Network (1976)

"There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT & T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably deter- mined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale!"

Why do you post this like you think we've never heard of it?

Beatrice Straight's tour de force performance.

It is Network!

While the film makes valid points, it's preachy in a way that makes you feel like you're being lectured. Holden's takedown of Dunaway is particularly annoying in this regard.

Finch and Holden are both excellent. Dunaway does well with a 2-dimensional character.

Peter Finch, who won a posthumous Oscar for Network, the incomparable Anne Bancroft and Eric Porter were in 1964's The Pumpkin Eater.

I have typed this before, and I will type it again. I am sure that some DL geniuses before I discovered the site in 2019 typed the same thing. It's FOX NEWS!! NETWORK was ahead of its time when they made the movie. Until the corporations took over ownership of the news stations, which is what NETWORK is about, how the national news can make $$$$ for the corporations to make the stockholders happy.

Holden's takedown of Dunaway is basically another of those whiny unemployed man complains that wife/girlfriend spends too much time working and doesn't give him enough attention. I'd have shown him the fucking door.

This film predicted the fucked up present we're living in today.

It is surprising how topical the plot of this 45-year old movie remains.

I thought Robert Duvall was so hot when he made this movie.

It’s because it all came true, R10.

Love William Holden in this

Holden was only 57 in this. Looks like 87. I know he was a drunk, but really.

William Holden’s and Faye Dunaway’s last scene was superb. Paddy Chayefsky was positively brilliant!

R15, you should have written - William Holden and Faye Dunaway’s last scene

Duvall’s “great big, BIG-TITTED hit!” scene is pretty amazing. Also Dunaway’s orgasm over the potential ratings was pretty cool. And the militant anarchist fighting over the terms of a network deal. These were pretty clever touches in this great old film. The writing was all dialed up, like stunt-writing. I can imagine what the rehearsals and read-throughs were like.

R16, thank you for letting me know. I appreciate it.

Aren't any of you bitches gonna mention that I was in it?

"And the militant anarchist fighting over the terms of a network deal."

Great stuff.

Also loved seeing a very young Conchetta Ferrell as Diane's assistant.

I want a Mao Tse Tung Hour Tshirt.

R20 Yep, that’s it.

In Duvall’s big scene, you can see Dunaway’s yard-wide beautiful face beaming at Duvall’s character’s rage and madness over ratings and power. It’s like a combination of media allegory and Jolt soda. The script makes its points with a hydraulic nail gun.

Network is one of my favorite 70s movies, but the plot spirals out of control in the second half/final third. Maybe that's part of the point--a metaphor for out-of-control media--but for me it made the movie bloat and drag. I'll watch the first half repeatedly and enjoy it anew with each viewing.

R23 = thinks Rocky deserved the Best Picture Oscar over Network

I’m horny as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore

Ham-fisted, you say?

Faye's villainess is named "Diana Christensen." Get it? Yes. We get it.

[quote] The film follows a failing television station that will do anything for higher ratings.

It's not a STATION, OP ... it's a NETWORK.

Hence the title of the movie.

Sheesh.

R20 That is one of my favorite scenes from any movie. It is hilarious.

I have never watched this movie, but my friend has been trying to get me to for years. She loves it, and she likes to act out a scene where ( Peter Finch, I think), has a breakdown.

Booze,. California sun, and heavy, heavy smoking r14

R20 - that scene is just pure genius. Utterly inspired.

R24, just for the record, the only thing I liked about Rocky was Talia Shire. And that delightfully revolting scene where Rocky dumps raw eggs in a blender and drinks them. Raw!

Another great scene is when Conchata Ferrell's blasé programming exec is reading the new season's pilot summaries to Diana, each featuring a "crusty but benign" authority figure.

R7 you do understand that news stations were owned by large corporations decades earlier…

Our idol!

The next time I send out a marketing analysis you all better read it or I will sack the fucking lot of you..

