Network

by Lee Hall

  They look at the outside broadcast. They are yelling in Atlanta.

  Diana Put them on.

  On the screens in the studio the outside broadcasts.

  Outside Broadcaster They’re yelling down here in Atlanta. ‘We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more.’

  Diana They’re yelling down in Atlanta, Howard.

  Howard That’s right. First, you’ve got to get mad. When you’re mad enough, we’ll figure out what to do with it.

  Diana Get me the OB in Baton Rouge.

  Baton Rouge comes up.

  They’re yelling! They’re yelling!

  Hackett Holy Jesus Fuck.

  Howard I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.

  Production Assistant I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more.

  Other voices join in from around the studio.

  Howard That’s it. I’ve had it with the foreclosures and the oil crisis and the unemployment and the corruption of finance and the inertia of politics and the right to be alive and the right to be angry. I want to hear the little man and woman – I want to hear you now – go to your windows – yell out so they can hear you – yell and don’t stop yelling – so the whole world can hear you – above the chaos and degradation the apathy and white noise

  Diana They’re yelling in Chicago, Howard.

  Howard They’re yelling in Chicago.

  Yell, yell, and then we’ll work out what to do about terrorism and the oil crisis. Stick your head out of the window and shout it with me: ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more. I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this any more. I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.’

  The screens show more people joining in the chant.

  Diana (over the address system) Son of a bitch. We’ve hit the mother lode.

  Act Two

  SCENE ONE

  CORPORATE MATTERS

  Hackett addressing an audience:

  Hackett UBS was running at a cashflow break-even point after taking into account 110 million dollars of negative cashflow from the network. It was clear the fat on the network had to be shaved off.

  Perhaps graphs illustrate his talk.

  Please note the increase in projected initial programme revenues in the amount of 21 million dollars due to the phenomenal success of The Howard Beale Show. I expect a positive cashflow for the entire complex of forty-five million achievable in this fiscal year, a year, in short, ahead of schedule. But I go beyond that. This network may well be the most significant profit centre of the communications complex –

  A close-up of Hackett is projected on the screen behind him.

  – and based upon the projected rate of return on invested capital, and if the merger is eventually accomplished, the communications complex may well become the towering and most profitable centre in the entire CCA empire. I await your questions and answers. Mr Jensen.

  Jensen’s voice:

  Jensen (out of view) Very good, Frank. Exemplary. Keep it up.

  SCENE TWO

  DIANA TALKS TO THE TERRORISTS

  Diana is alone. On the phone.

  Diana This is Diana Christiensen. Director of Programming at UBS and producer of The Howard Beale Show. I’ve seen your footage of Detriot and I’d like to talk to you about an idea I have for a series. I believe television should tell the whole story and I think this could get very good ratings. I understand you are essentially a terrorist organisation but do you have a lawyer I could talk to?

  SCENE THREE

  THE NEWS

  Warm-up Guy.

  Warm-up Guy It’s really great to have you all here this evening. Really great. Did you hear the news this afternoon? Oh, there was some very interesting news this afternoon. Amnesty International have come out against marriage?

  Think about it.

  It was only a matter of time, ladies and gentlemen.

  Let me ask you a question:

  How is everybody feeling tonight?

  Hello?

  Is there anybody out there?

  I asked you: How is everybody feeling tonight?

  Perhaps a flashing sign shows the catchphrase.

  Voices from the Audience We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it any more.

  Warm-up Guy I’m sorry. I didn’t quite catch that.

  Voices from the Audience We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it any more.

  Warm-up Guy That’s more like it. And one last time …

  Voices from the Audience WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE!

  Warm-up Guy We’ve got a really great show for you this evening. Pop Vox and his Street Talkin’. Jim Webbing with ‘It’s the Damn Truth Department’. So sit back, relax and remember the nightly news is all about YOU! So whenever you see this sign –

  ‘Applause’.

  You got to clap like hell.

  The audience applaud. Harry Hunter is the producer of the show.

  Hunter Thirty seconds.

  Production Assistant Thirty seconds.

  Floor Manager Thirty seconds and counting.

  The ‘Applause’ sign goes again.

  Warm-up Guy That’s it. Let them hear ya!

  Applause over:

  Hunter Can we have Howard, please?

  Floor Manager Can we have Howard?

  Production Assistant Continuity on air in twenty-three seconds.

  Floor Manager Twenty-three seconds and counting.

  While final checks are made we hear more voices from the control room.

  Director Check Camera-A.

  Floor Manager Check.

  Nervous tension, people dash round executing the last-minute technical stuff. Harry Hunter leaves for the control room.

  Director Camera-B.

  Floor Manager Check.

  Director Sound.

  Floor Manager Check.

  Director Howard.

