Network

The other Technician pushes a button and the SCREEN goes white. The first Technician flicks the room lights on.

AMUNDSEN

(to Hackett)

Do you want to go to your office?

Hackett stares silently into space.

CHANEY

(to the Technicians)

Look, could we have the room?

TECHNICIAN

Sure.

The two Technicians exit. SILENCE fills the cluttered room. Amundsen and Hackett sit in their chairs, Chaney leans against a side wall, Diana lounges against a rear wall. After a moment, Amundsen stretches, stands –

AMUNDSEN

Well, I'd like to see a typescript and run it a couple of more times, but I don't think he said anything seriously actionable. But, as for this whole C.C. and A. deal with the Saudis, you'd know a lot more about that than I would, Frank, is it true?

Hackett sighs.

HACKETT

(mumbles)

Yes. C.C. and A. has two billions in loans with the Saudis, and they hold every pledge we've got. We need that Saudi money bad.

(he stands, so wretched he is tranquil)

A disaster. This show is a disaster, an unmitigated disaster, the death knell. I'm ruined, I'm dead, I'm finished.

CHANEY

Maybe we're overstating Beale's clout with the public.

HACKETT

An hour ago, Clarence McElheny called me from New York. It was ten o'clock in the East, and our people in the White House report they were already knee-deep in telegrams. By tomorrow morning, they'll be suffocating in telegrams.

CHANEY

Well, can the government stop the deal?

HACKETT

They can hold it up. The SEC could hold this deal up for twenty years if they wanted to. I'm finished. Any second that phone's going to ring and Clarence McElheny's going to tell me Mr. Jensen wants me in his office tomorrow morning so he can personally chop my head off.

Tears stream shamelessly down his cheeks as he shuffles, a broken man, around the room.

HACKETT

Four hours ago, I was the sun God at C.C. and A., Mr. Jensen's hand-picked golden boy, the heir apparent. Now I'm a man without a corporation!

DIANA

(comes off the back wall)

Let's get back to Howard Beale. You're not seriously going to pull Beale off the air.

HACKETT

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

DIANA

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

HACKETT

(explodes)

Two billion dollars isn't pique! That's the wrath of God! And the wrath of God wants Howard Beale fired!

DIANA

What for? Every other network will grab him the minute he walks out the door. He'll be back on the air for ABC tomorrow. And we'll lose twenty points in audience share in the first week, roughly a forty million loss in revenues for the year.

HACKETT

I'm going to kill Howard Beale! I'm going to impale the son of a bitch with a sharp stick through the heart!

DIANA

And let's not discount federal action by the Justice Department. If C.C. and A. pulls Beale off the air as an act of retribution, that's a flagrant violation of network autonomy and an egregious breach of the consent decree.

HACKETT

(beginning to like his new train of thought)

I'll take out a contract on him. I'll hire professional killers. I'll do it myself. I'll strangle him with a sashcord.

DIANA

No, I don't think Jensen is going to fire anybody. He's sitting up there in his office surrounded by lawyers and senior vice presidents, and right about now, they've begun to realize the extraordinary impact of television. That impact can be focused, manipulated, utilized. If Howard Beale can hurt them, he can help them.

The PHONE RINGS. A moment of anxious silence. Hackett picks it up –

HACKETT

(on phone)

Hackett – Yes, Clarence, I've already booked my flight... Well, can you give me a little more time than that? I've got the red-eye flight, I won't be back in New York till six tomorrow morning... That'll be just fine. I'll see you then –

He returns the phone to its cradle, regards Diana for a moment.

HACKETT

Mr. Jensen wants to meet Howard Beale personally. He wants Mr. Beale in his office at ten o'clock tomorrow morning –

EXT. THE C.C. AND A. BUILDING – PARK AVE. AND 46TH STREET – MORNING

A black limousine pulls to the curb in front of the C.C. and A. Building, disgorging Hackett, and, a moment later, Howard Beale, both dressed in banker's gray. As they move for the building's entrance, Hackett herding Howard along, it becomes clear that Howard is in a beatified state. His eyes glisten transcendentally, and he smiles the smile of the elevated spirit. He suddenly pulls up abruptly, raises his arms over his head, and announces at the top of his lungs:

HOWARD

(imbued)

The final revelation is at hand! I have seen the shattering fulgurations of ultimate clarity! The light is impending! I bear witness to the light!

This outburst doesn't seem to bother most of the PEOPLE passing by except for ONE or TWO who murmur: "Hey, that's Howard Beale, isn't it?" The outburst does appall Frank Hackett, who stares in distress and entreaty to some god in the heavens, and clutches at Howard's arm to get him moving again.

