E173 | Thinking Films: Network (1976) w/ Tom Shkolnik

Today Alex and special guest Tom Shkolnik discuss the 1976 film Network directed by Sidney Lumet, written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, William Holden and Faye Dunaway.  

In this episode we discuss Lumet's film-making style, how Network predicted the future, the evolution of the media landscape, the impact of systems and media on how we think and behave, technology addiction, cultural stagnation and much more. 

Tom is the director of the 2012 British drama The Comedian nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2012 London film festival. He is the director of an upcoming film based on the book A Life of One's Own by psychoanalyst Marion Milner. 

Here is the link to the crowdfunding campaign for Tom's upcoming film A Life of Own's Own about psychoanalyst Marion Milner:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/qr/BWdq6L4n?utm_campaign=sharemodal&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=shortlink

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist in-training.

Check out The Thinking Mind Blog on Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-186445029

If you would like to invite Alex to speak at your organisation please email alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Speaking Enquiry" in the subject line.

Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

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Transcript

Alex: Welcome back, everyone. Today, I'm very excited to discuss the 1976 film "Network," and we're back with film director Tom Shkolnik. Tom, thanks so much for joining me

Tom: it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

Alex: As you guys probably know by now, Tom is running the crowdfunding campaign for his upcoming film, which he's doing the post-production on, "A Life of One's Own," based on psychoanalyst Marion Milner and her life. We talked about that on the podcast a couple of weeks ago.

I'll put the link to the crowdfunding campaign in the description, and not only can you support the project, but you can get access to cool extras, merchandise, special screenings. Check it out. "Network" is a stark satirical film. It's primarily about how a system can metabolize a human being's mental breakdown but it's also about a lot of other things: aging, the evolution of media, the beginnings of what I would argue you could call the simulacrum, uh, how media can be [00:01:00] dehumanizing if you immerse yourself too much in it, it's generally considered a very prescient film. It's of course directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayefsky. It's gen- this film is generally thought to have predicted the conversion of news from primarily information to entertainment, which seems very quaint now, thinking about what news was back in the '70s, the harnessing of anger for populist means, the conversion of human feeling into a commodity.

I, uh, as, as we did with "Taxi Driver," I suggested some films that we could discuss, and you were quite keen to discuss "Network." What's, what's your relationship to this film, Tom?

Tom: Um, well, it's funny. I, I, I said to you just before we started that you're gonna take the lead on this because I really love "Network," I- and I've always really loved "Network," but I've never thought of it as a particularly psychological film.

And when you suggested [00:02:00] it, like all the other films that you suggested were, you know, fantastic films, but they were very,

like,

uh... The, the psychology of them was very clear in the kinda makeup of the characters, and I think there's something about "Network" that's so... It's like this sort of, um, monolith of cinema.

You know, it's just this sort of incredible achievement of kind of '70s cinema and is unparalleled in its combination of comedy and satire, and yet

so,

um, precise- Mm-hmm ... in the depiction of the characters. And so I just love the film. I was really excited to talk to you about it and to see what you think about it as well.

Alex: Yeah, and I, I think that's one of the things that makes a great film or a great work of art, it, is that it can be about many things simultaneously. There's enough layers- 

Mm-hmm So with "Network," there is an aspect of it where it's, you can say, okay, it's about media and evolution of media, and that's maybe the most obvious.

But it involves a lot of [00:03:00] very deep characters going through struggles which are very important, so there is a commentary, I think, a little bit on human nature and, and how human nature can respond to different systems. Uh, it's also a little bit about aging. You know, it's about there are characters who are going through their life, and s- a couple of the main characters are at the end of their life, and how they interact with younger characters as well.

So what I love about this film is you can take it from many different angles. , How, how old were you when you first watched this film?

Tom: film? It's a good question. It's unlike with Taxi Driver, I can't say that I remember specifically, but I just have such a memory of the first time I saw Howard Beale cracking up on s- on TV, and this feeling that I was watching something that was like nothing else.

