Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies (10 page)

A few subsequent discussions about the project would soon discredit such a generous assessment of its creator. That spring, Mike Medavoy met with Chayefsky and Gottfried over lunch to talk about possible directors for
Network
and was surprised that they had enthusiastic designs on Sidney Lumet, the onetime wunderkind of television who was now the revered director of feature films such as
Serpico
and
Murder on the Orient Express
.

As Medavoy recalled the conversation, “I turned to both of them and I said, ‘Are you serious? Sidney Lumet? To do a funny movie? When was the last funny movie you saw from Sidney Lumet?’” Reminding Chayefsky and Gottfried of the agonizing scene from Lumet’s movie
The Pawnbroker
in which Rod Steiger penetrates his own hand with a nail, Medavoy told them, “That ain’t funny.” At which point, Medavoy said, Chayefsky “took his matzo ball soup and it went, a little bit, flying. And I looked at Paddy and I said, ‘You know what? If you feel that strongly, he’s probably a really good director for this.’ And that ended the conversation and it was time to leave. It’s one of those moments that is indelible in my mind, because I can’t remember ever having anybody turn a plate of soup on me.”

Chayefsky’s resentment of the studio personnel, whose interference with
Network
, he felt, could only diminish the final product, grew, with one frustrating interaction after another. Summarizing a May 15 meeting with the United Artists executive Dan Rissner, Chayefsky recounted in a letter to his lawyer, Maurice Spanbock, some of the studio’s suggestions for revising the script, including:

1. That Diana seduce Howard Beale for some not too clear reasons.

2. That Howard Beale and Max turn up at the affiliate convention and kick up some kind of comic ruckus.

3. That the characters of Althea and the Great Aga Khan [the domestic terrorists who would become Laureen Hobbs and the Great Ahmed Kahn] be merged into one character.

“All these suggestions are so amateurish and counter-productive they are hardly worth commenting on,” Chayefsky wrote, “but I maintained my temper.”

A few days later, Chayefsky and Gottfried were summoned to the studio’s offices in New York to see William Bernstein, the head of its business affairs department. The meeting began in a friendly manner, with Bernstein complimenting Chayefsky on the
Network
screenplay. There was, of course, a qualification coming.

“He says, ‘Listen, guys, it’s a great script, but there’s something about it that bothers me,’” Gottfried recalled Bernstein saying. “This is what he opens our meeting about. So I said, ‘What about it bothers you?’ So he looks at us, particularly Paddy, and he says, ‘There’s something about Howard Beale that I don’t think works.’ So, Paddy looks him in the eye. He says, ‘Let me get this straight: There’s something about Howard Beale that bothers you?’ He said, ‘That’s it.’” Without speaking a single word more, Chayefsky stood up and exited the meeting, leaving Gottfried behind with Bernstein.

“I’m still there and I look at him,” Gottfried said. “I knew the guy well. I said, ‘You dumb son of a bitch.’ Paddy really was an easy guy, but it was coming from the wrong place.”

When Gottfried completed his own solitary journey from the aborted meeting back to Chayefsky’s office, he found the author on the phone with Spanbock, asking that the United Artists deal for
Network
be dissolved.

It was a bold but not totally self-destructive move on Chayefsky’s part. By this time, news of his volatile and exciting screenplay had reached other studios. Among them was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which had once dominated the industry with a leonine might with epic films such as
Gone with the Wind
,
The Wizard of Oz
, and
Ben-Hur
, but which had not had much to roar about since 1960s-era hits such as
The Dirty Dozen
and
2001: A Space Odyssey
. Under its head of production, Daniel Melnick, MGM in the 1970s released about five to ten films a year, finding modest success with
Westworld
, a science-fiction thriller, and
That’s Entertainment
, a feature-length compilation of vintage music and dance numbers celebrating the studio’s fiftieth anniversary. But awards and credibility had recently proved elusive.

Melnick wanted to make
Network
, even if his corporate superiors did not. “They didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” he later recalled. “They were very scared, which was understandable. At that time MGM was working on a very reduced budget. To get their money back on a movie they had to sell the ancillary rights to television. And their network division said, ‘Forget this, it will never be shown on national TV.’” Warner Bros. was interested in Chayefsky’s screenplay as well, giving MGM the necessary encouragement to overcome its apprehension and pick up the project, if for no other reason than to keep it out of the hands of a competitor.

