What Would Paddy Think?
Paddy Chayefsky, who thrived during TV's "golden age" of live drama, didn't claim to be predicting the future when he wrote "Network" in 1976 – but the movie, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, may be the most prophetic ever made. It was set in "the present" – network anchorman Howard Beale is fired on Sept. 22, 1975, as the film opens – but Chayefsky took prevailing trends and extended them to outrageous extremes that now, unfortunately, don't seem all that extreme or outrageous.Shales writes that "Network" was "meant to be a comedy, but it grows less funny – though more entertaining – each time an anniversary rolls around." Less funny because its themes of ratings-and-profit-driven television news hits a little too close to home in today's world. Less funny because while we haven't yet seen a news anchor inviting the audience to tune in next week to watch him commit suicide, such a thing doesn't stretch believability anymore.Like the fact that a fourth network called UBS is acquired by a giant global conglomerate, CCA, whose executives are determined to turn the network's curiously prestigious news division into a profit center. They order Beale's firing and thereby push him over the edge into madness – madness that turns out to be such a crowd-pleaser that Faye Dunaway, resplendently cold-blooded as the head of the entertainment division, gets Beale a prime-time news hour to rant and rave.
Like any work of art, and "Network" qualifies, much of its meaning is open to different interpretations. I found the extra material included in the two-disc anniversary edition to be highly illuminating, particularly the extended interview with Chayefsky from the Dinah Shore show at the time. At one point the writer explained that he actually loved television and watched it all the time but said he refused to believe anything he ever saw on it, especially on the news.
Listening to Chayefsky I was struck at how similar his complaints were to those we hear today about television news. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that the reason he refused to believe television was the editing process, the fact that a 40-minute interview could be cut down to a few seconds and resemble nothing like what was actually said. He didn't say it in a disparaging way, didn't cast aspersions on the people doing the editing. He simply said the process itself was flawed and inevitably led to an inaccurate reflection of what had really happened.
Upon hearing Chayefsky's comments, my first thought was, "if I had a nickel for every time I've heard that complaint over the past year." My second thought was, "I wonder if he might revise his remarks if he were around today?" What would he have said about the recent flap over Mike Wallace's interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Would the fact that the entire 90-minute interview was shown on C-SPAN and posted at CBSNews.com have impressed him? I think it might have. I think he might find the trend toward transparency to be a step toward avoiding the future he saw in 1976, even as we sometimes seem ever-closer to becoming that future. Perhaps "Network" wasn't a prophecy but part of a heeded warning.
If you've seen "Network," the interviews included in the 30th anniversary add a level of understanding most of us were never exposed to. If you haven't seen the film and are reading this blog, I want you to get up out of your chair right now, walk over to the video store and yell …