Network

Diana Christensen:
Hi. I'm Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.

Laureen Hobbs:
I'm Laureen Hobbs, a badass commie n*gger.

Diana Christensen:
Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.

Diana Christensen:
I'm interested in doing a weekly dramatic series based on the Ecumenical Liberation Army. The way I see the series is: Each week we open with an authentic act of political terrorism taken on the spot, in the actual moment. Then we go to the drama behind the opening film footage. That's your job, Ms. Hobbs. You've got to get the Ecumenicals to bring in that film footage for us. The network can't deal with them directly; they are, after all, wanted criminals.

Diana Christensen:
The time has come to re-evaluate our relationship, Max.

Max Schumacher:
So I see.

Diana Christensen:
I don't like the way this script of ours has turned out. It's turning into a seedy little drama.

Max Schumacher:
You're going to cancel the show?

Diana Christensen:
Right.

Louise Schumacher:
Get out, go anywhere you want, go to a hotel, go live with her, and don't come back. Because, after 25 years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other, I'm damned if I'm going to stand here and have you tell me you're in love with somebody else. Because this isn't a convention weekend with your secretary, is it? Or - or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it. And, if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance. I hurt. Don't you understand that? I hurt badly.

Nelson Chaney:
All I know is that this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.

Frank Hackett:
We're not a respectable network. We're a whorehouse network, and 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 is duly noted; you can always resign tomorrow.

Nelson Chaney:
The affiliates won't carry it.

Frank Hackett:
The affiliates will kiss your ass if you can hand them a hit show.

Diana Christensen:
By tomorrow, he'll have a 50 share, maybe even a 60. Howard Beale is processed instant God, and right now, it looks like he may just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.

Max Schumacher:
After living with you for the last six months, I'm turning into one of your scripts. Well, this is not a script, Diana. There's some real, actual life going on here.

Max Schumacher:
I feel lousy about the pain that I've caused my wife and kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken, and all of those things you think sentimental, but which my generation calls simple human decency. And I miss my home, because I'm beginning to get scared shitless, because all of a sudden it's closer to the end than the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me, with definable features.

Diana Christensen:
Look, I sent you all a concept analysis report yesterday. Did any of you read it?

Diana Christensen:
Well, in a nutshell, it said: "The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression; they've turned off, shot up, and they've f***ed themselves limp, and nothing helps." So, this concept analysis report concludes, "The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them." I've been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network. I want counterculture, I want anti-establishment. I don't want to play butch boss with you people, but when I took over this department, it had the worst programming record in television history. This network hasn't one show in the top twenty. This network is an industry joke, and we'd better start putting together one winner for next September. I want a show developed based on the activities of a terrorist group, "Joseph Stalin and His Merry Band of Bolsheviks," I want ideas from you people. This is what you're paid for. And by the way, the next time I send an audience research report around, you'd all better read it, or I'll sack the f***ing lot of you. Is that clear?

Diana Christensen:
Well Max, here we are: Middle-aged man reaffirming his middle-aged manhood, and a terrified young woman with a father complex. What sort of script do you think we can make out of this?

Diana Christensen:
What's really bugging me now is my daytime programming. NBC's got a lock on daytime - lousy game shows - and I'd like to bust them. I'm thinking of doing a homosexual soap opera, "The Dykes": The heart-rending saga about a woman hopelessly in love with her husband's mistress.

Diana Christensen:
I was married for four years, and pretended to be happy; and I had six years of analysis, and pretended to be sane. My husband ran off with his boyfriend, and I had an affair with my analyst, who told me I was the worst lay he'd ever had.

Diana Christensen:
I watched your 6 o'clock news today; it's straight tabloid. You had a minute and a half of that lady riding a bike naked in Central Park; on the other hand, you had less than a minute of hard national and international news. It was all sex, scandal, brutal crime, sports, children with incurable diseases, and lost puppies. So, I don't think I'll listen to any protestations of high standards of journalism when you're right down on the streets soliciting audiences like the rest of us. Look, all I'm saying is if you're going to hustle, at least do it right.

Frank Hackett:
I argued that television was a volatile industry in which success and failure were determined week by week; Mr. Jensen does not like volatile industries and suggested with a certain sinister silkiness that volatility in business usually reflected bad management.

Arthur Jensen:
It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality 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. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? 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.

Arthur Jensen:
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? 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, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.

Arthur Jensen:
The world is a business, Mr. Beale; it has been since man crawled out of the slime. 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 tranquilized, 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:
I have seen the face of God.

