Cold Open And Cocktail Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I'm pretty much just going from coffee to bourbon these days.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Oh, that was college for me.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Right? It was beer o'clock.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Yes. And I had a teacher who pulled me aside after that because we were having a conversation about it and everybody laughed. And he was like, please, please drink water though.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Please drink water.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Can you just can you just I can't not say that. Say that.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Greetings andor salutations, and welcome to Imbibe Cinema. The Imbibe Cinema podcast is brought to you by the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival, otherwise known as Buiff. I'm Jonathan C. Leggett, along with my co-host, Trisha Leggett, as well as our producer, Michael Noens. And we are also pleased to welcome a very special guest, Nick Cardiff. In this episode, we're going to be discussing the 1976 Dark Comedy Network. The cocktail we are imbibing is called Ratings War, which consists of bourbon, uh, Angostora bitters, a sugar cube, an orange peel, and cherries. Look for the episode recap. Uh link in our show notes where you'll also find a written summary of our discussion, along with a picture and the ingredients needed to make your own ratings

Why Network Still Hits Hard

SPEAKER_02 1:26

war at home. All right, so Nick, what is it about this particular film that that made you uh so giddy about joining us for a podcast?

SPEAKER_04 1:35

Uh this is just one of my favorite movies of all time. I think it is exactly what art is supposed to be. And I I think that they the fact that it's been 50 years and it is still uh just as relevant today, if not more so, than it was in 1976, uh to me is just which which is crazy because uh on the surface it maybe shouldn't be like a favorite of mine. It's not uh it's not necessarily the type of movie that is like that I care to watch like you know, executives in boardrooms and things like that. Talking about numbers and um uh what do they call them in the movie? Uh points? Share, you know, fifty share, you know, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Not not something I really care about ultimately, and yet every single scene in this uh movie is is captivating.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Do you remember the first time you saw it?

SPEAKER_04 2:39

I've seen it a handful of times now. I think the first time I saw it was probably I think I was living in Chicago, so I think it must have been 2011, 2012. It's just one that I revisit every couple years. I hadn't seen it in a couple years, so I thought this was a good time to revisit.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yes, uh very poignant, very of the times. I know uh uh at least from from my uh viewing, this was my first. It is very fascinating to me to to to watch a film, and as as love you lovingly pointed out, it's fifty years later. Uh and and it it it still reigns true. I mean, the the the writing on this is uh absolutely fascinating. Uh and I know uh uh Nick, you from a uh writing and screenplay standpoint, is there anything that jumps out to you that you feel really encompasses what made this film so amazing?

SPEAKER_04 3:33

Oh yeah, from a script point of view, the characters. Every character is ultimately corrupted by the thing that they love. Yep. And the whole movie is really about the business takeover of media. Correct. And how media is sensationalized and thus like becomes fake. It becomes for entertainment and not knowledge. And I just feel like every character embodies that in their own way. And by the time you get to the end, the movie itself is fake. The movie itself has been corrupted. And it just it it really just spoke to me from the first time that I watched it, which was early on in in my life where I was like politically uh active, or at least where I was a participant in, you know, paying attention to the world and to politics and to those kind of things, and it really stuck with me. And then as I have uh become more knowledgeable and uh as I participate more in that process, it just I mean the end of the movie, it's the one of the main monologues is about how the Arabs are taking are taking control of the media by buying all of these American yes businesses, and and right now with the Times Warner and uh the Paramount merger, and you got 45 billion from the Saudis coming in. It's it's just it was it was a very uh profound and foretelling script. And to to live in a time after it's all happened and to watch something where it hadn't happened yet, uh to me is just like it's it's very depressing on one hand, but it's also a privilege on the other that this thing even still exists, that we're all like you know, that we're still allowed to watch it in some sense.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah, they haven't started movie burnings yet.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Oh boy, yeah. Too soon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Yeah. Yeah, John.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

That we know of.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Yeah. Uh that is that is something that has uh entertained uh uh me in a possibly very dark way over the last uh number of years is how aware of uh smaller governmental things and people uh I have had to be over the last 10 years uh that that I never had to track or or be aware of before that.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

I know Network has been referenced and I've seen clips over the years, and I've always meant to watch it. Uh and I knew that it was about making the news profitable and that sin, as it were, and how uh it has affected everything since. But I hadn't uh seen it until this past week. So I'm really excited that I I did see it, and it is one of those it it settles. It's like one of those things where like there are so many movies that you watch and it's like bubblegum, it kind of goes in and out. You enjoy it, but and I was like, oh, I don't remember what happened. Uh or there are those that are so dark and heavy that they just oh, I'm depressed. And this is one of those that just I don't know, it sits with you and it's like it's gonna hang out in the back of uh my head for a while and kind of haunt me. Oh yeah. And uh in a good way, because it makes you question things and it makes you think about things on taking things uh at more than face value.

