21 апр. 2020 г.

Network (1976)

Howard Beale: I'm gonna kill myself.
Max Schumacher: Oh, shit, Howard.
Howard Beale: I'm gonna blow my brains out right on the air. Right in the middle of the 7:00 news...
Max Schumacher: Well, you'll get a hell of a rating, I'll guarantee you that. 50 share easy.
Howard Beale: You think so?
Max Schumacher: Well, sure. We could make a series out of it... Suicide of the Week... Hell. Why limit ourselves? Execution of the Week.
Howard Beale: Terrorist of the Week.
Max Schumacher: Suicides. Assassinations. Mad bombers, Mafia hitmen... Automobile smash-ups... The Death Hour. Great Sunday night show for the whole family. We'll wipe that fucking Disney right off the air!

Diana Christensen: The Ecumenical Liberation Army. That's not the one that kidnapped Patty Hearst?
Bill Herron: No, no. That's the Symbionese Liberation Army. This is the Ecumenical Liberation Army. They're the ones who kidnapped Mary Ann Gifford three weeks ago. There's a lot of liberation armies in the revolutionary underground... and a lot of kidnapped heiresses.

Howard Beale: Well, I'll tell you what happened. I just ran out of bullshit. .... Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. If we can't think up any reasons of our own, we have the God bullshit. ...through all this pointless pain, humiliation and decay... so there better be someone who does know. That's the God bullshit.
Max Schumacher: ... He's saying that life is bullshit and it is. What are you screaming about?
Howard Beale: Man is a noble creature that can order his own world. Who needs God? If there's anybody out there... that can look around this slaughterhouse of a world we live in... and tell me that man is a noble creature... believe me, that man is full of bullshit. ... And I was married for 33 years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.

Diana Christensen: Last night Howard Beale went on the air and yelled "bullshit" for two minutes... and I can tell you right now that tonight's show will get a 30 share, at least! I think we've lucked into something.

Nelson Chaney: All I know is this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.
Frank Hackett: We're not a respectable network. We're a whorehouse network. We have to take whatever we can get.
Nelson Chaney: Well, I don't want any part of it. I don't fancy myself the president of a whorehouse.
Frank Hackett: That's very commendable of you, Nelson. Now, sit down! Your indignation has been duly recorded. You can always resign tomorrow. Now look, what in substance are we proposing? Merely to add editorial comment to our Network News show...

Howard Beale: What's wrong with being an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our times? What do you think, Max?
Max Schumacher: Do you want to be an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our times?
Howard Beale: Yeah, I think I'd like to be an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our times.
Max Schumacher: Then grab it. Grab it!

Diana Christensen: Your Network News is going to need some help, Max, if it's gonna hold. Beale doesn't do the angry-man thing well at all. He's too, uh, kvetchy. He's being irascible. We want a prophet, not a curmudgeon. He should do more apocalyptic doom. I think you should take on a couple of writers to write some jeremiads for him... I see you don't fancy my suggestions.
Max Schumacher: Hell, you're not serious, are you?
Diana Christensen: Oh, I'm serious. The fact is I could make your Beale Show the highest-rated news show... in television, if you'd let me have a crack at it.
Max Schumacher: What do you mean, "have a crack at it"?
Diana Christensen: I'd like to program it for you. Develop it. I wouldn't interfere with the actual news itself, but TV is showbiz, Max. And even the news has to have a little showmanship.
Max Schumacher: My God, you are serious.


Diana Christensen: I was married for four years and pretended to be happy... and had six years of analysis and pretended to be sane.

Diana Christensen: Howard Beale obviously fills a void. The audience out there wants a prophet, even a manufactured one... even if he's as mad as Moses. By tomorrow he'll have a 50 share, maybe even a 60. Howard Beale is processed, instant God.

Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad, everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the streets. There's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us... that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes... as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
     We know things are bad. Worse than bad, they're crazy. Everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house and 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 gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest, to riot. Don't write to your congressmen. I wouldn't know what to tell you. I don't know what to do about the depression... and the Russians, and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being, goddamn it. My life has value."
     So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. 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 gonna take this anymore!"

