by Lee Hall
Network
adapted for the stage by
LEE HALL
based on the film by
PADDY CHAYEFSKY
Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Premiere Productions
Characters
Network
Act One
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
Scene Eight
Scene Nine
Scene Ten
Scene Eleven
Scene Twelve
Scene Thirteen
Scene Fourteen
Scene Fifteen
Scene Sixteen
Scene Seventeen
Scene Eighteen
Scene Nineteen
Scene Twenty
Scene Twenty-One
Scene Twenty-Two
Act Two
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
Scene Eight
Scene Nine
Scene Ten
Scene Eleven
Scene Twelve
Scene Thirteen
Scene Fourteen
Scene Fifteen
Scene Sixteen
Scene Seventeen
Scene Eighteen
About the Authors
Also by Lee Hall
Copyright
Introduction
I have long wanted to bring Paddy Chayefsky’s drama Network to the stage. I remember being thrilled when I first saw the film in the early 1990s in New York. I was baffled why it wasn’t as well known in Britain as it is in the States, where it has a cult status. The writing is brilliant and coruscating. The image of a man losing it, and that anger being absorbed and manipulated by the capitalist machine seems an abiding fable. Watching the movie again about ten years ago I realised that Chayefsky’s analysis of seventies TV could equally apply to the internet. His understanding that what you see isn’t necessarily what you are getting seemed amazingly prescient. So I made my first bid to try to see if the stage rights were available. I was initially thwarted by the complex maze which always entangles anything that was first written as a movie, but was amazed to get a call from producers who did eventually manage to unpick everything. They had no idea of my existing interest but I gratefully grabbed the opportunity.
I was very keen to ensure that Paddy’s vision was as unsullied as I could make it. Almost every word in the adaptation is actually Paddy’s. I was given access to his notebooks and papers which are housed in the New York Public Library and I pieced together various insights he had about the script retrospectively. If you watch the interviews with him just after the film came out you sense a man who is still struggling to get a handle on the new world order he is drawing on screen. It’s like he’s almost unwittingly stumbled upon something and is trying to keep up with his own invention. I’ve tried to include these thoughts and his passionate articulations about what the film is about in an act I like to think of as ‘keyhole surgery’. Hopefully my interventions are invisible to the untrained eye.
What I had not bargained for when I took on the adaptation was how prescient it would be about our own Age of Anger. As a fable about how the media and corporate interests can exploit the very discontent they cause, it feels current and chilling. Chayefsky’s satire has become almost documentary realism. The only element which seemed stuck in the seventies was the depiction of the terrorists as cynical media whores. Both Ivo and I felt that terrorism’s relationship to the media is now very different from those salad days when it might have been acceptable to poke fun at the supposed radical chic of the Black Power movement. I think we all feel terrorism is difficult to laugh at and not something we can so easily laugh off any more. But other than those cheap jibes at Stokely Carmichael this is unadulterated Chayefsky replete with some of the best dramatic writing and brilliant invective of the last fifty years. I think he’s one of the great American dramatists and would urge anyone to track down The Hospital or Marty or indeed any of his other plays or screenplays if you want to see a master at their game.
Thanks to Dan Chayefsky and Patrick Myers for allowing me to work on this, and Rufus Norris and the extraordinary Ivo van Hove for bringing it to the stage with such care, flair and consideration.
Lee Hall, October 2017
Network, produced in association with Patrick Myles, David Luff, Lee Menzies, Ros Povey and Dean Stolber, was first performed on the Lyttelton stage of the National Theatre, London, on 13 November 2017. The cast, in alphabetical order. was as follows:
Harry Hunter Charles Babalola
Technician Tobi Bamtefa
Arthur Jensen Richard Cordery
Howard Beale Bryan Cranston
Secretary Isabel Della-Porta
Diana Christensen Michelle Dockery
Director Ian Drysdale
Edward Ruddy Michael Elwyn
Louise Schumacher Caroline Faber
Jack Snowden Robert Gilbert
Max Schumacher Douglas Henshall
Nelson Chaney Tom Hodgkins
Frank Hackett Tunji Kasim
Technician Andrew Lewis
Technician Beverley Longhurst
Schlesinger Evan Milton
Floor Manager Stuart Nunn
Technician Rebecca Omogbehin
Continuity Announcer Patrick Poletti
ELA Member Danny Szam
Sheila Paksie Vernon
On Film
News Reporters Julie Armstrong, Sian Polhill-Thomas and Sid Sagar
Verger Adrian Grove
Priest Ian McLarnon
Blindman Quartet
Matt Wright (Music Director)
Tom Challenger (Assistant Music Director)
Pete Harden
Kit Downes
Jonas De Roover (Quartet Manager)
Director Ivo van Hove
Set and Lighting Designer Jan Versweyveld
Video Designer Tal Yarden
Costume Designer An D’Huys
Music and Sound Eric Sleichim
Fight Director Kevin McCurdy
Company Voice Work Jeannette Nelson
Dialect Coach Charmian Hoare
Staff Director Jaz Woodcock-Stewart
The production was played without an interval
Characters
Howard Beale
anchorman
Harry Hunter
associate producer
Max Schumacher
Head of News
Frank Hackett
executive
Louise
his wife
Ed Ruddy
chairman
Diana Christiensen
Director of Programming
Schlesinger
her researcher
Nelson Chaney
executive
Jack Snowden
presenter
Mr Jensen
Head of UBS
Director
Production Assistant
Floor Manager
Continuity Announcer
Outside Broadcaster
Technician
Assistant Cameraman
Secretaries
Warm-up Guy
ELA Member
NETWORK
Act One
SCENE ONE
PRELUDE TO THE NEWS HOUR
Chaos of voices.
