Hello Cinephiles!
Tyler here.
The next film you voted for is Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s 1976 diatribe of the
television industry, Network.
I often wonder how much of Network’s biting satire is lost on someone my age simply because
it had all mostly come true before I had seen it.
I must say, it took a couple of viewings for me to realize just how funny the movie was.
“You can blow the seminal prison-class infrastructure out your ass!
I’m not knocking down my goddamned distribution charges!”
[Gunshot]
What I want to look at today is how the film got such great performances out of its cast.
The cast won a multitude of awards including the Oscar for Best Actress won by Faye Dunaway
and the Oscar for Best Actor won by Peter Finch— who won over another nominee for
the same film: William Holden.
Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress for only five minutes and two seconds of screen
time— the shortest performance to win an Oscar.
And Ned Beatty was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for pretty much one scene.
The previous year, Sidney Lumet had directed Dog Day Afternoon, which itself, contained
some of the greatest performances captured on film.
So what was Lumet doing to elicit such brilliant motion picture acting?
This is Making Film...
Ensemble casts were nothing new for Lumet, who had previously directed Murder on the
Orient Express, The Group, and the iconic Twelve Angry Men (Under the Influence).
And Lumet’s reputation for strong character pieces was helpful when casting the film.
Sidney Lumet: “We never got a turn-down.
Whoever we sent the script to said, ‘yes.’
Usually somewhere down the line, you’ve got second, third, fourth choices and then
finally some compromised choices.
Not on Network.
Everybody there was the first choice and they knew it.”
Another reason for this was the reputation of the screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky.
Chayefsky was one of the most successful television writers in the 1950s—
the [quote] “golden age of television.”
He was disillusioned with the direction television was going and wrote the satire as a commentary
on the medium he had once been such an important part of (Cinephilia).
Chayefsky had previously won screenwriting Oscars for Marty and The Hospital, and after
his win for Network, he became the only person in history to win three screenwriting Oscars
without the help of a co-writer (Wiki).
Highly unorthodox, Chayefsky's contract stated that he, the writer, was given final cut of
the film— a power usually reserved for the director.
This was Chayefsky’s film (Washington Post).
The first thing Lumet did was to bring the cast and crew together for two weeks of rehearsals
at the Hotel Diplomat in Times Square (Itzkoff 99).
Script supervisor, Martha Pinson who worked with Lumet on many of his later films, detailed
Lumet’s rehearsal process in an essay titled “The Lumet Method” (hodah).
Once gathered together, Lumet would first make an address about the piece, then they
would move onto a table reading and discussion (hodah).
The rehearsal process began on a cold January 5th, 1976.
They had wanted to use the large ballroom at the Hotel Diplomat for the table-read,
but it was unheated and they had to use an adjacent room (Itzkoff 99).
Everyone was excited to witness the meeting of acting giants William Holden and Peter
Finch who many had grown up with— Holden and Finch had never worked together (Itzkoff 99).
After the table read, Lumet would show location photographs, they’d analyze each scene to
[quote] “[put] the film on its feet” (hodah).
As I mentioned in a video on Dog Day Afternoon, Lumet sometimes used the rehearsals to have
the cast improvise dialogue that they would write into the script.
This was not the case with Network.
Here, the screenplay was sacred.
Every line had to be spoken exactly as it was written.
Chayefsky attended the rehearsals to make sure everything was working toward his vision.
After all, he had final cut.
Lumet announced to the cast that he wanted them to “keep their performance simple”
and that they should display [quote] “pure behavior,” but of course not quite as naturalistic
as Dog Day Afternoon (Itzkoff 100).
Sidney Lumet: “I don’t know what to say about actors reacting perfectly because it’s
so much a part of the norm of what they’re doing if they’re working well.
So many times on pictures, because they haven’t rehearsed it, because they haven’t worked
it out cleanly and in advance, these things are mechanical and forced, but not here.”
The actual rehearsals would begin after the assistant directors taped the floor plan of
each set onto the floor the rehearsal space (hodah).
Luckily the heat to the ballroom was fixed and so they spent the next few days in there
blocking the action in each scene (Itzkoff 100).
Chayefsky explained the hierarchies of UBS and CCA to the cast
and they were ready to begin (Itzkoff 100).
Then they were off, rehearsing each scene of the film as if it were a play.
The scenes were blocked within the confines of the taped-off floor plans, all the props
needed were at their disposal.
Lumet said that they would even rehearse transition scenes of walking and, if there were a car
chase, they’d rehearse that too (Under the Influence).