Arthur Jensen:
You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

Howard Beale:
I would like at this moment to announce that I will be retiring from this program in two weeks' time because of poor ratings. Since this show is the only thing I had going for me in my life, I've decided to kill myself. I'm going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. 50 share, easy.

Howard Beale:
All human beings are becoming humanoids. All over the world, not just in America. We're just getting there faster since we're the most advanced country.

Diana Christensen:
I'm sorry for all those things I said to you last night. You're not the worst f*** I ever had. Believe me, I've had worse. You don't puff or snorkel and make death-like rattles. As a matter of fact, you're rather serene in the sack.

Max Schumacher:
Why is it that a woman always thinks that the most savage thing she can say to a man is to impugn his cocksmanship.

Diana Christensen:
I'm sorry I impugned your cocksmanship.

Max Schumacher:
I gave up comparing genitals back in the schoolyard.

Howard Beale:
All I know is, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being, goddamn it. My life has value."

Howard Beale:
We'll tell you anything you want to hear, we lie like hell.

Howard Beale:
You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do. Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.

Howard Beale:
Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation; this tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers; this tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communications Corporation of America; there's a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett, sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the twentieth floor. And when the 12th largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what sh*t will be peddled for truth on this network?

Howard Beale:
Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit. Am I still on the air? I really don't know any other way to say it other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don't know why we're going through all this pointless pain, humiliation, decays, so there better be someone somewhere who does know. That's the God bullshit. And then, there's the noble man bullshit; that man is a noble creature that can order his own world; who needs God? Well, if there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of bullshit. I don't have anything going for me. I haven't got any kids. And I was married for forty-three years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.

Howard Beale:
Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park.

Howard Beale:
I want you to go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

Laureen Hobbs:
He's plague, he's smallpox, he's typhoid. I don't want to follow his goddamn show. I want out of that 8 o'clock spot. I've got enough troubles without Howard Beale as a lead-in. You guys scheduled me up against "Tony Orlando and Dawn," NBC's got "Little House on the Prairie," ABC's got "The Bionic Woman". You've gotta do something. You've gotta do something about Howard Beale. Get him off the air. Get him off. Do something. DO ANYTHING.

Frank Hackett:
Well, the issue is: Shall we kill Howard Beale, or not? I'd like to get some more opinions on that.

Diana Christensen:
I don't see we have any options, Frank. Let's kill the son-of-a-b*tch.

Mary Ann Gifford:
You f***in' fascist. Did you see the film we made at the San Reno jail breakout demonstrating the rising up of the seminal prisoner class infrastructure?

Laureen Hobbs:
You can blow the seminal prisoner class infrastructure out your ass. I'm not knockin' down my goddamn distribution charges.

Barbara:
These are those four outlines submitted by Universal for an hour series. You needn't bother to read them; I'll tell them to you. The first one is set at a large Eastern law school, presumably Harvard. The series is irresistibly entitled "The New Lawyers." The running characters are a crusty-but-benign ex-Supreme Court justice, presumably Oliver Wendell Holmes by way of Dr. Zorba; there's a beautiful girl graduate student; and the local district attorney who is brilliant and sometimes cuts corners. The second one is called "The Amazon Squad." The running characters include a crusty-but-benign police lieutenant who's always getting heat from the commissioner; a hard-nosed, hard-drinking detective who thinks women belong in the kitchen; and the brilliant and beautiful young girl cop who's fighting the feminist battle on the force. Up next is another one of those investigative reporter shows. A crusty-but-benign managing editor who's always gett...

Narrator:
This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because of lousy ratings.

Arthur Jensen:
Good morning, Mr. Beale. They tell me you're a madman.

Howard Beale:
...I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest, I don't want you to riot, I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression, the inflation, the Russians, or the crime in the streets. All I know is that first... You've got to get mad.

Howard Beale:
I MUST MAKE MY WITNESS.

Howard Beale:
This is not a psychotic breakdown; it's a cleansing moment of clarity.

Secretary:
Mr. Hackett's trying to get through to you.

Max Schumacher:
Tell Mr. Hackett to go f*** himself.

Howard Beale:
I'm gonna blow my brains out right on the air, right in the middle of the seven o'clock news.

Max Schumacher:
Well, you'll get a hell of a rating, I'll tell you that. A 50 share, at least.

Max Schumacher:
We could make a series of it. "Suicide of the Week." Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? "Execution of the Week."