SPEAKER_04 6:59

No, and even the other elements of the script too, I I think are so amazing, like the love story itself is this disconnected fantasy for both of these characters.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 7:11

And so I I think that again, from every angle, each character is doing or representing this idea that what we consume uh on our day-to-day life is just becoming more and more and more for entertainment purpose only. Yeah, it is like we must cure boredom with entertainment. Yes. And I think that um that the love story itself did a good job with that too, because you've got the middle-aged man going through the you know, the crisis, uh the midlife crisis. I I feel like it's more of a later stage crisis, though. I think he's in his late 50s. Yes. And then you have uh Faye Dunaway, who unreal in this movie. Oh god, she crushes it. Diana Christensen is just this, she's the new generation, she's ice cold, she does not understand this human connectivity, and that's already in 1976. He's writing this character. And again, it's before everything happened. And so it's it's very interesting now to come at it having been a young, uh, a young person through the major changes of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle and all those things, and then seeing it from the other end, right? It was like he was he was 10 to 25 years uh before it all happened, and now we're 25 years roughly after a lot of the changes. Oh my gosh, yes. And so, like right now is the perfect time to to think about and analyze this movie because we really are like just as far uh away from the thing than they were on the other side.

News Becomes Entertainment Over Time

SPEAKER_00 8:50

This first became fascinating to me when I stumbled across this documentary called Best of Enemies.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Oh, yes, with Gore Vidal and Buckley. Yep William Buckley Buckley.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

And it's these uh if you get it, if you haven't seen it, I I rec highly recommend it's the debates leading up to the 1968 presidential election. And it's really it's where you see the game of back and forth uh mudslinging starting to happen, but it was so captivating because it was so intellectual compared to where we have it now. But that time frame where you have like a war being broadcast on television, you're watching Vietnam. So you have an audience that has like has that in their face. Because I was thinking, oh, okay, so this has gotta be like, you know, 1976, that broadcast that was like changed how politics was covered really happens in 68. So then maybe it's around that time that the news becomes this entertainment thing. So I started looking to see if I was correct.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

But what I did come across was the news started to become longer on television, and in 1963, they moved it to 30 minutes and it got a wider audience and everything and became more profitable after Kennedy's assassination, which makes sense. And that of course immediately makes me think oh, the 24-hour news cycle really hits home after 9-11.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

The fact that 24-hour news cycles need to fill the space that is not keeping you informed about something horrible that just happened, they then have to fill that space with making you afraid of things that you have no reason to be afraid of. Escalators can kill news at 11. Yeah, is it are alligators in your toilet? Uh yeah. We we should not be on a 24-hour news cycle.

SPEAKER_04 10:47

Fact check me on it, but I'm pretty sure it started in 1986, 10 years after this. Okay. Because I'm pretty sure it was Ted Turner who did CNN, and that's who kind of ushered in the 24-hour news cycle. Right. And then by the 90s, you had Murdoch and Fox News, and then with the rise of the internet and just mass information, we had the 90s that that we all, you know, grew up in, which like OJ Simpson through John Bene Ramsey and Monica Lewinsky.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 11:19

And that's what I remember about the 90s. Just sensationalization.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah, when Trisha, you you're talking about watching the Vietnam War unfold on TV. Something I do vaguely remember uh you know, the Gulf War being on TV and going into the room, and my parents were paying attention to whatever was going on, and and and I knew it was a war, but I I didn't knew nothing else, you know. Like I was too young to understand the I guess almost like fact versus fiction uh element of it. It was just like this is a show where where there's really no story, and they just talk at you and it's very depressing. Like that's all I knew at that time.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

How many of us got to watch the challenger explode in our school? Our teachers are sitting there wheeling it a television into the classroom being like, hey, look at this oh shit, wheel it out. We're gonna pivot to like all these other things now. It's like, wait, what? Did we just see a bunch of people die?

