Network

DIANA

We're starting to get rumbles from the agencies. Another couple of weeks of this, and the sponsors will be bailing out!... This is breach of contract, Lew! This isn't the Howard Beale we signed. You better get him off this corporate universe kick or, so help me, I'll pull him off the air!... I told him, Lew! I've been telling him every day for a week! I'm sick of telling him! Now, you tell him!

She slams the receiver down, sits in silent rage on the bed, turns up the volume on her remote control unit. Howard's Voice suddenly emanates from the television set across the room from her –

HOWARD (ON TV)

– Well, the time has come to say: is dehumanization such a bad word? Because good or bad, that's what's 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 –

Diana reaches for the phone again, dials briskly. She looks up to note Max regarding her from the doorway. She regards him sullenly. They are both clearly in foul tempers.

HOWARD (ON TV)

– The whole world's people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, wired, insensate things useful only to produce and consume other mass-produced things, all of them as unnecessary and useless as we are –

MAX

I'm sorry I'm late –

They exchange dully sullen looks. Max turns back into –
 

INT. THE LIVING ROOM

Where he sprawls morosely on one of the soft chairs –
 

Howard (ON TV O.S.)

– that's the simple truth you have to grasp, that human existence is an utterly futile and purposeless thing –

INT. THE BEDROOM

Diana perched on her bed, cross-legged –

DIANA

(on phone)

Barbara? Diana –

HOWARD (ON TV)

– because once you've grasped that, then the whole universe becomes orderly and comprehensible –

DIANA

(on phone)

Listen, I had another howling session with Howard Beale today, and he's impenetrable. We better start shoring up the dykes –

HOWARD (ON TV)

– We are right now living in what has to be called a corporate society, a corporate world, a corporate universe. This world quite simply is a vast cosmology of small corporations orbiting around larger corporations who, in turn, revolve around giant corporations –

DIANA

(stares at set, mutters)

Jesus Christ –

HOWARD (ON TV)

– and this whole, endless, ultimate cosmology is expressly designed for the production and consumption of useless things –

Diana clicks the remote control thing, and the TV set goes black.

DIANA

(on phone)

Let's start looking around for possible replacements. I hear ABC's grooming a mad prophet of their own in Chicago as our com- petition for next season. See if you can get a tape on him. Maybe we can steal him. And let's start building up the other segments on the show. Sybil the Soothsayer, Jim Webbing. The Vox Populi segment is catching on; let's make that a daily feature –

INT. THE LIVING ROOM

Max sprawled on the soft chair. We notice that, in the back of the living room, a bridge table has been set up as a makeshift desk. It has a typewriter on it and a welter of papers and books and filing folders. Diana appears in the bedroom doorway, regards Max coldly –

DIANA

You know, you could help me out with Howard if you wanted to. He listens to you. You're his best friend –

MAX

(exploding off the chair)

I'm tired of this hysteria about Howard Beale!

DIANA

(erupting herself)

Every time you see somebody in your family, you come back in one of these morbid middle-aged moods!

MAX

(raging around the room)

And I'm tired of finding you on the goddamned phone every time I turn around! I'm tired of being an accessory in your life!

He finds himself by the upstage typewriter, which he sweeps crashing off the bridge table, sending the welter of papers there flying off in a storm –

MAX

– and I'm tired of pretending to write this dumb book about my maverick days in those great early years of television! Every executive fired from a network in the last twenty years has written this dumb book about the great early days of television! Nobody wants another dumb book about the great goddamned early days of television!

DIANA

Terrific, Max, terrific. Maybe you can start a whole new career as an actor.

For a moment, it looks as if Max is going to slug her. Then he deflates –
 

MAX

It's the truth. After six months of living with you, I'm turning into one of your scripts. But this isn't 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 my daughter flew in from Seattle to be with her. And I feel lousy about that. I feel lousy about the pain I've caused my wife and kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken and all those things you think sentimental but which my generation called simple human decency. And I miss my home because I'm beginning to get scared shitless. It's all suddenly closer to the end than to the beginning,

and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me, with definable features. You've got a man going through primal doubts, Diana, and you've got to cope with it. Because I'm not some guy discussing male menopause on the Barbara Walters show. I'm the man you presumably love. I live right here. I'm part of your life. I'm real. You can't switch to another channel.