During rehearsal, Dunaway was often found thumbing through her [quote] “heavily annotated
copy of the script” (Itzkoff 100).
Other actors were afraid of the amount of Lumet’s preparation.
Lumet said, "When I have worked with actors who've only worked in movies, they come in
terrified of rehearsal.
They say, 'Sidney's going to kill the spontaneity.'
The truth is the exact opposite.
Because they know what they're doing, because they know where they are in the character,
because they feel safe with me and in the selections they've made,
they are twice as free.
On a location, if a plane goes by, fine, they'll incorporate it or ignore it.
If a dog bites them, they'll incorporate it or ignore it.
They're open to whatever the momentary situation is because they are much more secure.
So, if anything, it helps spontaneity” (Under the Influence).
This makes sense.
The actual location will be a different environment and there will always be a number of variables
that the production will have to figure out how to roll with.
If the cast is thoroughly prepared, I’d imagine that they might feel comfortable enough
with the character to make spontaneous decisions if needed while still having a sense-memory
of what is important for them to include.
Faye Dunaway: “But it’s just so much better to have layered already,
some sense of the performance.”
Sidney Lumet: “You need the continual exposure to the same thing happening again and again
to give you an inkling of ‘ah ha,’ there’s something interesting here.”
Pinson said that these run-throughs would [quote] “[clear] up uncertainty about the
arc and pitch of an actor’s role, the tone of a performance, [and] the intensity needed
for any given scene in relation to what comes before and after” (hodah).
Everybody, even the bit players would be on the same page and understand how they fit
into the whole of the film (hodah).
Lumet brought in his notebook of [quote] “hand-drawn diagrams of where he expected to place his
cameras and how he expected each sequence to unfold" (itzkoff 100).
That said, even though everything was worked out beforehand,
they were still able to remain flexible.
If, on the day of shooting, he couldn’t remember how he wanted to block a scene he
would say that it “must have been bad” (itzkoff 100).
Lumet said, "I can't remember going past four takes on anything we did in Network.
If I go more than four takes, it's usually because I staged it wrong, or maybe there
are some words that are wrong.
[Rehearsal] is also a time in which the actors can develop faith in me,
in my taste and in my knowledge.
Once they have that, they are released, they are free" (Under the Influence).
Lumet would have a final run-though on the last day of rehearsal in which
the Director of Photography would attend— in this case, Owen Roizman— and they would work out the
lighting around what the actors were doing.
This way, they could even be prepared enough to send the crew out to rig lights on sets
well before they were ready to shoot there (hodah).
They would also diagram all the camera positions and lenses they would use for each shot (hodah).
The point of all of this extensive preparation was that Lumet liked to go fast during production.
If you can believe it, the iconic “mad as hell” speech
was done on the first day of shooting (itzkoff 108).
These were actually the shots done with the television camera
that would appear on the screens.
They did four takes and in each take, Peter Finch performed the entire two-and-a-half-minute
scene except for take three, which
[quote] “halted at the one-minute mark for an unspecified reason” (itzkoff 108).
“Stick your head out of the window, open it and stick your head out and keep yelling
and yell: I’m as mad as hell, I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Remember when Lumet said that everyone they sent the script to said yes?
While technically true, this doesn’t mean that Peter Finch was their
first choice from the start.
In the months leading up to the production, Chayefsky and Producer Howard Gottfried were
intensely searching for an actor that had what it took to play Howard Beale.
They even had to halt the production at one point because they were having such trouble
finding the right person (Cast and Characters).
A talent manager named Barry Krost came across the script and, while not too impressed with
the character of Howard Beale, he decided to pester Gottfried into auditioning his client,
Peter Finch (Itzkoff 87, 91).
When Finch realized he would have to audition for the role, he angrily hung up on Krost
only to call back a few minutes later to apologize saying,
“Sorry, darling, I forgot I was an actor” (Itzkoff 87).
Finch was an Australian living in England and Lumet and Chayefsky were worried about
whether or not he could be convincing as an American newscaster.
Finch had Lumet send him a copy of the New York Times and he read it in front of a camera
to show that he could portray a newscaster’s cadence in an American accent (Commentary).
Sidney Lumet: “And one day, Peter Finch called and he said if we would be good enough
to send him a tape of Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor—any one of the evening anchors,
he would send us back a tape in two weeks with a perfect accent.
That’s exactly what we did, the tape arrived, and we hired him.”
The second day of shooting— January 20th, 1976— had Finch performing the ‘bullshit speech.’
“Well I’ll tell you what happened—I just ran out of bullshit.”
“Alright, cut him off.”
“Leave him on.”
