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

by Dave Itzkoff

  This approbation, however, was hardly unanimous. Sean Mitchell, the theater critic for the Dallas Times Herald, took the unorthodox step of writing directly to Chayefsky to tell the screenwriter he could not find it within himself to “reconcile my longstanding admiration for your work with your churlish performance” at the Academy Awards show. “How can the same man who wrote ‘Marty’ and ‘Network,’” Mitchell asked, “who clearly understands the indomitable human spirit, so recklessly impugn that spirit as displayed by a colleague? Contrary to your remarks, Miss Redgrave’s acceptance speech did not appear as a grandstand play at all, rather, as proof that some actors actually have the convictions of their work.… Your soliloquy, on the other hand, seemingly sprang from no irony except that some of Hollywood’s best minds habitually soften in the spotlights of this annual pep rally for the industry.”

  Writing about the confrontation in the New York Times, the film critic Vincent Canby condemned Chayefsky for his piousness. Compared to Redgrave’s acceptance speech, Canby wrote, “nothing she said came anywhere near the fustian fancies later delivered by Paddy Chayefsky, the self-appointed industry nanny, in what he may have thought to be a rebuttal, though he sounded amazingly like the sort of character that Paddy Chayefsky, the motion picture writer … would send up in half a scene. It was not a fine hour—either for him or for the winning writers to whom he was to present Oscars.” To a wide swath of observers, Chayefsky’s reaction was not courageous and not necessary; it confirmed their perceptions that he was a dyspeptic, intolerant crank.

  Chayefsky’s cultural standing was not entirely enhanced by the publication of his Jekyll-and-Hyde novel, which was released by Harper and Row in the summer of 1978 and which, after Columbia Pictures tested the project with such names as The Atavist, The Experiment, and Exploding Circle, was given the title Altered States. Some critics appreciated the book’s lofty philosophical aim of probing more deeply into the kernel of humanity’s soul than any of Chayefsky’s previous dramatic work. But many were put off by its jargonistic writing—“all the electronic-spin resonance tests,” one reviewer wrote, “the metabolites, the fractionating, the images of pyroclastic debris, lapilli, Phlegethon, the excessive VMA and HIAA levels, and the telltale N-methoxy bufatonin in the urine serums”—and the apparent absence of the author’s trademark dark humor. Another commentator wrote that Altered States “does offer a few passages of spectacularly bad writing, notably in the rendering of crude and quick sexual bouts,” and that “Jessup and his companions affect a sometimes annoying locker room vernacular, as if to prove themselves he-men,” in an otherwise positive assessment that called the novel “a marvelous and exciting work of the imagination.”

  Prior to the book’s publication and only a few weeks before he appeared on the Oscars, Chayefsky learned that a medical expert who had helped him with the novel was suing him. Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, the chief psychiatric resident at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, said that he worked in close consultation with the author on Altered States for nearly a year and a half, making what his lawsuit said was “a substantial contribution” to the screenplay that entitled him to half ownership in the property and damages of more than $1.5 million. Chayefsky’s lawyer, Maurice Spanbock, countered that while Lieberman had served as a “research assistant in connection with the novel,” ultimately “his claims are without merit.” But fighting the suit was going to be a long, expensive, and invasive undertaking, requiring Chayefsky to exhaustively inventory every document, draft, and discarded page he had created for the treatment, the novel, and the screenplay, and to rigorously detail his time line and whereabouts throughout the development of the project.

  Chayefsky found an ally for Altered States at the highest level of Columbia Pictures, where the former MGM executive Daniel Melnick had risen to the studio’s presidency. (Reviewing the screenplay a few weeks prior to his official appointment, Melnick had cheekily written to Chayefsky in a telegram, DEAR PADDY: STUNNING, BRILLIANT, BREATHTAKING—BUT WE CAN FIX IT.) The path now seemed clear for a reunion between Chayefsky and Lumet, who was as qualified a candidate to direct Altered States as anyone could imagine. But after lengthy negotiations between the two, the writer and director were unable to come to financial terms. When his final deadline to strike a deal elapsed, Lumet informed Chayefsky that he had instead chosen to direct the romantic comedy Just Tell Me What You Want, following up with a letter that all but guaranteed an end to their creative partnership.

