Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies

by Dave Itzkoff

  Sidney Lumet, who had been sent a copy of the essay by Bradbury, wrote back to say that he loved the idea and would forward it to Chayefsky, adding, “Among other things, it gives us a chance for NETWORK two.” “Also,” Lumet continued, “with the reality of television, it would allow them an on-going series because each time he is shot and the stone rolled back and he reappears, it could be the beginning of a new series.” The resurrected Beale, the director suggested, “could come back each time in the guise of whatever is in fashion: i.e., a black militant, Bella Abzug, an esoteric film director, or, what have you. Who knows, he could even come back as a fashion designer.”

  As he promised, Lumet sent the offbeat proposal to Chayefsky, where it went no further.

  In this same period, Chayefsky made slightly more progress on a screenplay treatment for Reds, Warren Beatty’s motion picture about John Reed, the American journalist and author of Ten Days That Shook the World, who was a firsthand witness to the Bolshevik Revolution. After reading biographies of Reed, Chayefsky began to sketch out the acts of a story that would follow the journalist over a period of five years, on a journey from Portland, Oregon; to Greenwich Village; to Petrograd. (Beatty would later say that he was asking Chayefsky only to provide his informal advice on Reds, not to write the screenplay. “I was not asking him to work on it,” Beatty said. “I was mooching on his opinion.”) But Chayefsky agonized over how he would make a hero out of Reed, who not only had been an ardent supporter of communism—a system Chayefsky fervently believed was inferior to capitalism and destined for failure—but had given his life for an inherently flawed and ultimately wrongheaded movement.

  Seeing no parallels with and feeling no sympathy for his would-be protagonist, Chayefsky wrote in his treatment, “We’ve got a guy who falls in love with his role in history—which is all he ever really wanted.… He is world-famous, admired, respected and influential—and all that has no more meaningfulness to it than anything else—The resolution seems to be it’s all shit, no matter what you do.” When Reed died, Chayefsky wrote, “He didn’t want to live because the great ultimate truth he had fallen in love with and given his life to—(the betterment of the world)—turned out to be as full of shit as everything else.” The overall story that Reed’s life suggested to Chayefsky was “that a man can live without love, but he can’t live without his illusions. (Something in that as a theme, maybe.)” Even for Chayefsky, it felt too nihilistic.

  Forgoing other people’s pitches and suggestions, Chayefsky pursued the modernized Jekyll-and-Hyde story he had first begun to sketch out while he wrote Network. In his telling, the central character—first named Edward Jekyll, then rechristened Eddie Jessup—would be “an associate professor in behavioral psychology” who has for years “experimented with hallucinogenic drugs, isolation chambers, sense-deprivation tanks, hypnotic and induced trances, Eastern mysticism and Western gestalts,” and who, via an unknown mushroom compound he encounters at a tribal ceremony in Mexico, hits upon what he believes is life’s “Ultimate Force” and “Final Truth,” but is instead turned temporarily into “a small, finely furred, erect, bipedal, protohuman creature.”

  In the afterglow of Network, Chayefsky was as committed to the project as to the target price he expected for it. “Paddy decided he wanted a million bucks,” Howard Gottfried recalled. “That’s it. He wanted a million dollars. You don’t want to pay? Forget it.”

  As he had done on Network and The Hospital, Chayefsky immersed himself in field research for the project, traveling to hospitals and universities and meeting with scientific experts up and down the East Coast, at Harvard and at Duke and throughout New York, at Columbia, Hofstra, Fordham, Lehman College, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He familiarized himself with the writings of Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castaneda, Timothy Leary, and Dr. John C. Lilly, whose studies of human consciousness had combined the use of isolation chambers and psychedelic drugs. And on a visit to Stockton State College in California, Chayefsky tried a sensory-deprivation tank for himself, describing the experience as “a warm return to your mother’s womb.”

