Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies (43 page)

Lumet shows the actor Peter Finch how to execute a nervous breakdown he would perform in the role of Howard Beale, the mentally unstable anchorman of
Network
. A British-born actor who grew up in Australia, Finch was living in Jamaica and considered himself semi-retired before he was hired to play Howard Beale, after the part had been turned down by several top Hollywood stars, including Paul Newman and George C. Scott.
(Credit: Photograph by Michael Ginsburg)

The producer Howard Gottfried on the set of
Network
with Paddy Chayefsky in Toronto. Gottfried had worked as a producer of Off-Broadway theater and television before he started producing Chayefsky’s motion pictures. Gottfried was genial and accommodating; he could fight the battles Chayefsky wasn’t equipped for and put out the fires his partner started.
(Credit: Photograph by Michael Ginsburg)

The star-studded principal cast of
Network
was rounded out by Robert Duvall, who played the belligerent executive Frank Hackett; Faye Dunaway, the glamorous leading lady of
Chinatown
and
Bonnie and Clyde
, as the ratings-obsessed TV executive Diana Christensen; and the former marquee idol William Holden as Max Schumacher, the defeated news-division president who falls under Diana’s spell.
(Credit: MGM Studios/Getty Images)

Chayefsky’s primary concern during the filming of
Network
was to ensure that every line of dialogue was performed exactly as he had written it. And to best observe the actors’ work, he felt it was necessary to situate himself as close as possible to their performances. To accommodate him (and prevent him from appearing in their shots), the
Network
crew created a light where he could stand and called it “the Paddy light.”
(Credit: Photograph by Michael Ginsburg)

The actors seen here as members of the radical Ecumenical Liberation Army include Kathy Cronkite (center, with prop gun pointed at Chayefsky), as Mary Ann Gifford, a kidnapped heiress in the mold of Patty Hearst, and Arthur Burghardt (right), as its leader, the Great Ahmed Kahn. Cronkite, the daughter of the CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, was struggling to define her identity, while Burghardt had recently served twenty-eight months in prison for draft evasion.
(Credit: Photograph by Michael Ginsburg)

Dunaway brought her tantalizing and intimidating exterior, curious intellect, boundless passion, and mercurial mood to the part of Diana Christensen. Her strong ideas and even stronger will would nearly cost her the role, but she believed the character was worth fighting for. “If you wanted to succeed as a woman in a man’s world, you had to beat them at their own game,” she said. “Diana, I knew, would end up right in the middle of that debate.”
(Credit: MGM Studios/Getty Images)

Beatrice Straight, a member of one of New York society’s most prominent families, believed that her role as Louise Schumacher, the loyal wife devastated by the infidelity of her husband, Max, was too small to merit attention for awards. “If you blink, you miss it, but it is a lucky break,” she said. “It’s just a contrast in the film.”
(Credit: Photograph by Michael Ginsburg)

Peter Finch became synonymous with
Network
for his searing delivery of a monologue in which the increasingly unhinged Howard Beale announces to his TV audience, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” He was only able to perform the scene once in its entirety during the filming of the movie. During Take 2, Lumet said, “He stopped halfway through. He said, ‘Sidney, I can’t do any more.’ ” That was as much the director was willing to ask of Finch.
(Credit: MGM Studios/Getty Images)

“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!” Ned Beatty, who played Arthur Jensen, the explosive tycoon who converts Howard Beale to his “corporate cosmology,” was a late addition to the cast, replacing the character actor Roberts Blossom. After auditioning for Chayefsky, Lumet, and Gottfried, Beatty told them he had a competing offer from another film. But Beatty later admitted, “I was lying like a snake.”
(Credit: MGM Studios/Getty Images)

The poster for the original theatrical release of
Network
, designed by Stephen Frankfurt, an advertising executive who had also created campaigns for
Rosemary’s Baby
and Lay’s potato chips, promised controversy and outrage. And while the movie was a commercial and critical success, receiving ten Academy Award nominations including best picture, it also provoked angry reactions from reviewers and the TV news business, with much of that indignation directed squarely at Chayefsky.
(Credit: MGM Media Licensing)