"I'm a human being god damnit, my life has value!"
The movie centers around a news anchor who learns of his impending layoff and decides to kill himself live on air. However, he instead announces his retirement after being convinced by the channel. Howard Beale, played wonderfully by Peter Finch (who posthumously won an Oscar for his role), delivers a chilling monologue that is as timely today as it was then. Paddy Chajewski's screenplay, which won three Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, is a bitter satire on the cannibalistic world of the spectacle and society's vicious cycle of Procrustean admonition and re-feeding into the logic of social automatism. Lumet's direction adds a dystopian feel and futility to this unequivocal masterpiece. Despite losing the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars to Avildsen's Rocky that year, Network's timelessness is evident in the following scene, and the shock of Paddy Chajewski's words through Peter Finch's mouth.
"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, yet 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 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. You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, god damn it! 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 going to 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!""
Words that when read or heard by watching the movie ring a bell and makes you thing is this about today ?
A great movie hope anyone that watches is if after reading this likes it an anyone who watched feel free to comment !
