Network begins on a real day, in a real city, with real network newscasters sharing real news.
We’re told it’s the story of Howard Beale, the anchor of the (fictional) United Broadcasting System. UBS would be the fourth network in a system of three — CBS, NBC and ABC.
Clips of the evening telecasts show us news of Patty Hearst having a court hearing, an energy proposal from President Ford and a broken truce in Beirut. But the lead story, from Howard Beale, is that shots were fired at President Ford in San Francisco.
This actually happened on that day. Sarah Jane Moore, a woman who the Secret Service had evaluated and released in early 1975 and who was arrested the day before on an illegal weapons charge, fired one shot at President Ford before being wrestled to the ground by a bystander named Oliver Sipple.
Howard Beale’s report underscores the chaos and confusion that often surrounds breaking news events:
Police arrested a man with a six-shot revolver in his possession, although there is some confusion about this. Our last reports indicate the attempted assassination may have been made by a woman. In any event, this is the second attempt on the President’s life in eighteen days, and we will have a comment to make about that later on in the program.
While we’re seeing Howard Beale talk about this matter of grave national importance, the voice over is more interested in Howard Beale’s personal life and ratings. This will be a constant theme throughout the film, that the trivia of the TV industry and personal lives is constantly overshadowing the massive social changes underway — as if we need the business data and soap opera to distract us from the horrors of the world.
For a film about television news, the characters in “Network” spend very little time talking or caring about it. Sure, there will be rants and opinions about the troubled times they live in, but it’s a movie nearly empty of political content. Presidents, terrorists, heiresses, they are all the same in the broadcasts that make up the film. When a populist political message takes hold at one point, the real powers that be immediately step in to deflate it — and get back to the real business of television, business.
The news for Howard Beale on this day is not that someone took a shot at the President, it’s that he was about to be fired. The news division lead Max Schumacher informed him of his two weeks notice while taking him out for drinks.
They are two old friends and they stay out late. Max shared a story and joke about the George Washington Bridge that he tells again later in the film — and I’m guessing Beale had heard it more than once before this night as well. The punchline of the joke concerns a cabbie who misinterprets a reporter’s request to be dropped off on the bridge as news that he might attempt to die by suicide.
Beale breaks the laughter by announcing that he is going to die by suicide … on the air. Paddy Chayefsky did not invent this idea. On July 14, 1974, a Sarasota, FL news reporter named Christine Chubbuck shot herself on air seconds after saying:
In keeping with the WXLT practice of presenting the most immediate and complete reports of local blood-and-guts news, TV-40 presents what is believed to be a television first. In living color, an exclusive coverage of an attempted suicide.
The film does not cite Chubbuck’s sad case directly, but Schumacher responds to Beale’s gruesome suggestion by telling him that he’d get “a helluva rating” if he did it on air. This leads to an extrapolation of the incident to a new style of news program:
MAX
We could make a series out of it. Suicide of the Week. Hell, why limit ourselves? Execution of the Week-the Madame Defarge Show! Every Sunday night, bring your knitting and watch somebody get guillotined, hung, electrocuted, gassed. For a logo, we’ll have some brute with a black hood over his head. Think of the spin-offs. Rape of the Week….
HOWARD
(getting caught up) Terrorist of the Week?
MAX
I love it! Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, murder in the barbershop, human sacrifices in witches' covens, automobile smashups. The Death Hour!
The darkness of this passage has multiple layers. We know that “Network” takes place in the real world, so we know that they know about the Chubbuck suicide. They are making light of a real-life incident. Then they are actually describing what television news had become, just repackaged. But the third, ironic level is that the rest of the movie will basically be about enacting these ideas, making real the ideas these old newsmen are kicking around in jest.
And then the opening title for the film comes up: Network by Paddy Chayefsky.
“Network” was released in December 1976, but it truly inhabited the United States of 1973-75. It’s challenging for a movie to directly reflect its times. Scripts are written typically a year or two before filming begins. Production time and editing often tack at least another year onto that. And in the case of “Network,” the film was finished roughly six months before its scheduled release date.
Paddy Chayevsky’s script for “Network” was completed sometime in mid 1975 — but a whole lot happened in the U.S. between then and December 1976. Energy prices stabilized after the OPEC oil embargo ended. The country started to recover from a deep recession. An underdog Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter captured the national imagination with a promise to never lie to the American people. And then there was the Bicentennial Celebration and the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, two events that rallied the country around the flag.
Even television started to look a little sunnier. The top two rated TV shows that fall were the 1950s nostalgia comedies “Happy Days” and its spinoff “Laverne and Shirley.” And a few weeks before “Network” hit theaters, the blue collar underdog sports film “Rocky” immediately raced to the top of the box office.
So, in other words, by the time “Network” was released, its time had pretty much passed. It still turned out to be a significant box office hit and won major Academy Awards — three acting Oscars for Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight, plus Best Original Screenplay for Paddy Chayevsky, his third. But it probably came out at least a year too late to have maximum immediate cultural impact.