  The five-page handwritten note from Lumet was addressed to “Dearest Paddy & Howard,” but it was clear from its opening lines to whom the director was speaking. “I think you know how sad I am that ‘Altered States’ did not work out,” Lumet began. “But, Paddy, in all honesty, it’s your own fault. I am not a hustler.” Citing his contracts at Universal (where he had a three-picture deal) and Warner Bros. (to whom he owed an additional two films), Lumet said he could not take on Altered States for the amount he was being offered “without destroying my credibility at those places.”

  “But furthermore,” Lumet continued, “it’s all silly. You know that you’ve got a 10 to 12 million picture on your hands. What in the hell is the difference in the few hundred thousand that you would have asked me to reduce? You know I’d make it up in the below-the-line, not even mentioning quality!”

  Lumet, straining to be diplomatic and gracious for a reader whom no amount of diplomacy or grace would placate, while still sticking up for his own self-worth, wrote to Chayefsky: “No one knows better than I how much intellect, guts & talent goes into your work. But you know how hard I work too. I agree that when a writer is of your caliber, that it’s a bit galling to say that to the guy who puts it upon the screen. I am not, as you well know, a believer in ‘auteur’ bullshit. I serve the script.”

  And when it’s a script like yours, that’s an honor. But the only wise thing Pauline Kael ever said was in an article on Candy Bergen, attacking her for her sloppiness and still being a star. She wrote, “You think it’s unfair? Well, life is unfair.” If I’m lucky & have earned the right to that dough then I’m going to take it!

  I’m doing a wonderful script by Jay Presson Allen. She can write! It’s not as good as yours, but very few ever will be. Paddy, you’re perhaps one of the five best writers this country has. (I can hear you asking Howard, “Who the hell are the other four?”) I wish this had worked because you’re going to need a combination of Kubrick’s images and my brain & heart. I wish for movies’ sake that you have a brilliant picture. Please, pick my brain about another director. You know I’m not a competitive man, no one is irreplaceable, and I want to see this done well.

  Lumet concluded, “I love you, love your talent and love working with the two of you. And I’m deeply sorry this didn’t work out.”

  In defeat, Chayefsky and Gottfried turned again to Sam Cohn, who represented Lumet, and were persuaded to hire Arthur Penn, another director on the agent’s roster, in May 1978. Penn was an old hand who had known Chayefsky since they worked together on The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, and his distinguished résumé of feature films included The Miracle Worker and Bonnie and Clyde. But he seemed overwhelmed by the complicated effects and design work needed to realize a script that, among other fantastic imagery, called for the depiction of a “flaming cloud of gasses, hydrogen and helium” as it “WHOOSHES across the black screen at 90,000,000 mph” and “a grayish blob” that “folds and slithers into itself to take on other shapes, changing into soft, pulsating globules of matter.” Joe Alves, the film’s original production designer, would later say that “Arthur really wasn’t that positive” about what he wanted “in any visual concept sense.… He knew exactly what he wanted from the actors. When it got to the effects things, he sort of stopped. He was sort of waiting for us to do something.”

  That November, during a disagreement with Chayefsky over the size of an isolation tank being built for the movie, Penn discovered he lacked the contractual authority to overrule the sc
reenwriter on this or any other matter. “He had the power to veto everything,” said Penn, “and I didn’t find that out until we were getting ready to shoot.” Knowing that if he quit the production outright he would not be paid for the months of work he had already put in, Penn said, “I went back to the house I had rented in Los Angeles, and I waited for the telegram to come removing me from the film.”