I try and incorporate 'sack the fucking lot of you' into everyday speak whenever and wherever appreciate.

Darryl Hickman was hot in this. He is a jerk in real life though.

I seem to recall Pauline Kael describing Faye as a dirty Mary Tyler Moore.

Faye Dunaway's power-walking entrance, braless little titties a-jiggling, is iconic.

Found the "crusty but benign" scene.

^ Nup.

These are those four outlines submitted by Universal for an hour series. You needn't bother to read them; I'll tell them to you. The first one is set at a large Eastern law school, presumably Harvard. The series is irresistibly entitled "The New Lawyers." The running characters are a crusty-but-benign ex-Supreme Court justice, presumably Oliver Wendell Holmes by way of Dr. Zorba; there's a beautiful girl graduate student; and the local district attorney who is brilliant and sometimes cuts corners. The second one is called "The Amazon Squad." The running characters include a crusty-but-benign police lieutenant who's always getting heat from the commissioner; a hard-nosed, hard-drinking detective who thinks women belong in the kitchen; and the brilliant and beautiful young girl cop who's fighting the feminist battle on the force. Up next is another one of those investigative reporter shows. A crusty-but-benign managing editor who's always gett...

What does "Nup" mean?

Paddy Chayefski's writing was brilliant and eerily on point. This is my favorite scene:

This:

[QUOTE] The next time I send out a marketing analysis you all better read it or I will sack the fucking lot of you..

My friend and I use this line just as often, however, it’s “audience research report” not “marketing analysis.”

Lumet's sledgehammer approach has everyone taking their turn screaming.

R46 Lumet is one of the greatest American directors.

Overrated. His main direction seems to be yell.

Showed to college students years ago. They hated it. Very talky like filmed theater and the parody of Angela Davis is offensive and she uses the N word.

I think black people are allowed to use it.

I think students don't want to see or hear it particularly coming out of the mouth of someone who's a sellout.

YOU SAD LITTLE HOMOSEXUALS NEED TO LEARN TO APPRECIATE A BRILLIANT PERFORMANCE!!!

This has been my favorite movie since I saw it at age 14 in the '90s, because of the screenplay.

But I've never LOVED Faye in the role. I loved her dialogue, which she recited well. But they could have done better with someone whose apple-pie looks would have contrasted with the dialogue, or a gorgeous borderline automaton.

Or even Jane Fonda. Was this one of the roles Jane turned down, leading Bette Davis to call Faye the queen of Hollywood's B-list?

R53 Everybody talks about what a great actress Faye Dunaway is, but if you really watch her, she basically does a version of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in virtually every performance.

I never liked Faye Dunaway until this performance.

I think Faye is terrific. I really do.

I think Jane was still persona non grata in Hollywood and it would take Fun with Dick and Jane (1977) to bring her back because it was a box office success.

[QUOTE] Showed to college students years ago. They hated it. Very talky like filmed theater and the parody of Angela Davis is offensive and she uses the N word.

How many years ago? Three? This sounds like the typical GenZ take on any and everything. They have no sense of context and put everything through a woke-o-meter, at the ready to cancel as soon as the see something offensive. Did your class realize that the film is a satire?

The “Angela Davis” parody is one of the best parts of NETWORK and Marlene Warfield should have been nominated.

^ People have attention spans of gnats these days, so they can't tolerate any dialogue more than 30 seconds in a film, and it has to be between car crashes/explosions/gunfights. I'm the opposite, I enjoy character development, dialogue, and an interesting plot that makes you think.

R57 I think you’re utterly clueless about Jane Fonda’s career. ‘Nuf said.

Don’t fuck with my distribution costs!

The film was perfectly cast.

It was at least ten years ago, I turned off the video and apologized. Had it happened more recently, I might have been reprimanded and fired. I remember hearing Angela Davis lecture on Marcuse years ago. The film's caricature, reducing her to a shuck and jive hustler, was deeply offensive.

