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.