Network

MAX

She does all this with Tarot cards?

DIANA

No, this one operates on parapsychology. She has trance-like episodes and feels things in her energy field. I think this lady can be very useful to you, Max.

MAX

In what way?

DIANA

Well, you put on news shows, and here's someone who can predict tomorrow's news for you. Her name, aptly enough, is Sibyl. Sybil the Soothsayer. You could give her two minutes of trance at the end of a Howard Beale show, say once a week, Friday, which is suggestively occult, and she could oraculate. Then next week, everyone tunes in to see how good her predictions were.

MAX

Maybe she could do the weather.

DIANA

(smiles)

Your network news show is going to need some help, Max, if it's going to hold. Beale doesn't do the angry man thing well at all. He's too kvetchy. He's being irascible. We want a prophet, not a curmudgeon. He should do more apocalyptic doom. I think you should take on a couple of writers to write some jeremiads for him. I see you don't fancy my suggestions.

MAX

Hell, you're not being serious, are you?

DIANA

Oh, I'm serious. The fact is, I could make your Beale show the highest-rated news show in television, if you'd let me have a crack at it.

MAX

What do you mean, have a crack at it?

DIANA

I'd like to program it for you, develop it. I wouldn't interfere with the actual news. But teevee is show biz, Max, and even the News has to have a little showmanship.

MAX

My God, you are serious.

DIANA

I watched your six o'clock news today – it's straight tabloid. You had a minute and a half on 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 crimes, sports, children with incurable diseases and lost puppies. So I don't think I'll listen to any protestations of high standards of journalism. You're right down in the street soliciting audiences like the rest of us. All I'm saying is, if you're going to hustle, at least do it right. I'm going to bring this up at tomorrow's network meeting, but I don't like network hassles, and I was hoping you and I could work this out between us. That's why I'm here right now.

MAX

(sighs)

And I was hoping you were looking for an emotional involvement with a craggy middle-aged man.

DIANA

I wouldn't rule that out entirely.

They appraise each other for a moment; clearly, there are the possibilities of something more than a professional relationship here.

MAX

Well, Diana, you bring all your ideas up at the meeting tomorrow. Because, if you don't, I will. I think Howard is making a goddam fool of himself, and so does everybody Howard and I know in this industry. It was a fluke. It didn't work. Tomorrow, Howard goes back to the old format and this gutter depravity comes to an end.

DIANA

(smiles, stands)

Okay.

She leans forward to flick her ash into Max's desk ash tray. Half-shaded as she is by the cone of light issuing from the desk lamp, it is nipple-clear she is bra-less, and Max cannot help but note the assertive swells of her body. Diana moves languidly to the door and would leave but Max suddenly says:

MAX

I don't get it, Diana. You hung around till half-past seven and came all the way down here just to pitch a couple of loony show biz ideas when you knew goddam well I'd laugh you out of this office. I don't get it. What's your scam in this anyway?

Diana moves back to the desk and crushes her cigarette out in the desk tray.

DIANA

Max, I don't know why you suddenly changed your mind about resigning, but I do know Hackett's going to throw you out on your ass in January. My little visit here tonight was just a courtesy made out of respect for your stature in the industry and because I've personally admired you ever since I was a kid majoring in speech at the University of Missouri. But sooner or later, now or in January, with or without you, I'm going to take over your network news show, and I figured I might as well start tonight.

MAX

I think I once gave a lecture at the University of Missouri.

DIANA

I was in the audience. I had a terrible schoolgirl crush on you for a couple of months.

She smiles, glides to the doorway again.

MAX

Listen, if we can get back for a moment to that gypsy who predicted all that about emotional involvements and middle-aged men – what're you doing for dinner tonight?

Diana pauses in the doorway, and then moves back briskly to the desk, picks up the telephone receiver, taps out a telephone number, waits for a moment –

DIANA

(on phone)

I can't make it tonight, luv, call me tomorrow.

She returns the receiver to its cradle, looks at Max; their eyes lock.

MAX

Do you have any favorite restaurant?

DIANA

I eat anything.

MAX

Son of a bitch, I get the feeling I'm being made.

DIANA

You sure are.

MAX

I better warn you I don't do anything on the first date.

DIANA

We'll see.

She moves for the door. Max stares down at his desk.

MAX

(mutters)

Schmuck, what're you getting into?

He sighs, stands, flicks off his desk lamp.

INT. A RESTAURANT

Max and Diana at the end of their dinner. In fact, Max is flagging a WAITER for two coffees, black –

DIANA

(plying away at her ice cream)

You're married, surely.

MAX

Twenty-six years. I have a married daughter in Seattle who's six months pregnant, and a younger girl who starts at Northwestern in January.

DIANA

– 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?

MAX

Terrified, are you?

