Network
The West Wing Weekly
Joshua Malina & Hrishikesh Hirway
4.9 • 12.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we dive deeper into the role of the fourth estate, as we discuss Network, the Oscar-winning film that was meant to be a wild satire at the time it was released, but ended up uncannily predicting the future.
Some additional reading material:
Mad As Hell, Dave Itzkoff's book about Network
Directors' Guild of America post about Sidney Lumet at a 2003 screening of Network
Vanity Fair article on the legacy of Network (which includes thoughts from Aaron Sorkin)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello again. You're listening to The West Wing Weekly Political Film Fest. I am Joshua Molina. |
| 0:12.4 | And I'm Rishi K. Sherway. And today we're talking about the film network. |
| 0:17.1 | The screenplay is by Patty Chayevsky. The direction is by Sidney Lumet, and it was |
| 0:22.4 | released in 1976. This was Rishi the first R-rated movie I ever saw, and salute to my parents |
| 0:29.3 | for letting me see it. How old were you? I guess I was 10. I think I saw it in the theater when it |
| 0:33.4 | came out, so that would make me 10 years old. Did you like it? Yes. This has always been one of my |
| 0:38.7 | favorite movies or long been one of my favorite movies. Well, I guess since I was 10. And I do think |
| 0:45.1 | that what I appreciate about it now is what I appreciated then. Like I think I had a sort of dark turn |
| 0:51.1 | and I think I got it. I think I got it at a young age, and it really appealed to me |
| 0:56.8 | the darkness of the humor and the sort of acid look at life altogether and at the |
| 1:04.2 | entertainment industry in particular. That's awesome. So according to the very first line of the movie, |
| 1:10.6 | we hear a voiceover saying, |
| 1:11.6 | This story is about Howard Beale, who's the network news anchorman on UBS TV. |
| 1:17.6 | I think for the synopsis, I would disagree with that. |
| 1:19.6 | I don't think that's really what the story is about, or at least that's not what it's only about. |
| 1:24.6 | True. |
| 1:25.6 | Meaning it's about other characters as well? I think it is. Should I give you my |
| 1:28.9 | synopsis? Sure. Okay. This is a behind-the-scenes look at UBS, a network that's struggling in the |
| 1:35.4 | ratings, struggling in its profitability, and declining in its importance as a news outlet. After UBS is |
| 1:41.3 | purchased by the CCNA Holdings Company, the pressure for profitability vis-a-vis ratings is acute, and the new guard represented by CCNA executive Hackett, played by Robert Duvall, and the new vice president of programming Diana Christensen, played by Faye Dunaway, go up against the old guard, represented by William Holden as a veteran news producer, Max Schumacher. The anchor, |
| 2:02.9 | Howard Beale, wants a legend of the news, starts publicly losing his mental health and becomes a pawn |
| 2:07.5 | in the game, moved around by the network, its new parent company, and the voices in his head. |
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