Yes, it’s Network. Could you expect anything else after Medium Cool? Maybe. But you’d be wrong. It’s Network. Let’s look at this documentary… errr fictional satire from the mind of Paddy Chayefsky and executed with the deft touch of Sidney Lumet.
I realize there’s an entire laundry list of things that could have been touched upon which I did not. Again, an injury is limiting my computer time. Computer time includes recording and editing so I need to be economical with both. The character of Diana Christensen is probably one of the most interesting because of how she’s written but, also, because the romance plot is actually a larger part of the movie than I sometimes realize. So she’s got screen time and there’s plenty of time to examine her. And I think that, choosing her, to represent what she represents is maybe a bit… biased. Hackett could have easily been that, too, or there could have just been a dude. I know that they, for economy, combined Max’s love interest with Max’s rival and it works but she’s one of the very precious few women in this movie–which is also probably documentarian as well. Maybe bringing this lens to bear on this specific point is fruitless. But it wasn’t brought in the podcast.
I think I did completely forget to mention the other two academy awards. Faye Dunaway takes it and there’s a really good photo of her the next day looking real blase. It’s called “The Morning After” and it’s the kinda photo that would make me want to be a magazine photographer. Getting to wake up in the morning and do shoots like that is the dream. The other Academy Award was given to Chayefsky for the screenplay which, if you’ve seen the movie, is no great surprise.