SPEAKER_04 12:19

Like, what the fuck just happened? I'm I'm I'm all for sensationalizing, you know, space. That's kind of cool. Yeah, we agree.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

No, but if you want to hear like something heartbreaking, find a recording of uh the Hindenburg. Um they were reporting it live as it was landing because it was historic. I haven't. And all of a sudden it goes up. And the to the reporter's credit, as he's watching it happen, he is relaying it in real time. And you can hear how he is crying through it. And it's like, and then for a moment, it's like you're there. And you imagine at the time, everybody's there as they're listening and sharing this moment together, where before that it had been like you hear about it weeks later, right? That's the power of having things like that happen on television, is suddenly everybody's sharing this moment together.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Yep. And to a degree that has been the internet, which is the blessing and the curse that is.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Wow, we went to Hindenburg. Sorry. Shist. We went dark, guys. We went dark. To be fair, this this film kind of helps you go there.

Monologues, Writers, And Theatrical Voice

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Uh I pulled up uh William Holden's monologue to uh Faye Dunaway. The writing of this will probably linger with me for for for years to come because like you know, these some of these speeches right.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

And we can go into that because I really want to go into that because I have other writers that come to mind when I heard that when I watch this film.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

The statement that he makes is you need me. You need me badly because I'm your last contact with human reality. I love you, but our painful decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day. It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're just one of the humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. I'll be destroyed like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana. You're indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of your life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death, all are the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensation of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. Your madness, Diana. Vurulent madness, and everything you touch dies with you, but not me. Not as long as I feel pleasure and pain and love. It is so rich with subtext and and and just beauty.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Yeah, and and then right before he leaves, he describes their affair as if it was an episode. And next week.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Oh, yes. A wayward husband comes to his senses, returns to his wife, with whom he has established a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her Arctic desolation. Music up with a swell, final commercial, and here a few scenes from next week's show.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

That speech right there, I'm taken to two places. One, Mankowitz, because all about Eve. It has that, you know, we are theater incarnate.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

We must describe all of this as, you know, because life is a play. Um, and and then also delirious elderly men exit stage left. Like there's this point where it's just right in between the two. It's like a little fourth wall there. And I I love that.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Cold deer. Where do you want the cold deer? No cold beer, it's a typo.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

If you haven't seen that movie, enjoy that.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Oh, John Candy.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

John Candy and one of his best.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Sorkin, I think, said that like this movie really influenced him and uh his writing.

SPEAKER_04 16:17

Yeah, that tracks.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

And uh to me, I thought it was one of those really interesting things whose network is so it's just an ugly side of television, right? And and that uh that inspired the guy who wrote newsroom, which is such a hopeful, like this is what it should be.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Well, it's Aaron Sorkin, like idealism. If only the world worked this way, right?

SPEAKER_04 16:38

Yeah, Patty Chievsky was much darker. It's but that's that's why I I mean I love both of those writers. Yeah and uh one is very positive and one is is not. I will I also think that it is very interesting uh to see the screenwriters that come from theater.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yes. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 16:59

You know, it reminds me a little bit, not not the same, but a little bit of uh Martin McDonough, um, who maybe is a little bit more polarizing, but I I've enjoyed most of his movies in Bruges, Banshees of Anishurin. So the thing that I you know see from Chaevsky script, uh that that is reminiscent obviously of other uh playwrights who then go into films is is that the characters just go, they talk so much and so long. And uh Mike Flanagan is this way too in different genres, but yep. Um lot a lot of monologues, a lot of monologues. And uh I don't mind it. I know a lot of people who who you know maybe didn't grow up watching three plays a week, but uh I I think that a movie like this just shows how incredibly that can transition into film. Watching Faye Dunaway in this movie makes me lose my breath because she's going fast and just hard at every scene. And when she's done with some of her monologues, I'm like, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Right? And she channels this like little kid energy. She's so excited about this. This is her chance, and it's not for power and glory and wealth, and yeah, that you know, moving up the ranks is important to her, but it's more about like this is the passion, and William Holden's character is like her idol, her childhood idol. Like we get we have this this like romantic notion of of that um from uh her youth, and then she outgrows him essentially, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

