Post: #1

I just found it on Youtube, so I don't know how long it will stay up there. I highly recommend watching this movie. It's from 1976, and it predicts many things that have happened with media since that time. It looks like about five minutes are cut from the beginning, but you can still get the whole story from this video.





Paddy Chayefsky was a brilliant screen writer. It's too bad he never got an Oscar for this one. Three actors did get Oscars though-Beatrice Wright (best supporting actress), Peter Finch (best actor, dead when it was awarded), and Faye Dunaway (best actress). Sidney Lumet directed.

It features a lot of memorable one-liners and a few memorable monologues. Yet, it somehow never seems preachy. The comedy is dark, but hilarious at the same time. You'll laugh, but you will think a lot as well. It is brilliant.

Hollywood seems to do some of their best work when it takes on the television industry. This is one of the best takes on television, especially news and what has become reality television. I definitely encourage a couple viewings.

Here's a video of Siskel and Ebert reviewing it. They liked it, but it seems even better forty years later:





And here is a copy of a script, but it must have been an early draft:

https://sfy.ru/?script=network

I also see that they cut off the ending as well. Here it is:

Post: #2

I stand corrected. Paddy Chayefsky did win an Oscar for his screenplay. He won best screenplay two other times as well.

Post: #3

Holds up really well. Women in the workforce who have no soul and become corporate nuns. Revolutionaries acting as tools for the international corporate elite. News as entertainment. Reality TV being a fraud. People being disgusted and mad but their anger being used to further the system not change it.

It was spot on with all that.