Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies
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a $500,000 offer to write a screenplay about the Israel Defense Forces’: CP, Box 182, Folder 5.
“the subject was simply too painful for me to write about”: Brady, Craft of the Screenwriter, pp. 64–65.
“The assassination, of course, was a fraud”: Ray Bradbury, “Second Coming of ‘Network,’” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 2, 1977.
“Among other things, it gives us a chance for NETWORK two”: CP, Box 11, Folder 15.
“I was mooching on his opinion”: Author interview with Warren Beatty, Nov. 8, 2012.
“We’ve got a guy who falls in love with his role in history”: CP, Box 135, Folder 7.
“an associate professor in behavioral psychology”: CP, Box 94, Folder 2.
“bipedal, protohuman creature”: Lois Gould, “Special Effects,” New York Times, June 18, 1978.
“Paddy decided he wanted a million bucks”: Author interview with Howard Gottfried, July 6, 2012.
traveling to hospitals and universities and meeting with scientific experts: Paddy Chayefsky, Altered States: A Novel (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), pp. ix–x.
“a warm return to your mother’s womb”: Considine, Mad as Hell, p. 354.
a short, incomplete treatment of his proposed film: CP, Box 185, Folder 2.
“We reached the point where Paddy really has nothing else to say”: Author interview with Howard Gottfried, July 6, 2012.
Chayefsky nonetheless had his million-dollar deal: CP, Box 182, Folder 7.
“At least this proves I’m mortal”: Considine, Mad as Hell, pp. 356–57.
“I’ve got two children to raise”: “Eletha Acts,” Page Six (column), New York Post, Apr. 6, 1977.
The value of that estate … was placed at $115,000: “Finch’s Widow Hits Will,” Daily News (New York), May 16, 1977; “Finch Progeny Challenge 2d Wife,” Variety, July 27, 1977.
split from her husband, Peter Wolf, by that summer: Page Six (column), New York Post, Aug. 16, 1977.
an affair with Terry O’Neill, the photographer: Page Six (column), New York Post, Feb. 3, 1978.
$1 million to star in Irvin Kershner’s thriller Eyes of Laura Mars: Parade, Aug. 14, 1977.
$750,000 to appear … in a remake of the boxing drama The Champ: “Champ to Star Faye Dunaway and Jon Voight,” New York Times, Apr. 29, 1978.
“She just didn’t like me” … “and I didn’t like her”: “A List: Art of the Deal,” W, Feb. 2006.
the portrait of Dunaway that ran on its cover: “New Mag’s Cover Girl Unmasked,” New York, Feb. 27, 1978.
“I have been an actor for 38 years”: Harmetz, “Happy Journey of Holden and Powers.”
The couple sent Christmas cards to Chayefsky: CP, Box 9, Folder 7.
had been told to avoid caffeine, tobacco, and salt and to exercise more: Considine, Mad as Hell, p. 357.
“the P.L.O. says Israel has no right to exist”: Display advertisement, New York Times, Sept. 21, 1977.
“the only comment you keep hearing is ‘Kill the enemy’”: Richard F. Shepard, “Redgrave Film on P.L.O. Stirs a Controversy,” New York Times, Nov. 10, 1977.
“I believe the Palestinian people have been denied the right to be heard”: “Redgrave Defends P.L.O. Film,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 1977.
members of the Jewish Defense League from turning out at the 1978 Oscars: Aljean Harmetz, “‘Annie Hall’ Wins 4 Academy Awards,” New York Times, Apr. 4, 1978.
a role that Faye Dunaway had turned down: Dunaway, Looking for Gatsby, p. 320.
“the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums”: Vanessa Redgrave, Academy Awards speech, Apr. 3, 1978, archived at the Paley Center for Media, New York, NY.
“Paddy just went nuts after her speech”: Author interview with Mike Medavoy, Mar. 12, 2012.
“everybody ran to Paddy and wanted to say something”: Author interview with Sherry Lansing, Mar. 14, 2012.
“Before I get onto the writing awards, there’s a little matter I’d like to tidy up”: Paddy Chayefsky, Academy Awards speech, Apr. 3, 1978, archived at the Paley Center for Media, New York, NY.
“Arthur didn’t speak to me for five years”: Author interview with Shirley MacLaine, Nov. 16, 2012.
numerous appreciative letters and correspondence that applauded him: CP, Box 19, Folder 17.