She is of the time, whereas he is of the the job. Well, and and that's why she idealized him. He is incarnate what this job she she wants is, but she sees where it can head, and he doesn't want to go there. Yeah, he he understands what it should be for the security and safety of all of us.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

As a screenwriter, I'd love to know what Nick thinks, because there's like this cross between like if they all have these great pieces of vita chew, if they all have these great monologues and these great scenes, it the risks them all sounding like the same person, right? Having the same voice, but then at the same time, if done right, maybe it's just the world that they live in. How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_04 19:32

I think it's a a testament to Chaevsky knowing what he's talking about, because every character has such a specific and different point on the theme, on what he's talking about. So you've got Holden over here, you've got Dunaway over here, you've got the president who at the beginning is like, we're not doing this. And then he has then he has the scene at the um at the junk table. Yeah, he's like, We're not, we're not doing this. And then the and then Robert Duvall's like, well, you can resign in the morning if you want, and then he stops and he's like, I'll sit back down. You know, um, and so every single character has their you know their integrity, their the thing that they value on full display, and then we see them contradict that. Yes. Um, but each one of those things are a little bit different. Even um the the woman who is from the communist party. Yes. Yes, she's like, she's like, oh, we're gonna reach all these people, and her expectation and her point of view on what media is, but then halfway through her using media for her benefit, it just becomes about the bottom line. Yep, he's not taking my shares. Yeah, right. The communist with the her learn is like the communist party won't see a penny of these profits until syndication. Yes. And it's like, wait, I thought you were trying to, you know, I didn't think it was about the money for you. Yes. And so you see you get to see all of these characters who have different worldviews, who have different backgrounds, all using this one thing for their own benefit, and that's where you see their differences, but then they all end up in the same place.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Nick, you were you were talking about Wesley Addy, uh, who plays uh Nielsen Cheney, and there's a point where he is all, you know, righteous and and and whatnot, but he's the one who specifically says, like, we're talking about murder, like, you know, if if we do this, we can't be like found out. And it like that was the moment where he specifically has lost, like he, you know, the bottom has fallen out for him.

SPEAKER_04 21:46

Yeah, and then the uh the scene at the end is so amazing because all of their passion for everything, it just nobody moves, nobody talks more than a whisper. Yep. And it's like it's just matter of fact, oh, yeah. So uh business as usual. What are we doing tomorrow? Yeah, we're gonna do an assassination. Okay, let's do an assassination. Yep. On live TV. Yeah, on live TV. Yep. And it's it's wild.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

It it's wild. It feels like satire because it should be, but at the same time, you start to wonder what happens in some of these boardrooms, which leaves it to not be satirical anymore.

Break And Listener Calls To Action

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Anyway, we're gonna take a few moments to fill our glasses and get ready to imbibe more after this. The Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival exhibits short and feature-length motion pictures that utilize story elements in a new and exciting way. Our official selections are a carefully assembled blend of imaginative, sophisticated, and full-bodied stories. This is what our name represents. Filmmakers can expect an intimate festival experience where their personal story is valued as much as the one projected on the big screen. Tricia Leggett and Michael Newens, as well as our special guest, Nick Cardiff. Enjoying this podcast, please subscribe or follow us on your favorite podcast providers to get new episodes as soon as we release them. Rate and leave us a review to help our show reach that larger audience. And you can also follow Imbibe Cinema on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Letterboxd. We want to hear your thoughts on Network for those who might have been alive, or for those who, like Nick, uh watched it uh after not have previously I love it when John goes off script on this.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

I don't it gets real, real interesting.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

And this is the danger of imbibing too much during imbibe cinema.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Well, that that literally is the script yeah, continue. As the script says, I was supposed to imbibe.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Okay. Back to the script. Go back to the script.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Oh, back to the script. Let him go. Just let him go. Let the man cook. Look for the link in our show notes to send us a text or leave us a voicemail on things that you think we should have talked about or things you think we missed, or or uh films you think we need to uh make a cocktail and imbibe with next. Uh we'll make some time after the break in our next episode.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

We let you cook and you burnt.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Nope. Yep. Well played. Uh we'll make some time after the break in our next episode to discuss.

