Network (1976) Review [Archive]

19:05Josh Larsen:China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

19:18Adam Kempenaar:This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable.

19:46Josh Larsen:This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

19:55Adam Kempenaar:Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move.

20:10Josh Larsen:These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba.

20:26Adam Kempenaar:Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app,

20:29Josh Larsen:Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I think that's the tricky thing with Beal as a character is he was more of a tool for me this time around. I didn't ever really get a sense of, you know, fully what he did believe, where he was losing control of his senses, legitimately becoming mentally ill, and where it was this existential force actually speaking to him. Those things got mixed because I felt like he kept being used depending on how the screenplay wanted him to be used. And I guess, you know, yes, he's not a false prophet in the sense of like, you know, Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter, where he's, you know, he's preaching this false gospel.

21:07Josh Larsen:But he's not a true prophet because true prophets speak truth to power. And he becomes one, as I was saying, when he does start telling the audience that you are slaves. And he starts hinting about the corporate machinations going on in the background that get him into trouble. That's the power he is rousing at that point. And that's why Ned Beatty brings him into the boardroom for that amazing scene and gives him that booming speech. So it's when he starts talking truth to power, he does become a true prophet. But I still think at the end of the day, he registered mostly for me this time around as this convenient prophet because he's a tool of Chayefsky's screenplay, which is, you know, this is didactic cinema.

21:51Josh Larsen:And I'm trying to come around on that. You know, I've always been a little bit hesitant to it, even though one of my favorite. I figured you'd struggle. Even though one of my favorite filmmakers, Spike Lee, is, you know, maybe the king of didactic cinema. Okay. And so like the message here, I totally, as we've talked about, it's prescient, on point, needed, necessary. But in watching Beale this time around, I did feel like this was just this figure. We didn't get to really know him as a character or what, especially how the movie begins with just these two guys going out for a drink and really rooted in their shared past together.

22:24Josh Larsen:Eventually, we no longer really, the movie doesn't seem that interested in Beale as a person. He becomes this figure that can be used depending on what points the screenplay wants to make. They're great points. They're fascinating points. Finch is amazing in delivering them. I love the transition he makes from this morose older guy to the televangelist to the guy who's really likely lost his mind. I mean, the performance is good. Yes. But it's a convenient figure for the screenplay is how it struck me.

22:52Adam Kempenaar:I don't see it that way. I definitely see it as more ambiguous by design and actually one of the strengths, as I was mentioning earlier, in that there's a moment, for example, it's when he's giving the I'm mad as hell speech and we cut to Diana, Faye Dunaway, reacting like this overzealous, proud mother who knows that she can milk this for whatever she wants. And we as viewers, I think most of us look at that character and say, OK, she's she's on the wrong side of this. So if she's reacting positively, well, that's not necessarily a good thing. Well, then you've got on the other side, William Holden's character who's scoffing at it and who thinks it's an embarrassment and can't believe anyone would be swayed by it.

23:35Adam Kempenaar:And the reality is, is that as a viewer, I'm right in the middle where I'm going, well, he's kind of making a lot of sense, but he also is off his rocker and probably should be in a home or at least getting some kind of treatment. And he definitely shouldn't be getting more airtime. And yet I like what he has to say. I find myself reacting viscerally to what he's saying. So I think that that is complexity that really draws me into network. And in terms of the didacticism, definitely this time. first time I'd seen it, as I mentioned, since probably 93 or 94. There are definitely parts that seem overwritten.

24:10Adam Kempenaar:There are moments that seem overacted. There are parts where Chayefsky through Beale is perhaps not just attacking corporatism and capitalism run amok, but relying on a little xenophobia to unify his American audience. There are problematic aspects of network. I see it and none of it overrides. I'll use that word again. It's prescience, it's perceptiveness, it's sense of humor and the entire brilliant satirical DNA that is its foundation. And satire is a word that I think often gets used or misused to describe a lot of different types of art or content, if you will. But with network, I'm talking about the pure stuff, the acute but outrageous Swiftian let's solve poverty by selling poor kids to the rich for food stuff.