Howard Beale:
"Terrorist of the Week."

Max Schumacher:
I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: "The Death Hour." A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It'd wipe that f***in' Disney right off the air.

Diana Christensen:
Look, we've got a bunch of hobgoblin radicals called the Ecumenical Liberation Army who go around taking home movies of themselves robbing banks. Now, maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, hijacking 747s, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd open each week's segment with their authentic footage, hire a couple of writers to write a story behind that footage, and we've got ourselves a series.

Max Schumacher:
She does have one script in which I kill myself: An adapted for television version of "Anna Karenina", where she's Count Vronsky and I'm Anna.

Frank Hackett:
Four hours ago I was the Sun God at CCA, Mr. Jensen's handpicked golden boy, the heir apparent. Now I'm a man without a corporation.

Frank Hackett:
Mr. Jensen is unhappy with Howard Beale and wants him discontinued.

Diana Christensen:
He may be unhappy, but he isn't stupid enough to withdraw the number one show on television out of pique.

Frank Hackett:
Two billion dollars is not pique! That's the Wrath of God! And the Wrath of God wants Howard Beale fired.

Frank Hackett:
I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna impale the son-of-a-b*tch with a sharp stick through the heart. I'll take out a contract on him. I'll hire a professional killer; no, I'll do it myself. I'll strangle him with a sash cord.

Arthur Jensen:
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 the price-cost probabilities of their transactions, just like we do.

Diana Christensen:
We're kidding ourselves. Full-fledged messiahs don't come in bunches.

Howard Beale:
I'm gonna blow my brains out right on the air, right in the middle of the seven o'clock news.

Max Schumacher:
Well, you'll get a hell of a rating, I'll tell you that. A 50 share, at least. We could make a series of it. "Suicide of the Week." Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? "Execution of the Week."

Howard Beale:
"Terrorist of the Week."

Max Schumacher:
I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: "The Death Hour." A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It'd wipe that f***in' Disney right off the air.

Diana Christensen:
I think we can get a hell of a movie of the week out of it, maybe even a series...Look, we've got a bunch of hobgoblin radicals called the Ecumenical Liberation Army who go around taking home movies of themselves robbing banks. Maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, hijacking 747's, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd open each week's segment with their authentic footage, hire a couple of writers to write some story behind that footage, and we've got ourselves a series.

George Bosch:
A series about a bunch of, uh, bank-robbing guerrillas?

Barbara Schlesinger:
What are we gonna call it - the Mao Tse-Tung Hour?

Diana Christensen:
Why not? They've got 'Strike Force', 'Task Force', 'SWAT'. Why not Che Guevara and his own little 'Mod Squad'. Look, I sent you all a concept analysis report yesterday. Did any of you read it? Well, in a nutshell, it said, 'The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression. They've turned off, shot up, and they've screwed themselves limp and nothing helps.' So this concept analysis report concludes, 'The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them.' I've been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network. I want counter-culture. I want anti-establishment. [She shuts the door] I don't want to play butch boss with you people. But when I took over this department, it had the worst programming record in television history. This network hasn't one show in the top 20. This network is an industry joke. We better start putting together one winner for next September. I want a show developed, based on the activities of a terrorist group. 'Joseph Stalin and his Merry Band of Bolsheviks.' I want ideas from you people. That is what you're paid for. And, by the way, the next time I send an audience research report around, you'd all better read it or I'll sack the f***in' lot of you, is that clear?

Diana Christensen:
We just increased our audience by twenty or thirty million people in one night. Now, you're not gonna get something like this dumped in your lap for the rest of your days, and you can't just piss it away. Howard Beale got up there last night and said what every American feels, that he's tired of all the bullshit. He's articulating the popular rage. I want that show, Frank. I can turn that show into the biggest smash on television.

Frank Hackett:
What do you mean, you want that show? It's a news show. It's not your department.

Diana Christensen:
I see Howard Beale as a latter-day prophet, a magnificent messianic figure, inveighing against the hypocrisies of our times, a strip Savonarola, Monday through Friday. I tell you, Frank, that could just go through the roof. And I'm talking about a six dollar cost per thousand show! I'm talking about a hundred, a hundred thirty thousand dollar minutes! Do you want to figure out the revenues of a strip show that sells for a hundred thousand bucks a minute? One show like that could pull this whole network right out of the hole! Now, Frank, it's being handed to us on a plate. Let's not blow it!