Instead, “Network” has grown in stature over time for the way it predicted all kinds of major cultural trends — especially the rise of reality TV and the merging of news and entertainment.
But for someone watching “Network” today, nearly 50 years after its original release, fully understanding and appreciating the film, requires a clear glimpse at the times it reflected. “Network” was a darkly comic film that specifically called out to its era like few films ever have. The 1970s gave us many contemporary films that captured the decade astoundingly well — from “The Conversation” and “A Woman Under the Influence” to “Nashville,” “Taxi Driver” and “Annie Hall.” A good case can be made that “Network” topped them all.
So, to prepare you for the scene by scene discussion of the film ahead, here the key cultural benchmarks of the early to mid 70s you need to understand. And I’ll start with one that is fundamental to understanding the film and the 1970s in general — the economic turbulence of the era.
Heading into the 1972 elections, the country began to get its first real taste of high inflation in many years. The combination of the U.S. leaving the gold standard, spending heavily on the Vietnam War and experiencing a slowdown in domestic energy consumption (while Americans continued to burn gasoline freely in big gas guzzling cars) pushed the inflation rates to around 5 percent. President Nixon was so panicked over the political effect of inflation that he imposed national wage and price controls in the summer of 1971. They lasted until August 1973. To head off an oil shortage during the price controls, President Nixon ended import restrictions on foreign oil. Soon, oil from the Middle East began taking up an increasing share of the national market.
This gave the newly-formed OPEC cartel considerable leverage on American foreign policy and almost immediately, they tried to wield it. Saudi Arabia and Libya said they would not increase production to fill American oil needs unless the U.S. pressured Israel to cede lands it captured in the 1967 War. Rebuffed in that effort, the oil producing nations soon began to limit their exports to control the price of oil. Gas stations started to ration fuel purchases and the first gas lines formed.
And then, in October 1973, forces from Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur. The U.S. began resupplying Israel with weapons. OPEC responded by doubling the price of oil and limited supplies. Then President Nixon announced a new military aid package for Israel and OPEC responded with a complete embargo on oil sales to the United States and the Netherlands. Then stagflation set hold — high inflation combined with a deep recession. Unemployment rates spiked from 4.6 percent to 9 percent. It was the worst American economic downturn since the Great Depression.
The oil embargo finally ended in March 1974, but the inflationary effects remained significant into 1976. One interesting side note to the long-term effects of this oil-induced downturn: in 1974 the U.S. and Saudi Arabia cut a deal. In exchange for security guarantees, the Saudis agreed to sell all of its oil in U.S. dollars. By 1975, all of the other oil producing states followed suit. The petrodollar had been created — an instrument that still defines the global flow of currency, and is the backdrop for one of the most famous speeches in “Network.”
Here are the factors beyond the economy that influence the era of “Network.”
Vietnam and Watergate. While President Nixon was dealing with this economic chaos, he was also managing his rapidly disintegrating Presidency as the Watergate scandal spread like a cancer. While the Watergate break in occurred in the summer of 1972, few paid much attention to it that year. The Washington Post broke nearly all of the major stories on Watergate in 1972, single handedly keeping the story alive.
At the same time, the Vietnam War finally began to wind down in early 1973 with an agreement in Paris that would lead to the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Nixon administration believed it had negotiated an agreement that would hand over the war to South Vietnamese forces, but the U.S. was no longer able to prop up the South without a direct military presence.
In 1974, both Watergate and Vietnam rapidly unraveled. Nixon resigned the Presidency in August 1974 and roughly nine months later, Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces.
Crime and Urban Decay. Violent crime rates surged throughout the 1960s and leveled off a bit in the early 1970s. But they began to spike again as the recession took root, especially in New York City.
This was exacerbated by a deteriorating fiscal condition in New York City. The new President Gerald Ford refused to assist the City with a bailout after city bonds failed to receive any bids at an auction. This led to the famous New York Daily News headline. Ford to City: Drop Dead.
The Women’s Movement. Between 1964-1974, the number of women in the U.S. workforce increased by 43 percent. By 1977, roughly 60 percent of all women were employed outside of the home. This was also accompanied by a doubling of the U.S. divorce rate from the early 1960s to the late 1970s.
The Patty Hearst case. One of the most bizarre incidents of the early 1970s involved a Cal-Berkeley student named Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Patty Hearst was kidnapped in her home by members of a political sect called the Symbionese Liberation Army, or the SLA. Hearst was tortured by her captors, and was eventually broken — leading her to adopt SLA ideology.
She accompanied her captors on two bank robberies and made a public statement in support of the SLA during one of the heists. Hearst was eventually captured with other SLA members, put on trial and convicted for the crimes she committed. In 1979, President Carter commuted the remainder of her sentence.
While Patty Hearst is just mentioned in passing in the film, there is an SLA-like terror group that takes up major space in the film and it’s important to understand the reference before you see it.