25:05Adam Kempenaar:There simply, for me, isn't a better piece of cinematic satire. That ending. I'm going to give people listening, radio or podcast, a chance here in a sec. I'll give you the cue to turn the radio off for 15 seconds or hit the jump ahead button on your phone if you haven't seen it. But here it is. So what do we do about this Beale son of a bitch? I suppose we'll have to kill him. I don't suppose you have any ideas on that, Diana.

25:35Adam Kempenaar:Well, what would you fellas say to an assassination? I think I can get the Maltzy Tomb people to kill Beale for us. It's one of their shows. In fact, it'll make a hell of a kickoff show for the season. We're facing heavy opposition on the other networks. That ending is so incredible and chilling watching a group of TV execs deciding to murder one of their personalities live on TV with the same gravity and solemnity they'd give to ordering takeout. Is it realistic? Of course not. It's absurd. But it is. Yes, I get it. That is the line it's walking, but it's also not something we actually believe is probably taking place, but that's the entire point.

26:24Adam Kempenaar:Is Diana Christensen being so consumed with her work and her ambition that she literally talks only about TV deals and ratings while on a romantic weekend getaway with her lover, including during sex, realistic? No, it's absurd. But I do think that absurdity and that irony is why network's message is so lucid and so potent. And I mentioned that it resonated differently this time. When I saw it originally in the 90s, it felt sort of groundbreaking and clairvoyant enough in what it foretold about journalism and the media and infotainment about the unchecked power of corporations. But it's not like those things were new in the 1970s.

27:06Adam Kempenaar:Chayefsky just envisioned the inevitable sad trajectory. What was amazing at that time was to see him predict the rise of reality TV, as you mentioned, which was then flourishing in the 90s. Diana's obsession with taking real footage, real events, and turning them into programming, creating stars out of quote unquote real people. I do know that An American Family aired in 1973 on PBS, but I couldn't believe how right Chayefsky was when I saw it back in the 90s. And now you watch it in 2021 and you recognize that it's not just reality TV. It's user generated content. It's reality as captured by the people experiencing the events.

27:50Adam Kempenaar:In 1976, in this movie, it's a terrorist group with one person shooting a bank robbery with a movie camera. Now, right, we see insurrectionists storming the Capitol. Every single one of them has the phone in their hand and they're shooting video. They're streaming to Facebook or Twitch or whatever platform they choose. And that is what really struck me this time when you hear Howard Beale talking about the madness of it all and talking about the illusion of television and trying to tell people to turn their TV sets off and saying this tube is the gospel. It can make or break presidents. And he has that great line where he says the tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world.

28:33Adam Kempenaar:And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people. Well, today, Howard Beale wouldn't get anybody to go to the window because if they had the TV on at all to the news, it would just be background noise as they stared at their phones. You know, replace turn off your television sets with turn off your phones. It's really no different, except it's actually it's more ubiquitous, more dangerous, more desensitizing and even more disconnected from reality.

29:01Josh Larsen:Yeah. And that's why I said the American sickness is, you know, more screens than actually specifically television. And you bring up the insurrectionists, you know, that's an example of the unchanneled rage. How much of that footage that we saw was of these morons just like wandering around once they got in? Because some of them had principled, not principled, that's the wrong word, but specific reasons for being there. But how many others of them got in there once their rage was vented? They didn't know what they were supposed to do. And I guess that's like those sequences of the people yelling out the windows.

29:33Josh Larsen:That's the exact same kind of rage we're hearing there. I want to go back to that scene where they're talking about having Beal murdered, the corporate execs, the TV execs. The reason I said it's believable is, and here we should probably give Lumet some credit, is just how that – I can't remember exactly how many edits there are. But it's a very casually blocked scene where they transition so seamlessly from these boring corporate discussions of ratings points and so forth into, well, how are we going to kill him? And like their tones don't shift that nothing dramatic happens with the camera.

30:10Josh Larsen:It doesn't know. No music like it. But now it's just evil is. And that's the satire. And the other satire that was so perfect that I had really forgot about was how much of the subplot involved this communist activist played by Marlene Warfield, who Diana recruits to find this footage you're talking about from other from extremist groups that she has connections with. And we get that great scene where Warfield is negotiating with the leader of this extremist group and some TV execs over. I forget I forget what the term is, but it's something I don't even know what it means. I think it was something like distribution charges or rights.