Max Schumacher:
He could be jumping off a roof for all I know. The man is insane. He's not responsible for himself. He needs care and treatment. And all you grave-robbers think about is that he's a hit!

Diana Christensen:
You know, Max, it's just possible that he isn't insane, that he is, in fact, imbued with some special spirit.

Max Schumacher:
My God, I'm supposed to be the romantic. You're supposed to be the hard-bitten realist.

Diana Christensen:
All right. Howard Beale obviously fills a void. The audience out there obviously 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, and right now, it looks like he may just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.

Max Schumacher:
I am not putting Howard back on the air.

Diana Christensen:
It's not your show any more, Max, it's mine.

Frank Hackett:
I gave her the show, Schumacher. I'm putting the network news show under programming. Mr. Ruddy has had a mild heart attack and is not taking calls. In his absence, I'm making all network decisions, including one I've been wanting to make a long time - you're fired.

Louise:
Then get out. Go anywhere you want. Go to a hotel, go live with her, but don't come back! Because, after 25 years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other, I'm damned if I'm gonna stand here and have you tell me you're in love with somebody else! Because this isn't a convention weekend with your secretary, is it? Or -- or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it! And if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance! [sobbing] I hurt! Don't you understand that? I hurt badly! Does she love you, Max?

Max Schumacher:
[about Diana] 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 from over the TV set. She has very carefully devised a number of scenarios for all of us to play, like a Movie of the Week. And, my God, look at us, Louise. Here we are going through the obligatory middle-of-act-two 'scorned wife throws peccant husband out' scene. But don't worry, I'll come back to you in the end. All of her plot outlines have me leaving her and coming back to you because the audience won't buy a rejection of the happy American family.

Arthur Jensen:
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?! Do 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, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, 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 sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one 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 the price-cost probabilities of their 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 by-laws 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 tranquilized, 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:
I have seen the face of God.

Arthur Jensen:
You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

Diana Christensen:
You're his goddamn agent. I'm counting on you to talk some sense into the lunatic. Nobody wants to hear about dying democracy and dehumanization.

Max Schumacher:
I'm sorry I'm late.

Diana Christensen:
We're starting to get rumbles from the agencies. Another couple of weeks and the sponsors will be bailing out! This is a breach of contract. This isn't the Howard Beale we signed. Get him off that corporate universe kick, or so help me, I'll pull it off the air! I told him, Lou! I've been telling him every day for a week! I'm sick of telling him. Now you tell him! Jesus Christ. You could help me out with Howard if you wanted to. He listens to you. You're his best friend.

Max Schumacher:
I'm tired of all this hysteria about Howard Beale.

Diana Christensen:
Every time you come from seeing somebody in your family you come back in one of these middle-aged moods.

Max Schumacher:
And I'm tired of finding you on the god-damn telephone every time I turn around. I'm tired of being an accessory in your life! And I'm tired of pretending to write this dumb book about my maverick days in the great early years of television. Every god-damned executive fired from a network in the last twenty years has written this dumb book about the great early years of television. And nobody wants a dumb, damn, god-damn book about the great years of television...

Diana Christensen:
Terrific, Max! Maybe you can start a whole new career as an actor.

Max Schumacher:
After living with you for six months, I'm turning into one of your scripts. Well, this is not a script, Diana. There's some real actual life going on here. I went to visit my wife today because she's in a state of depression, so depressed that my daughter flew all the way from Seattle to be with her. And I feel lousy about that. I feel lousy about the pain that I've caused my wife and my kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken and all of those things that you think sentimental, but which my generation called simple human decency. And I miss my home because I'm beginning to get scared shitless. Because all of a sudden, it's closer to the end than it is to the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me - with definable features. You're dealing with a man that has primal doubts, Diana, and you've got to cope with it. I'm not some guy discussing male menopause on the 'Barbara Walters Show'. I'm the man that you presumably love. I'm part of your life. I live here. I'm real. You can't switch to another station.

Diana Christensen:
What exactly is it you want me to do?

Max Schumacher:
I just want you to love me. I just want you to love me, primal doubts and all. You understand that, don't you?

Diana Christensen:
I think the time has come to re-evaluate our relationship, Max.

Max Schumacher:
So I see.

Diana Christensen:
I don't like the way this script of ours is turning out. It's turning into a seedy little drama. Middle-aged man leaves wife and family for young heartless woman, goes to pot. The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings. I don't like it.

Max Schumacher:
So you're gonna cancel the show.

Diana Christensen:
Right.