“My husband would be proud of you”: CP, Box 96, Folder 7.
“You damned near made me cry with your gutsy but courteous put-down”: CP, Box 19, Folder 17.
“Miss Redgrave’s acceptance speech did not appear as a grandstand play at all”: Ibid.
“the fustian fancies later delivered by Paddy Chayefsky”: Vincent Canby, “In the Afterglow of the Oscars,” New York Times, Apr. 16, 1978.
Columbia Pictures tested the project with such names as The Atavist: CP, Box 60, Folder 6. Among the titles that were field-tested by Columbia Pictures, Altered States was deemed to possess a “critical weakness,” according to a studio memo: “This title conjured up the greatest variety of interpretations—almost all of them bearing no relation to the proposed movie. Brain-washing, war between the states, witchcraft.… A number of people perceived that it would be a movie dealing with drugs, but in the illicit sense rather than the experimental sense. The lack of a clear message produced the lowest degree of interest.”
“all the electronic-spin resonance tests”: Gould, “Special Effects.”
“a few passages of spectacularly bad writing”: Alan Harrington, “Madness in the Deep,” Saturday Review, July 1978.
a medical expert who had helped him with the novel was suing him: CP, Box 62, Folder 2.
his lawsuit said was “a substantial contribution” to the screenplay: “St. Vincent M.D. Sues Chayefsky,” Variety, May 31, 1978.
requiring Chayefsky to exhaustively inventory every document, draft, and discarded page: As thoroughly catalogued in CP. The case was settled in 1982 after a two-week jury trial, with Lieberman receiving a payment of $40,000.
Melnick had risen to the studio’s presidency: Aljean Harmetz, “Melnick Named President of Columbia Pictures,” New York Times, June 2, 1978.
STUNNING, BRILLIANT, BREATHTAKING—BUT WE CAN FIX IT: CP, Box 19, Folder 17.
“I think you know how sad I am that ‘Altered States’ did not work out”: CP, Box 11, Folder 15.
a “flaming cloud of gasses, hydrogen and helium”: Chayefsky, The Screenplays Vol. II, pp. 256–57.
“He was sort of waiting for us to do something”: “The Filming of Altered States,” Cinefantastique 11, no. 2 (Fall 1981).
“He had the power to veto everything”: Considine, Mad as Hell, p. 363.
CBS, which paid $5 million for three showings: Variety, June 1, 1977.
once contemplated the idea of replacing “bullshit” with “bullsoup”: Val Adams, “Television Hopes to Go ‘Network,’” Daily News (New York), Dec. 23, 1976.
“The use of BS is a focal point of the movie”: “Taking Bed and Bawdy out of ‘Network,’” New York Daily Metro, Sept. 26, 1978.
Principal photography for Altered States began on March 23, 1979: CP, Box 182, Folder 9.
“I was the 27th person they offered it to”: “The Filming of Altered States.”
Melnick helped get Altered States reinstated at Warner Bros.: Aljean Harmetz, “Melnick Production Unit Leaves Columbia for Fox,” New York Times, Jan. 23, 1980.
“eight voluble academics gabble away”: Chayefsky, The Screenplays Vol. II, pp. 248–49.
Almost immediately, Chayefsky and Russell disagreed: “The Filming of Altered States.”
“the point where we have teetered into non-salvageable”: CP, Box 60, Folder 5.
“you will be able to forestall a crisis”: CP, Box 60, Folder 4.
“Paddy said to me, ‘Howard, I can’t work with him’”: Author interview with Howard Gottfried, July 6, 2012.
“the marriage took Hollywood by surprise”: “Actor Peter Finch’s Widow, 41, Weds Young Hollywood Actor, Age 21,” Jet, Oct. 18, 1979.
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“eventually I fought my way back”: “A New Start,” Parade, Nov. 18, 1979.
Chayefsky attempted to send a check for $200 to the Gordonstoun school: CP, Box 96, Folder 7.
“Bill did more in his life, on and off the screen”: Stefanie Powers, One from the Hart (New York: Gallery Books, 2010), p. 190; also Linda Charlton, “William Holden Dead at 63; Won Oscar for ‘Stalag 17,’” New York Times, Nov. 17, 1981; and Andrew M. Brown, “When Alcoholics Drink Themselves to Death,” Telegraph (London), Apr. 7, 2011.