  Floor Manager Check.

  We see a plethora of ads for soap powder, tacos, hair products, diarrhoea pills as before.

  Director Studio ready?

  Floor Manager Studio ready.

  In the control room the countdown starts:

  Production Assistant Ten … nine … eight …

  The ads conclude.

  Seven … six … five …

  Director Continuity.

  The ‘Applause’ sign comes on. We hear applause.

  The Continuity Announcer appears on the monitors telling us:

  Continuity Announcer Ladies and Gentlemen. It’s six o’clock and it’s time for the Network News Hour live from New York, with everybody’s favourite Prophet of the Airwaves –

  Director Cue music.

  Production Assistant Three … two … one.

  Continuity Announcer Mr Hhhhoward Beeeeale!

  The new theme music blasts out, the Floor Manager is shouting over the top of this:

  Director Titles, credits, camera and Howard!

  Music soars into an imperial crescendo.

  A fake stained-glass window.

  A dramatic shaft of light picks out Howard looking austere in a black suit and tie.

  Tumultuous applause.

  Howard Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of Union Broadcasting Systems. And he died at eleven o’clock this morning of a heart condition. And woe is us, we’re in a lot of trouble. So a rich little man with white hair died, what’s that got to do with the price of rice, right? Why is that woe to us? Because you and 62 million other Americans are watching me right now, that’s why. Because less than three per cent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen per cent read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get on your television. There is a whole and entire generation right now who never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube. This tube is gospel. This tube is the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes and prime m
inisters. This tube is the most awesome goddam force in the whole godless world! And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people. And that’s why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy is dead. Because this network is now in the hands of CCA: the Communications Corporation of America. We’ve got a new chairman of the board called Frank Hackett sitting in Mr Ruddy’s office on the twentieth floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddam propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth. So listen to me. Television is not the truth. Television is a goddam amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion-tamers and football players. If you want to find out about life go to God, go to your guru, go to yourself, because that’s the only place to find it – cos you won’t find it here. Don’t look to us for Truth – because we just tell you what you want to hear. We’ll tell you Kojak always gets the killer, and no one gets cancer on the Archie Bunker Show. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, he’s always gonna win. We’ll tell you any old shit you want to hear. None of it is true. Any idiot knows that. But you people sit there – all of you – day after day, night after night, all ages, colours, creeds – and this is all you know. You’re beginning to believe this illusion we’re spinning. You’re beginning to think this is the true reality and it’s your own lives that are unreal. That you are the ones who are inadequate. You feel what the tube tells you. You think like the tube tells you. You do what the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your goddam children like you’ve seen on the tube. This is mindless madness, you maniacs. In God’s name, YOU are the real thing. We’re illusions. So turn off your sets. Turn it off and leave it off. Go to your switches, pick up your remote controls and strike us down, put an end to this madness, strike a blow for sanity, right now, in the middle of the show, in the middle of this sentence I’m speaking now. Turn off your TVs and set yourselves free, goddammit.

  Howard stands like a preacher.

  Director And cut to the ad break.

  SCENE FOUR

  RUDDY’S FUNERAL

  On screen, in the rain.

  SCENE FIVE

  A NEW YORK STREET

  It is snowing.

  Max Hi.

  Diana Hi. How are you doing, Max?

  Max I’m fine.

  Diana Really?

  Max No. Not really.

  I try to keep busy. This is my third funeral in two weeks. I have two other friends in hospital who I visit regularly. I’ve been to a couple of christenings. All my friends seem to be dying or having grandchildren.

  Diana You should be a grandfather about now. You have a pregnant daughter out in Seattle, don’t you?

  Max Any day now. My wife’s out there for the occasion. I’ve thought of calling you many times.

  Diana I wish you had. My intimate involvement with a craggy middle-aged man turned out to be just one many-splendoured evening. It was a many-splendoured evening, was it not?

  Max Yes, it was.

  Diana Are we going to get involved, Max?

  Max I need to get involved very much. How about you?

  Diana I’ve reached for the phone so many times, but I was sure you hated me for my part in taking your news show away.

  Max I probably did. I don’t know any more. All I know is I can’t keep you out of my mind.

  Diana I’d say what we have here, Max, is a modern-day Greek drama. Two star-crossed lovers. An unhappily married middle-aged man meets desperately lonely career woman. He abandons the devoted wife and children and they fall dementedly in love. Till one of his children is rushed to hospital with a mysterious disease. He goes back to his family, and she is left to throw herself on the railroad tracks. Give me a two-page outline, I might be able to sell it. What are you doing for supper, Max?

  SCENE SIX

  CANDLELIT SUPPER

  Holding hands, looking in one another’s eyes.