I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!

Diana Christensen: Hi, I'm Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.
Laureen Hobbs: I'm Laureen Hobbs, a bad-ass commie nigger.
Diana Christensen: Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.

Laureen Hobbs: .... This is my lawyer, Sam Haywood, and his associate, Merrill Grant.

Howard Beale: ... And when the 12th largest company in the world... controls the most awesome, goddamn propaganda force... in the whole godless world... who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network.
     So you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television's a goddamned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats... storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion-tamers... and football players.
We're in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth, go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves. Because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth. But, man, you're never gonna get any truth from us.
     We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell. ... No matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry... just look at your watch, at the end of the hour he's gonna win! We'll tell you any shit you want to hear.
     We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there, day after day, night after night... all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know.
     You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. Dress like the tube, you eat like the tube... raise your children like the tube, you think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs.
     In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion!
     So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now. Turn them off!

Diana Christensen: ... They heard about our Flagstaff bank rip-off film and they want it. Hackett told the FBI to fuck off. But we're getting around the FBI... by doing the show in collaboration with the news division. We're standing on the First Amendment, Freedom of the Press... and the right to protect our sources. Walter thinks we can knock out the misprision of felony charge. Ha, ha. ... They'll hit us with conspiracy and inducement to commit a crime... See, we're paying these nuts from the Ecumenical Liberation Army... $10,000 a week in order to turn in authentic film footage... of their revolutionary activities... and that can constitute inducement to commit a crime. And Walter says we'll all wind up in federal prison. I said, "Walter, let the government sue us. Let the federal government sue us. We'll take them to the Supreme Court. We'll be front page, mm, for months. The New York Times and The Washington Post... will be writing two editorials a week about us. We'll be front page for months. We'll have more press than Watergate!"
All I need is six weeks' federal litigation...

Louise Schumacher: Does she love you, Max?
Max Schumacher: I'm not sure she's capable of any real feelings. She's television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny. The only reality she knows comes to her over the TV set.

Frank Hackett: I'm gonna impale the son of a bitch with a sharp stick! I'll hire professional killers. No, I'll do it myself. I'll strangle him with a sash cord!

Arthur Jensen: ... 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 and immane... interwoven, interacting, multi-variate... multinational dominion of dollars. Petrol dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars. Reichsmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines... the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic... and subatomic... and galactic structure of things today. ...

Arthur Jensen: You get up on your little 21-inch screen... and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T... and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
     What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts... statistical decision theories, minimax solutions... and compute price-cost probabilities of transactions and investments... just like we do.
     We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations... inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale... to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine... oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company... for whom all men will work to serve a common profit... in which all men will hold a share of stock... all necessities provided... all anxieties tranquillized... all boredom amused.
     And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale... to preach this evangel.
Howard Beale: Why me?
Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Howard Beale: ...at the bottom of all our terrified souls... we know that democracy is a dying giant... a sick, sick, dying, decaying, political concept writhing in its final pain.
     I don't mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The States is the richest and most powerful... the most advanced country, light years ahead of any country. I don't mean the communists are gonna take over the world. The communists are deader than we are.
     What is finished... is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom... and flourishing of every individual in it. It's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary, human being that's finished. It's every single one of you out there that's finished.
     Because this is no longer... a nation of independent individuals. It's a nation of some 200-odd million... transistorized, deodorized... whiter than white steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings... and as replaceable as piston rods.
     Well, the time has come to say... is "dehumanization" such a bad word? Whether it's good or bad, that's what is so. The whole world is becoming humanoid, creatures that look human but aren't. The whole world, not just us. We're just the most advanced country, so we're getting there first. The whole world's people are becoming mass-produced, programmed... numbered insensate things.

Max Schumacher: It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with.
     ...and if I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. ... Like everything that you and the institution of television touch... is destroyed.
     You're 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.
     You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you.
     But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure and pain... and love.

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+++ Quotes on the IMDb

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