ONE OF THE BEST BEST POLITICAL FILMS EVER
"NETWORK" Finch, Dunnaway, Holden, NED Beatty

"NETWORK" THE 1976 film is up there with Citizen Kane, Lawrence of
Arabia,.The Package, Under Fire, Missing,  State of Siege, JFK,
as the best ever politically active film ever. NETWORK was WRITTEN
during  the 1974 OIL CRISIS when all over USA we were lined up in gas stations,
or had one day a week we could buy gas, it had the incredible monologue
from Ned Beatty where he tells us exactly what America will do to get oil.
His tirade is blistering and makes the film a real scorcher. As you do not hear
that kind of truth telling in Hollywood often. The tirade qualifies the film as
being progressive, political and daring.  (It certainly MAKES the
List of BEST POLITICAL FILMS.) It really is a CULTURE DEPICTING film.
It 'toasts' western Culture to a turn!

"I think I'd like to be an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our
time," fallen news anchor Howard Beale tells co-workers in the opening
minutes of Paddy Chayefsky's masterpiece "Network."

Writer Chayefsky, equally mad as hell, used his black comedy about a
raggedy fourth TV network to denounce the hypocrisies of 1976 and warn of
media evils to come.

Like his creation Sybil the Soothsayer, who is in this film, "Paddy was
capable of seeing the future," director Sidney Lumet says. Chayefsky warned
of entertainment masquerading as news, corporate meddling, violent reality
shows, the tyranny of ratings, foreign ownership of U.S. media --
essentially the strip-mining of what already was a vast wasteland.

"The vision that the movie displayed so eloquently is alive today,"
producer Howard Gottfried maintains. Adds Lumet, "TV today has become its
own satire."

Warner Bros. has released "Network" in a 17$ (amazon ) double-disc set
that's tagged "Still mad as hell after 30 years." Disc 1 includes a sober
but quite good commentary from Lumet, who focuses on who won what Oscar,
why he rehearses actors and the thinking behind the "Network" lighting
scheme, in which "even the camera is corrupted" as the movie descends into
anarchy.

The extra features leadoff is a making-of by DVD documentary specialist
Laurent Bouzereau. It includes chapters on the late Chayefsky, the "mad as
hell" phenomenon and the film's powerhouse actors. The docus cover a lot of
material and get the job done, but don't expect much of that loopy
"Network" spirit.

Also on Disc 2, Chayefsky ponders "Network" on a segment of the talk show
"Dinah!" which you can watch now. Never saw Dinah so flustered!

http://www.gointothestory.com/2008/08/video-interview-paddy-chayefsky.html

And there's an hour-long Lumet retrospective from 2005, when he received
an honorary Oscar, partly to atone for oversights that included losing the
best director award (for "Network") to John Avildsen for "Rocky."

"THE DEATH HOUR." A GREAT SUNDAY NIGHT SHOW FOR THE WHOLE
FAMILY.

Aside from "Network's" on-air killing of a TV personality -- "because he
had lousy ratings" -- all of its outrageous events happened in real life,
Lumet points out.

"Network" anchorman Beale (Peter Finch) starts his wild ride by threatening
to kill himself on camera. Crazy talk, but it mirrored headlines of the
time. In 1974, as Chayefsky was writing "Network," a Florida TV personality
shot herself to death on a morning show, saying it was "in keeping with
(the) policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts." In the world of
"Network," an on-air suicide was good for "a 50 share, easily."

The home video hit "Faces of Death" followed "Network" by two years,
launching an above-ground snuff franchise. "Cops," "The Morton Downey Jr.
Show" and Howard Stern were in the wings.

Today, death and violence -- real and imagined -- do brisk business in all
media. News divisions draw and redraw the line between electronic
journalism and morbid pandering. Freeway chases don't always end with
surrenders and handcuffs, a percentage play that keeps viewers tuning in at
10 and 11. Local TV news "is as corrupt as anything I've ever seen," Lumet
charges.

As for death in primetime, the director says: "On one of the reality shows
it'll happen. There will be a real death. And it'll be shown to you, I
promise."

Ratings are money, Chayefsky said in 1976. "If you follow the desire to get
ratings . . . we will pursue this right into 'Coliseum '77' -- in which we
will throw Christians to the lions every Saturday night."