  Diana NBC’s offering three-point-two million for a pack of five James Bond pictures but I think I can steal them for three-point-five including a third run.

  The Vigilante show is sold firm. Ford took a whole thing at, so help me, five fifty-five per episode! In fact, I’m moving the Vigilante show to nine and I’d like to stick The Terror Hour in at eight because we’re having a lot of trouble selling The Terror Hour.

  They start to make out.

  Max The Terror Hour?

  Diana I’ve done a deal with those guys from Detroit. We’re having some heavy legal problems. Two FBI guys turned up in Hackett’s office last week and served us with a subpoena. We’re gonna get round that by doing the show in collaboration with the News Division so we can stand on the First Amendment: freedom of the press and the right to protect sources. Walter thinks we can knock out the misprision of felony charge but he says absolutely nix on going to series.

  They are stripping each other.

  They’ll hit us with inducement and conspiracy to commit a crime. I say ‘Let the government sue us!’ We’ll take them to the Supreme Court. We’ll be front page for months. The Washington Post and the New York Times will be doing several editorials a week about us.

  Max But these are terrorists.

  Diana Like they’re not gonna do it anyway.

  They make love.

  People need to look reality in the eye. We’ll have more press than Watergate. Six weeks of federal litigation and The Terror Hour can start carrying its own time slot. But what’s really bugging me is my daytime programming.

  Diana is mechanical and orgasms almost immediately, gets up and starts dressing.

  NBC’s got a lock on daytime with their lousy game shows but I’d like to bust them. I’m thinking of doing a gay soap opera: The Dykes.

  She finishes buttoning up her blouse.

  What do you think?

  SCENE SEVEN

  BACK AT ‘THE HOWARD BEALE SHOW’

  Howard Beale gives an oration on ‘The Howard Beale Show’.

  Howard All right, listen to me. Listen carefully. This is your goddam life I’m talking about today. In this country when one company takes over another company they simply buy up a controlling share of the stock. But first they have to file notice with the government. That’s how CCA – the Communications Corporation of America – bought up the company that owns this network. And now somebody’s buying up CCA. They filed their notice this morning. Well, just who the hell is the Western World Funding Corporation? It’s a consortium of banks and insurance companies who are not buying CCA for themselves but as agents for someone else. Well, who is this someone else? They won’t tell you. They won’t tell you, they won’t tell the Senate, they won’t tell the SEC, the FCC, the Justice Department, they won’t tell anybody. Because it is private equity – therefore it’s none of your business, they say. I say: The Hell it Ain’t. Well, I’ll tell you who they’re buying the CCA for. They’re buying it for the Saudi-Arabian Investment Corporation. They’re buying it for the Arabs. We know the Arabs control more than sixteen billion dollars in this country. They own a chunk of Fifth Avenue, twenty downtown pieces of Boston, a part of the port of New Orleans, an industrial park in Salt Lake City. They own big hunks of the Atlanta Hilton, the Arizona Land and Cattle Company, part of a bank in California, the Bank of the Common wealth in Detroit. They control Aramco, so that puts them into Exxon, Texaco and Mobil Oil. They’re all over New Jersey, Louisville, St Louis, Missouri. And the majority share of the national debt. And that’s just what we know about. There’s a hell of a lot more we don’t know about because all those Arab petrodollars are washed through Switzerland and Canada and the biggest banks in the country. For example, what we don’t know about is this CCA deal and all the other CCA deals. Right now the Arabs have screwed us out of enough American dollars to come back and with our own money buy General Motors, IBM, ITT, AT&T, DuPont, US Steel and twenty other top American companies.
Hell, they already own half of England. A handful of agas, shahs and emirs who despise this country and everything it stands for – democracy, freedom, the right for me to get up on television and tell you about it – a couple of dozen mediaeval fanatics are going to own where you work, where you live, what you read, what you see, your cars, your bowling alleys, your mortgages, your schools, your churches, your libraries, your kids, your whole life – and there’s not a single law on the books to stop them. Because everything is for sale. It’s a global market. The rich are steadily getting richer and they have bought up you. And there’s only one thing that can stop them. You. Now listen to me, goddammit! I want you to get up right now. I want you to get out of your chairs and go to the phone. Right now. I want you to go to your phone or get in your car and drive into the Western Union office in town. I want everybody to get up right now and send a telegram to the White House. By midnight I want a million telegrams in the White House. I want them wading knee-deep in telegrams at the White House saying, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more.’ I want this CCA deal stopped right now.

  Lights out on Howard, but the speech continues on a bank of monitors in the control room.

  SCENE EIGHT

  HACKETT WATCHES BEALE’S DISASTER

  We are in Hackett’s office and he is watching it on playback with Diana, Chaney and a technical guy.

  Hackett Oh God. Oh God.