DIANA

Well, what exactly is it you want me to do?

MAX

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

For one brief moment, you could almost believe she does understand. She stares, eyes-locked with Max, her eyes threatening to well with tears. There are certainly tears in Max's eyes.

DIANA

(small voice)

I don't know how to do that.

Then, shatteringly, the PHONE OFF SCREEN in the bedroom RINGS; and DIANA promptly turns to answer it –

DIANA

(matter-of-factly as she exits into the bedroom)

I'll be with you in a minute, Max –

He sighs, the inchoate moment of love evanesced –
 

NARRATOR

By the first week in July, the Howard Beale show was down eleven points. Hysteria swept through the network, even to those people who had only a contractual connection to it –

INT. DIANA'S OFFICE – MONDAY, JULY 7 – 2:30 P.M.

Laureen Hobbs in a shrill, wide-eyed panic, raging all over Diana's office as Diana's PHONE RINGS, and Diana answers it –

LAUREEN

(in a raging panic)

– He's a plague! He's smallpox! He's typhoid! I don't want to follow his goddam show! I want out of that eight o'clock spot! I got enough troubles without Howard Beale for a lead-in. You guys have scheduled me up against Tony Orlando and Dawn! NBC'S got Little House on the Prairie! ABC's got that new Mel Brooks show! You got to help me out! You got to do something about Howard Beale! Get rid of the plague! Get him off the air! Do something! Do anything!

DIANA

(hanging up and yelling back)

We're trying to find a replacement for him! I'm going down to look at audition tapes right now!

She is already out of her office –
 

INT. NINTH FLOOR – A SCREENING ROOM

CLOSEUP of an imposing MOSAIC FIGURE, fully bearded and wearing ankle-length black robes and thonged sandals, standing on a lonely mountain spur inveighing against the idolatries of the world.

PULL BACK to show the screening room half-filled with network and programming executives, spotted around the room. Diana is there and her top assistants – Barbara Schlesinger and Tommy Pellegrino. Frank Hackett is there; Nelson Chaney, Herb Thackeray (Stations Relations); and Joe Donnelly and Harry Hunter. In b.g., the ranting Mosaic Figure on the wall console roars out his inveighing until otherwise indicated –

DIANA

(suddenly standing into the shaft of light coming from the projector)

No, damn it! If we wanted hellfire, we'd get Billy Graham! We don't want faith-healers, tent-show evangelists or Oberammargau passion-players! What about that terrific new messiah ABC was supposed to have signed up as our competition?

PELLEGRINO

(indicating the monitor screen)

That's him.

DIANA

That's him?

PELLEGRINO

Yeah.

DIANA

Jesus, turn him off.

The MONITOR SCREEN goes blank.

PELLEGRINO

I've got three more, but you've already seen the best ones. I've got a guru from Spokane and two more hellfires who see visions of the Virgin Mary.

Diana sinks down in a chair and turns to Hackett in the row immediately behind.

DIANA

We're not going to find a replacement for Howard Beale, so let's stop kidding ourselves. Fully fledged messiahs don't come in bunches. We either go with Howard or we go without him. My reports say we'll do better without him. It would be disaster to let this situation go on even another week. By then, he'll be down sixteen points and the trend irreversible, if it isn't already. I think we should fire Howard.

HACKETT

Arthur Jensen has taken a strong personal interest in the Howard Beale show.

(sighs gloomily, addresses the room at large)

I'm having dinner with him tonight. Let me talk to Jensen and then let's meet in my office at ten o'clock tonight. Diana, give me copies of all your audience research reports. I may need them for Jensen. Is ten o'clock convenient for everyone?

Apparently it is.