“Faye Dunaway is doing the ‘I want to be alone’ bit”: Page Six (column), New York Post, July 20, 1979.
the actress had been dropped from an upcoming cover of Los Angeles magazine: Jack Martin, “Faye’s ‘Too Fat’ to Be Magazine’s Cover-girl,” New York Post, Aug. 22, 1979.
the closure of a troubled clothing store and antiques emporium: Jack Martin, “Pity Poor Old Faye: Nobody Wants to Buy Her Antiques,” New York Post, Sept. 21, 1979.
“I really like things to be done right … I’m like Joan in that way”: Peter Lester, “Faye Dunaway Surfaces with Sympathy for Joan Crawford Despite a Harrowing Movie Portrayal,” People, Oct. 5, 1981.
“Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene”: Variety review of Mommie Dearest, http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117793196?refcatid=31&printerfriendly=true.
“These scenes have been in the finished motion picture since it was released”: CP, Box 96, Folder 4.
“I feel almost totally alienated from what’s going on today”: Ronald L. Davis, “Interview with Paddy Chayefsky,” Ronald L. Davis Oral History Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
“This one has everything: sex, violence, comedy, thrills, tenderness”: Richard Corliss, “Cinema: Invasion of the Mind Snatcher,” Time, Dec. 29, 1980.
“it is at least dependably—even exhilaratingly—bizarre”: Janet Maslin, “Screen: Ken Russell’s ‘Altered States,’” New York Times, Dec. 25, 1980.
a historical drama about Alger Hiss: CP, Box 182, Folder 11. The drama would not have included Hiss, who was still alive at the time, due to concerns about defamation of character and invasion of privacy. But Whittaker Chambers would have appeared in the play, as would a fictional lover of Chambers’s, called “Mr. X.”
Some friends said this was not his natural hair: Considine, Mad as Hell, pp. 393–95.
On July 4 he was admitted for treatment: CP, Box 166, Folder 12.
“They weren’t delusional or hallucinatory”: Author interview with Dan Chayefsky. Mar. 1, 2013.
“I tried. I really tried”: Considine, Mad as Hell, p. 396.
“I once read his palm when I was young”: Author interview with Dan Chayefsky, Mar. 1, 2013.
“Our family has never taken death all that seriously”: CP, Box 182, Folder 8.
Chayefsky’s funeral service was held on August 4: Herbert Mitgang, “Chayefsky Praised for Passion in Exposing Life’s Injustices,” New York Times, Aug. 5, 1981.
“Paddy and I had a deal”: Author interview with James L. Brooks, Nov. 9, 2012; and Martin Gottfried, All His Jazz: The Life and Death of Bob Fosse (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), pp. 405–6.
“I just hope the world lasts that long”: John Brady, “We Were Writing for Criers, Not for Laughers,” American Film, Dec. 1981.
8. It’s All Going to Happen
“There will be soothsayers soon”: Brady, Craft of the Screenwriter, p. 69.
“This tube is the most awesome goddam force in the whole godless world!”: Chayefsky, The Screenplays Vol. II, p. 183.
“No predictor of the future—not even Orwell”: Author interview with Aaron Sorkin, May 2, 2011.
“Chayefsky’s warning was made to people who knew everything he said was true”: Author interview with Peggy Noonan, Mar. 12, 2013.
“I have seen everything in that movie come true”: Author interview with Keith Olbermann, Nov. 8, 2012.
First came the 1986 maneuvering by the sibling corporate titans: “Business People: Corporate Newsmakers of 1986; Tisch’s Regimen Built Trimmer CBS,” New York Times, Dec. 26, 1986.
when CBS fired 215 employees from its news department: Peter J. Boyer, “CBS’s Tisch Responds,” New York Times, Mar. 10, 1987.
“thirty million dollars bought you maybe sixty Walter Cronkites”: Author interview with Keith Olbermann, Nov. 8, 2012.
his “urbane small talk” with Samuel Goldwyn, Eva Gabor, and Groucho Marx on Person to Person: “Edward R. Murrow, Broadcaster and Ex-Chief of U.S.I.A., Dies,” New York Times, Apr. 28, 1965.
“we’ve got to shout these truths in which we believe from the rooftops”: Chris Matthews, “And That’s the Way It Was: ‘Cronkite,’ a Biography by Douglas Brinkley,” New York Times, July 6, 2012.