  * * *

  October 4, 1978, saw the arrival of a quietly momentous and unexpected occasion: the television debut of Network. The film, which once raised concerns that its contemptuous portrayal of broadcasting would prevent it from ever being aired on television, had been licensed in June 1977 to CBS, which paid $5 million for three showings. (That fee was a respectable sum, considering that NBC had spent the same amount in 1976 for one showing of Gone with the Wind.) Network, whose CBS premiere came three weeks before Lumet’s long-in-the-works adaptation of The Wiz turned up dead on arrival in movie theaters, would not make its transition to the small screen with all its fury and frankness intact; gone from the TV version was the love scene between Dunaway and Holden and most of the movie’s vulgar language. But not all of it: though CBS executives had once contemplated the idea of replacing “bullshit” with “bullsoup,” they decided to let stand three of the thirteen instances in which “bullshit” was said in Network, once by Dunaway and twice by Peter Finch.

  “The use of BS is a focal point of the movie,” said Donn O’Brien, CBS’s vice president of program practices, censoring himself as he explained the decision. “BS is not obscene. It’s gutter slang and can mean many things. We would not allow BS to be used in movies we make ourselves, but Network is a movie of renown that won four Oscars.” Adding that the movie “was not an easy edit,” O’Brien said that he believed CBS had succeeded in delivering its story “without being hit with all that sledgehammer language.”

  * * *

  Principal photography for Altered States began on March 23, 1979, some ten months after Arthur Penn was let go from the production. In his place now stood Ken Russell, the brave, boastful, and unapologetically confident filmmaker whose previous works of sensory overload included Women in Love, Tommy, and Lisztomania. He had hardly been Chayefsky and Gottfried’s first choice as a replacement, and he knew it. “I was the 27th person they offered it to,” Russell would later say, exaggerating only slightly. “They had tried just about everybody in town, but for one reason or another, no one panned out.” The budget of Altered States had risen from about $9 million to more than $12 million, and the film had been dropped by Columbia after another rotation of its executive merry-go-round saw Daniel Melnick replaced by Frank Price, who had no patience for the project’s delays and overruns. But Melnick helped get Altered States reinstated at Warner Bros. before setting up his own independent production company at 20th Century–Fox.

  The first scene to be filmed in Altered States was set at an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles (standing in for Boston), as, according to the screenplay, “eight voluble academics gabble away, swilling their wine, stowing their pasta,” and Eddie Jessup’s wife, Emily, lectures a young medical student on the tool-using abilities of lower primates. Almost immediately, Chayefsky and Russell disagreed on how the moment should be performed.

  “We played it one way,” said Blair Brown, who played Emily Jessup, “and then Ken wanted me to play it more as if Emily was slightly drunk and starting to find it a little bit hilarious. I know Paddy felt that she would never treat her subjects like that. He had asked me about that just on the side.”

  Russell, who was not particularly interested in Chayefsky’s previous accomplishments or the level of input he expected on his films, was offended by the screenwriter’s actions. “While I was busy talking and joking with the crew,” the director said, “he took two of the girls in the scene aside and told them they were playing it ‘too drunk.’ They were very upset with that, and it wasn’t until the scene had been shot that I found out what had gone on. That was when I finally said, ‘This can’t go on,’ and requested that Paddy not come to the set anymore.”

  Richard MacDonald, Russell’s newly appointed production designer, remembered the scene slightly differently. “Paddy went out of his head,” he said. Filming was halted as Russell ordered Chayefsky to leave the set “or else,” at which point the writer exited. “If Paddy wanted a safer approach to the material,” said MacDonald, “he should not have chosen Russell in the first place.”

  Exiled to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a fuming Chayefsky was determined to take his revenge. In a draft of a letter to Ted Ashley, the chairman of Warner Bros., Chayefsky insisted that Russell needed to be deposed from Altered States, not because of “pique on my part or personal paranoia,” but because every choice the director was making, from line readings to his shot selection—filming with an isolation tank open, for example, when Chayefsky’s script called for it to be closed—had pushed the situation to “the point where we have teetered into non-salvageable.” He went on:

  If you’d like, I’d be glad to come out and sit through the dailies with you and your people and point out the dozens and dozens of tiny bad moments and false notes and simply bad shit, one after the other, until the overall effect is the loss of reality and credibility and the introduction of overinflated drama and cheap cliche. What I’m telling you now is that you’re spending thirteen million bucks on a picture that’s going to come out looking not much better than a second-rank horror movie.