The “Mad As Hell” Moment Explained

SPEAKER_02 25:02

All right. So um I I I know, Michael, you uh before we had not not before we had started recording, but before before we started the actual uh uh cast, I guess you could say. The podcast. Yes. No, I I call it the cast. Yes, but it's confusing when there's a cast involved and they all actor is not an acting cast. It is uh the cast is in the podcast. But but is the the uh verb of casting I regardless.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

I know you're trying to make it the thing. Next stop, trying to make cast happen.

unknown 25:34

Damn it.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

So Michael, you had mentioned that uh, you know, I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore. You had seen it, you feel about 20 years previous.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah, I feel like I feel like I I've been seeing this. Okay, maybe 20 was an exaggeration, but um I know it's been definitely longer than a decade that I've been seeing this creep up in response to you know things that are things that are going on in the world, decisions that are being made that that uh you know that that the mass majority doesn't agree with. I don't know. I just find it interesting that it that it constantly floats to the top in the social media world, especially, it just gets this um very similar response.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

I see it pretty regularly. Yeah, it's something that I mean it's it fits for me though. It's it's definitely not outside my personalized algorithm.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Algorithm.

SPEAKER_04 26:36

Our corporate overlords. But yeah, I mean I I I've seen it uh a lot, and it's also been um spoofed.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

It has apparently been done in UHF, Critical Role, The Simpsons, and Family Guy.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

I was gonna say The Simpsons, I was preparing.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Real World Echoes? What the fuck is real world echoes?

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Oh, John learned something new.

SPEAKER_04 27:01

The scene itself is incredible. Oh my god, yes. The way that they they shot it, the way that he did all of those scenes as a live studio audience. Sidney Lamette came from uh live TV, and so he wanted to film it like that, and so they got uh the audience in and did it as a live, all of those things as live episodes. And um, that specific scene they did one and a half takes. Right? They did the whole scene from start to finish, and then Sidney Lamette immediately said, Okay, let's start again, to the dismay of uh uh Peter Finch. Yes, Peter Finch, yep. And so then Peter Finch goes back into it, and Lamette did that because he wanted the beginning to come in with all of that exhaustion and all of that uh like almost psychosis. And so what you see in the movie is the first half of the scene is take two, and then the second is take one.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

That's really clever.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

But the reason that it's only that half is because halfway through take two, Peter Finch stopped and went, I can't, I can't go on.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Yeah. Well he had a he had heart problems, and didn't even Lamette did not know about that.

SPEAKER_04 28:27

But yeah, so he had him start again. He went through, yeah, he went through half of it again and then cut it himself. Uh and then Sidney Lamette was like, It's okay, we got it. Yeah, he's crazy. He just wanted that first.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Peter Finch won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and he was the first to uh win it uh and not have made it to the Academy Awards. He passed away shortly before. Oh but he really, really, really wanted the role, and uh he wasn't the first consideration as far as I remember reading that um Sydney was concerned about his Australian accident. Accident. Now I'm sounding like you drink I know, too much accent. And so he had to he recorded himself reading the like a newspaper in an American accent.

SPEAKER_04 29:16

He's he told Sydney, he told Sydney to send him recordings of Walter Cronkite and I forget who else. Um, but he said, give me two weeks and I'll send you a recording of an American of a perfect American accent, and then he did. And so they hired him. It's amazing. It's incredible. It was like the movie itself, it's enraging.

Oscars, Performances, And Creative Choices

SPEAKER_04 29:36

There are many emotions that that um that it brings up, at least in me, but I it's hard almost to call it like an emotional movie because the void of emotion is like the point and the void of music.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

There is it is so quiet.