  With the help of Sam Cohn, the powerful talent agent from ICM, Chayefsky sold, as a novel, a short, incomplete treatment of his proposed film about “the subject of laboratory experiments involving man’s primal instincts and his ability to revert to them.” Chayefsky had never written a novel before and was wary of this arrangement, but he agreed that it would help create awareness and stir interest for the eventual movie. Together with Gottfried and Daniel Melnick, the former MGM executive who had helped guide Network and who was now an independent producer, he then brought the new project to Columbia Pictures.

  The studio was eager for its own science-fiction thriller, laden with makeup and special effects, to keep pace with the latest Hollywood vogue created by the runaway box-office grosses of Star Wars, which had opened in May 1977. But Columbia’s president and chief executive, David Begelman, had one lingering question about how its narrative would be resolved.

  As Gottfried would later recall the meeting, “We reached the point where Paddy really has nothing else to say. And Begelman says, ‘What happens then?’ Paddy hesitates and says, ‘I don’t know.’ Begelman says, ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’ He says, ‘Well, we’ll work on it.’”

  Chayefsky nonetheless had his million-dollar deal, and it was as lucrative, as intense, and as stressful a bargain as he had ever struck. He immersed himself in the project, but that summer, as he labored over the manuscript of the novel and tormented himself to devise an ending for the story—should Jessup die, or should some other unknown fate befall him?—Chayefsky suffered a heart attack. As the author, now fifty-four years old, told his son, Dan, during a visit with him in the hospital, “At least this proves I’m mortal.”

  * * *

  For the key players who had once been associated with Network, it was a season of transition and tumult. Sidney Lumet was putting the finishing touches on his film adaptation of Equus and would soon be moving on to his first musical, The Wiz, a modernized, soul music retelling of The Wizard of Oz based on a hit Broadway show, for which his all-star cast included Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and the director’s mother-in-law, Lena Horne.

  In Los Angeles, Peter Finch’s widow, Eletha, had been struggling since her husband’s death. “I’ve got two children to raise and I need income,” she explained in a gossip item in the New York Post that reported that she had started renting out the family’s Beverly Hills home to tenants while she and her children moved to a more modest three-bedroom apartment; she had also lost twenty-five pounds and begun taking acting lessons in preparation for a small on-screen role in an episode of TV’s Police Woman, arranged for her by its star, Angie Dickinson. Her summer was spent in court, fighting for her share of the estate of her late husband, who had not written a will since 1965 and had never named Eletha as a beneficiary. The value of that estate, accumulated by an actor who in his lifetime had appeared in more than fifty motion pictures, was placed at $115,000.

  Faye Dunaway, whose life had always been treated as an open book by the news media, had split from her husband, Peter Wolf, by that summer. She had begun an affair with Terry O’Neill, the photographer who had shot her People cover story as well as her unforgettable post-Oscars portrait, and within months it was a matter of public record. These modest scandals had no measurable impact on Dunaway’s career; the actress was paid a reported $1 million to star in Irvin Kershner’s thriller Eyes of Laura Mars, and $750,000 to appear opposite Jon Voight in a remake of the boxing drama The Champ. But any goodwill she might have won with her victory on Oscar night seemed to have evaporated in the morning mist rising from the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

  Dunaway’s relationship with Sue Mengers, the talent agent who helped persuade her to take Network and then ensured that she was not fired from it, had deteriorated, and the two were no longer working together. “She just didn’t like me,” Mengers would later say, “and I didn
’t like her.” In the press, she was a villainess again, and for every minor misstep or embarrassment—say, a beauty magazine paying $2,000 to retouch the crow’s-feet, laugh lines, and facial puffiness in the portrait of Dunaway that ran on its cover—there was an enthusiastic audience waiting to hear about it.

