I'm mad as hell' and you know the rest (CNN) {Network, the movie}

[eppur_se_muova]

'I'm mad as hell' and you know the rest

Three decades later, 'Network' remains prescient as ever

By Todd Leopold

Diana Christensen: I've been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network. I want counterculture, I want anti-establishment. I don't want to play butch boss with you people, but when I took over this department, it had the worst programming record in television history. This network hasn't one show in the Top 20. This network is an industry joke.
***
Max Schumacher: I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hit men, automobile smashups: "The Death Hour." A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It'd wipe that Disney right off the air.
***
Howard Beale: It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone." Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! ... I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
***
Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you've 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. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.
***
more at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/02/22/eye.ent.network/index.html

WOW! What is an article like this doing on CNN? They must have tranked the editors to get this one past. Oh wait...they're advertising the 2-DVD boxed set of Paddy Chayefsky's "Network", due out on Tuesday. So I guess they saw profit in it. But the article is dangerous reading -- people might compare Chayefsky's vision of the future of network television with what they are seeing now. And while that might be good for them, it is not likely to be good for the Money$stream Media and their multibillionaire Rethuglican backers.

[stillcool]

1. anyone wishing to record...

TCM channel 256 on DirectTV is airing "Network" again this morning at 4:15 a.m.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

2. I'm going to get that DVD to replace my old one.