TV shows.
Channels of news.
Ads.
Soaps.
All talking at once, across several different networks.
; A TV studio,
Cameras roll into position.
A cacophony of voices from the studio floor,
Voices from the control booth boom over the PA.
The Director and Production Assistant are always in the control booth – but the conversations they are having via their headsets are amplified for us. The Floor Manager answers them through his headset which is also amplified so we can hear.
Production Assistant One minute to go.
Floor Manager One minute to go.
Director Can we have Howard, please?
Floor Manager Can we have Howard?
Production Assistant Continuity on air in fifty-five seconds.
Floor Manager Fifty-five seconds and counting.
Howard. Where the hell is Howard?
Howard is brought on followed by his make-up and costume people. Projected signs tell us the story:
THIS IS THE STORY OF HOWARD BEALE
Howard takes his seat and receives last-minute attention.
THE NETWORK NEWS ANCHOR MAN FOR UBS-TV
And Harry Hunter, Associate Producer, is running through the order of things privately with Howard, referring to a clipboard.
Harry Hunter Patty Hearst, the Middle East, Rust Belt closures, OPEC …
MANDARIN OF TELEVISION
While final checks are made we hear more voices from the control room:
Director Give me A-Camera. Do we have sound?
Floor Manager Check.
Production Assistant Thirty seconds.
Nervous tension, people dashing round executing the last-minute technical stuff. Harry Hunter leaves for the control room.
Director B-Camera.
Floor Manager Check.
Director Sound.
Floor Manager Check.
GRAND OLD MAN OF THE NEWS
Director Howard?
Floor Manager Check.
We are see a plethora of ads for soap powder, tacos, hair products, diarrhoea pills.
LOST A SIX-POINT SHARE IN 1972
The make-up artist and costume person have finished and rush away from Howard’s desk.
Howard prepares himself, shuffling through his papers.
Director Studio ready?
COINCIDING WITH HIS WIFE’S DEATH
Floor Manager Studio ready.
In the control room the countdown starts:
Production Assistant Ten … nine … eight …
The ads conclude.
LEAVING HIM A CHILDLESS WIDOWER
Seven … six … five …
Director Continuity.
The Continuity Announcer appears on the monitors telling us:
Continuity Announcer It’s time for Tonight, with
Howard Beale.
Howard takes a swig of water.
WITH AN ALCOHOL PROBLEM
Director Cue music.
Production Assistant Three … two … one …
AN 8 RATING
The theme music blasts out, the Floor Manager is shouting over the top of this.
AND 12 SHARE
Floor Manager Titles, credits, camera, and Howard!
Howard (on camera) Good evening. It is Friday, September the nineteenth 1975, and I am Howard Beale. Today reaction to the capture of Patty Hearst –
The newscast magically carries on on-screen while Howard moves to the bar, where he joins Max.
– granddaughter of the publisher William Randolph Hearst, in Morse Street, San Francisco. Police reveal images of the moment they apprehended the original kidnappers William and Emily Harris. Hearst, who had eluded capture for nineteen months became part of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army …
AND WAS FIRED BY HIS BEST FRIEND, MAX SCHUMACHER, AFTER THE EVENING NEWS
SCENE TWO
HOWARD AND MAX ARE DRUNK
As the newscast ends we join Howard and Max’s conversation:
Howard Twenty-five years, Max. I came over from CBS in ’51. Can you believe it? They were just building the lower level on the George Washington Bridge – I remember just after I started they were doing a remote there. Except nobody told me. Then ten after seven in the morning, I get a call. ‘Where the hell are you? You’re supposed to be on the George Washington Bridge!’ I jump out of bed, run downstairs, I get out in the street, I flag a cab, jump in. I say, ‘Take me to the middle of the George Washington Bridge!’ The driver turns round. He says, ‘Don’t do it, buddy. You’re a young man, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.’
