Network

by Lee Hall

  Howard (on the monitor) 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.

  Hackett freezes the playback.

  Diana Is this true, Frank?

  Hackett CCA has two billion in loans with the Saudis, and they hold every pledge we’ve got. We need that Saudi money bad. Disaster. This show is a disaster, an unmitigated disaster, the death knell. I’m ruined, I’m dead, I’m finished.

  Chaney Maybe we’re overstating Beale’s clout with the public.

  Hackett An hour ago, Clarence McElheny called me from Washington. It was ten o’clock and our people in the White House report they are already knee deep in telegrams. By tomorrow morning they’ll’ve suffocated.

  Chaney Can they stop the deal?

  Hackett They can hold it up. The SEC can hold this deal up for twenty years if they want to. I’m finished. Any second that phone’s gonna ring and Clarence McElheny’s going to tell me Mr Jensen wants me in his office tomorrow morning so he can personally chop my head off. Four hours ago I was the sun god, the hand-picked boy, the heir apparent. Now I’m a man without a corporation. I want him off the air.

  Diana We can’t just pull the number one show on television out of pique?

  Hackett Two billion dollars isn’t pique. That’s the wrath of fucking God!

  Diana Every other network will grab him the minute he walks out the door. He’ll be back on the air for ABC tomorrow. And we’ll lose twenty points in audience share.

  Hackett I am going to kill Howard Beale. I’m going to impale the son of a bitch with a sharp stick through the heart.

  Chaney Calm down, Frank.

  Hackett I’ll take out a contract on him. I’ll hire professional killers. I’ll do it myself. I’ll strangle him with a sash cord.

  Diana Jensen is a big man. He won’t overreact. I don’t think he’s gonna fire anybody.

  The phone rings.

  Hackett Hackett. Yes. Mr Jensen … Yes, of course, of course … Of course. I’ll be there.

  He puts the phone down.

  Mr Jensen wants to see Howard Beale in person. At ten o’clock tomorrow morning.

  SCENE NINE

  OUTSIDE JENSEN’S OFFICE

  Hackett and Howard Beale wait outside Jensen’s office.

  Hackett You shit. You get down on your fucking knees, Beale, and you plead for fucking mercy.

  Howard You don’t understand, do you? I can’t be bought. I have the power of television with me. And instead of it being used to buy and sell people, finally I am using it to set people free. Jensen doesn’t scare me. None of you scare me because this isn’t a corporate game any more. The final revelation is at hand. And I come to bear witness to the light.

  A Secretary comes out.

  Secretary Mr Jensen will see you now.

  SCENE TEN

  VALHALLA

  Jensen’s room – more like a cathedral than an office. Howard comes in. Footsteps echo. He can’t see Jensen in the gloaming. Anyway, Jensen has his back to us.

  Jensen (unseen, politely) Sit down, Mr Beale.

  Then he switches on the lights, a spotlight on Jensen in his seat. Jensen decorously clears his throat then stands up.

  (With the wrath of God.) You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr Beale, and I won’t have it. Is that clear? You think you have merely stopped a business deal – that is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast immanent, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petrodollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichsmarks, roubles, pounds and shekels. It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life upon this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, sub-atomic and galactic structure of things. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature and you will atone. Am I getting through to you, Mr Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, Mr Beale, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and Ford and General Electric, Union Carbide, Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today, but they are not entities like the nation state – they don’t actually exist. Where is Coca-Cola? It is a notion. What exists is the primordial movement of capital. We are the flux of commerce, Mr Beale. There is no politics, ideology, just the endless, inexorable movement of money. What do you think the Russians or the Chinese talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price–cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr Beale. It has been that way since man crawled out of the slime and our children, Mr Beale, will live to see that perfect world without war or famine, oppression or brutality – one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquillised, all boredom amused.

  Howard is in awe.

  And I have chosen you to preach this evangel.

  Pause.

  Howard Why me?

  Jensen Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week.

  SCENE ELEVEN

  MAX CONFRONTS HIS INFIDELITY

  Max and Louise.

  Louise How long has this been going on?

  Max A month. I thought at first it might be a transient thing and blow over in a week. I still hope to God it’s just a menopausal infatuation. But it is an infatuation, Louise. There’s no sense my saying I won’t see her again, because I will. Do you want me to clear out, go to a hotel?

  Louise Do you love her?

  Max I don’t know how I feel, I’m grateful I still feel anything. I know I’m obsessed with her.

  Louise Then say it! Don’t keep telling me you’re obsessed, you’re infatuated – say you’re in love with her.

  Max I’m in love with her.