The message of "Network," he said, was, "When do we say 'Hold it!' A human
life is a hell of a lot more important than your lousy dollar."

Star Faye Dunaway reflects: "The reason ('Network') was so funny was
because it was so outrageous. You're thinking, 'C'mon, nobody's going to
kill somebody on television, are they?' And now we sort of think, yeah, we
think so."

THE NEWS DIVISION WILL BE REDUCED FROM AN INDEPENDENT

DIVISION TO A DEPARTMENT ACCOUNTABLE TO NETWORK.

Walter Cronkite, who worked with Lumet on the historical re-enactment
series "You Are There," recalls CBS news staffers' reactions to "Network":
"I understand it was supposed to be a combination of drama and comedy, but
to us it was all comedy -- it was so overdrawn. . . . We howled with
laughter."

Chayefsky talked extensively with NBC's John Chancellor but otherwise
relied on his own adventures in live television. Cronkite says accusations
that Chayefsky and Lumet were turning on the medium that made them were
just "sour grapes from some who were envious." Adds Lumet: "We didn't leave
TV. It left us."

Of ratings demands on network news, Cronkite says, "It is a fact that the
pressure is there" to entertain. But taken too far, "The newspeople would
revolt, pressure and maybe quit." As they did in "Network." Sort of.

Cronkite, whose daughter Kathy played the film's Patty Hearst lookalike,
says the film's legacy is "it waved a banner of warning to the TV industry
that it better not let things do as far as it did on that (UBS) network."

ALL I WANT OUT OF LIFE IS A 30 SHARE AND A 20 RATING.

Faye Dunaway's portrayal of lone-wolf programming VP Diana Christensen won
her the best actress Oscar -- and it is her top-billed performance that
gets the most attention in the DVD extras.

Diana, "who learned life from Bugs Bunny," stalks the sagging UBS network's
news division, eventually hijacking its madman anchor for her evening news
carnival. The ratings potential of her show "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour,"
featuring the criminal exploits of black radicals, brings the slinky
executive to orgasm. She beds the everyman news chief (William Holden),
stealing him from his wife and then stealing his division.

The part "wasn't easy to say yes to," Dunaway says. "I was advised not to
do it. Because, you know, she didn't have a soul. She was a TV baby. There
was a vacantness behind those eyes. People were afraid I'd be thought of
that way."

Theater veterans Dunaway and Finch helped Holden adjust to Lumet's
drawn-out rehearsals, a new one on the longtime film star. Dunaway says
rehearsals "always struck me as insane not to do" on films.

SHE GETS THE WINTER PASSION; I GET THE DOTAGE.

Three "Network" players won Academy Awards: Dunaway, Finch (posthumously)
and Beatrice Straight. There were five acting nominations in all, making
the cast the most honored in Oscar history.

Straight, a stage actress, took home the supporting actress gold for one
five-minute scene, in which Holden's newsman tells his wife of 25 years
he's in love with the beautiful young programming exec. Her reply, in a
heartbreaking monologue, contains some of Chayefsky's finest writing. Lumet
says he deliberately exhausted the actress by making her do repeated takes,
then captured this amazing scene.

Ned Beatty, who played a corporate chieftain, likewise was nominated for a
single scene in which he uses the voice of doom to warn Beale that he's
"meddled with the primal forces of nature." Beatty, who mimicked his
hometown holy roller for the tirade, describes himself as just "a day
player" on the film.

"Network" couldn't beat "Rocky" in the best picture race, a loss that
Chayefsky took hard. "I think it's a hell of a film," he told Dinah Shore.
Cinderella flicks do well in Hollywood where they dig that kind of myth
See 'slumdog millionaire.' especially if it has facets of 'class breaks out.'

VIDEO DIFFICULTIES ARE TEMPORARY -- PLEASE DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET.

The new! 17$ improved! "Network" double DVD smokes Warner's bare-bones
versions of 1998 and 2000. Images are suitably colorful and handsome for a
'70s film, though the presentation suffers from some speckling and
unwelcome grain. The stereo Dolby Digital seems challenged by the audio's
occasional spikes, lessening their intended impact. The aspect ratio is
2.35:1; the video employs the enhancement for widescreen monitors

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