Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies (36 page)

“You and Ed Murrow and Fred Friendly”: CP, Box 92, Folder 7.

“If I could stand the taste of liquor I’d be a lush”: CP, Box 92, Folder 9.

“it was nipple clear that she was bra-less”: CP, Box 92, Folder 8.

“Sounds like good family entertainment”: CP, Box 92, Folder 10.

“I’ll try to make a home with you”: CP, Box 93, Folder 7.

“We’re born in terror and we live in terror”: CP, Box 93, Folder 6.

“Wayward husband comes to his senses”: Chayefsky,
The Screenplays Vol. II
, p. 216.

“We can hear the CLICK of the door being opened”: Ibid.

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad”: Ibid., pp. 173–74.

“Since that production,” the article said, “nothing”: Richard Hatch, “Follow-Up on the News: Paddy Chayefsky,”
New York Times
, Jan. 12, 1975.

“She had the kind of skin that doesn’t need powder or makeup”: Considine,
Mad as Hell
, p. 334.

“I got the wedding; Paddy got the honeymoon”: Author interview with Mary Lynn Gottfried, Mar. 31, 2012.

Susan offered Paddy her comments, recorded on a memo pad: CP, Box 95, Folder 2.

Chayefsky received an offer on June 24: CP, Box 213, Folder 10.

“People thought about making good movies to make money”: Author interview with Mike Medavoy, Mar. 12, 2012.

A deal offered by United Artists for the
Network
screenplay in the fall of 1974: CP, Box 182, Folder 1. As executed, the deal paid Chayefsky in six installments of $50,000: on signing; on delivery of the script; on approval of the film’s budget and director; on approval of its principal cast; on completion of principal photography; and the final deferment.

the studio gave a substantial 42.5 percent of any net profits from the picture to Chayefsky’s Simcha Productions: CP, Box 214, Folder 2. Those profits were then split between Chayefsky and Gottfried, who also received a producer’s fee of $110,000 and a further $15,000 for “script supervising services.”

An internal MGM memo cited “an off-the-record speculation”: CP, Box 96, Folder 3.

Network
“is all madness and bullshit philosophy”: Considine,
Mad as Hell
, p. 310.

“I turned to both of them and I said, ‘Are you serious?’”: Author interview with Mike Medavoy, Mar. 12, 2012.

Summarizing a May 15 meeting with the United Artists executive Dan Rissner: CP, Box 215, Folder 8. Chayefsky was not particularly consistent about the spelling of the name of the Great Ahmed Kahn. In the closing credits of
Network
, his surname is given as “Kahn,” while some screenplay drafts and script pages render it as “Khan.”

“He says, ‘Listen, guys, it’s a great script’”: Author interview with Howard Gottfried, Mar. 9, 2012.

“They didn’t want to have anything to do with it”: Considine,
Mad as Hell
, p. 312.

“he made it plain that UA would look like assholes”: Author interview with Howard Gottfried, Mar. 9, 2012.

Variety
reported that MGM and United Artists had made a deal: “Chayefsky’s ‘Network’ Via Metro and UA,”
Variety
, July 2, 1975.

3. A Great Deal of Bullshit

a budget of about $4 million: According to the film’s production designer, Philip Rosenberg, the budget for
Network
may have been as little as $3.5 million.

One list of candidates compiled by Chayefsky: CP, Box 95, Folder 6.

Chayefsky wrote that the directing of
Shampoo
was “blunt and obvious”: CP, Box 94, Folder 3.

William Bernstein … wrote to Chayefsky’s lawyer, Maurice Spanbock: CP, Box 96, Folder 3.

“We said, ‘Here it is. You name the part’”: Author interview with Howard Gottfried, March 20, 2012.

Van Devere wrote directly to Chayefsky: CP, Box 96, Folder 3.

on July 31 he finally wrote to her: Ibid.

“I advise all the children who want to go on the stage”: “Young Veteran on ‘Warpath,’” no publication, no date [probably 1937].

“As a Jew, I’m very judgmental”: John Lombardi, “Lumet: The City Is His Sound Stage,”
New York Times Magazine
, June 6, 1982.

A 1953 feature in
Life
magazine: “Director Participation: Sidney Lumet Kisses, Fights, Dies, Running Two Top TV Shows a Week,”
Life
, June 8, 1953.

“I spent nights puzzling the problem”: “Good Men and True and All Angry,”
Life
, Apr. 22, 1957.

front-page news in the summer of 1963: “Sidney Lumet Takes Overdose,”
New York Post
, Aug. 26, 1963.