INT. ARTHUR JENSEN'S OFFICE

An enormous office with two walls of windows towering over the Manhattan landscape and through which SUNLIGHT streams in. Arthur Jensen is rising from behind his massive desk –

JENSEN

Good afternoon, Mr. Beale. They tell me you're a madman.

CAMERA DOLLIES to include Howard just coming into the room.

HOWARD
(closing the door behind himself)

Only desultorily.

JENSEN

How are you now?

HOWARD

(as mad as a hatter)

I'm as mad as a hatter.

JENSEN

Who isn't? Don't sit down. I'm taking you to our conference room which seems more seemly a setting for what I have to say to you.

He takes Howard'S arm and moves him to a large oaken door leading out of Jensen's office –

JENSEN

I started as a salesman, Mr. Beale. I sold sewing machines and automobile parts, hair brushes and electronic equipment. They say I can sell anything. I'd like to try and sell something to you –

They pass into –
 

INT. THE CONFERENCE ROOM – C.C. AND A. BUILDING

The overwhelming cathedral of a conference room remembered perhaps from an earlier scene where Frank Hackett gave his annual report. When last seen, it was in pitch darkness, but now the enormous curtains are up, and an almost celestial light pours in through the huge windows. Being on the 43rd and 44th floors, the sky outside is only sporadically interrupted by the towers of other skyscrapers. The double semi- circular bank of seats are all empty, and the general effect is one of hushed vastness –

JENSEN

Valhalla, Mr. Beale, please sit down –

He leads Howard down the steps to the floor level, himself ascends again to the small stage and the podium. Howard sits in one of the 200 odd seats. Jensen pushes a button, and the enormous drapes slowly fall, slicing away layers of light until the vast room is utterly dark. Then, the little pinspots at each of the desks, including the one behind which Howard is seated, pop on, creating a miniature Milky Way effect. A shaft of white LIGHT shoots out from the rear of the room, spotting Jensen on the podium, a sun of its own little galaxy. Behind him, the shadowed white of the lecture screen. Jensen suddenly wheels to his audience of one and roars out:

JENSEN

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it, is that clear?! You think you have 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, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet! That is the natural order of things today! That is the atomic, 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?

(pause)

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 and 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 pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and 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 deter- mined 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, Mr. Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and 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 to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.

HOWARD

(humble whisper)

Why me?

JENSEN

Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Howard slowly rises from the blackness of his seat so that he is lit only by the ethereal diffusion of light shooting out from the rear of the room. He stares at Jensen spotted on the podium, transfixed.

HOWARD

I have seen the face of God!

In b.g., up on the podium, Jensen considers this curious statement for a moment.

JENSEN

You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

NARRATOR

That evening, Howard Beale went on the air to preach the corporate cosmology of Arthur Jensen.

INT. NETWORK NEWS CONTROL ROOM

The CREW at their various control panels. Business as usual. If anything, EVERYBODY in the control room appears a little more bored. On the SHOW MONITOR, Howard Beale stands in his stained-glass-filtered spotlight, but, rather than his old enraged self, he seems sad, resigned, weary –

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

(sad, resigned, weary)

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 C.C. and A. has been stopped. The people spoke, the people won. It was a radiant eruption of democracy. But I think that was it, fellers. That sort of thing isn't likely to happen again. Because, in the bottom of all our terrified souls, we all know that democracy is a dying giant, a sick, sick dying, decaying political concept, writhing in its final pain. I don't mean the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the most powerful, the richest, the most advanced country in the world, light-years ahead of any other country. And I don't mean the Communists are going to take over the world. The Communists are deader than we are. What's 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 who's finished. It's every single one of you out there who's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. This is a nation of two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter- than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods –

NARRATOR

It was a perfectly admissible argument that Howard Beale advanced in the days that followed; it was, however, also a very tedious and depressing one. By the end of the first week in June –

INT. DIANA'S APARTMENT – THURSDAY – JUNE 19 – ENTRANCE FOYER – 7:15 P.M.

– as Max lets himself into the apartment. Max seems depressed –

NARRATOR

– the Howard Beale show had dropped one point in the ratings, and its trend of shares dipped under forty-eight for the first time since last November –

Max moves into the living room as Diana's Voice erupts shrilly from the bedroom –
 

DIANA (O.S.)

– You're his goddam agent, Lew! I'm counting on you to talk some sense into the lunatic!

INT. DIANA'S BEDROOM

Diana perched on her bed, shrilling into the telephone –