For Chayefsky and Gottfried there was an additional incentive to choose MGM. At that time, the studio’s own distribution muscle was so atrophied that for significant releases it often sought support from United Artists. If United Artists joined in as a production partner now, it would be doing so in supplication, on Chayefsky and Gottfried’s terms. And Gottfried was certain that Arthur B. Krim, the studio’s chairman, would make the case to his colleagues that they did not want to lose out on the same movie twice. “I don’t know Arthur’s exact words,” Gottfried said later, “but he made it plain that UA would look like assholes.”

On July 2, 1975,
Variety
reported that MGM and United Artists had made a deal to release
Network
as a coproduction. The announcement declared that the “television industry is the target” of the film, adding that “Few specifics are offered about
Network
but one is that it will be ‘a dramatic yet comedic view of the television medium.’” It would take more than a year for the movie to be made and released in theaters, at which time audiences could decide for themselves if that synopsis offered an adequate summary of what Chayefsky had wrought.

3

A GREAT DEAL OF BULLSHIT

“This story is about Howard Beale.” The matter-of-fact observation was not only the first spoken phrase in Chayefsky’s screenplay for
Network
; it became a mission statement for the author and his producer, Howard Gottfried, as they began the brick-and-mortar work of making the movie. They had the support of two studios and a budget of about $4 million, and now they needed to find a director, hire actors, scout locations, and fill every post from cinematographer to editor to costume designer to key grip.

But what they wanted most of all was an anchor. The actor playing Howard Beale would have to not only master large volumes of material and perform several intense monologues, but also substantially dictate the tone of the motion picture and establish a center of gravity around which its entire fictional world revolved. If they could have their way, they would cast this part first, and then move on to the remaining roles. But while cinema may be the art of bringing dreams to life, this particular fantasy would go unfulfilled.

As Chayefsky and Gottfried negotiated their deal with MGM and United Artists, they held wide-ranging discussions with the studios about a suitable director for
Network
. One list of candidates compiled by Chayefsky noted nearly every working filmmaker of the day—not only his preferred candidate, Sidney Lumet, but also accomplished screen veterans such as Elia Kazan, John Huston, and George Roy Hill; members of the next generation’s New Establishment, including Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman; and foreign directors who had crossed over to the American marketplace, such as Roman Polanski and Marcel Ophüls. Another list seemed to emphasize Lumet, Bob Fosse, and Mike Nichols, whose personal telephone numbers were written next to their names, while adding Sydney Pollack and a relative newcomer named Martin Scorsese—whose name was sufficiently unfamiliar to Chayefsky that he misspelled it as “Scorcese.”

One viable contender strongly opposed by Chayefsky was Hal Ashby, whose hit social satire
Shampoo
had opened in March 1975. In a draft of a letter that did not mention Ashby by name but whose subject was clear, Chayefsky wrote that the directing of
Shampoo
was “blunt and obvious,” made by a filmmaker who was weak “on scene and setting and shoots everything—even his crowd scenes—up tight on the actors throughout.” “He never pulls back and lets you see where the hell you are,” Chayefsky added. “With the exception of the beauty salon, which was blatant, none of the sets and locations had any comment or character in them.” Dispensing with any lingering uncertainty about whether he would let this person touch
Network
, Chayefsky wrote, “If you’re asking me if this director is the right one for a high-style film, filled with lengthy set-pieces and theatrical monologues, a film that is totally satiric and especially politically satiric … I’d have to say no I don’t think so.”

The studios also made their preferences known. Before his relationship with Chayefsky could go completely sour, William Bernstein, the United Artists executive whose indelicate remarks about Howard Beale had sent the author storming out of his office, wrote to Chayefsky’s lawyer, Maurice Spanbock, suggesting “that any submissions be limited only to those directors whom we specifically discussed last week, i.e., Stanley Kubrick, Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn and Bob Fosse.”

But in a letter to the actor Paul Newman dated May 21, Chayefsky wrote, “All other factors remaining constant, Sidney Lumet will probably direct this picture.” He continued: “As far as Sidney is concerned, you can have any part in this picture you want. From the selfish interest of the production, however, I’d like you to consider the part of Howard Beale. It’s the most difficult part to cast; you and a very small handful of other actors are the only ones I can think of with the range for this part. Anyway, please read this script and see if you have any interest in starring in it. Needless to say, I would consider it a privilege to have you star in anything I write.” He added his home and office numbers, but his entreaty to Newman was unsuccessful.