But aside from the n word and caricature, the film is talky and the dialogue is theatrical. It is not meaningful to younger people who see Sixty Minutes as an artifact and do not see a sharp divide between news and entertainment. "Broadcast News" examines this conflict a little less offensively although it has its problems, too.

Obviously, there's far more latitude in what you'd consume on your own vs what you'd show in a classroom.

There’s no shuck and jive, just a wry comment on the marxists acting just like the capitalists

R63 = unfamiliar with satire

It's good to respond without an ad hominem attack.

R63 Angela is a hustler.

R63, what class were you even teaching? Hopefully nothing related to film studies.

More ad hominem attacks. A mature person would agree to disagree.

I realize that was an ad hominem attack, suggesting a lack of maturity on your part. I apologize as I do not know you and do not want to go there. I think reasonable people can disagree on the enduring appeal of "Network."

R63, what is “Sixty Minutes”?

Were Faye's braless tits more fried eggs or robin's eggs?

Sybil the Soothsayer seems like a good addition here at the DL

Vox Populi was the precursor to DL

I’ve seen this movie easily twenty times, possibly more. It’s just fantastic.

Beatrice Straight’s win for her fierce six-minute scene is also one of my favorite Best Supporting Actress wins. She and William Holden are playing the only “human” characters in the entire movie. And the range of very human emotions, absent from so many other characters in the film, that Straight is able to weave through— from pain to anger to remorse to acceptance and finally humor—in such a short amount of screen time is pretty remarkable. Her big scene sticks out from the layers of artifice most of the other characters are wrapping themselves up in. They are sort of audience surrogates for the crazy satire the rest of the characters are acting in.

My friend also slapped a guy in the ass with a “Network” DVD while the guy was fucking me in 2004, apropos of nothing.

R63 I saw this movie in the theater with my family when I was 14 years old, and I loved it. And I understood the satire, too.

Basically, a Tuesday on the Today Show: third hour ;)

I wish we had gotten a glimpse of Sybil the Soothsayer and Ms. Mata Hari's segments, R77.

I wonder if they shot anything and it was left on the cutting-room floor.

George Clooney planned a live television adaptation of this film, but it was not done.

It's best to leave it alone.

As a huge fan of the film, I saw the Broadway adaptation, and while Bryan Cranston actually elevated Howard Beale and surpassed Finch, the rest was a mess—it's a period piece, and attempts to modernize it are stupid. Tatiana Maslany should have killed it as Diana, and she barely registered. I heard this was the same situation with Michelle Dockery in the London tryout.

The stage production was 1/2 a tv show anyway…

This movie, which was satire, is a brilliant foreshadowing of what would come true in the post 90's landscape of cable news/right wing talk radio/reality shows.

The Beatrice role would have been a lovely swansong for Mrs Al Steele

Whenever I see this, I can't help but remember that 2 years before this film, both Holden and Dunaway starred in "The Towering Inferno".

It was during the filming of TTI that Holden, angry and frustrated by Dunaway's disrespectful behavior (being late, causing delays that meant other actors were waiting around for her), supposedly slammed Dunaway up against the wall and told her to get her act together and stop her shitty behavior.

Faye Dunaway managed to put aside their earlier clashes and enjoy an apparently cordial relationship with William Holden. She claimed that during the shooting of the new film, "I found him a very sane, lovely man."

Besides Faye, who else would you recast?

Ned Beatty is great in this and, like Straight, was also nominated for a single five minute scene.

Until last year (EEAAO), Network was the most recent film to win three acting Oscars. Only three films have achieved this distinction.

No mention of Robert Duvall as Frank Hackett? I thought he was excellent as an obnoxious prick of a TV exec.

I thought Ned Beatty, though good, was far too young for the role - he was still in his thirties. In those days, people in their thirties were not chairmans.

I thought he worked in the role because he has always looked older than he is. But I can see your point, R89.