DIANA

(pushes her ice cream away, regards him affably)

Terrified out of my skull, man. I'm the hip generation, man, right on, cool, groovy, the greening of America, man, remember all that? God, what humbugs we were. In my first year at college, I lived in a commune, dropped acid daily, joined four radical groups and fucked myself silly on a bare wooden floor while somebody chanted Sufi sutras. I lost six weeks of my sophomore year because they put me away for trying to jump off the top floor of the Administration Building. I've been on the top floor ever since. Don't open any windows around me because I just might jump out. Am I scaring you off?

MAX

No.

DIANA

I was married for four years and pretended to be happy and 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. He told me I was the worst lay he had ever had. I can't tell you how many men have told me what a lousy lay I am. I apparently have a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely, and can't wait to get my clothes back on and get out of that bedroom. I seem to be inept at everything except my work. I'm goddam good at my work and so I confine myself to that. All I want out of life is a 30 share and a 20 rating.

The Waiter brings the coffee.

MAX

(sipping coffee)

The corridor gossip says you're Frank Hackett's backstage girl.

DIANA

(sipping coffee, smiles)

I'm not. Frank's a corporation man, body and soul. He surrendered his spirit to C. C. and A. years ago. He's a marketing-merchandising management machine, precision-tooled for corporate success. He's married to one C. C. and A. board member's daughter, he attends another board member's church, his children aged two and five are already enrolled in a third board member's alma mater. He has no loves, lusts or allegiances that are not consummately directed towards becoming a C. C. and A. board member himself. So why should he bother with me? I'm not even a stockholder.

MAX

How about your loves, lusts and allegiances?

They smile at each other.

DIANA

Is your wife in town?

MAX

Yes.

DIANA

Well, then, we better go to my place.

INT. DIANA'S APARTMENT – BEDROOM

Dark. Blinds drawn. Max and Diana lying naked on a maelstrom of sheets, both still puffing from what must have been an ebullient bout in the sack –

DIANA

Wow, and you were the guy who kept telling me how he was going to be a grandfather in three months.

MAX

Hell, you were the girl who kept telling me what a lousy lay she was.

She bounces out of bed and stands naked in the shadowed darkness, arms akimbo, looking happily down at Max on the bed.

DIANA

All right, enough of this love-making. Are you going to let me take over your network news show or not?

MAX

(laughs)

Forget it. Tomorrow, Howard Beale goes back to being a straight anchorman. I'll tell him first thing tomorrow morning.

INT. HOWARD BEALE'S BEDROOM

Howard Beale, fast asleep in his dark, empty, hushed room.

HOWARD

(suddenly)

I can't hear you. You'll have to speak a little louder.

He gets up on one elbow, eyes still closed, cocks his head as if he were listening to someone mumbling from the rocking chair across the room.

HOWARD

You're kidding. How the hell would I know what the truth is?

He sits up, gets out of bed, walks around and perches on the foot of the bed, stares at the empty rocker, nods his head as if he is following a complicated argument –

HOWARD

What the hell is this, the burning bush? For God's sake, I'm not Moses –

Whoever he thinks he is talking to apparently gets up and crosses the room to the overstuffed chair and sits there, since Howard follows this movement with his eyes and finally gets up and perches on the side of his bed in order to continue the curious conversation.

HOWARD

Why me? I'm a deteriorating old man.

Howard listens, sighs, shrugs:

HOWARD

Okay.

EXT. UBS BUILDING – THURSDAY, OCT. 2, 9:00 A.M. – DAY

Bright sunny day to establish the next morning.

INT. ROOM 517 – NIGHTLY NEWS ROOM

Max enters. The usual morning hum of activity. PHONES RING. Harry Hunter, going over some wire releases with his HEAD WRITER, looks up as Max approaches –

MAX

Howard in his office?

(Hunter nods)

Harry, I'm killing this whole screwball angry prophet thing. We're going back to straight news as of tonight's show.

HUNTER

Okay.

Max veers off for –

INT. HOWARD'S OFFICE

Howard at his typewriter, clicking away. Max leans in through the open doorway –

MAX

Howard, we're going back to straight news tonight. You don't have to be the mad prophet any more.

Howard turns to regard Max in the doorway with a sweet smile.

HOWARD

I must go on with what I'm doing, Max. I have been called. This is my witness, and I must make it.

This gives Max pause, to say the least.

MAX

You must make what, Howard?

HOWARD

I must make my witness. I must lead the people from the waters. I must stay their stampede to the sea.

Max takes a step into the office and closes the door.

MAX

You must stay their what, Howard?

HOWARD

I must stay their headlong suicidal stampede to the sea.

MAX

(regards Howard for a moment)

Well, hallelujah, Howard, areyou putting me on or have you flipped or what?

HOWARD

(serenely)

I have heard voices, Max.