You know, when the camera pushes in, uh, Peter Finch as he goes on this incredibly long monologue and he goes, you know, "I want you to stick your head out and [00:04:00] I want you to shout, 'I'm mad as

Alex: hell-" "... and I'm

Tom: it anymore.'" And I j- And it's funny because I watched it again in preparation for our conversation, and I invited a friend who not only had never seen it, didn't know what happened in the film.

Alex: Mm.

Tom: And as the film was progressing towards that moment, my friend was just getting more and more excited. There was just a kind of real giddiness of the kind of, uh, anarchy of the film. And when that moment happened, my friend was just in, in kind of fits of laughter and joy. And then it cuts from that, and I just remember the first time I saw it and seeing all the people on the tenement, you know, in New York when sh- when, um, uh, the, the w- Holden's character, the, Max opens the window and he looks out and it starts raining and everyone is screaming, "I'm mad as hell."

Yeah. And it's

like,

obviously it's Chayefsky's genius, which we'll come back to [00:05:00] probably in our talk, but Lumet's direction and, like, the details that you hear a kind of a, a kinda elderly-sounding Jewish guy, and you hear a, a young couple, and you hear... And it's so specific, and they're all mad with rage, screaming at the rain, you know, at the, a- as the lightning hits the building.

So I don't remember when, but I really remember the first experience, and it still affects me in the same way. I still get as giddy with the energy of the film now when I, when I see it.

Alex: Yeah, I, I think you're right. Even though it's very dark, it's very fun, and it's very energizing, and it's hard to feel... It's, it's, it's surprising that a film from 1976 can still feel so fresh and so- Anarchic. Like you think, how, how can a film from that long ago still present itself as so... H- haven't we, we, um, broken the boundaries much more since then?

But no, you go back to Network, [00:06:00] um, they're doing something very interesting there still. I first watched this film in my early 20s. Mm. And for me, this is one of the first films I would have watched via research. Mm. You know, there was a phase in my life where I probably watched a lot of classic films because my older brother recommended them.

Mm. And probably one of those films was Serpico, which was also directed by Sidney Lumet. But then I, what I would do is, "Okay, this director made a film I liked. Let me watch as many of his films as I can." And I think that's how I stumbled upon Network. I had actually heard the mad as hell speech before because, uh, back then you would listen to, like, DJ mixtapes and stuff.

DJs would make mixtapes, and one I listened to had that speech at the beginning. And even then I'm like, "Wow, this is something. This is crazy to listen to." And I never knew it was from a film. Yeah. But then the first time you're watching the film and you see the speech and, and its context, then it's totally electrifying.

Tom: It's so electrifying, and Peter Finch, you know... I mean, there's so [00:07:00] many stories about this film, but, like, Peter Finch was, was obviously dying when they were shooting it.

He was very, very sick with cancer. And he could only do one take of that big, you know, because it, it... You can tell that it was shot as one long continuous speech where he did the whole thing, and the camera, the film camera starts behind the TV camera. Yeah. And then it just pushes in, pushes in, pushes in, pushes in until it becomes this enormous close-up of him, and then he stands up, you know, like the prophet, and 

Alex: and then he

Tom: walking around, and they did one take, and then Lumet asked him if he could do another one, and he tried and, and, um, a few moments into it, he just dried up, and he almost collapsed. I mean, he j- he'd put so much energy into that first take. And so the thing that we see in the film is the take that Peter Finch was able to, to do of that speech because he was so unwell.

I, 

Alex: I didn't know that. I knew that he had died, [00:08:00] uh, after the film was made while he was promoting the film. Mm. My understanding is he was obsessed with getting this part.

He was really determined to get this part, and almost didn't.

Tom: I didn't know that. I know, I, I know that there is a story that Lumet wanted someone else

Alex: to do the role.

Tom: with.

Yes. And, and so tell me. What-

Alex: so Lumet thought that Peter Finch couldn't play it because he was Australian- Yes ... and couldn't do the accent.