Lumet later joked that what he’d indulged in: “Lumet Did Wed Lena Horne’s Girl,”
Daily News
(New York), Dec. 21, 1963.

finally admitting to their nuptials: Ibid.

Lumet was “everybody’s second choice”: Pauline Kael, “The Making of
The Group
,” in
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
(London: Calder and Boyards, 1970), pp. 70, 82.

“I found that I was getting something back”: Randolph Hogan, “At Modern, Lumet’s Love Affair with New York,”
New York Times,
Dec. 31, 1981.

“I never left television; it left me”: Lumet made remarks to this effect in interviews in the
New York Post
, Dec. 6, 1975; the (Los Angeles)
Herald-Examiner
, Nov. 14, 1976; and the
Christian Science Monitor
, Aug. 13, 1981.

Amjen Entertainment, would ultimately receive 12.5 percent of the film’s net profits: CP, Box 214, Folder 2.

“Paddy is a tough writer and creator”: Author interview with Philip Rosenberg, Mar. 23, 2012.

“Most of the directors who worked in New York”: Author interview with Alan Heim, Apr. 5, 2012.

“His cynicism was partly a pose”: Sidney Lumet,
Making Movies
(New York: Random House, 1995), p. 42.

“I think of Faye Dunaway as an enchanted panther in a poem”: “A Panther of an Actress Springs Back to the Top,”
People
, Dec. 30, 1974.

gossipy newspaper columns and their readers: Hy Gardner, “Where Did Faye Fade To?” Glad You Asked That (column),
Jersey Journal
, Sept. 25, 1970.

a poetically apt summation of the actress: Brad Darrach, “A Gauzy Grenade Called Dunaway,”
People
, July 29, 1974.

“You have, I guarantee, never seen such certifiable proof of craziness”: Tom Burke, “The Restoration of Roman Polanski,”
Rolling Stone
, July 18, 1974.

“The fact is a man can be difficult and people applaud him”: Faye Dunaway,
Looking for Gatsby
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), p. 260.

a one-room frame house on the Florida farm: Ibid., p. 11.

“I would never allow myself to be in the position”: Ibid., p. 39.

she passed up a Fulbright Scholarship: Ibid., p. 66.

“a creature who wanted freedom, and a bra just didn’t fit”: Ibid., p. 127.

“These were women who found out who they were”: Ibid., p. 162.

she had to give back $25,000 of her $60,000 salary: “Biography: Faye Dunaway,”
Movie News
, Mar. 1972.

“I couldn’t stand how I was—my manners, my gestures”: Dunaway,
Looking for Gatsby
, p. 118.

“I used men as buffers against the world”: Production notes for
Network
, as printed in the novelization of
Network
by Sam Hedrin (New York: Pocket Books, 1976), p. 184.

“She wasn’t beautiful”: Marcello Mastroianni with Oriana Fallaci, “X Ray of a Man,”
McCall’s
, Sept. 1971.

Dunaway married Peter Wolf:
Time
, Aug. 19, 1974.

“I could no longer represent her if she didn’t do this film”: “A List: Art of the Deal,”
W
, Feb. 2006.

“one of the most important female roles to come along”: Dunaway,
Looking for Gatsby
, pp. 293–94.

“‘Where’s her vulnerability? Don’t ask it’”: Lumet,
Making Movies
, p. 41.

Max Schumacher should be played by Robert Mitchum: Dunaway,
Looking for Gatsby
, p. 296.

a press release announcing that Dunaway would star: Press release from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists, Sept. 24, 1975.

Dunaway’s salary of $200,000:
Parade
, Aug. 14, 1977.

An item published in
Variety
: “A Spoofing ‘Network,’”
Variety,
Sept. 24, 1975.

“I was halfway through when I hit a hidden rock headfirst”: “William Holden Talks About … The Film I’ll Never Forget,”
National Enquirer
, Jan. 21, 1973.

“the hairline is receding, the skin has leathered”: Arthur Bell, Bell Tells (column),
Village Voice
, June 12, 1978.

“a whisky baritone buried by a coffee-table carton of Carleton cigarettes”: Jan Hodenfield, “Holden’s Network of Sighs,”
New York Post
, Nov. 1976.

“A crazy-faced middle aged man”: Rex Reed, “Holden: Movies Have Grown Up. So Have I,”
Sunday News
(New York), Nov. 21, 1976.

a family that claimed George Washington and Warren G. Harding among its relations: Alan Chester, “Game Farm for Holden,” CNS News Service,
Newark Sunday News
, Nov. 5, 1967. Holden’s mother was a descendant of Martha Bell, mother of George Washington, and his maternal grandfather, Samuel Bell, was a cousin of Warren G. Harding.

a fifty-dollar-a-week contract with the studio: William Holden, “The Player,”
New Yorker
, Oct. 21, 1961.

changed it to Holden: Sidney Skolsky, “Tintypes: William Holden,”
New York Post
, Oct. 12, 1974.

