Sidney Lumet discusses his work on the film “Network,” commenting on the character’s storyline and the narrative of the film.
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TRANSCRIPT
What one of the fascinating things about Paddy is that he writes a character who who's protest becomes a byword today I mean it's in the language: 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!'
What I love is that Howard Beale does absolutely nothing about it. There's no action from then on in - he only continues with something which began before he made that speech because it's when he's still in his normal anchor man's clothes and when he still comparatively sane that he says, 'I just got tired of the bull .' So he starts telling the truth before that scene. He's clearly in a psychotic state in that scene - he's left the house in his pajamas and a raincoat walking through a thunderstorm to come do his broadcast. So, that nothing changes in Howard Beale when he says 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore,' and one of the brilliances in the writing of that movie was that Paddy would never be sentimental enough to make a difference. He has an audience out there which shouts along with the announcer 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore,' and that becomes as stupid and duplicitous as anything else and Howard is yelling at them, 'you're not serial; you're not fake. We're the ones who were fake.' And they sit there and he goes into a fit and falls on the ground and they cheer. And when he gets shot they cheer. The audience doesn't change. Howard doesn't change.
Bill Holden loses his direction and goes back - wants to go back to his wife, God knows if she'll take him, but fundamentally doesn't change. The Faye Dunaway character when he says to her, 'You're the television generation. You learned life from Bugs Bunny.' One of the great great lines and he says, 'You're heartless Diana.' And he leaves her and I had said to Faye, when I first met her I walked into her living room and she was seated on a couch all the way across the living room and I said I know what the first question is going to be from you and that you're gonna ask me where's her vulnerability and I'm gonna tell you right now she has none. And if you try to get any in, I'll cut it out of the movie and when Bill Holden said that to her, I said to her specifically, 'Faye, you've got to remember our first conversation.
If I see any tear brimming when I'm shooting your reaction brimming in your eye, I won't use that.
I'm warning you.' And she got exactly what i meant and she played the exactly perfect thing which was, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'