  “What I’m saying is, he is no longer under control,” Chayefsky concluded. “The only thing that ever contained him was the script, and now he’s violating the script.”

  Chayefsky’s letters to Gottfried soon devolved into blunt, mechanical recitations of how the author expected the filming of Altered States to continue in his absence. “With this advance notice,” Chayefsky wrote, “you will be able to forestall a crisis. I will be saved the unpleasant duty of demanding that the scene be re-shot for violating the script—(since, as you know, the film must be photographed in accordance with the screenplay, and no changes can be made in the screenplay without my consent)—and you will be saved the problem of imposing this re-shooting on Russell.”

  “If the scene is not shot the way it is written and the way I have reaffirmed it to be shot in this letter,” Chayefsky added, “I will insist on having the scene re-shot until I am satisfied it is not a violation of the script.”

  When it became clear even to Chayefsky that his instructions were not going to be followed, he leaned on Gottfried one last time to have Russell dismissed. As Gottfried later recalled, “Paddy said to me, ‘Howard, I can’t work with him. You’ve got to fire him. Get rid of him.’ I said, ‘Paddy, I don’t know if I can get rid of him at this point. We’ve already dismissed Arthur Penn. We are heavily into production. I would have to have somebody else in mind who could come in and take over the movie. And I honestly don’t know who that would be.’”

  Torn between personal loyalty and professional responsibility, Gottfried saw just one desperate resolution to both problems. “The only way I could do that and get away with it,” he said to Chayefsky, “is if I tell them that you’ll take over the direction of the movie. There’s nobody else we could get. I will go up to them and say, ‘Paddy really thinks he’s the guy to take over the direction of the movie. Consequently, we want to get rid of Ken Russell.’ Otherwise, I don’t see how I could do that.”

  But past experience had taught Chayefsky that he was not a director. “He didn’t think he should,” Gottfried said. “He didn’t think he could. And I understand that, he never directed a movie. But at least I could try to sell that. Nobody understood the movie better. Anyhow, he said, ‘Well, I can’t do that. I won’t do that. And if you’re not going to do that, I’m going to have to leave the movie.’”

  Chayefsky never returned to the set of Altered States, and he and Gottfried never worked together again.

  * * *

  One day after what would have been Pete
r Finch’s sixty-third birthday, on September 29, 1979, his widow, Eletha Finch, now forty-one, married Paul Holliman, a twenty-one-year-old actor, in a small ceremony at the Beverly Hills home of Peter’s former manager, Barry Krost. “Although the marriage took Hollywood by surprise,” Jet magazine observed, “the disparity in ages of the newlyweds hardly raised an eyebrow or comment because of the increasing trend of older women who are now taking younger men for marriage mates or live-in lovers.” Amid rumblings that her immigration status in the United States was once again in jeopardy, a lawyer for Eletha Finch told reporters that this was no marriage of convenience: “It was the real thing, and since Holliman is an American citizen, there is no longer any danger of Eletha’s deportation.”

  The aspiring actress, now known as Eletha Finch Holliman, acknowledged that she had struggled personally in the two years since Peter Finch’s death and that she had even considered suicide. “I started drinking, escaping from reality, ignoring my two kids,” she said. “But eventually I fought my way back. If I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned how to survive.”

  The following summer, Chayefsky attempted to send a check for $200 to the Gordonstoun school, a private academy in Britain, indicating that he wanted the amount designated for Christopher Finch, Eletha’s son, who was a student there. “I would appreciate your getting this money into the Finch boy’s fund as soon as possible,” Chayefsky wrote. Within days the check was returned to him, with a letter from an administrator saying that the school could not “accept gifts which are earmarked to a particular individual.” “I am sorry about this ‘Red Tape’ as we would like to help,” the letter said, “but we have to be very careful to abide by I.R.S. regulations.”