30:49Josh Larsen:And she's delivering this Warfield as Lorraine Hobbs is the character's name. She's delivering this like it's a fiery speech, a revolutionary speech. But they're talking about distribution charges. I'm not giving this pseudo-insurrectionary sectarian a piece of my show. I'm not giving him script approval, and I sure actually ain't cutting him into my distribution charges. You f***ing fascists!

31:10Adam Kempenaar:Did you see the film we made of San Marino Jail Breakout demonstrating the rising up of the Seminole prisoner class infrastructure?

31:16Josh Larsen:You can blow the Seminole prisoner class infrastructure out your ass! I'm not knocking down my goddamn distribution charges!

31:24Adam Kempenaar:Man, give her the f***ing overhead clause.

31:28Josh Larsen:that is the sort of like sorry to bother you bamboozled idiocracy level satire that is so rich in network that i think is just great um now i do want to we've mentioned dunaway a couple of times and i just love how she devours this movie me too you know what i think she's doing here we've characterized her um you know a couple ways we could you could call her driven brazen unscrupulous. She really made me wonder if she was a model for those sleazy business types that Michael Douglas would specialize in during the 1980s, because I got such vibes from her like that. And then there's great little moments she gives when her boss, Duvall, is talking about his hesitancy about putting Beale, this is early on, on the air, and says something about how we're talking about putting a manifestly irresponsible man on television.

32:19Josh Larsen:As he's saying that, Lumet cuts to Dunaway and her eyebrows, her iconic eyebrows, just go like higher and higher. Yes, she's ecstatic. Yes. Every word he uses to argue against this gets her more excited about the possibility. So yeah, just the fact you mentioned the scene on the romantic getaway with Holden where she's just talking business. She's like this dead-eyed great white shark just zeroing in on her career. It's the only thing she can think about. And it's just an amazing performance.

32:49Adam Kempenaar:It really is. but as histrionic or as shrill as the performance sometimes is. And no matter how much we, I think, probably most viewers anyway, loathe her as a character, there are these quieter moments and these subtler moments where she's really remarkable. I love the scene, for example, where she comes to Max Schumacher, William Holden's office, late at night, and it's really their first encounter. And she basically seduces him. That's where I got the Douglas vibes. There you go, right? It's all calculation, but at the same time, there's nothing – here's that word again. There's nothing actually false about it.

33:26Adam Kempenaar:I believe every single word she's saying, and there's a self-awareness to it and a self-awareness to the performance that matches the overall self-awareness of the movie, obviously, including the relationship between her and Schumacher and the way Chayefsky frames it in terms of this conceit of TV melodrama and the way that that plays out. And that brings us to near the end of the film, that last big scene, that last big throwdown with Dunaway and Holden. She's getting monologued at. She is getting destroyed. Chayefsky doesn't really give her anything to do. This is Holden as his mouthpiece getting to tell off the heartless, cold television generation.

34:11Adam Kempenaar:And as you're watching it, I'm thinking, how do you as Faye Dunaway, how do you play this scene without just being a doormat or being a witch? And that delivery of her line where she says, then don't leave me. It's actually bracing, I think, in that it's an expression of actual emotion. But it's subtle. It is really subtle. It feels like a real moment. And here again is the ambiguity. it's so real because I don't know that I actually believe that she means it. I don't think she knows whether or not she means it.

34:47Josh Larsen:Is that the line where there's a hiccup? Those layers come through. Does she have a little hiccup in that line where there's a pause? If it's not that line, it's another one in that scene where she lets us know exactly what you're pointing at, Adam, is that she's either trying to convince herself or, you know, she's not there yet herself. Because one thing about Diana is she never lies, right? Even in that early scene in his office, she's telling him, this is what I want to have happen tonight. If you're interested, great. If you're not, great. This is what I want to do in terms of our business partnership.