Tom: Yes, I did. And didn't L- Finch fly to meet Lumet?

Alex: flew and he auditioned, and I think he wasn't used to necessarily auditioning for a role at that time 'cause he was a big actor. Mm. But he said, "I'll swallow my pride for this 'cause I really want this part." Having done the part, he was obsessed with getting nominated for an Oscar for it, and that's why he went on an aggressive promotional tour.

Tom: But didn't he die before the Oscars even

happened? 

Alex: he died on the promotional tour. Wow. So he d- he died, you know, going on various shows to talk about it. I learned all of this in researching just for this. Mm. Uh, I didn't understand that he was dying of cancer. Yeah. [00:09:00] But that's v- very salient, I think, 'cause this film is all about his character's...

This character's death comes up again and again throughout the film, so it's quite sad, but quite important. 

Tom: Well, he

gets murdered. I

mean, that's the- end of

the thing. He gets, he gets killed. But there's something about Chayefsky. It's funny, Chayefsky, 'cause we'll talk... I know, I remember from last time, there's gonna be a ti- you're gonna ask me for another film.

Yeah. But basically, Chayefsky has, like, two strands to his writing in a way. There's the sort of institutional writing, and there's another great film that he made in 1971 that he wrote, uh, called The Hospital- Mm-hmm ... which in the same idea as Network, he just chooses a body. You know, he chooses a sort of institution of modern life, and then he tries to come up with a story that helps him dissect the kind of surrealism and madness of, of this thing.

And in, in [00:10:00] 1971, The Hospital came out, which, which has certain parallels. Again, it's about an aging doctor who is, is obsessed with this feeling that his life is ending. But then there's another great film, um, that he wrote before that called, uh, Middle of the Night, where Fredric March plays an o- an aging businessman who falls in love with his 24-year-old secretary.

Mm. And there's something that, that Chayefsky comes back to of, like, what do we look for in love, and what is the purpose of love in our life, and how do we confront our mortality?

And,

and it kind of comes into, into Network and I think gives the film its heart in a way. Mm-hmm. Because there's so much satire in the film, and there's so much kind of hard-edged stuff.

But then there's this feeling of, like, what makes life really meaningful?

Alex: Yeah. And what's, what constitutes... I do [00:11:00] think this film is asking, you know, what constitutes a fulfilling relationship- Mm ... versus an emptier, more shallow relationship, potentially. I mean, looking at Lumet's films, so looking at Lumet's films that I have also watched, I have watched "12 Angry Men"- Failsafe, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and his last film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - with Philip Seymour Hoffman.

And the strand I get is there's a lot about morality, like morality, uh, but also, as you said, he chooses a s- a system or an institution. So in 12 Angry Men, he's obviously talking about the justice system and the ju- the, the judicial system. Failsafe is all about nuclear weapons. Mm. Um, Network is about media.

Serpico is about the police. Mm. So it seems, among other things, Lumet is interested in how do large systems navigate or fail to navigate ethical questions.

Tom: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I... The statement I made was about Chayefsky. N- uh- Oh,[00:12:00] 

Alex: Oh, all right. 

Pavel Chayefsky. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Tom: But, uh, but in a way it's true for both of them. I don't know. I mean, I think Lumet... It's funny, like, Lumet is one of my favorite film directors, like, of all time. He's, he's a real idol of mine, and he does such a beautiful job with Network.

But to me, Network is a Paddy Chayefsky film. Like, it's interesting, Paddy Ch- Chayefsky, as far as I know, is the only screenwriter that got a film, his films credited as by

Alex: Paddy Chayefsky.

Mm-hmm.

Tom: Mm. Like, like, I don't know of any other film writer that had such control over his films. Um, and I think the marriage of Lumet's sense of morality and incredible sense of character, and the clarity, you know, the clarity that he directs the film with is just astonishing.

But the script

Alex: It's beautifully written

Tom: it's mouthwatering. I mean, it's so incredible.