SPEAKER_04 29:53

And so for me, one of the really one of the the moments that I actually feel that the human emotion, like I'm trying to explain like what I mean by like emotional, like it like it gets me mad, it gets me all those things. I'm in awe of the performances. Yes, but like the love story, I'm not like moved by the love story, I'm like kind of watching it unfold. But the one moment, maybe there's two, maybe the end that we already talked about with holding the that monologue to Fade Dunaway. But the the main moment that I get emotional, like on a human level, is the is this speech and the I'm mad as L speech. And it for as many times as I've seen it, I always find something new in it. There's something that he says, you know, I'll I'll I'll connect to a different sentence, you know, each time. There's something very cathartic about seeing a man say those words and then immediately seeing it have an effect. Yeah. And I think it's partly cathartic for all of the anger that we all have, but it's also um inspiring to see it, even in this fictional world, to see it immediately have an effect because that's what we all want. Yes. It's like if I am so whatever the emotion is, if if I'm so happy that I'm that I have to speak, if I'm so angry that I have to speak in any given moment, all I want is for it to have an effect. Yep. And to be able to see in in this movie immediately people shouting from the windows, listening to him. And then, you know, you see the the corporate suits. Yeah, you know, it's great. It's uh like from them, but then also you see the people, and you see the people screaming and and standing up and um just just taking power, even if it's again the whole point of this movie is nothing we consume is real. Yeah, nothing we do in from the point of view of this movie really matters all that much if we're headed towards this global conglomerate that rules us all. Yeah. But it's still inspiring to see people get up and yell out their windows. Yeah, so it's the that's the that's the moment of the movie that that gets me.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

And the fact that they're all separated, everybody's in their own bubble, everybody's in their own window, everybody's living their own life, and they're all different types of people, and they're all like it it reached everybody. And to have have that is very cool.

SPEAKER_04 32:29

I I forgot actually there's three. Um, we talked about Holden and and the monologue that he has with Faye Dunaway. Yeah, it's a great closer. It's the motif, as you said, about him uh using her language against her, you know, the scenes from next week's show. Yeah, he does that a couple times throughout. That's amazing. But the other one is uh Beatrice Strait. Uh she won an Oscar for the best supporting for the least amount of screen time in history for five minutes and one second, I think, or five minutes and forty seconds. Yep, yeah. And and that moment, that scene, she had a few scenes. She worked for one week. She had the but the one monologue is what uh catapulted her above everybody else. And that monologue is just insane, insane to watch from an an actor point of view, from a writing point of view, from an audience point of view. Any way you analyze that moment, she crushes it.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

That year at the Oscars, like she's up against uh Jane Alexander in All the President's Men, Jody Foster and Taxi Driver, Piper Laurie and Carrie, and Lee Grant in Voyage of the Damned. And not often do I know all the movies in like I mean, but all those movies are movies I know. Um I might not have seen them all, but they're ones that I know. So that's a that's a jam-packed group. And to be only on screen for five minutes.

unknown 33:59

Damn.

SPEAKER_04 34:00

Five minutes. And and Ned Beatty was on screen for less than six as well, and he got nominated. It's his monologue, all these monologues are are insane. For uh Beatrice Strait, uh, there's a funny uh interview that I saw where Sidney Lamette was talking about how Patty Chievski was always on set because he was also a producer, he had a say in everything, and they loved working like that because Sydney knew that Patty like had the comedy and knew the comedy much more than uh Sydney. And so he was happy to have him around whenever there was a moment dialogue-wise, Patty was there to kind of steer the ship. There's one moment where uh Howard Beale walks in the rain, he's in pajamas, and he walks past a guard and he says hello. And the the guard says a very hello, Mr. Beale. Um, and he goes, he says an insane thing. I forget what the line is, um, but he says an insane thing like I'm I'm the prophet or something crazy like that. And the line is just like, sure thing, Mr. Beal. And that's that's the response. And Sidney was directing him to be like eye rolly, sure thing, Mr. Beal. And Patty Trievsky was like, No, no, no, dude. It's that's that's you're killing the laugh. Yeah, that's not it. Yet he has to not even notice that anything's wrong. And so then you have the line read that you have in the movie, which is just, yep, hello, Mr. Beal. Sure thing, Mr. Beal. Very just very and it's so funny. The moment with Beatrice, Patty Tievsky comes in because uh Sidney Lamette had done take after take after take. He'd done five, six takes, and she's she's getting bigger and bigger as actors tend to do. And he was doing something where he was trying to kind of like get it out, let it let it get it out of her system so then she could settle down and and find the you know the the the moment that he wanted uh her to have. And Patty Chevsky comes up and is like, this she's doing way too much, she's doing way too much. And he goes, Listen, Patty, you know about comedy, but I know about divorce. I thought it was very funny.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Well done and funny.

SPEAKER_03 36:07

Um gets the message across.