35:19Josh Larsen:And throughout the movie, she never lies to anyone. So there's something admirable there. And I do think she's great in that climactic scene between them. And I was having the same thoughts as you. I think the scene overall as written, and you can't hold it against Holden because it's the material he's given. I just don't think it works because I can forgive Beal becoming Chayefsky's mouthpiece because it is this sort of prophetic figure, as we've been discussing. But Holden is supposed to be more rooted, down-to-earth, a character we can relate to. And he gradually transitions. Another scene is between he and his wife.

35:56Josh Larsen:We mentioned Beatrice Strait, who won the Oscar. there's a scene between them as well where they start talking about you know how their life is resembling this melodrama script that diana is writing and you can just see the screenplay so much over those scenes as good as the actors are and so that that climactic one between holden and dunaway i as good as she is in it um i i don't think it i don't think their relationship overall works because it's kind of caught in between trying to bring some character some real people into this story and still having it stand metaphorically for the larger points Chavsky wants to make.

36:34Josh Larsen:And I think it can never quite manage those two things at once. Your television incarnate, Diana. Indifferent to suffering. Insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death. all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays.

37:15Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I definitely, watching that scene this time, and this is where I mention some scenes maybe being overwritten, in that last big showdown between them, When Holden says, after living with you for the last six months, I'm turning into one of your scripts. Well, this is not a script, Diana. There's some real actual life going on here. I said, OK, that's that's a mouthful for an actor to actually sell convincingly. And I'm going to say that for the most part, Bill Holden does it. It works well enough for me, but it did stand out for me this time, Josh. You know what is kind of the issue at the very beginning about their relationship is that Holden doesn't discover anything new about Diana that would lead him to either get that involved with her or to leave her.

38:03Josh Larsen:Everything he quote unquote comes to find out about her, he knows the second she walks into that office. So I don't think the whole like convention of having them give this arc to their relationship doesn't work because there's there is no arc to it.

38:18Adam Kempenaar:he knows everything about her already no and i think that's completely accurate and maybe because of that i was paying even more attention to it this time and why i was invested in that relationship at all or why i believed it in terms of the script and i think this time i recognize that it can work if you see it in the scope of the whole script where diana has no real genuine affection for him or sees this relationship as anything profound, but she does need to be tethered to reality in some way. What he says as much of a mouthful as it is, it is, it is accurate. I believe that anyway about her character.

38:56Adam Kempenaar:And I also believe exactly what he says to his wife, that this is the last chance for him at something, some kind of feeling, maybe no different than Peter Finch saying, I still matter. And I'm going to express myself, even if it's just a bunch of rage. He's saying, you know what? You're not just going to push me out the door. I'm not just going to be this Zion of TV news and I'm just going to go out to pasture. This is sort of my last chance to prove myself as the still kind of virile man of action. And she is only a response to that because she really can't be anything else. There is no way in those scenes I mentioned earlier, the romantic weekend getaway, where he is actually having a good time, but he is playing along.

39:40Adam Kempenaar:He is playing along because I think he needs it and she needs it, just as he does say to her late in the film. So I guess that's how I convinced myself, Josh, of what Chayefsky was after with that couple.

39:56Josh Larsen:What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, it's where Culture Meets the Soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated.

40:34Josh Larsen:Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

40:53Josh Larsen:In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

41:00Adam Kempenaar:The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

41:08Josh Larsen:Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

41:55Josh Larsen:China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

42:09Adam Kempenaar:This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life.

42:29Josh Larsen:And that's a unicorn.

42:31Adam Kempenaar:No one had ever seen anything like that.

42:33Josh Larsen:It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

42:45Adam Kempenaar:Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was out of breaking point.

43:04Josh Larsen:Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale.

43:07Adam Kempenaar:In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Almormata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

43:22Josh Larsen:To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest.

43:40Adam Kempenaar:It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

43:52Josh Larsen:All right, so convince me why Duvall is so great in this because I had some... I'm glad you asked. I struggled with his performance.