And- 

Alex: mean, it's got... Uh, what's ni- what's different about it is, in [00:13:00] contrast to a lot of modern films, is it has a lot of monologues- Mm ... like a lot of speeches. Some are like crazed, but some are very, very fascinating and interesting. Not n- they're not just monologues that are for the media, but even between the characters in their lives, they give these nice, almost like Shakespearean speeches.

Yeah. And there's a wonderful, uh, theatricalness to it.

Tom: Yeah. Well, it's funny that, that both Chayefsky and Lumet come from the same background.

Like, they're both these sort of New York Jews who came up, grow up, grew up in theater, and then went into television in the early days of television, and then moved into movies. And it's kind of funny that these two, who in a way owe so much to TV, end up being the ones that make probably the most sca- scathing satire of TV and the place of TV.

And I think for me it's funny, like... when the film came out, I, I, in [00:14:00] preparation for our talk, I read some reviews from the time, and some people accused it of being, like, overly hysterical.

Alex: And

Tom: when we look at it now from the perspective of where we are now,

it,

it's n- it's not overly hysterical at all.

It's understated. It's understated compared to where things went in relation to,

you know, that,

that even, even Beale's monologue towards the end where he says, "You've become humanoids.

You, you're no longer people, you're just consumers." And you listen to that now- You know, I'm watching the film as a part of me is going, "Where's my phone?

I need to check my phone." And I hear Beale shout at me that, you know, I'm a humanoid.

Alex: a humanoid.

Tom: I'm like, "I am. I am a humanoid." Like, I, I struggle to stay off my phone. I, I move from one screen to the next, and I think there's so much that that film was, was picking up [00:15:00] in the kind of sensitivities of the artists that made it that, that got much, much worse than anything they

Alex: imagined. That they could have imagined. Yeah. Important background for this film. So 

Tom: apparently 

Alex: two years before this film was released, a TV news reporter named Christine Chubbuck died by suicide live on air.

So this was in Florida. Apparently, she introduced it as exclusive coverage, and she shot herself. And of course, during the first act of this film, Howard Beale, one of the main characters, we'll talk about the plot in a second, he threatens to kill himself on air. I don't think it's necessarily certain that this event inspired the film, but obviously parallels can be drawn.

Is 

Tom: Cha- Chayef- Chayefsky claims that he didn't know, that it had nothing... He had already started writing that story when it happened.

Mm. So I think his, his feeling was that it was sort of in this

zeitgeist- Mm ...and

he was sort of picking [00:16:00] up on something that was coming anyway, that someone was going to, to commit suicide as an act of entertainment,

Alex: And s- speaking of the zeitgeist, so obviously this is a mid-'70s film. The last film we talked about, "Taxi Driver," was a mid-'70s film. How do you see this film fitting into that time, fitting into the zeitgeist?

Tom: Um, well, it's funny, they're both New York films as well. Um, I mean, I sometimes joke that I should have lived in that time.

Alex: I'm

Tom: I'm really, like, in, in the, in the... I somehow was born in the wrong moment of history. Um,

Alex: I

Tom: there's something about this kind of incredible combination of robustness and frailty.

Like, you know, the oil prices were going up, as they are now, and New York was, was about to default. It was sort of on the edge of bankruptcy. But there was also an audience for a certain type of culture, and there was- Mm ... a sort of interest in, you know... Network was [00:17:00] not, um, just, um, a- as was Taxi Driver, these were not just sort of, uh, niche art house films.

These are big movies that also ended up making a lot of money.

Alex: They had a big cultural impact.

Big impact. They were event films. Yeah.

Tom: People were queuing around the block to see these films, and I think that is something That is almost unimaginable now. You know, again, in the way that Network... I mean, we can talk about there's all kinds of ambivalences in, inside Network, but,

Alex: you 

Tom: know,

it's funny that inside Network is, you know, the, the, the character of Schumacher is played by Holden, who's like a kind of old school Hollywood actor, and he represents a sort of earthy, old America that has a sense of love and tradition and honor.