^ Yeah, Beatty looked 44

Beatty was the male version of Angela Lansbury, always looking at least 20 years older than he really was.

In a making of DVD featurette the director has all the other actors do the I'm mad as hell line. Even Dunaway does it.

That wasn't much of a stretch for me.

R92, it’s called a character actor.

Was it a big shock when Network lost to Rocky?

Fairly so. But you could tell something was coming based on the Best Director and Best Editing awards.

R96 Not really. Network was a masterpiece, but it was too dark and dreary for the Academy to award over a feel-good "triumph of the American spirit" movie.

Was Faye considered a shoo-in for Chinatown then and Ellen winning was a shocker?

R99 No. I think everyone was expecting Burstyn would win after being ridiculously passed over the year before for The Exorcist by Glenda Jackson in that unforgettable movie she made.

Ellen Burstyn talked at my college before the Academy Awards. She said the Oscars were just a beauty contest (as was the fashion at the time) and had no feelings bout winning or losing. Then week before the show, she was on a show gushing "I want to win an Oscar!" I didn't get it.

R101 I had absolutely no feeling about losing to Glenda Jackson. It didn't bother me in the least.

R102 And that dying bitch in a wig mispronounced the name of my movie. What the fuck?

Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under The Influence should have won in 74

R101, Ellen Burstyn has always been weird about the Oscars. Before her win for 'Alice,' she told the press, "I won't win, I never do, I just get nominated" and complained that there were so few good roles for women that if you work, you get nominated. Years later she changed her story and said she was not surprised to win for 'Alice,' because it was her third nomination and it was her time.

She also encouraged voters to not vote on Best Actress the following year to protest the lack of quality roles for women in film, which eventual winner Louise Fletcher found insulting.

I would have voted for Gena Rowlands in '74 as well, R104, and suspect it was a close race. Burstyn is terrific in 'Alice' (the overall roster of nominees was excellent that year), but Rowlands gives one of the all-time great film performances IMO.

Ellen should have won for Requiem of a Dream over Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich

The other contenders were good: Laure Linney for You Can Count on Me, Joan Allen for The Contender, and Juliette Binoche for Chocolat.

Really any of them should have beat Julia Roberts, but Ellen deserved it more. Way more.

Faye was also considered for the Ellen role in Requiem. Thank God Ellen got it.

The same year she won, Burstyn protested the Academy's ruling that Liv Ullmann was not eligible for a nomination for "Scenes from a Marriage" because the film had originally been shown on Swedish TV.

Louise Fletcher said, "Ellen Burstyn's remarks are tacky. It's none of her business, and it's hurtful."

[quote]"I won't win, I never do, I just get nominated"

Cry me a river, sister.

R106, I would have subbed out Juliette Binoche (Chocolat) and Joan Allen (The Contender) that year for Björk (Dancer in the Dark) and Gillian Anderson (The House of Mirth).

R111 Or Laura Linney in the House of Mirth for Best Supporting

R105 that is rude to the 1975 nominees. Plus Ellen should have gone supporting for Requiem and beaten Marica Gay Hard-on

Nup. Marcia Gay is 10 x the actress Burstyn is.

Hardly.

R80, I agree with you about the stage NETWORK, except for the part about Cranston's elevating Howard Beale. Making it the Bryan Cranston Show was one of many dumb things about this adaptation, and sentimentalizing Beale (especially in the hideous ending) really showed how no one involved understood the material.

R53, I don't know whether Fonda's name came up (despite her father's close connection with Lumet, JF herself wouldn't work with him for another decade), but Lumet's first choice for Diana was Vanessa Redgrave. Predictably, Chayefsky vetoed that notion.

Jennifer Connolly in REQUIEM should have been the winner that year in Best Supporting Actress.

Jennifer’s Oscar the next year was clearly a make-up for not even nominating her for REQUIEM in which she is superb.

Bumping this thread because, 2024 has been insane.