44:00Adam Kempenaar:It's one of those performances that I just love every moment of it. I don't know how to completely articulate it, but there isn't a line reading or a set of grimaces or expressions I didn't find surprising and just fun as hell. When he says, for example, to the guy playing Nelson Cheney, the president of the network, the ineffectual president, he says, we're not a respectable network. And he says, well, I don't want any part of it. I don't fancy myself the president of a whorehouse. And Hackett says, that's very commendable of you, Nelson. Now sit down. Your indignation is duly recorded. You can always resign tomorrow.

44:37Adam Kempenaar:And just very calmly puts him completely in his place. That's one of the scenes I love. But it's honestly, it's just watching him in agony as he is hearing what Howard Beale said on the airwaves, knowing that Arthur Jensen is going to call him back to New York the next day and he's going to probably get fired. And you just see how it's tearing him apart. It's all in the way he kind of grits his teeth, the way he smiles in a completely false way. It's just Duvall. It's just Duvall to me. It's a pure Duvall performance. I'm finished. any second that phone's gonna ring and Clarence McElhaney's gonna tell me Mr.

45:16Adam Kempenaar:Jensen wants me in his office tomorrow morning so he can personally chop my head off four hours ago I was a son got at CCA Mr. Jensen's hand-picked golden boy the heir apparent now I'm a man without a corporation

45:35Josh Larsen:let's get back to howardville i like how dunaway snaps him out of it because i was thinking like please please stop we get the point he like keeps struggling for more metaphors for how much trouble he's in how far he's fallen it's so overwritten and overperformed i i can't remember a guy with so little hair constantly pushing back his hair in one movie it's like there's nothing there bobby i mean you can keep going for it i don't know i i think that he it's it's a movie of a lot of performances that are didactic but he's the only one i found who was kind of overdoing the material which didn't which didn't need you know much doing at all i did like on his desk i like the touch this has nothing to do with the performance but what does the sign say on his desk i can't kindly refrain from smoking in this room and it was just a nice visual like joke here's this guy who's supposed to be the hard ass in the movie right right um and then he has that in 1976 he has this on his desk please refrain from smoking here yeah actually the hard ass in the movie we got to talk about ned beatty's scene he's so good oh my goodness incredible that is where lumet pulls out the filmmaking stops i feel like you know 100 the lights go down in this boardroom he sits beal down he's gonna ream him out for for going on air and talking about the corporations and so forth and he gives this um what is what is it a corporate cosmology, is that the phrase he throws at him?

46:59Josh Larsen:It's this. I mean, there's the prophet of evil, is what Ned Beatty is. And Lumet frames him. There's all of these glowing green reading lamps on this long conference table. And it's just like there's these oracles of globalism chanting around Ned Beatty as he booms from Mount Capitalism. You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Veal, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you 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.

47:45Josh Larsen:You are an old man. I totally forgot that scene as well, and it's astonishing.

47:50Adam Kempenaar:It's incredible, and let's give credit here to the cinematographer, the great cinematographer, Owen Roisman, who in the 70s, just going to mention some of the titles in addition to Network, The French Connection, The Heartbreak Kid, The Exorcist, Three Days of the Condor. And I agree that's the standout scene in the movie in so many ways. But in terms of the filmmaking, utilizing the boardroom table and the space with those lights you mentioned, I was watching it thinking, like we discussed with All the President's Men, are they using a diopter here? And I don't think they are, but it's almost a diopter effect where because of those lights and where the camera is positioned almost underneath them shooting through them, it seems that Ned Beatty is very distant while also right on top of you, right on top of Beale, just overpowering him.

48:35Adam Kempenaar:And it really does make you think of Jensen in that scene as a director. You know, he brings him into that space for a reason. He dims the lights. He positions himself just so and starts his oration. And then that that line where he finally then breaks and says, am I getting through to you is hilarious. That's the line of the movie. And, you know, I think it's easy without psychoanalyzing too much here or reading too much into his personal biography. I don't know a whole lot about Patty Chayefsky other than I will say I read David's cop's book about the making of network. Very good. Very fun read.