They break into uncontrollable laughter.
I think I’m going to kill myself.
Max Oh shit, Howard.
Howard I’m going to blow my brains out right on air, right in the middle of the seven o’clock news.
Max You’ll get a hell of a rating, I’ll tell you that. A fifty share. Easy.
Howard You think so?
Max Sure. We could make a series out of it. ‘Suicide of the Week’. Hell, why limit ourselves? ‘Execution of the Week’. Every Sunday night, settle down and watch someone get hung, drawn and quartered. For a logo we’ll have some brute with a black hood over his head. Think of the spin-offs.
Howard ‘Terrorist of the week’.
Max I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, human sacrifices in witches’ covens.
Howard ‘The Death Hour’. A great Sunday-night show for all the family. Wipe Disney right off the air.
They laugh again.
Max I really am sorry, Howard.
SCENE THREE
NEWS STUDIO AGAIN
Chaos of voices, news feeds, ads etc., back exactly where we were in the opening scene.
Images of all channels. Cameras are put into position.
Voices call from the control room – but this time we also follow the conversation that is going on within the control room alongside the cacophony of voices on the news set.
The Production Assistant, the Director and Harry Hunter are all in the control booth, with others.
Production Assistant One minute to go.
Floor Manager One minute to go.
Director Can we have Howard, please?
OK. We run the Presidential item. How long is Snowden’s package?
Harry Hunter One-twenty.
Director Continuity. Going on air in fifty-three seconds.
One-twenty. Tag on Ron Neeson. Then cut to the ads. Open the second segment with the the Iranian piece and the terrorist report. All good.
Can we have Howard, please?
Floor Manager Fifty-five seconds to broadcast.
Howard.
Howard walks confidently on to the set followed by make-up and wardrobe.
Harry Hunter Are we using Squeaky Fromme?
Production Assistant Give me A-camera. Do we have sound?
Director No, Snowden nixed Squeaky Fromme.
Floor Manager Check.
Harry Hunter But we are keeping the map in?
Director B-Camera.
Yes, keep the map. Hold the news-pix.
Floor Manager Check.
Director Sound.
Floor Manager Check.
A countdown is taking place, nervous tension, people dash round executing the last-second technical stuff.
Production Assistant Howard.
Floor Manager Check.
Director Studio ready?
Floor Manager Studio ready.
We see the ad breaks. The make-up artist and costume person rush away from Howard’s desk. In the control room the countdown starts
The ads conclude.
Production Assistant Ten … nine … eight … seven … six …
Director Continuity.
Production Assistant Five … four …
Continuity Announcer It’s time for Tonight, with Howard Beale.
Director Music.
Howard takes a swig of water.
Production Assistant Three … two … one.
The theme music blasts out, the Floor Manager is shouting over the top of
this:
Floor Manager Titles, credits, camera, and Howard!
Howard Good evening. It is Monday, September the twenty-second 1975, and I am Howard Beale. Today, a shot was fired at President Ford’s motorcade in San Francisco. The President was unharmed. The incident happened late this afternoon just seventeen days after an attempt on his life in Sacramento. The shot was fired as Mr Ford was leaving the St Francis Hotel on his way to the airport. Our reporter Jack Snowden reports from the scene.
As Howard hands over to Snowden, the make-up person comes on to set and administers more makeup. We see Snowden doing his piece to camera on the monitors around the studio and in the auditorium.
Snowden (on monitor) The first attempt on President Ford’s life was seventeen days ago, and again today in San Francisco. In spite of two attempts, Mr Ford said in a press conference he will not become a prisoner of the Oval Office …
All the while a Technical Director does a countdown while Snowden’s report is on air.
We also hear the conversation in the control room.
Director Cue Jack.
Sheila, d’ya wanna get a drink later?
Production Assistant I can’t, I said I’d see Jeff from downstairs.
Harry Hunter Jeff?! You realise he’s a married man.
Production Assistant I happen to like married men.
Harry Hunter Sheila, if you are so hot for married men, why go to strangers? What’s wrong with me?
Snowden (on monitor) A hostage of would-be assassins …
Production Assistant Headroll … rolling …
Counting. Twenty seconds … nineteen …
President Ford (on monitor) The American people are good people. Democrats, Independents, Republicans and others. Under no circumstances will I capitulate –