  Louise Then get out, go to a hotel, go anywhere you want, go live with her, but don’t come back. Because after twenty-five years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain we’ve inflicted on each other I’ll be damned if I’ll just stand here and let you tell me you love someone else. Because this isn’t some convention weekend with your secretary, is it? Or some broad you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn’t it? Your last roar of passion before you sink into your emeritus years. Is that what’s left for me? Is that my share? She gets the great winter passion and I get the dotage? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling till you slink back like a penitent drunk? I’m your wife, damn it. If you can’t work up a winter passion for me then the least I require is respect and allegiance. I’m hurt. Don’t you understand that? I hurt badly.

  Silence.

  Say something, for God’s sake.

  Max I’ve got nothing to say.

  Louise I won’t give you up easily, Max. Perhaps it is better if you do move out. Does she love you, Max?

  Max I’m not sure she’s capable of any real feelings. She’s the television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny. The only reality she knows is what comes over her teevee set. She has devised a variety of scenarios for us all to play as if it were a Movie of the Week. And my God, look at us, Louise. Here we are going through the obligatory middle of Act Two, scorned-wife-throws-peccant-husband-out scene
. But don’t worry I’ll come back home in the end. All her plot outlines have me leaving her and returning to you, because the audience won’t buy a rejection of the happy American family. She does have one script in which I kill myself, an adapted-for-television version of Anna Karenina in which she’s Count Vronsky and I’m Anna.

  Louise You’re in for some dreadful grief, Max.

  Max I know.

  SCENE TWELVE

  HOWARD PREACHES THE EVANGEL

  Howard Last night I got up here and asked you people to stand up and fight for your heritage and you did. The Arab takeover of CCA has been stopped. A radiant, nostalgic eruption of people power. But we know this isn’t how things can be run. Because, in the bottom of all our terrified souls, we know that democracy is a dying giant, a decaying political concept. I don’t mean the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest country in the world. What we all know is finished is the idea that any country can be dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. You see, we’re no longer a nation of individuals. This is a nation of two-hundred-odd million, transistorised, deodorised, dehumanised beings – mass produced, regulated, programmed to produce and consume other mass-produced products. Well, the time has come to ask: is this such a bad thing? Our bellies are full, our needs are met. Maybe it’s time to wake up and realise this is evolution. That what matters is not any single one of us. We are not ‘the meaning’. Human existence is an utterly futile and purposeless thing. Grasp that, the whole damn universe becomes orderly and comprehensible: You have no power, democracy has no power, politicians have no power, nobody really has power. But it works. And how it works is accepting that we are not the emperors of ourselves, we are bees in the hive, it’s not our individuality which makes us rich, but our communality. We must ask how we can advance the whole rather than ourselves, each one of us just a tiny node in the grand, glorious network.

  SCENE THIRTEEEN

  RATINGS START TO FALL

  Diana The Beale Show Q-score is down to thirty-three. With the biggest drop-off in the eighteen to thirty-four categories. That’s already a forty 45-million-dollar loss in annual revenues. The affiliates are refusing to follow him. They’re pleading with me to take him off the air. They’re refusing to follow his goddam show. The man’s a plague. He’s smallpox. Can’t we lay him off? Put him on vacation? If we don’t do something, Mr Jensen is gonna kick our sorry asses.

  Hackett On the contrary. Mr Jensen is unhappy at the idea of taking Beale off the air. Mr Jensen thinks Howard Beale is bringing a very important message to the American people, so he wants Howard Beale on the air. And he wants him kept on. Where does that put us, Diana?

  Diana That puts us in the shithouse, that’s where that puts us.

  SCENE FOURTEEN

  THINGS GO FROM BAD TO WORSE

  Howard on a TV screen in Diana’s home, the sound turned off as Diana is on the phone.

  Diana You’re his goddam agent, Lew, I’m counting on you to talk some sense into the lunatic! Nobody wants to hear about the dying of democracy and dehumanisation. We dipped under a 40 share last night. He has to stop. It’s killing us. Another couple of weeks and the sponsors will be pulling out all together.

  During the call Max has come in. He looks dejected.

  This is breach of contract, Lew! You better get him off this corporate kick or so help me I’ll pull him off the air … I already told him, Lew. I’ve been telling him every day for a week. I’m sick of telling him. Now you tell him.

  She finally slams the phone down.

  You know you could help me out with Howard if you wanted to. He listens to you. And I really don’t see why you don’t talk to him. I thought he was your best friend, for chrissake.

  Max Well, I’m just tired by all this hysteria about Howard Beale. And I’m tired of finding you on the goddam phone every time I turn around. I’m tired of being an accessory in your life. After six months of living with you, I’m turning into one of your scripts. But this isn’t a script, Diana. There’s some real actual life going on here. I went to visit my wife today.