49:11Adam Kempenaar:I also read the biography of Bob Fosse and he was really intimate friends with Patty Chayefsky. So I have a little bit of background and it's easy to see the Howard Beale in Patty Chayefsky. It's easy to see the William Holden in this scene. I'm watching Arthur Jensen and thinking not only of, you know, Lumet and the symmetry to a director, but I'm thinking about Chayefsky as a storyteller where you've got that kind of fire and brimstone preacher, the didacticism of that. I'm here to impart a very important message that you better listen to. But he's also trying to frame it as a storyteller. He's considering how to best get through to his audience.

49:51Adam Kempenaar:And in this case, that's how Jensen sets up the entire scene. So, yeah, I think that's one of the standouts. And I think Beatty is incredible in it.

49:59Josh Larsen:All right. Real quick. One last question I got for you. The occasional narration, the whole the movie begins with this voiceover narration, kind of a TV announcer setting things up. And I think it comes back five or six times more again than I remembered. Why do you think that's there? Is it just another kind of meta play on TV tropes that they wanted to layer in? Because other than that, I was kind of like, it's not really giving us anything new.

50:22Adam Kempenaar:No, and it really probably isn't necessary. I'm not sure that it really moves anything along, but there is something about the framing of it, that device, that self-awareness. I think maybe if it was actually used just a little bit more than it was, it probably would have been very annoying. But as it is, the beginning, the end, couple of key moments in between is transitions. I didn't have a problem with it watching it this time.

50:45Josh Larsen:Yeah, yeah. It just stood out to me. And again, I'm thinking it's, you know, they're referring to their lives as a script of Diana's and here the movie obviously has a script. It's also being narrated as a script. So it fits. Yeah.

50:57Adam Kempenaar:Going back to Lumet and Roisman for a second. Actually, while I was thinking about this today, I put it on in the background here at my desk just so I could kind of be watching network and maybe, you know, gathering something through osmosis, Josh. And you know what really struck me? When I think about Network, and I just watched it two nights ago, I, in my head, think about how dark it is. I think about the scenes like with Jensen. I think about the scenes in the boardroom at the end. I think about the scenes on Howard Beale's set when he's the mad prophet, and it's all dark and so artificially lit.

51:35Adam Kempenaar:and I was kind of shocked to go back and have it on and I'd keep looking up at the screen and through the first half or so of the movie, it is very evenly and brightly lit and Lumet is constantly, and Royceman are constantly relying on natural light to tell this story. It really isn't that dark at all. It's only as the movie itself gets darker and darker and everybody gets, it seems, a little bit more corrupted that then it's like every moment is a TV set moment. But earlier in the movie, if you go back and look, all of those scenes in offices or that take place at UBS, there's a ton of natural light always coming into the room.

52:15Josh Larsen:Yeah, they're in this corporate high rise. These are day meetings. And so that's kind of the setting. And then you're right. We transition into the studio more. More things take place at night and the movie overall grows darker.

52:28Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. And you mentioned the script And I understand you're wrestling with the didacticism a little bit, but there is a poetry to it. And I use that word because I did catch part of an interview today where Chayefsky is asked about the poetry of the script and whether or not audiences will accept it. And I think what I'm getting at or I want to get at is just the language of the script, the word choices, the way it doesn't feel natural all the time. And yet the way the characters deliver it, it does feel like it makes sense within this world. There's a line of Duvall's actually that I've quoted fairly often throughout my life.

53:09Adam Kempenaar:And when you think about quotable lines from network, nobody would ever point to this one. Right. There's all these lines. I'm mad as hell. And for me, there are times where if someone says something to me where they're trying to qualify how firmly I feel about something or how firmly someone else feels about something. And there's that line at the end where they ask him just one more time. Well, how did Mr. Jensen really feel about Howard Beale? Like, can we fire him? And he says, I would describe his feelings as intractable and adamantine. Now, nobody uses that phrase in real life. Right. But in this movie, it makes sense.

53:43Adam Kempenaar:And it makes sense that it's pushing on the audience in that way. It's the kind of film that makes you maybe actually go home and get out the dictionary and try to understand what some of the characters are saying. I'll also mention a little moment. It's a complete throwaway moment. And I don't even know if it's one Lumet was very conscious about. But it, I think, gets at some of the subtle choices that really make this movie what it is. when they show, I think his name's Edward Ruddy, and he's the head of the company. And he's who everybody reports to at this point. He's in kind of a power struggle with Frank Hackett, with Duvall's character.