And in a way, everyone else is, is the future, is a kind of symbols of [00:18:00] fragmentation of a culture that's becoming more and more broken up. And I think now we're so broken up that we can't agree on anything.

Alex: Fragmentation, overt focus on performance at the expense of everything else. So we talked about, like in McGilchrist's work when we talked about Marion Milner.

Mm-hmm. So what you could, what you could call a left hemisphere view of the world- Yes ... 

is very much on display as emerging in the news world in "Network."

Tom: Yeah. And a kind of performativeness of life.

Alex: Performativeness of life, yeah. 

Tom: Like

something that you can tell... I mean, Schumacher even, even says it to, to Diane when they break up, like, just this feeling that peop- that,

that, that,

w- we are... W- we've stopped just watching TV, we've taken the TV into ourselves, and I think now we're not... We're all on TV. We are making our own,

Alex: Yeah

Tom: making our own content. We are advertising [00:19:00] ourselves, our opinions, our personality constantly. And in that sense, you know, there's something kind of Marshall McLuhany about it, like the kind of the speeding up and heating up of, of the, the mechanism of technology, you know?

And, and, and Network seems to sit in that space where-

Alex: Mm-hmm

Tom: movies turn into TV, and they can't even see that it's going from TV into computers, into mobile phones, and- Into 30-second TikTok videos. Into 30-second TikTok videos, exactly, of,

Of,

of anything, you know? And, and you can feel that break happening in that film, and I think that's why-

Alex: It's like, um, ground zero almost

yeah.

Tom: It just captures this moment of like the crack, the crack that happens, and now we can look at that moment, and we can see its ramifications, you know? Again, just that last scene where he [00:20:00] says goodbye to her and he, and he says,

you know,

the... How can we feel things? How can we really feel things for each other?

And when I watched that the other day, I thought that scene was so prescient, like now. Like how do we connect? How do we break out of this relentless loneliness that we've been pushed into?

Alex: And how do we-- why is it that we repeatedly fail to connect? Why is it that connection has become so rare? Yeah. And what's getting in the w- what about modern life is getting in the way of connection?

Tom: Well,

that's what I felt when, when I watched the scene when Beale gets them to shout. In a way, I mean, it's an incredible line, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore," but it's also gibberish. I mean, it doesn't mean anything.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And when I watched the scene, I thought really what those people want to do is feel connected. Like it made me remember people clapping for the NHS- Mm-hmm ... you know, during COVID, or those [00:21:00] videos of Italian people singing from balconies. Like what they really wanted to do, apart from the fact that they wanted to be angry, which, which we can talk about, but I felt like there was this desperate need to be together and to shout together and, and-

Alex: I have a different read on the anger.

Go on. So, I mean, we'll talk about the plot in a second, but there's a fa- the, the famous mad as hell speech where the main character, Howard Beale, is telling people o-on air, on the news to, to go to their windows and shout, you know, "I'm mad as hell. I'm not gonna take it anymore," and everyone goes and does that.

And I, I think almost certainly there is a need for connection there that's being tapped into, but I also think a need for, like, agency, like a s- a need for a sense of control over the events of your life. And I think there is something about modern societies. Again, I'm not anti-modern society. I don't want to go back to a hunter-gatherer existence.

But there is something about [00:22:00] modern society that makes us feel that life is being done to us- Mm-hmm ... rather than we are having an effect on our lives. Jobs, you know, having to live i-in, in small apartment buildings in very dense cities, having to pay taxes, having to commute, having to abide by strict rules and laws- Make a lot of people feel like their life is just being run for them and that they have no input.

So the, "I'm not gonna take it anymore," is the sense of I'm not going to constantly be a passive ... I interpreted it as I'm not gonna be a passive observer of my own life anymore.

Tom: Mm-hmm. But, but, but they don't-- It's not a call to action in the sense that he doesn't say-- He, he even says in his speech, "I, I," you know, "I'm not gonna tell you to go and write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write.

But the first thing you need to do is get

Alex: Yeah. 