Around this same time, Chayefsky and Gottfried had an audience with George C. Scott, the truculent star of
The Hospital
, who was preparing to play Willy Loman in a Broadway revival of
Death of a Salesman
that he was also directing. They delivered a copy of the
Network
screenplay to Scott in his dressing room at the Circle in the Square Theatre, hoping that he would be interested in playing Howard Beale.

“We said, ‘Here it is. You name the part,’” Gottfried recalled. “Because at that point, we were just anxious to get him, and we’d figure out how to get him to play the role.” A few days later, Scott summoned the partners back to the theater.

“He said in that voice of his, ‘Who’s playing Diana?’” Gottfried recounted. “And we said we haven’t cast it yet. And he says, ‘How about Trish?’”—the actress Trish Van Devere, Scott’s fourth wife, whom he had married in 1972, after his second divorce from Colleen Dewhurst.

Van Devere had appeared in films such as
Where’s Poppa?
and
One Is a Lonely Number
, but neither Gottfried nor Chayefsky could envision her carrying the central female role in
Network
. “I spoke up,” Gottfried said, “because I didn’t want to put Paddy in any position. I said, ‘George, that’s impossible. I’m sure that the studio’s going to insist on a star.’ We had to give him some reason.” Nonetheless, said Gottfried, “He was devoted to her and wanted to get her a part. I said, ‘George, you know the business, it’s impossible, we can’t do this.’ And he said, ‘Then I’m not interested.’”

In a letter dated June 8, Van Devere wrote directly to Chayefsky, praising him for having come a long way “from not one woman doctor in
Hospital
to the executive broad of all times heading your cast in
Network
!” She added, “George felt that role and I would be very good for one another—I seldom agree with George but in this case I tend to.”

It took nearly two months for Chayefsky to respond to Van Devere; on July 31 he finally wrote to her, saying that his response had been slow because “I had nothing to tell you.” He went on to say that “the preliminary processes of casting have started; that is, a great deal of bullshit is going on between us and M.G.M. and United Artists. I will keep you informed on what’s happening.”

In further handwritten lists, Chayefsky cycled through the many esteemed actors he could imagine playing his carefully crafted
Network
characters. For Beale, his mad prophet of the airwaves, he envisioned Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gene Hackman, Sterling Hayden, or Robert Montgomery; Max Schumacher, too, could be played by Fonda or Hackman, or by William Holden; and Diana Christensen seemed ideal for Candice Bergen, Faye Dunaway, Ellen Burstyn, or Natalie Wood. On another sheet of his telltale yellow paper he ranked his top choices for the three principal roles. For Beale, they were: 1. Hackman, 2. Fonda, 3. Hayden, 4. Stewart; for Diana: 1. Dunaway, 2. Bergen, 3. Burstyn; and for Schumacher: 1. Lee Marvin, 2. Fonda, 3. Holden, with Burt Lancaster and Walter Matthau listed, unnumbered, in reserve.

These standings were arrived at after much crossing out and many revisions, and with the use of several crisscrossing arrows that suggested last-minute changes of heart. For Chayefsky they represented personal tastes rather than the actual attainability of the actors, and he could not invest himself too deeply in these preferences. He had worked in show business long enough to know that for every available role and responsibility, a dozen or more options must be floated, and that no one ever gets his first choice. But some crucial pieces soon began to fall into place.

*   *   *

The life of Sidney Lumet had advanced on a track that was often parallel to Chayefsky’s, intersecting only occasionally. Born in Philadelphia in 1924 to Russian-Jewish parents, Lumet was raised in the tenements of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and in Astoria, Queens. As a teenager he attended New York’s Professional Children’s School while acting in Broadway plays written by Maxwell Anderson and William Saroyan, and filled his personal notebooks with precocious guidance such as: “I advise all the children who want to go on the stage to try first to find a profession where the hours are more regular and the pay is better. The theatre is no place for sissies or people who can’t take it.” With his inner fire came feistiness; as Lumet would later observe, “As a Jew, I’m very judgmental. As a street Jew, doubly so.”