From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell in I see New York. If you've been reading the work of David's Coff in New York Times, I guess that's the name of the paper, Dave.

Still called that. Yeah, still called that. You know that he tends to actually focus his point of view on people who are obsessed. It's a really interesting kind of purview that's kind of run through his work. And it definitely comes to a crest in his new book, Mad as Hell,

The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies.

Dave, first of all, thanks so much for doing this.

I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you.

But I would ask you, though, because you really do kind of focus on obsession in people,

and I wonder where that comes from for you.

Seems pretty obvious, I guess.

I mean, I like people that are really fixated on their work,

and I probably apply similar approaches in my own.

I just like things that I can really dig into.

I'm pretty protective of the things that I do,

and I'm sure I, if not consciously, subconsciously recognize that in other people. That's what I'm probably drawn to.

And in picking this movie network, written by Patty Jayevsky, who also produced, he basically is kind of the center of the storm.

His obsession basically drew everybody else in, didn't it?

Absolutely. I mean, that was what was so fascinating to learn in the course of just sort of unpack storm. His obsession basically drew everybody else in, didn't it? Absolutely. I mean,

that was what was so fascinating to learn in the course of just sort of unpacking this story.

He was a screenwriter. I knew a little bit about just because of his resume, the films that he'd

won Oscars for were so different. And his career, you know, it was so broad, touched so many

different mediums.

But it wasn't really until I was able to kind of, you know, dig into his personal papers and

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