Tom: Yeah, yeah. yeah. And,

and-

[00:23:00] I mean,

and may- maybe that connects, like you said in your introduction, like to, to, to populism, you know, to the rise of populism. Like, I don't know, m- I'm a bit tangential in my thought maybes, but like I thought of like, you know, Jungian shadows- Mm-hmm

and the way the more society becomes polite and managed and docile, these forces have to go somewhere and, and Beale becomes like a lightning rod through his madness. He becomes like a lightning rod to some underbelly of rage and frustration and aliveness- Yeah ... uh, that people are yearning for- Absolutely

and, and are not, are not having a space for. They don't have a, a space to, and then he comes and he says to them, "Follow me."

Alex: Yeah, and I, and I think that anger and frustration, that shadow exists because of that [00:24:00] combination, that lack of connection- Mm ... 

that lack of feeling of immediacy, and that lack of feeling of control- Mm

I f- for me are, like the main reasons why that repressed anger exists, aside from, of course, all the normal frustrations and tragedy- tragedies of any life, of course. Yeah.

This film was received very well largely when it came out. It was nominated for 10 Oscars.

It won four, including Best Screenplay, Best Actor for Peter Finch, which he won posthumously, Best Actress for Faye Dunaway, Best Supporting Actress for Bridget, who played the wife of Max Schumacher, and I think she was only on screen for, like four minutes. I

Tom: think it was, uh, for many years it was like the Oscar for the shortest performance ever until- Yeah

Judi Dench won it. It's

Alex: it. It's crazy. Um, so what actually happens in this film? We've talked about a lot. I'm sure many people have watched it. For those who haven't, of course there will be spoilers. We've got Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch. He's a veteran anchor whose breakdown is repackaged [00:25:00] as must-see TV.

We've got Diana Christensen, played by Faye Dunaway, who is the programming executive, the new up-and-coming programming executive. We have Max Schumacher Played by William Holden. He's the old-school newsman who's behind the scenes for Howard's show, and he still believes in something, um, akin to journalistic dignity.

The, the film opens with Howard being a long time UBS evening news anchor, and he's been told he's gonna be fired because of low ratings. He becomes depressed. He starts to unravel. He announces on air that he will kill himself live during his final broadcast. Obviously, the network panics, but then Diana convinces the network that Howard's breakdown is drawing attention.

So instead of removing him, they actually keep him on TV, and then gradually Howard returns to the air not talking about killing himself, but he starts to rant and quote, you know, "Tell the truth," with growing intensity. This becomes the highest-rated television show on air, [00:26:00] and then he gives that famous...

This culminates in this famous, "I'm mad as hell" speech, which we talked about earlier. Max, the old news executive, begins an affair with Diana, uh, and Max becomes increasingly horrified by how the network is exploiting Howard's mental state. Then Howard starts ranting about corporate interests and deals that the television company are doing, and that, makes him brought before the president of the ch- channel and basically threatened and then told to change his message.

But then Howard changes his message to one of dehumanization, so he starts talking about how humans, individuals are going extinct. Essentially, the human spirit is going extinct. That kills his ratings, and he becomes very, very unpopular, and then all of the TV executives around him, in a very nonchalant way, plan his death, say, "You know, his, his, his ratings are going down.

We have to kill him," and then they kill him live on air, and that's how the film ends. It ends [00:27:00] famously saying he's the first man to be killed due to low ratings. And that's how it ends.

Tom: how it ends.

Alex: What, what are some things you think this film really gets right? Oh

Tom: Oh my God. I mean, it gets so much right.

Filmically, I mean, I think there's, there is a kind of clarity and a beauty to the way this film is made as far as the sort of mise-en-scène, the way Lumet stages each scene, and the way he breaks it up into very clean shots.

I mean, most scenes are broken up into maybe two or three setups at best, but the camera is always at the right place. And he does this really beautiful thing that at the beginning of the film, I mean, it's very, very subtle, but at the beginning of the film, the film language is incredibly simple. If there are any camera moves, they're very subtle.