54:20Adam Kempenaar:And he goes to meet with William Holden's character in his office. I think he might even be going at this point, actually, to to ask him to come back after he's fired him. He's about ready to to leave. And this is his last day at UBS. and he goes in, but he doesn't just show him walk into the office. He doesn't just show him sitting down or having a conversation with William Holden. He shows him enter the floor and walk up to the receptionist and walk past like four people all just doing their jobs. And in every case, you see how all of those people react to him. They are all deferential. They all show their respect to him because he's the boss, the big boss.

55:01Adam Kempenaar:And in a movie that really is in a lot of ways about power, who has it, who's losing it, you do need to see that. Nothing is even really said. It's just all in the blocking of that and the movement of those characters. You see how they defer to him as the man in charge.

55:19Josh Larsen:Well, and this goes back to Beatty too, right? Because we're constantly trying to track these layers of authority that you're talking about. Who's over who? How are they related professionally? Who's really holding the cards here? And it is communicated in details like that. We only see before that boardroom scene, Beatty's character once, very briefly at another board meeting, he gives a few words of approval and then he disappears. And we hear him referred to. But then when we get him, it's like we've left. This goes back to the filmmaking too. We've left those daytime offices where there are all these, you know, these little ways of showing deference and who's in charge.

55:57Josh Larsen:And now we are in this. I don't know. It's a totally different building. It's almost gothic. Yeah. It's a little more sinister. The lights are down. It's like, OK, if there's a guy at the top or the bottom, I think we finally found him when Beatty shows up.

56:11Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I don't know if it was by accident or not either, but I even noticed today when it was on in the background that the same type of green lights that are in that Ned Beatty scene with Peter Finch, which I'm sure have an exact name that I'm not aware of, where you pull the string and they turn on. Yeah, I think they're like reading lamps. Yeah, that's what they seem like. Library reading lamps. Like reading lamps, like at a library. They're the same kind of lights, it seemed to me, almost in the scene where you have Faye Dunaway being feeded as like she's some politician who's just won the presidency.

56:39Adam Kempenaar:see there's all these red lights on the table, just like those green ones. And that's where everything does kind of get a little bit more sinister. As I said, network is available to stream on most platforms. I wonder if Patty Chayefsky would be happy about that or not. It also plays on a loop over at the UBS network. You can look for that on your cable provider. For more on our seven from 76 best year ever series, visit filmspotting.net slash seven from 76. We do only have one more 76 title to get to before we complete our 77 Best Picture nominee homework. We are going to talk about the eventual winner, Rocky.

57:20Adam Kempenaar:That will come here in a couple of weeks.

57:22Josh Larsen:His name is Sylvester Stallone, but you will always remember him as Rocky.

57:31Adam Kempenaar:Josh, it does seem from my glance at Letterboxd that Sam had a change of heart Back in March 2021, he gave Network four and a half stars. Four and a half. That was a wild swing of heart for Sam. Wild swing. I love it. Yes. Yes. Now, of course, maybe he's going to tell me, no, I'm mixing up my memory and it was some other film I adored, but I'm pretty sure it was Network that he was not a big fan of. And it hurt me. It really cut me deep. If you would like to dig into the film spotting archive and hear other conversations like that one, well, you can do that as a member of the film spotting family.

58:11Adam Kempenaar:You get our monthly bonus shows. You get a weekly newsletter. You get early ad free shows and a lot more to join. Josh, what do they have to do to join?

58:21Josh Larsen:It's very simple. Filmspottingfamily.com. All your options, the various tiers you can choose from are right there. So check it out and join the family. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between.

58:45Adam Kempenaar:Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you.

58:55Josh Larsen:Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit.

59:16Adam Kempenaar:The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed.

59:18Josh Larsen:What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world.

59:46Adam Kempenaar:The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

59:54Josh Larsen:Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00:02Adam Kempenaar:1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move.

1:00:10Josh Larsen:These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app,

1:00:28Adam Kempenaar:Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.