The next day— January 21st— Finch was performing the “mad as hell” scene again,
but this time it was for the actual camera (Itzkoff).
This is perhaps the most important scene in the movie.
Howard Beale needed to be so impassioned that he would make an incredible impact on the
country and carry us through the rest of the film.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s hear it!
How do you feel?”
“We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take this anymore!”
Much like Sonny’s phone call in Dog Day Afternoon, Lumet loaded up two cameras with
film so that they wouldn’t need to take time reloading.
They could start the next take immediately after finishing the first and maintain the
momentum and exhaustion of the performance.
The first take ended— Lumet remarked that it was marvelous
and they immediately started take two.
Finch got up to the congressmen line —
“I don’t want you to write to your Congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write.”
and then collapsed in his chair and said that he couldn’t go any further (Itzkoff 110).
What we’re actually seeing in the film is the first half of take two and then the second
half of take one (Itzkoff 110).
“I want you to get mad!”
I believe the two takes are stitched together by this shot of Faye Dunaway.
Finch being unable to finish the second take of the speech was an ominous foreshadowing
of his failing health.
About 8 to 10 months later, well after the film had wrapped and the Academy Awards were
approaching, Finch was sitting on a bench at the Beverly Hills Hotel and Lumet was coming
down to meet him when he suffered a fatal heart attack and keeled over (Commentary).
He went on to win the Oscar for his performance becoming the first and only person to posthumously
win Best Actor.
In 2009, Heath Ledger became the second actor to win an Oscar after death— Ledger’s
was for Best Supporting Actor (Under the Influence).
What’s interesting is that every line spoken in the film was exactly as Chayefsky had written it,
except for the most important line of the film.
Finch managed to accidentally sneak an extra ‘as’ into the line which originally read,
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
But you can hear Finch say:
“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
You can even hear the correct line shouted by the people on the fire escapes and out
of the windows.
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
They had to leave Finch’s version in the film because they had only shot it one and
a half times (Itzkoff 109, 110).
Lumet said that the beauty in Chayefsky’s scripts was that it made the actors “toe
the line” of what is realistic and unrealistic.
It’s the subtle progression of madness that makes you accept the insanity of exploiting
Howard Beale for ratings (Commentary).
It is because of this that Lumet said perhaps the most important thing to consider when
casting is the progression of change over a character’s arc.
He says that you should cast for the third act.
Cast for who the character ends up becoming (Cast and Characters).
When casting a character like Howard Beale, cast the madman.
Chayefsky would sit as close as possible to the actors so he could evaluate their performances
and so he could make sure every line was delivered verbatim.
He liked to sit under the key light because it was the angle in which the actors were
“best lit” (Itzkoff 106).
There was even a running joke that if anyone was looking for Chayefsky on set, the first
place they should look is under the key light (Itzkoff 106).
Chayefsky said, “My biggest contribution is in explaining my humor to the actors” (Moss).
“He’s saying that life is bullshit and it is, so what are you screaming about?”
One of Chayefsky's contributions was in the scene of Howard Beale arriving at the studio
directly before his “mad as hell” speech.
Lumet originally had the security guard look Beale up and down and make a face at the strangeness
of a news anchor arriving at the station soaking wet in his pajamas.
Chayefsky told Lumet, “This is TV…
He shouldn’t even notice him” (Itzkoff 107).
“How do you do Mr. Beale?”
“I must make my witness.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Beale.”
I had never quite realized how similar the humor in Network is to the humor in American Psycho.
“I like to dissect girls.
Did you know I’m utterly insane?”
“Uh, great tan Marcus.”
The world seems indifferent to what we perceive as madness and I think that’s what gives
the satire its weight.
I think the trick is that we should believe that what is humorous to us is absolutely
serious to the characters.
“The light is impending!
I bare witness to the light!”
For the role of Diana Christensen, they needed to find someone willing to do the part as
Chayefsky had envisioned the character— he would not allow any actor or actress to
demand anything about their character be changed (Lumet 41).
Diana was a tricky part to cast because, as Lumet put it, Diana had to be played by someone
who didn’t need to be loved on screen (Cast and Characters).
Lumet had heard that Faye Dunaway had a reputation for being difficult, so he visited her at
her home to make sure that everything was out in the open.
In his book, Making Movies, Lumet writes, "Crossing the floor of her apartment, before
I’d even reached her, I said, “I know the first thing you’re going to ask me:
Where’s her vulnerability?
Don’t ask it.
She has none.”
Faye looked shocked.
“Furthermore, if you try to sneak it in, I’ll get rid of it in the cutting room,
so it’ll be a wasted effort.”