Rouben Mamoulian chose him from among some three thousand contenders: Chester, “Game Farm for Holden.”

“I’ve put up with a lot of asinine suggestions”: Holden, “The Player.”

a contract that paid him $3 million: “Liz’s ‘Cleo’ 10% Mebbe Soon; But Holden Coin Tops,”
Variety
, no date [1963?].

investments in nearly every part of the globe: Joe Hyams, “‘The Wasted Life’ of William Holden,”
New York Herald Tribune
, Sept. 28, 1960.

“I’m living in Switzerland”: James Bacon, “American in Alps: Holden Plans Films in Hollywood, Europe,” Associated Press,
Newark Evening News
, no date [1960?].

1,200 acres of ranch land near Nairobi: Chester, “Game Farm for Holden.”

played host to the likes of Bing Crosby and Lyndon B. Johnson: “William Holden: The Man,”
Palm Springs Life
, Nov. 1975.

the couple announced their separation: “William Holden, Wife Separate,” Associated Press, Aug. 26, 1963.

they briefly reconciled: Dwight Whitney, “To Africa, with Love,”
TV Guide
, Mar. 22–28, 1969.

finally divorced in 1971: Toni Holt, Column,
Daily Mirror
, July 9, 1971.

Holden was involved in a fatal car accident: “William Holden Is Involved in Fatal Car Crash in Italy,” Associated Press,
New York Times
, July 23, 1966.

ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing in the crash: “Holden Freed in Auto Death,” Associated Press,
New York Times
, Oct. 27, 1967.

Holden “had sought some solace in the bottle”: Whitney, “To Africa, with Love.”

he had quit drinking altogether: Earl Wilson, “Holden’s a Teetotaler Now,” It Happened Last Night (column),
New York Post
, Mar. 2, 1976.

Holden had recently been seeing the actress Stefanie Powers: Aljean Harmetz, “The Happy Journey of Holden and Powers,”
New York Times
, May 12, 1977.

“the one real embarrassment, the chief invasion of privacy”: William Holden, “Love in a Fishbowl: Movie Clinches Embarrass William Holden,” UPI,
Newark Evening News
, Sept. 17, 1962.

a generous bonus plan: CP, Box 214, Folder 2. According to the bonus schedule, Holden received $50,000 when the grosses for
Network
reached $2.5 million; Dunaway’s Port Bascom production company received $50,000 when the grosses reached $5 million; Holden received another $50,000 when the grosses reached $7.5 million; and so on.

“Bill Holden is Bill Holden”: Author interview with Howard Gottfried, Mar. 20, 2012.

“I’m all excited he returns my call”: Author interview with Barry Krost, Mar. 30, 2012.

Born Frederick George Peter Ingle-Finch in London in 1916: Elaine Dundy,
Finch, Bloody Finch: A Life of Peter Finch
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980), p. 29.

met George Finch at an officers’ dance during World War I: Ibid., p. 28.

put him in the care of Buddhist monks: Ibid., p. 37.

Peter had his head shaved and was dressed in yellow silk robes: 20th Century–Fox studio biography of Peter Finch, 1960, Peter Finch file, New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre Division.

an adventure, “sometimes in thinking and learning”: “Actor Apprenticed to Buddhist Monk,”
Warner Bros. Rambling Reporter
, June 18, 1959.

“it would destroy the British Empire”: David Galligan, “Peter Finch: A Lot of Phantasmagoria,”
The Advocate
, Mar. 23, 1977.

known as “Finch’s Follies”: 20th Century–Fox studio biography of Peter Finch, 1960.

a lunch-hour production of Molière’s
The Imaginary Invalid
: Richard Whitehall, “Peter Finch: Britain’s Best,” Personality of the Month (column),
Films and Filming
, July 1960.

After moving to London in 1948: Dundy,
Finch, Bloody Finch
, p. 130.

he was also slated to play Julius Caesar in
Cleopatra
: “Man in Waiting,”
New York Times
, May 31, 1964.

“Errol used to say we were the last ones in London”: David Barry, Arts & Pleasures (column),
Women’s Wear Daily
, Oct. 11, 1976.

“He had a streak of mad anger”: Dundy,
Finch, Bloody Finch
, p. 266.

An affair that Finch conducted during the 1950s: Richard Brooks, “Olivier Worn Out by Love and Lust of Vivien Leigh,”
Sunday Times
(London), Aug. 7, 2005.