Network: A Satire That Stopped Being One
Network (1976)
Chayefsky wrote it as an absurd exaggeration of television news. Every absurdity in it has since been implemented.
Runtime
121 minutes
Director
Sidney Lumet
Budget
$3.8 million
Box office
$23.7 million worldwide
Cinematography
Owen Roizman
"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.
"Howard Beale · Network · 1976
Ratings As The Only Value
An anchorman is fired for low ratings, announces on air that he will kill himself on the following Tuesday's broadcast, and becomes the most valuable asset the network has. From there the film simply follows the incentives. A news division is moved under entertainment, a programming executive builds a lineup around a terrorist cell and a psychic, and the prophet in the raincoat is kept on air while he is visibly unwell because the numbers are good. Chayefsky's dialogue is written to be performed at full volume and Lumet shoots it with progressively more artificial lighting as the film goes on, so the picture itself turns into television. Nothing in it was plausible in 1976 and nearly all of it is now standard practice.
Watching Network
Hope
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Movement
Peter Finch died two months before the ceremony and became the first actor to win Best Actor posthumously. His widow accepted it.
Ned Beatty is on screen for about five minutes and was nominated for the boardroom monologue, which Chayefsky wrote as a single unbroken speech and Lumet shot with the lights coming up on cue.