“we are not above climbing over the rubble each week to take an entertainment-size paycheck”: Don Hewitt, Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001), p. 168.
abolished its long-standing Fairness Doctrine: Robert D. Hershey Jr., “F.C.C. Votes Down Fairness Doctrine in a 4–0 Decision,” New York Times, Aug. 5, 1987.
“It was everyone’s basic understanding … that the information business was a business”: Author interview with Bill Wolff, Dec. 27, 2012.
“There’s a segment of the viewing population which likes to either have their opinion validated”: Author interview with Anderson Cooper, Nov. 13, 2012. Among broadcast journalists, Anderson Cooper has unique connections to Network: his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, was married to Sidney Lumet from 1956 to 1963; the couple dated again briefly after the death of Wyatt Emory Cooper, Anderson Cooper’s father, in 1978. Vanderbilt and Cooper are also cousins of Beatrice Straight.
“If I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, I’m going to say that”: Author interview with Bill O’Reilly, Dec. 12, 2012.
Glenn Beck … has claimed Howard Beale as an influence: Brian Stelter and Bill Carter, “Fox News’s Mad, Apocalyptic, Tearful Rising Star,” New York Times, Mar. 29, 2009.
“I thought, wow, none of those stories end well”: Author interview with Stephen Colbert, May 12, 2011.
“it was three white, middle-aged guys saying what the news was”: Author interview with Anderson Cooper, Nov. 13, 2012.
“I don’t know what diversity there is”: Author interview with Gwen Ifill, Dec. 18, 2012.
At the end of 2012, each of the three network programs: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/12/04/world-news-slashes-total-viewing-gap-by-with-nbc-nightly-news-by-double-digits/160248/.
numbers that the cable competition simply cannot touch: http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/the-top-cable-news-programs-in-november-2012-were_b156891.
“We ran Countdown several times on NBC”: Author interview with Keith Olbermann, Nov. 8, 2012.
“There is still a tremendous appetite for straight, sober information”: Author interview with Bill Wolff, Dec. 27, 2012.
“Chayefsky is chiding the audience”: Author interview with Bill O’Reilly, Dec. 12, 2012.
“He looks like Liberace, in capes and everything”: Author interview with Anderson Cooper, Nov. 13, 2012.
“It wasn’t easy back in the seventies, and it’s certainly not easy now”: Author interview with Oliver Stone, Nov. 19, 2012.
“Could I imagine a great movie getting made today? Yeah”: Author interview with James L. Brooks, Nov. 9, 2012.
“society was still really informed by that perspective on the world”: Author interview with Ben Affleck, Jan. 21, 2013.
“we’re not nearly as important as we think we are”: Author interview with Bill Wolff, Dec. 27, 2012.
“the same award that was given to Paddy Chayefsky thirty-five years ago”: Aaron Sorkin, Academy Awards speech, Feb. 27, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VP5mFHl_lY.
“You wish Chayefsky could come back to life long enough to write The Internet”: Author interview with Aaron Sorkin, May 2, 2011.
; “You can’t build for the future with nice, polite people”: Logan, Movie Stars, Real People, and Me, p. 125.
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
ABC
ABC News
Evening News
Academy Awards
Finch and
Network and
Redgrave and
Action News
Addy, Wesley
Advocate
Affleck, Ben
After the Fall (Miller)
Alfred, William
Ali, Muhammad
Allen, Irwin
Allen, Jay Presson
Allen, Woody
All the President’s Men
Altered States
Chayefsky novel and
Chayefsky’s disputes with Russell and
screenplay pseudonym and
written
Altman, Robert
Alves, Joe
Americanization of Emily, The (Chayefsky screenplay)
Amjen Entertainment
Anderson, Maxwell
Anderson Cooper
Anderson Tapes, The
Andrews, Dana
Anti-Defamation League
anti-Semitism
Arafat, Yasir
Argo
Arledge, Roone
Arlen, Michael J.
Ashby, Hal
Ashley, Ted
Assault on Precinct
As Young as You Feel (Chayefsky screenplay)
Atlantic Monthly
Avildsen, John G.
Bachelor Party, The (Chayefsky screenplay)
written as teleplay
Bananas
Barnes, Clive
Barrett, Christopher. See Finch, Christopher
Bassey, Shirley
Beale, Howard (character)
Bradbury on
Chayefsky on
critics on
Finch on
influence of
Beatty, Ned
Beatty, Warren
Beck, Glenn
Begelman, David
Behn, Noel
Belafonte, Harry