  Diana Oh! Really?!

  Max Because she’s in a state of depression –

  Diana Every time you see someone in your family you come back in one of these morbid middle-aged moods

  Max She’s so depressed my daughter flew in from Seattle to be with her.

  Diana And you feel real lousy about that.

  Max Yes, I feel lousy about that. I feel lousy about the pain I’ve caused my wife and kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken and all those things you think sentimental but which my generation called simple human decency. And I miss my home because I’m beginning to get scared shitless. It’s all suddenly closer to the end than to the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me. You’ve got a man going through primal doubts, Diana, and you’ve got to cope with it. Because I’m not some guy discussing male menopause on the Barbara Walters show. I’m the man you presumably love. I’m part of your life. I live here. I’m real. You can’t switch to another station.

  Diana Well, what exactly is it you want me to do?

  Max I just want you to love me. I just want you to love me, primal doubts and all. We’re born in terror and we live in terror. Life can be endured only as an act of faith and the only act of faith any of us are capable of is love.

  You understand that, don’t you?

  Diana I don’t know how to do that.

  The phone rings. They stare at one another. Finally she picks it up.

  Yes.

  Max You are a wasteland, Diana.

  SCENE FIFTEEN

  DIANA GOES TO VALHALLA

  Jensen’s office. Diana and Jensen.

  Diana Mr Jensen, sir. As a network we are above taking any ideological positions. News and opinion has to be governed by the same editorial strictures as any other department. But the bottom line is that Beale is dropping like a stone. I have no editorial beef, here, Mr Jensen. I am neutral on all ideological issues – but the ratings have plummeted. This week The Howard Beale Show is likely to be the least watched show on the entire evening schedule.

  Jensen You don’t like Beale’s ideas?

  Diana I am a television executive. With great respect, Mr Jensen, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about ideas. The bottom line is if we don’t take Beale off the air he is going to cost us five hundred thousand a week. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with The Howard Beale Show. Television is a volatile industry in which success and failure are determined week by week. We have to deal with Beale for the future of the channel.

  Jensen May I politely suggest, Ms Christiensen, that volatility in business is often a reflection of poor management. Personally I do not care if Howard Beale is the number one show on television or the fiftieth. I can only imagine your obsession with ratings is due to some very antiquated thinking. The point of a network, Ms Christiensen, is that no one position need take the load – the point of a network is that functionality is spread throughout a system. What kind of television outfit are you running if you can’t carry a single goddam programme? Television isn’t the ‘future’ of anything, television is the past. You seem still under some nineteen-sixties delusion that the medium is the message. It is ‘ideas’ that are important, multivalent, cross-platform: good old-fashioned, immaterial ideas which exist with or without television, Ms Christiensen. Television isn’t the message. Television is the hardware – and like any hardware it is prone to obsolescence. The Corporation diversified a long time ago. I’ve nothing against television, in fact I rather like television and I especially admire Mr Beale.

  Diana But it doesn’t make any good business sense.

  Jensen That’s not my problem, Ms Christiensen.

  SCENE SIXTEEN

  MAX FINALLY GIVES UP ON HOWARD

  New York City Bar. Max and Howard in the same state as Act One.

  Howard It sounds like a hell of car crash.

  Max I am l
iving in a little room on 54th Street. I spend most days writing my memoirs like every other sad sack that got fired in the last decade. Neither of my daughters will speak to me. I miss Louise. I miss you, Howard. What are you doing?

  Howard I’m on television, dummy.

  Max They’re turning off in droves. Surely you don’t believe this corporate ‘shit’ is the truth?

  Howard It’s as good a truth as any. What good did the angry man stuff do us, Max? Did you see revolution in the streets? I have a wage, I have a purpose. You really want me to give it up after everything? All we wanted was to do our jobs.

  Max But Jesus Christ, Howard, surely there has to be some human dignity?

  Howard You think we were dignified – lining our pockets like everyone else? Yeah, it felt good being on the crest of a wave – the great new age of television – don’t be fooled, we were like every other schmuck and now it’s over, gone the way of the pigeon post. Do you really think we were immune and immaculate because we were on TV?

  Max You are despicable, Howard. I’m not talking about TV. You’re a dupe. It doesn’t work. You’ll get spat out like the rest of us. So long, Howard, it’s been a hell of a ride.

  Howard Wait, Max. You don’t understand. Max.

  Max is gone.

  SCENE SEVENTEEN

  THE FINAL SOLUTION

  Hackett’s office. Diana, Hackett, Chaney:

  Hackett So we’re fucked.

  Diana Unequivocably. He wants Howard Beale on the air. And he wants him kept on.