Don’t touch that dial The way we consume our news has changed, but Network’s message about media remains timely By: Ben Waldman Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/10/2022 (702 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Paddy Chayefsky did not mean to predict the future with his script for Network.

A cynic and a realist, the celebrated screenwriter intended only to typify the problems he saw in the 1970s and in his own industry, transmitted over the airwaves and into the eyeballs of a distracted, disengaged viewing public who couldn’t see what was really happening around them — in Vietnam, in Washington and in their own backyards.

In director Sidney Lumet — who, like Chayefsky, spent the bulk of the 1950s working for news corporations only then starting to grasp their power — Network (1976) took on an extra layer of meta-criticism: the shows Lumet and Chayefsky produced had helped fill the coffers of networks like CBS and NBC, which in the postwar era began to supplant newsprint and radio as the most influential disseminators of information to the public.

As the Vietnam War and Watergate emerged as not just major news stories, but major drivers of ratings, Chayefsky recognized an undercurrent of anger burbling in America. He sought to channel that ire into a workable story about media, power, capitalism and, above all, television, which he had once described as “an indestructible and terrifying giant that is stronger than the government.”

Had Chayefsky been born a few hundred years earlier, he might have reached a similar conclusion about the printing press — that powerful tools can be misused in grotesque ways by grotesque people to achieve grotesque results.

The film, which documents anchorman Howard Beale’s descent into madness and ascent from newsman to sweat-dripping prophet, was critically acclaimed upon its release, receiving Oscars for Lumet’s direction, Chayefsky’s script, Faye Dunaway’s turn as producer Diana Christianson and Peter Finch’s Beale, an award the Australian actor received posthumously. Vincent Canby of the New York Times remarked that the film had a quality other commercial releases lacked: “It’s alive.”

And as with the best stories, that life extends beyond the lives of its creators; Network has outlived its original self to be reincarnated on stage. This week, the broadcast comes to the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in a show that opens Thursday and runs to Nov. 12.

The first theatrical production of Network was mounted in 2017 in London, with Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston taking a seat at the anchor’s desk. Directed by Ivo Van Hove and written by Lee Hall, the production was a smash in both London and Broadway.

Director Daryl Cloran didn’t see the show, but he was still watching. In Edmonton, the director of the Citadel Theatre saw in Network a story that could work on the regional theatre level, pushing the boundaries of what audiences had come to expect. He also saw a story that felt both antiquated — an entire country watching the same broadcast? — and modern: an entire country attached to screens.

“I was blown away by its prescience,” Cloran said.

Cloran and Citadel acquired the rights prior to the pandemic, which, while ravaging the theatre industry, also reinforced one of Network’s core tenets: the power of media to shift and control both public behaviour and opinion.

While anchors today may not reach the same heights as Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow, Cloran said the crew was given a reminder of the power of newsreaders the week production began in Edmonton, where the show ran before its upcoming stop in Winnipeg.

“That was right when the Lisa LaFlamme story happened,” Cloran said, referring to the longtime anchor who was removed from the national news desk for CTV because of ageism and sexism — and, ostensibly, ratings.

That’s sort of what happened to Howard Beale, says Jim Mezon, the Winnipeg actor tasked with the role in the RMTC production. The story starts with Beale being let go, which triggers his anger, which triggers a ratings bonanza. In life, as in the film, the involved parties got mad as hell.

“He’s angry and he’s pissed off,” Mezon says. “He says things that upset people, but the viewers can’t stop watching. The executives see that as a potential goldmine.”

If it bleeds, it leads, and Beale is the one holding the knife.

Mezon, who was RMTC’s janitor in 1974, saw the original film at the Gaiety Theatre at the corner of Portage Avenue and Colony Street when he was a young amateur actor. “Network struck me immediately,” he says, sipping a beet smoothie. “We hadn’t seen that kind of writing before in a film script.” It was pure theatre.

The actor doesn’t watch a lot of television news — he prefers print media — but says the ideas at play in Network are no less relevant today than in 1976.

“It’s all based in anger. Anger at the system. Anger that people aren’t being told the truth,” he says. “And what the television world often doesn’t give is the truth.”

Nearly 50 years after it was written, Mezon believes Network is still vital. “Nothing has changed,” he says, of the world. “The medium has changed, but the method is the same.”

That’s an apt summary for the stage adaptation, which remains loyal to Chayefsky’s original morality tale and social critique.

It’s the age-old story of the tug-of-war between truth, profit and entertainment. And it might be more relevant today than ever before in human history.

At least until tomorrow.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com