells the people. “If you want truth, go to God, go to your gurus, go to yourself, because that’s the only place you’ll ever find any real truth! But man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear. . . In God’s name, you people are the real thing! We’re the illusions!” So, he continues, “turn it off right now, right in the middle of this very sentence I’m speaking now.”
As Beale’s show boosts UBS fortunes, Diana pursues another project. Bill Herron (Darryl Hickman) shows up touting a band of bank-robbing revolutionaries. Diana wonders if this group is the same one that kidnapped Patty Hearst.
“No, that’s the Symbionese Liberation Army,” Bill explains. “This is the Ecumenical Liberation Army. They’re the ones who kidnapped Mary Ann Gifford three weeks ago. There’s a hell of a lot of liberation armies in the revolutionary underground and a lot of kidnapped heiresses. That’s Mary Ann Gifford.” Diana is all over it and tells her staff:
Look, I just saw some rough footage of a special Bill’s doing on the revolutionary underground. Most of it’s tedious stuff of Laureen Hobbs and four fatigue jackets muttering mutilated Marxism. But he’s got about eight minutes of a bank robbery that is absolutely sensational! Authentic stuff. Actually shot while the robbery was going on! Remember the Mary Ann Gifford kidnapping? Well, it’s that bunch of nuts. She’s in the film shooting off machineguns. Really terrific footage. I think we can get a hell of a movie of the week out of it, maybe even a series.
But they have to go through “badass commie” Laureen Hobbs (Marlene Warfield), who is wary:
The Ecumenical Liberation Army is an ultra-left sect creating political confusion with wildcat violence and pseudo-insurrectionary acts, which the Communist Party does not endorse. The American masses are not yet ready for open revolt. We would not want to produce a television show celebrating historically deviational terrorism.
With the political content entirely in her hands, Laureen opts for the deal. She tells the great Ahmed Kahn (Arthur Burghardt) she will make him a star, “just like Archie Bunker.” That doesn’t sit well with Mary Anne Gifford, played by Kathy Cronkite, daughter of the famous CBS newscaster, Walter Cronkite.
“Fuggin’ fascist!” Gifford screams at Hobbs. “Have you seen the movies we took at the San Marino jail break-out demonstrating the rising up of a seminal prisoner-class infrastructure?” Hobbs tells her to “blow the seminal prisoner-class infrastructure out your ass!” and remarks that she’s not knocking down her distribution charges or “giving this pseudo insurrectionary sectarian a piece of my show!”
The Ecumenicals’ “Mao Tse-Tung Hour” is a hit, but “The Howard Beale Show” begins to tank. Communication Corporation of America (CCA) magnate Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) tells Beale he has “meddled with the primal forces of nature,” but keeps Howard on the air. Frank Hackett wonders what they should do about this mad prophet.
“I think I can get the Mao Tse-Tung people to kill Beale for us as one of their shows,” Diana says. “It could be done right on camera. We ought to get a fantastic lookin audience for the assassination of Howard Beale as our opening show.” The Ecumenicals duly gun down Howard, on camera.
“This was the story of Howard Beale,” narrator Lee Richardson explains. “The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.”
Dunaway bagged an Oscar for best actress, Finch for best actor, and Chayefsky for his screenplay. Marlene Warfield, who passed away last year, deserved an Oscar for best supporting actress, but that went to Beatrice Straight, as the wife of Max Schumacher (William Holden), who was involved with Diana. If there had been an award for best authentic prophecy, Network would have to be the leading contender from that era.
Bill Herron was right that there were many groups in the revolutionary underground during that time. The Symbionese Liberation Army, which kidnapped Patty Hearst, also assassinated Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster. The New World Liberation Front planted a bomb at the home of San Francisco Supervisor Dianne Feinstein. On May 19of that year, Communist Organization, an offshoot of the Weather Underground, robbed banks and bombed the U.S. Capitol.
Years later, in 2020, in the style of the Ecumenicals, looters livestreamed the murder of retired police officer David Dorn. In 2023, “transassassin” Audrey Hale gunned down three children and three adults while they were at school, and last year, Robert Westman, who “identified” as Robin Westman, shot dead two children in church and wounded many others. The Zizians, a violent vegan cult, have been tied to the murder of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont.
In 2024, Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts. Last September, an assassin’s bullet took down conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Network presaged reality television, and 50 years later, as Howard Beale said, “it’s like everything is going crazy.”
The nation now harbors millions of illegals who were brought hereby the Biden administration with no background checks or health records. Violent criminals who should not be in the country commit rapes and murders, as politicians look often deliberately the other way. Leftist punks gun down health executives and murder Jews in Washington, D.C. The Muslim mayor of Dearborn tells a Christian resident he’s “not welcome” in the city. Governors and mayors defraud taxpayers by the billions, and so on.
“You’ve got to get mad!” said Howard Beale in 1976. Fifty years later, the people can prove they are “not going to take this anymore” by their words, actions, and votes. That, we may hope, is the way going forward.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/mad-prophet-of-the-big-screen