In Network

I first decided to re-watch the 1976 film, Network, in tribute to the late Robert Duvall. Of course I (like pretty much everyone) had seen the movie when it first came out. This dark satire of the television news industry—written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet—was a major hit in a very good year for movies. When Oscar nominations were revealed, Network was up for nine awards, including best picture. The top winner turned out to be Rocky, but other big films of that year included All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, and Taxi Driver, so the competition was clearly fierce. Network won for its original screenplay, and also nabbed three of the four acting awards: for Beatrice Straight as a cast-off wife, for Faye Dunaway as a TV exec who’ll do anything to manufacture a hit show, and (most memorably) for Peter Finch. Finch, playing the newscaster whose firing because of low ratings sends him mentally ‘round the bend, was the first star ever to win an Oscar posthumously. He suffered a heart attack in January 1977, just after a TV talk-show appearance to promote the film, and died at age 60.

 Finch’s big line in Network—”I’m as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"—is still with us. And so, of course, is the idea that TV execs (like the one effectively played by Duvall in the film) are more concerned with ratings than with quality content. But in many respects, Network surprised me. First, of course, is the fact that television today is far from what it was in the 1970s. Back then there existed a limited number of major networks: CBS, NBC, ABC. Much of the American public got its news from respected anchors like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor. The film invents a fourth network, UBS, for dramatic purposes: when its longtime anchorman goes berserk and starts hollering out of windows, a large slice of the nation pays attention. Today, by contrast, our news sources are so widespread and so splintered that it’s hard to imagine public attention being focused on a single individual in quite the same way.

 I was also surprised by the film’s shifting tone. From what I’ve read, this was quite deliberate on the part of Chayefsky and Lumet, with low-key realistic scenes at the start of the film gradually giving way to stylized moments full of manic energy. A beautifully played early scene features Finch, as the newly-fired anchorman, and the great William Holden as his longtime pal who’s now the news division president. Two veteran newsmen, they commiserate with one another about how times have changed, making jokes to cover their mutual dismay.

 But then Faye Dunaway’s Diana Christensen enters the picture, and the whole mood changes. She sees in the crazed on-air pronouncements of Howard Beal (Finch) a new direction for TV news broadcasts, and quickly turns a hard news show into “infotainment,” of a sort that (alas) would not be so surprising today. Moreover, while spinning journalism as a form of public amusement, she also captures the heart of the long-married Holden, with predictable results. Late in the film, as Diana looks for new stars-in-the-making, there are some pointed references to a group of Symbionese Liberation Army-style young radicals who’ll do pretty much anything to be featured on TV. It’s very dark and, sometimes, very funny. Though the Patty Hearst era and the near-shooting of President Ford by Squeaky Fromme seem like ancient history now, Network brings them back to those of us old enough to remember.  

 

L.A. Weather and “Chinatown”

As a longtime volunteer with the Santa Monic Public Library system, I’m reading a new best-seller called L.A. Weather, by María Amparo Escandón. It concerns a family with Mexican and Old California roots, ambitiously folding in almost every touchstone 21^st century concern you can think of: sexuality, gender demarcations, surrogate pregnancy, gentrification, religious practices, divorce, and complex family dynamics. (Somehow the question of politics only briefly rears its ugly head). But the key issue that gives the book its title has to do with the complexities of Southern California weather. The book’s central patriarch figure, Oscar, becomes increasingly estranged from his wife and three daughters as he obsesses over climate change and its potential impact on his secret almond grove.

 I appreciate the novel’s insider grasp of L.A. geography, and of the ethnic enclaves it chronicles. A movie based on the book would be an enjoyable tour of Malibu beach houses, east L.A. barrio bungalows, and orchards set deep in the San Fernando Valley. I’ve never done a scientific study, but it’s been pointed out to me that most upbeat screen love stories are set in New York (see, for instance, You’ve Got Mail), while L.A. in the preferred backdrop for dysfunctional futuristic landscapes (Bladerunner, I’m looking at you!)  It seems as though film execs, mostly from the east, come to SoCal to pursue their careers, then score with movies that either romanticize the coast they left behind or turn their new west-coast home into a horror show.

 Escandón’s family saga contains a genuine affection for her adopted hometown, but also seems prophetic in that it worries about a climate crisis that threatens to uproot the Alvarado family’s sense of well-being. What strikes me, to my surprise, is how the novel’s key plot strand is the same one that resonates in the late Robert Towne’s script for Chinatown. This 1974 thriller, brilliantly directed by ultimate outsider Roman Polanski, is set in the L.A. of the 1930s, the era of such famous page and screen detectives as Philip Marlowe. There have been ten or more screen adaptations of Marlowe-related stories, including Humphrey Bogart’s 1946 The Big Sleep and Elliott Gould’s 1973 The Long Goodbye. Marlowe films always focus on moral decay and a private-eye hero who tries desperately (and sometimes messily) to create order out of chaos. But in Chinatown the hero (Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes) is less heroic and the ending is far less tidy than in the Marlowe-related flicks. As a crony memorably tells Gittes after the unthinkable has happened, “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” This climactic line threw me when I first saw the film, but of course I’ve come to accept it as a metaphor for all that’s chaotic and obscene about L.A. life. (Really, if you’ve seen this and Bonnie and Clyde, you know that Faye Dunaway should definitely stay out of moving cars when thugs and cops are around.)

 The moral story in Chinatown may be the one that stays with the viewer, but the plot hinges on a still-resonant L.A. topic: the drought. A key character in the film, L.A. water tsar Hollis Mulwray, is loosely based on a legendary L.A. figure, dam-builder William Mulholland. And we clearly see the tension between San Fernando Valley farmers who demand irrigation for their cash crops and City of L.A. residents worried about their source of drinking water. Those issues still remain, exacerbated by climate change, and we who prefer garden living to making our homes in a desert appreciate books and films that point out where we’re going wrong.