Dark Comedy Then And Now

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Yeah. Uh there are so many things that I think, because I know John has pointed out this is not a contemporary film. Um, that there are things that of the era I think that I'm missing, right? That I'm sure there are little nods to things that people would have gotten because it was very relevant at the time, but I can still from this distance see uh enough of it to understand. But I find it it it when I after seeing it, it made me think, oh, all these contemporary critical satires and whatnot that we see in the moment, you're like, damn. And then it's like, well, 50 years from now, people be like, um, okay, I get it, but what am I missing? So yeah, so there was a distance to me on that with the dark comedy. I feel like part and partly maybe because we were watching it alone.

SPEAKER_04 37:01

I think part of it too comes back to what we were talking about about being on the other side of it, because that this is one of my favorite things about watching old movies, is that you have to put yourself in that time 20 years before the internet, you know, in the 70s, and uh just all the things that were happening in the world when those people in 1976 sat down in this in this big movie theater or uh to to watch this movie, the idea that the world was run by one business was absurd. The idea that these suits on uh whatever avenue in in New York would so nonchalantly casually put together an assassination on live TV was absurd. So that dark comedy makes people laugh. When you see something that's absurd, you laugh. But we're watching it believing 100% that it's a drama, like it's this is just what they do in those in those high rises, you know, those buildings. And so I think that's a little bit of of the the disconnect too, because I also feel that. Uh, but I think that it's I think that's the the major disconnect is is that for us being on this side of it, it's just not absurd. It's not an absurd dark comedy. Because it's not just that too plausible.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

All the all the movies since then that criticize uh television, everything's gotten more and more jaded. And I'm wondering how much of it's like a snowball influence of like they're influenced by network and network, you know, blah blah blah. And and so then watching this for me, having been influenced by things that were probably influenced by network. My brain's gonna sit on that. I'm just gonna marry.

SPEAKER_04 39:01

I think that network's influence is immeasurable in uh in so many people's work. Um, but also I think the effects of, as we were talking about earlier, instant information and constant information. I think that does a lot of the heavy lifting in uh getting people, you know, jaded and and all of that. Because we see the effect, we see the rise in all what whatever negative thing you want to talk about in society, shootings or corruption or like whatever. You know, we see so much of that all the time. It's it's another it's another example of how this movie knew what it was saying and has been proven right over and over again. The way that the way that that Sidney Lamette shot it was he told the DP, I forget the DP's name, uh, he told him that he wanted the camera throughout the movie to become more and more corrupt. So by the end of the movie, it looks like a Ford commercial. If you look at the lighting throughout this movie, the beginning is dark. They're on the they're they're telling the story, they're getting drunk on the on the street, and they're in the bar. It is dark. It's a there's almost no extra light. It's you see them, you know, uh, but it's natural light. Yeah. The further you get into Howard's madness, the more you see, like when he's laying in bed, it's like a very crisp line. It's very aggressive, you know. When he's in the when he's in the meeting with uh Ned Beatty, it's it's very umir almost. Yeah, it's so aggressively lit, and it becomes unnatural when you're in the the assassination plot scene. Yeah, it's just like you just have these like pools of light and it looks fake, and even the show is like flatter. The thesis of this movie being that television corrupts. Yep. Right? And so I'm watching it on a TV, we're watching it on a screen. So by the end of it, we're corrupted. The thing we're watching is corrupted, and then by association we by consumption, we are corrupted. And and I just find I find it so profound on so many different levels and

Nick’s Projects And Farewell Cheers

SPEAKER_04 41:32

layers. I don't know, it's it's it's a movie that again, just I I think about a lot.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Nick, tell our our our lovely listeners uh uh what they can uh see you on, hear you on, read you on, watch you on, etc.

SPEAKER_04 41:48

Well, right now I am just in process for three features, uh getting financing together for those. That's what I'm spending most of my time on right now. But I'm I also have uh two pilots. Uh one is just out in the world, uh getting read, and we'll see what happens. Uh and the other one, uh, I'm shooting a proof of concept sometime before the end of this year. Uh and that's a most of the stuff I do, I'm like a horror guy, you know, horror fantasy. And uh this is the the one that I'm shooting is a uh proof of concept for a comedy, which I'm very excited about.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Well, we greatly appreciate all of our listeners for choosing this podcast, supporting Independent Films and the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival. I'm Jonathan C. Leggett, and thanks for imbibing with us. Cheers.