"
Network" was a bloody brilliant
film.
Although its writer, Paddy Chayefsky, intended it to be a hate-mail letter to a medium that he loathed.
Here is an excerpt from the new book, "
Mad As Hell: The Making Of Network And The Fateful Vision Of The Angriest Man In Movies" by Dave Itzkoff.
by television, as enumerated by Paddy Chayefsky, included but were not limited to: its crassness, its stupidity, its chasing of fads and its embracing of gimmicks; its reduction of all that was distinctive and worthy of celebration in American culture to the basic food groups of game shows, songs, and dances; its compulsion to force everyone watching it to think the same thing at the same time; and its overall lack of artistic integrity. Also, it paid him too little.
He would recite his list of charges whenever he was given a platform, whether in a newspaper or magazine interview, on the radio, or, especially, on television itself. But on this day in 1969 he happened to be delivering his latest version of the familiar tirade amid the clanging of silverware and the clattering of plates in the dining room of the Carnegie Deli. The bustling, boisterous Midtown Manhattan restaurant, next door to the gray-brown brick building where Chayefsky kept his office in room 1106 at 850 Seventh Avenue, and a short walk from its esteemed namesake, Carnegie Hall, was a frequent site for the weekday court he convened at lunchtime. There, the deli’s adoring maître d’, Herbie Schlein, gave him linen napkins to wipe the coleslaw and Russian dressing from his face while other patrons had to make do with paper, and his table was reliably populated by pals such as Bob Fosse and Herb Gardner—office neighbors who rented their work spaces down the hall from his—and other select peers who could keep pace with his accomplishments, his mind, and his mouth.
At this particular session, he was joined by Howard Gottfried, a producer with whom he had been working to figure out a new project ever since Alan Jay Lerner fired Chayefsky as the scriptwriter of his musical Western Paint Your Wagon. (The songs, Chayefsky had told the celebrated lyricist of Camelot and My Fair Lady, were no good, and anyway his stars Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood couldn’t “sing for shit,” and that was the end of that assignment.) Their companion was Mel Brooks, who had lately withstood some tough reviews for his directorial debut, a polarizing film satire about two shysters peddling a Broadway musical about Adolf Hitler, only to have the last laugh by winning an Oscar for his screenplay of The Producers.
They were three Jewish show business veterans kibitzing around a table, and naturally there was some commiserating about which industry they had worked in was the worst of the bunch. It didn’t take long for television to rise to the top of the heap.
Television, Chayefsky argued, offered the least creative control for writers and the lowest return on their investment. Where was its dignity? Where did it draw the line, and what wouldn’t it do for a rating?
Surely it wasn’t all bad, said Gottfried, the conciliatory industry professional. What about that first-rate production of Death of a Salesman with Lee J. Cobb that CBS ran a few years ago?
Irrelevant, Chayefsky countered. Television was a parvenu industry, constantly conscious of its image as a cultural wasteland. A passion for prestige trembles through the business, and suddenly all the networks race out to do meaningful programming.
Death of a Salesman had been just a seasonal attack of respectability, like hay fever.
“What’s next?” wondered Brooks, reaching for the darkest and least appetizing idea he could think of, one rife with murder, rape, and depravity. “A television show based onThe Threepenny Opera?”
Were the rights still available? Gottfried wondered.
What difference would it make to a programming executive? Chayefsky said. He wouldn’t know if The Threepenny Opera was written by Bertolt Brecht or Hy the plumber. He probably wouldn’t know that Bertolt Brecht had been dead for seventeen years.
“Leave it to me,” said Brooks, his eyes agleam as he stood up from his seat. “I’ll call one of the networks.”
“Now, don’t pile it on,” Chayefsky warned his friend while offering him a dime. “Remember, you’re not Doctor Krankheit,” he said, citing an old vaudeville sketch.
“Are you trying to tell me how to play this?” Brooks protested. He made his way to a phone booth and a few minutes later came back with the following report.
Having dialed up NBC, where both he and Chayefsky had long-standing relationships, he was connected to the programming department and asked for a certain executive there.
“Hello dere,” Brooks had said, slipping into an old stage accent. “Dis here is Berrrrrtolt Brrrrecht. I vanted to talk about der TV rights to my musical mit Kurrrrt Weill, derThrrrreepenny Operrrra.”
“One moment, please,” said the secretary who had taken the call. “Let me see if he’s available.”
The receiver was placed down, but a conversation was still audible from within the office.
First, the secretary: “There’s a Bertolt Brecht calling for you. Something about The Threepenny Opera?"
Then the executive: “What are you talking about? Bertolt Brecht is dead!”
And then the secretary again: “How can Bertolt Brecht be dead? He’s on the phone for you right now!”
“Oh, well, that’s different—put him on!”
And that was what Paddy Chayefsky thought of television.