  William Holden, meanwhile, was trying a different tack with his personal life. In an article in the New York Times (which described him as once possessing a “smiling, unlined face” that “served as a safe map of American aspirations and triumph,” but now being “58 and, finally, looking it”), he came clean about his relationship with the actress Stefanie Powers, who at thirty-four was about as far apart in age from Holden as Diana Christensen was from Max Schumacher. The off-screen couple had been introduced in 1973 at a celebrity tennis match. “I was fortunate to find a compatible female human being as curious as I am about the world and the effects of progress,” said Holden. “We didn’t gravitate toward each other because we were eager to jump into bed, although we did that too,” said Powers. Now they traveled the world together as Powers assisted Holden in his various projects, such as gathering four hundred pieces of indigenous artwork from the government of Papua New Guinea and selling them at Bloomingdale’s. “I have been an actor for 38 years,” said Holden, shrugging off his Oscar loss to Peter Finch. “I have been a conservationist in Africa for 18. The danger—the danger is being considered a dilettante both as an actor and a conservationist.”

  The couple sent Christmas cards to Chayefsky decorated with traditional seasonal imagery and depictions of jungle creatures frolicking underneath rainbows, and inscribed with entreaties to visit them at Holden’s palatial home in Palm Springs. But the author—who since his heart attack had been told to avoid caffeine, tobacco, and salt and to exercise more—did not take them up on their invitation. When Chayefsky was feeling well enough to write again, one of the first places where his name appeared was in a New York Times advertisement placed by a group calling itself Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East. Alongside fellow signatories such as Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller, Leon Uris, and Elie Wiesel, Chayefsky (who also helped compose the letter) urged readers to remember the fifth anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics and the eleven Israeli athletes murdered there by a radical Palestinian group. “But we shall not forget,” the letter read, “that the P.L.O. says Israel has no right to exist. Would any state in the world be asked to talk to those who say you must die at the end of the conversation?”

  * * *

  In the same film season that she was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as the title character in Julia, the pseudonymous friend and anti-Nazi activist from Lillian Hellman’s memoir Pentimento, Vanessa Redgrave produced, narrated, and appeared in a documentary called The Palestinian, in which she interviewed Palestinian refugees and leaders and the PLO’s chairman, Yasir Arafat. Theaters that showed the documentary were widely picketed, and the actress faced protests at public appearances where she did not promote or even mention the film. Dore Schary, the honorary chairman of the Anti-Defamation League, called the film “a terrible piece of work” and described it as “very dull, fortunately,” adding that “the only comment you keep hearing is ‘Kill the enemy.’ They keep saying that Israel is intransigent.” Redgrave countered that she had made the documentary “because I believe the Palestinian people have been denied the right to be heard,” adding that she had “consistently championed the rights of the Jewish people.” “No one can challenge the stand I have taken against fascism and anti-Semitism,” she said.

  Such remarks did not dissuade members of the Jewish Defense League from turning out at the 1978 Oscars ceremony to demonstrate against Redgrave’s appearance, nor did they keep away supporters of the PLO who came to demonstrate against the JDL. And when, near the start of the broadcast, Redgrave won the Oscar for best supporting actress (for a role that Faye Dunaway had turned down), she could hardly avoid weighing in on the continuing controversy. Thanking her Julia costar Jane Fonda and the film’s director, Fred Zinnemann, Redgrave said they had done “the best work of our life” because “we believe in what we were expressing: two out of millions who gave their lives and were prepared to sacrifice everything in the fight against fascist and racist Nazi Germany.

  “And I salute you,” Redgrave continued, “and I pay tribute to you, and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you’ve stood firm, and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior”—she paused to let pass the boos and cries that were drowning out her speech—“whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.” With a concluding expression of gratitude to Hollywood for having dealt “a final blow against that period when Nixon and McCarthy launched a worldwide witch hunt against those who tried to express in their lives and their work,” Redgrave hoisted her trophy and pledged to “continue to fight against anti-Semitism and fascism.”

  Redgrave’s comments were followed by a commercial break, and when the Oscars show resumed, neither its host, Bob Hope, nor any of its presenters made further mention of them. But backstage at the ceremony, expectations ran high that a response was imminent, and that it would be coming from Paddy Chayefsky. “Paddy just went nuts after her speech,” recalled Mike Medavoy, one of the United Artists executives who had worked with him on Network. “He was furious. I remember going to the bathroom and encountering Paddy railing on her outside the restroom.” Sherry Lansing, then a junior executive at MGM, said later that “everybody ran to Paddy and wanted to say something.” A huddle of people formed around the screenwriter, all of them asking, “What are you going to say, Paddy?” In due time they had their answer.