Max Schumacher:
Here, let me do that.

Diana Christensen:
The simple fact is, Max, that you're a family man. You like a home and kids. That's beautiful. I'm incapable of any such commitment. All you'll get from me is a couple months of intermittent sex and recriminate and ugly little scenes like the one we had last night. I'm sorry for all those things I said to you last night. You're not the worst f*** I've ever had. Believe me, I've had worse. You don't puff or snorkle and make death-like rattles. As a matter of fact, you're rather serene in the sack.

Max Schumacher:
Why is it that a woman always thinks that the most savage thing she can say to a man is to impugn his cocksmanship?

Diana Christensen:
Well, I'm sorry I impugned your cocksmanship.

Max Schumacher:
I gave up comparing genitals back in the schoolyard.

Diana Christensen:
You're being docile as hell about this.

Max Schumacher:
Oh, hell, Diana, I knew it was over with us weeks ago.

Diana Christensen:
Will you go back to your wife?

Max Schumacher:
I'll give it a try, but I don't think she'll jump at it. But don't worry about me. I'll manage. I always have, I always will. I'm more concerned about you. You're not the boozer type. So I figure a year, maybe two, before you crack up. Or jump out of your 14th floor office window.

Diana Christensen:
Stop selling, Max. I don't need you. I don't want your pain. I don't want your menopausal decay and death! I don't need you, Max. Now get out of here!

Max Schumacher:
You need me. You need me badly. Because I'm your last contact with human reality. I love you. And that painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day.

Diana Christensen:
[hesitatingly] Then, don't leave me.

Max Schumacher:
It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything 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 are 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.

[Kisses her]

Max Schumacher:
And it's a happy ending: Wayward husband comes to his senses, returns to his wife, with whom he has established a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her arctic desolation. Music up with a swell; final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week's show.

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 street, and 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, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We know things are bad — worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are 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, I don't want you to riot, I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad! [shouting] You've got to say: 'I'm a human being, goddammit! 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 GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell: 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!...You've got to say: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis! But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

Howard Beale:
Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems and he died at eleven o'clock this morning of a heart condition, and woe is us, we're in a lot of trouble! So, a rich little man with white hair died. What does that got to do with the price of rice, right? And why is that woe to us? Because you people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube! Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation! This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers! This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world! And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died! Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communication Corporation of America. There's a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the 20th floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what sh*t 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 wanna hear. We lie like hell. We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer, and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house. And 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 sh*t 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 that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal! You do whatever the tube tells you, you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even 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 this sentence I am speaking to you now! Turn them off!

Howard Beale: Last night I got up here and asked you people to stand up and fight for your heritage, and you did, and it was beautiful. Six million telegrams were received at the White House. The Arab takeover of CCA has been stopped. The people spoke, the people won. It was a radiant eruption of democracy. But I think that was it, fellas. That sort of thing is not likely to happen again. Because 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 United States is the richest, the most powerful, the most advanced country in the world, light-years ahead of any other country. And I don't mean the Communists are gonna take over the world, because 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 two hundred 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.

Howard Beale:
The American people are good people: Democrats, Independents, Republicans and others. Under no circumstances will I, and I hope no others, capitulate to those that want to undercut what's all good in America. [This quote is from a clip of President Ford that is broadcast right before Howard Beale announces that he is leaving the network.]

Narrator:
By mid-October, "The Howard Beale Show" had settled in at a 42% share, more than equaling all the other network news shows combined. In the Nielsen ratings, "The Howard Beale Show" was listed as the fourth highest rated show of the month, surpassed only by "The Six Million Dollar Man", "All in the Family" and "Phyllis" - a phenomenal state of affairs for a news show - and on October the 15th, Diana Christensen flew to Los Angeles for what the trade calls 'powwows and confabs' with our west coast programming execs and to get production rolling on the shows for the coming season.

Narrator:
It was a perfectly admissible argument that Howard Beale advanced in the days that followed. It was, however, also a very depressing one. Nobody particularly cared to hear his life was utterly valueless. By the end of the first week in June, "The Howard Beale Show" had dropped one point in the ratings and its trend of shares dipped under 48% for the first time since last November.

Narrator:
The initial response to the new Howard Beale show was not auspicatory. The press was, without exception, hostile and industry reaction, negative. The ratings for the Thursday and Friday shows were both 14%, but Monday's rating dropped a point, clearly suggesting the novelty was wearing off.

Frank Hackett:
The business of management is management.