She paused just a second, then burst out laughing…
She said yes.
She never tried to get sentimental in the part, and she took home an Academy Award.
My point is that it’s so important to thrash these things out in advance.
If push comes to shove, you can then say the obvious truth…
This is a script we both said yes to.
So let’s do it" (Lumet 41).
Faye Dunaway: “It was something that I couldn’t NOT do because I thought, if I can infuse
the performance with some sense of what she’s paying for this life of what kind of poignancy-
and I think I did, I think there was something there that you felt you couldn’t put your
finger on it maybe, but you felt for this character.
It’s probably in the writing.”
On being considered difficult, Dunaway said, “The fact is that a man can be difficult
and people applaud him for trying to do a superior job…
It’s in my nature to do really good jobs, and I would never have been successful if
I hadn’t” (Itzkoff 78).
Diana is such an interesting character because she is both the hero and the villain of the story.
We follow her work and the conflict that arises when she meets obstacles, but because she
tramples over these obstacles so fiercely and easily, we begin to notice how she is
ruining real human beings on her way there.
Lumet noted that each character becomes corrupted by the end of the film except for Diana who
he says was the way she was since the day she was born.
“For God’s sake, Diana, we’re talking about putting a manifestly irresponsible man
on national television.”
That said, one of the most brilliant things about the character is that they don’t explain
why she is the way she is.
It makes things more complex to leave it unknown because the audience lacks the comfort of
being able to explain her personality as a result of something specific.
For the role of Max Schumacher, William Holden’s name came up during a brainstorming session
and everyone approved and that was that (Cast and Characters).
Holden had done around seventy movies before Network, yet Lumet noted that he was actually
pretty shy about acting (Commentary).
He had no theater background, so the theater-style rehearsal process was much different than
what he was used to.
Holden remarked after the rehearsal period that he finally felt like a real actor (Commentary).
Sidney Lumet: “The difference in training or difference in acting styles never matters
if both actors are working honestly, which they both were.”
In his book, Lumet points out the importance of what the actor is seeing.
He explains the standard practice of clearing the actors’ eye-line to make sure that the
actor sees only what the character sees.
You can’t have Holden bare his soul to Dunaway with
[quote] “some teamster sipping coffee behind her” (Lumet 119).
I think we’re all aware of what happened when the director of photography didn’t clear
Christian Bale’s eye-line during a scene in Terminator: Salvation.
“Alright!
I’m trying to f--- do a scene here and I’m going, ‘why the f--- is Shane walking in there?
What is he doing there?’
Do you understand?
My mind is not in the scene if you’re doing that.”
Removing these distractions also helps an actor pretend that they are not being filmed
at all— that the scene is actually unfolding.
This way Holden can play the scene as if Dunaway is the only thing he sees.
But while rehearsing one of the most powerful scenes in the film— the ‘primal doubts’ scene—
Lumet noticed that Holden was looking everywhere but Dunaway’s eyes.
Lumet said, “He looked at her eyebrows, her hair, her lips, but not her eyes” (Itzkoff 101).
Lumet made a note of it, but didn’t say anything.
There is a good reason why he didn’t try to correct this even though the rehearsals
were supposed to be place to fix any issues that arise in the performances.
Lumet said, "On the day of shooting we did a take.
After the take, I said, “Let’s go again, and Bill, on this take,
would you try something for me?
Lock into her eyes and never break away from them.”
He did.
Emotion came pouring out of him.
It’s one of his best scenes in the movie.
Whatever he’d been avoiding could no longer be denied.
The rehearsal period had helped me recognize the emotional reticence in him" (Lumet 66).
Lumet gave Dunaway the same direction, but for her, Lumet wanted Dunaway to [quote] “just
try to understand what he’s talking about” (Itzkoff 126).
And when Holden says:
“I just want you to love me, primal doubts and all.
You understand that don’t you?”
We get her only vulnerable moment in the film.
“I don’t know how to do that.”
[Ringing Telephone]
Lumet said, “That’s as close a moment as she gets” (Itzkoff 126).
Dunaway described how she played the line as the character’s
[quote] “quintessential expression” (Itzkoff 127).
Dunaway said, “[Diana] isn’t connected as a woman, doesn’t feel like a woman.
With just those few seconds on the screen, you knew that she was
completely unable to love” (Itzkoff 127).
By the way, this scene was built entirely out of one take (Commentary).
Thanks for watching!
Stay tuned for part 2 where I will discuss Robert Duvall, Beatrice Straight, Ned Beatty,
and Arthur Burghardt who played the Great Ahmed Kahn.
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