There is so much more about the 1970s that I could toss into this introduction, but I think this is enough to get any viewer started on the film with the proper grounding. It might help to know a little about TV news and broadcasting in general from this era — but in truth, “Network” veers from television reality pretty wildly at times, so it can actually weaken the viewing experience to focus on its accuracy regarding TV news of that era.
It also might help to know that while “Network” takes dead aim at broadcast journalism, in some ways the 1970s was a golden age for journalism — especially considering the ways that reporters uncovered key details of the Watergate scandal. In the Academy Awards that year, “Network” faced off not only against “Rocky” and “Taxi Driver,” but also against “All the President’s Men,” a chronicle of Woodward and Bernstein and their remarkable Washington Post reporting.
The fact that the country could eagerly embrace all four of these films — the gritty, urban existentialism of “Taxi Driver,” the scandal-uncovering triumphs of “All the President’s Men,” the American Dream pugilism of “Rocky” and the black comic social commentary of “Network” demonstrates the complexity of the era. America lived through trauma after trauma in the early 1970s, yet somehow came out of it as optimistic as ever.
It was a country that could shout “I’m mad as hell” and “Yo Adrian” on the same weekend, without contradiction.
The other writing project staring me in the face is the one about “Network.” Actually, there’s an even more daunting third project out there that I don’t even want to write about, but let’s not go there right now.
My preparation for the “Network” project so far has been to re-immerse myself in the culture of 1973-76. I’ve rewatched not just “Network,” but also “All the President’s Men,” “Nashville” and “Taxi Driver.” I’ve also started reading some books about the oil crisis and the popular reaction to it.
There’s something surprising that’s coming up for me, though. My memories of the 1970s as a child were of Nixon’s demise due to Watergate, Vietnam and the oil-crisis induced recession, and a short-term restoration of the Democratic Party after the shellacking the party took in the 1972 elections. But the literature of the era — and the films, for that matter — tell a different story.
Everything in these films hints at the America to come.
From “All the President’s Men,” the massive potential for a President to raise nearly unlimited money and to find unique uses for abundant campaign resources.
“Taxi Driver” raises two issues that will come to dominate American politics: the dark power of vigilante justice as a racist response to urban violence, and the forces set loose on the culture by the sexual revolution, especially the confluence of children and sex trafficking.
“Nashville” features a bizarre disembodied political candidate who communicates via a car loudspeaker spouting populist phrases: not unlike leaders taking to X or Truth Social to declare everything from personal grievances to war updates.
And then there’s “Network,” where so many cultural forces align at once that I need to take a full series to detail them.
My point isn’t that what we are living through right now is a direct echo of the 1970s, it’s something stranger. Nearly everything we are experiencing now feels like a direct extrapolation of forces let loose in that era, forces that few people in America understood as they were experiencing them, but a handful of remarkably adept filmmakers were able to capture in films that have become classics.
It’s all a powerful argument for storytellers to askew period pieces and fantasy genres. Focus on the world you see as it exists — you’ll be surprised just how much you capture.
Now that my Montaigne Project URL is back online, perhaps I should start by discussing what’s up with “Essai by Essay.” I’ve recently pulled the first edition of the book from all retail channels in anticipation of my new version. Originally I thought this edition would include just some minor pagination updates and minor editing.
But the more I get into the project, the more I actively dislike the first edition of the book. I’m doing fairly extensive editing across the essays and expect to be engaged in this work for a couple more weeks, at least.
There’s something else that’s bothering me as well, however. Somewhere along the line, my writing about Montaigne lost me and no longer fits the premise of my introduction. I think it’s right for me to shift my analysis of Montaigne as I learn more, but it’s a mistake to turn the book into purely a chapter-by-chapter analysis of his writing.
This may not be something I can address in the second edition, I might just be better off creating a book that works on its existing terms. At some point, however, I need to return to the original purpose of the project, using Montaigne’s model to bring my own thoughts and experiences to light.
That does not mean another 107 day Montaigne marathon is in order. But a better balance needs to be struck, perhaps in a future third edition.
My next Movies Scene By Scene project will be the Sidney Lumet directed film “Network” by Paddy Chayevsky. It’s not only a brilliant, prophetic film, but also an essential piece of 1970s cultural history, harkening to a time much like ours. boxd.it/1VqG
I am bringing back my old URL for My Montaigne Project so that I can continue work on a couple of projects.
The first is the second edition of my book “Essai by Essay.” I’m already deep into the editing process on the new edition, but I think it would be helpful to slow down a little and workshop some of the chapter revisions, so I’m going to do that on the blog.
The second is my new “Network” project, which will include not just my scene-by-scene approach to the film, but also a cultural history of the early 70s, which I think is essential to attaining a full understanding of the film.
These projects will happen in conjunction, and will likely span over several weeks. We’ll see what comes after all.
By the way, I’ve also converted my danielmconley.com site into an author’s site that I’ll use primarily to promote my books. That URL does have a blog attached to it, but I will likely use it only to announce new publications and, from time to time, link to content here.