It only happens halfway through the film. You may recall that the most famous scene in “Network,” Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s look at television news, tabloid culture, corporate takeovers and the shape of things to come, occurs closer to the beginning of the film. We don’t have to tell you which one we mean: A newscaster named Howard Beale, intoxicated by prophecy and clarity, rises from his anchor desk.
After rattling off everything that’s going wrong in the world outside your window – unemployment, crime, pollution, a failing economy – the Lord now has a request for his viewers. He asks them to temporarily break free from their state of permanent isolation and become part of a collective choir, opening their windows and screaming into the void. Say it with us: “I’m so angry, I can’t take it anymore!”
Look at it again, if you haven’t done it in a while. You’ll be surprised at how effective, how electrifying and shocking it all still is.
A film that seems freshly released
Published in the year of America’s Bicentennial, “Network” turns 50 this year. Watch the entire film again now – especially since the Criterion Collection has just released a beautiful Blu-ray edition, which should be at the top of your to-do list; support physical media! – and it feels like it’s 50 minutes old. Only the corrupt media of mass communication has changed. For decades, it was viewed as a hard-hitting, darkly comic look at how the broadcast news industry could merge with the entertainment industrial complex and ultimately be exploited by those in power.
“Could” is no longer the right word here. About ten years after the film won four Oscars, the Fairness Doctrine was abolished and we had a former movie star in the White House who was known for using pop culture quotes in political meetings. Twenty years after its release, Fox News began its march toward Bethlehem. Thirty years after the release of Network, we encountered a fun new app called Twitter. Forty years later, it’s 2016, and…yeah. Exactly. Watch the film today, and it’s as if a nation of citizens with a gourmet passion for human flesh read Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and thought: Wait, that was supposed to be satirical?!
Neither satire nor fiction
Lumet and Chayefsky never viewed “Network” as satire; they always referred to it as a “reportage”. (“The industry is satirizing itself,” the latter was quoted as saying.) Both the director and the screenwriter who turned “I’m so angry” into a general mantra against the system came from television, if not the newsroom. Both began in the early days of live TV drama and eventually found their way to cinema.
Lumet became a versatile filmmaker with a special flair for acting, moving from socially critical parables like “The Pawnbroker” and “Fail Safe” and stage adaptations like “Long Days Journey Into Night” and “The Seagull” to New York City New Hollywood stories like “Serpico” and “Dog Day Afternoon.” Chayefsky was originally seen as a chronicler of the little man with a strong need for control, and after the success of his 1950s character study “Marty” he gained enough influence to enforce this. But his screenplay for the 1971 film “The Hospital” expressed righteous indignation at how the American health care system was failing its doctors and patients. It wasn’t long before he turned his gaze, his pen, and his anger to another institution.
Both had firsthand experience with the television business’s movers and shakers, who stopped paying their salaries but continued to dictate how they – and everyone else in the mid-1970s – processed the events of the day. When we meet Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), he is the fictional counterpart to Walter Cronkite.
The birth of a media messiah
However, his personal life has derailed him and he is on the verge of being fired. The president of the intelligence department and Beale’s old companion Max Schumacher (William Holden) takes his friend out for a drink. Howard says he’ll give the people what they want, which is sensationalism, and kill himself on live television. Max suggests making his death a weekly series: “Suicide of the Week.” In his farewell speech the next evening, Howard repeats his “joke.” Nobody knows whether it’s just gallows humor from a depressed man or something more serious. (In fact, there was a real-life model.)
Messiah of mass media
Then Diane Christensen (Faye Dunaway) enters. A program director, part emerging power figure of the next generation, part apex predator – she could have played the villain in “Jaws” the year before – believes she has found the channel’s recipe for success in the collapse of the star presenter. Their idea is to market Beale as a “mad prophet of the skies,” someone who can serve as a loud voice of the people. “The American people want someone to articulate their anger for them,” she explains. In addition, his rise could serve as a precursor to her passion project: a series about a militant left-wing organization, complete with a co-opted heiress à la Patty Hearst, which shows grainy, homemade footage of raids.
In 1976, the idea of putting a “patently irresponsible man on national television” who preached an uncompromising anti-establishment message and wanted to turn political firebrands into ratings stars was outrageous. In 2026, both would be considered harmless – although the shows would still generate plenty of memes and garner millions of followers on their respective YouTube channels. Regardless, the station’s new corporate owners, embodied by the late Robert Duvall as the executive apparatchik, step in. Beale becomes the messiah of the mass media.
The evening news turns into a variety show with fortune tellers and show announcers. What started as a spontaneous call – “You have to say: ‘I’m so angry, I can’t take this anymore!’ I’m human, damn it! My life has value!!!” – ends as a parroted chant. Rebellion is transformed into pro-capitalism slogans. The ratings are falling. The left-wing militants from Christensen’s project assassinate Beale during his broadcast. A remarkable crossover.
From cult film to reality
The critics were divided, the audience was entertained, television executives and real-life counterparts to Beale were horrified, and Oscar voters were thrilled. The film’s influence can still be seen today with its contempt for soulless conglomerates, immoral media players and opportunistic activists. “Network” was nominated for ten Oscars and won four. Peter Finch died of a heart attack during the advertising campaign and was the first posthumously awarded Oscar for Best Actor.
Chayefsky also won for Best Screenplay. Less than five years later, he too was dead. Both had illustrious careers with ups and downs, but this film is the cornerstone of their legacy. “I’m so angry” may no longer appear in editorials or adorn T-shirts like it did in 1976, but the phrase still carries weight. Beale’s prime-time sermon remains one of the most famous monologues in film history.
Less well known, but perhaps even more relevant to our current situation, is a following scene. Beale attacked his corporate bosses over a deal with the Saudis. The chairman of the board asks him to speak. He also has a lot to say.
There is no America
Television has given way to the internet, newscasters to content creators and podcast opinion leaders, fact-based journalism to “idea scoops.” You wouldn’t see the 2026 version of “The Mao Tse Tung Hour” on television, but you would certainly see it on the in-house streaming service. When it comes to corporate influence over news, talk to the editors of “60 Minutes” or Stephen Colbert, an avowed “Network” fan.
Americans wanted someone to express their anger – and they got him. It even received a second season. There is no America. And there is no democracy. There is only Meta and OpenAI and Amazon and Skydance and Google.
Our nation’s history is marked by atrocities, oppression, terror and violence. History is not pretty. But the one thing a divided country can currently agree on is that what is happening in this age of great regression is not normal, despite attempts to normalize it. Not even low ratings can stop it.
“Network” looked into its crystal ball and sent out a worst-case scenario tirade that, upon closer inspection, was also a warning. We don’t just live in Howard Beale’s world. We’re stuck in a world run by millions of Diane Christensens. Fifty years later, Lumet and Chayefsky’s brilliant work of art is neither satire nor reportage. It’s a horror film. It’s reality.