  When his turn to speak came later that night, Chayefsky approached the lectern with a speedy gait and his head bowed slightly, and began: “Before I get onto the writing awards, there’s a little matter I’d like to tidy up, at least if I expect to live with myself tomorrow morning. I would like to say, personal opinion of course, that I’m sick and tired of people exploiting the occasion of the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda.” The theater rang with applause and cheering, though a television camera that panned across fretful faces and folded hands in the audience showed that not everyone was supportive of his rebuttal.

  Undaunted, Chayefsky continued: “I would like to suggest to Ms. Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.” As another wave of applause subsided, Chayefsky gave a quick nod, wiped his lips, and attempted to change the subject. “And now, on to much more important matters,” he said, picking up an envelope and then letting it slip from his hands as he realized he still had his official presenter’s speech to give.

  Without any discernible difficulty, Chayefsky shifted his tone from one of quiet condemnation to another that was tender and humbled. “Screenplay writing,” he said, “is a much-misunderstood form of writing.”

  In the old days, the image of the screenwriter was that of the great novelist who had gone derelict in the corrupt tropics of Hollywood and nowadays I think they think of the screenwriter frequently as somebody who helps out the director with lines of dialogue. But in point of fact, screenwriting is a very special, highly refined discipline. It requires all the standard storytelling talents and it also requires a visual eye as well, because the screenwriter frequently has to tell a story without words, which are, after all, the primary tools of the writer’s craft. When it works, a good screenplay is a thing of beauty, a model of precision and clarity and imagery and concept [so saying, he extended his hands as if he were putting them around a woman’s waist] and mobility, wit, passion. It is something to celebrate and something to honor, so, let’s honor them.

  Then he picked up the envelope he had earlier droppe
d on the lectern and started to tear it open, as audience members who had held their tongues throughout the proceedings started shouting at him.

  “Oh!” Chayefsky exclaimed. “I forgot to read the nominees.” Falling back on his Borscht Belt ways, he jokingly adjusted his glasses, quickly removing them from and returning them to his face, and said to the laughing crowd, “I’m that eager to know, I must say. Every one of these fellas are friends of mine.” Then, finally, he read the nominees for best original screenplay.

  * * *

  Chayefsky’s oration was instantaneously sensational and instantaneously divisive, even before he was led off the Oscars stage by Alvin Sargent, who won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for Julia. (In his own acceptance speech, Sargent said he believed his trophy stood for “the free expression of all our good thoughts and feelings and loves, no matter who we are or what we have to say.”) While Chayefsky was still speaking, a camera had caught Shirley MacLaine, a best actress nominee for The Turning Point, sitting next to its screenwriter, Arthur Laurents, as he clapped appreciatively and she did not. Their disagreement over the incident and whose side they supported was so vehement, MacLaine later recalled, that after the Oscars, “Arthur didn’t speak to me for five years. He just thought that it was terrible that she had said those things about the Jews, and I was saying she had every right to say it, and he was mad at me.”

  When he returned home to New York, Chayefsky was greeted by numerous appreciative letters and correspondence that applauded him for his rebuke of Redgrave, with supportive messages coming from William F. Buckley Jr. (YOU ARE MY NEW HERO, the National Review founder wrote in a telegram, SORRY ABOUT THAT BUT YOU EARNED IT REGARDS), Carol Burnett and Joe Hamilton, Marlo Thomas, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and even Eletha Finch, who in a handwritten note to Chayefsky said, “You were great on the night of Oscar. My husband would be proud of you, you are a ‘great man.’” Chayefsky also received a note of praise from the director Frank Capra, who wrote, “You damned near made me cry with your gutsy but courteous put-down of Vanessa Redgrave.” Chayefsky replied, “I have to tell you that the response I got after the Academy Awards occasion was larger than the response I have ever received for all of the work that I have ever done put together. It will please you to know that my mail was overwhelmingly disapproving of Miss Redgrave.”