Mostly the camera just pans with characters and then [00:28:00] cuts from one person to another. And then when Beale has his big speech, you know, the, the I'm mad as hell moment, there is this incredible push in that we talked about, uh, a moment ago. And the camera starts behind the TV camera, and it's a very objective shot, almost like documentary like, like the, the previous moments in the film.

But then the camera moves in and in and in and in and in until it becomes this almost like distorted close-up of Howard Beale. And then he stands up, and it's this kind of wide shot of this raging thing. And really from that point on, the film becomes very subtly more grotesque. The angles are wider. The colors are brighter.

Mm. Everything... It's not ... It doesn't lose its, its kind of original thing. It's not like it becomes completely surreal, but it just becomes more and more grotesque as the plot of the film kind [00:29:00] of becomes more and more heightened and disconnects from, um, reality. And there's just this kind of incredibly subtle transformation that Lumet guides us through with his cinematographer and the editor, and then the performances are, I would say, pitch perfect, every single one of them.

I mean, Robert Duvall is just... That moment where he fires Schumacher, you know, and he goes, uh, like, uh, he goes, "It's a big-titted..." And the way he says it, and then he sits down, and he straightens his vest, and he's so excited that he has to clean some sweat off his, like, forehead. And it's just sublime, and there's this big old speech, and then Schumacher, you know, goes, "Fuck you," to Hackett, and then he goes to Diane, that he's already started having an affair with, and he goes, "And fuck you, too."

And then he leaves, and Hackett goes to Diane, "Is there a thing going on between you [00:30:00] and Schumacher?" And she just goes, without any, "Not anymore." I mean, it's like every single beat of the film you can just tell that they were all firing on all cylinders. I mean, it's just bliss to watch, uh, on that level.

Alex: That camera push you mentioned, so starting with an objective shot of Howard Beale and then zooming in on his face

Tom: as he- It's pushing in, so the camera moves. Yeah. Yeah. It's not... 'Cause a zoom would have been more realistic. You know, a zoom is still in the language of documentary. Right. But he literally on a dolly moves the camera.

So what, what was, was at the beginning of the shot quite distant, and even with an object between us and the thing with the camera, the TV camera, becomes an all-encompassing experience of this hell and brimstone, you know, fire and brimstone, um, that's coming out of Howard Beale.

Alex: And it's al- almost like that camera move mirrors or symbolizes what is happening with news in the [00:31:00] film. So in the film, news starts from this very objective Walter Cronkite style of, "We'll just give you objective information." Yeah. And that's how Howard Beale starts to, "We're now giving you this crazy, grotesque, ranting and raving man who is just going to be emotionally expressive with no substance whatsoever."

Tom: Yeah. And, and it's also something about, I don't know, subjectivity and madness and the power of madness, you know? Um, and, and what is madness responding to? Like, you know, what Howard's... You know, what... You're, you're, you're a professional. I, you know, you, you can tell me, what do you think is wrong with Howard?

Alex: From like a psychiatric- Mm.

So I mean, this can al- I guess maybe for me it feels this way, this can be almost the most boring part, but maybe it's interesting for those outside the profession. Uh, I, I think the closest or the, the most accurate diagnosis from a psychiatric point of [00:32:00] view is something like a manic episode with psychosis. Mm. And that often happens when people have a huge life stress, like they're about to lose their job. So in the beginning of this film, Howard is told he's gonna be fired.

Tom: Mm.

And 

Alex: seems to happen is his sleep is disrupted. He starts to believe very unusual things. He has a hallucination at one point in the film that he's talking to God, and that God has chosen him- Mm

to deliver the task of communicating with the public and spreading a very important message. Um, and, and so, so there's the manic part, which is being higher in energy, talking in a pressured and voracious way, not sleeping as much. And then there's the psychosis part, which is the hearing voices. Mm. And usually when, when someone also has a bunch of grandiose beliefs that are untethered to reality, you c- you can c- put all of that under the br- under the umbrella of mania with psychosis.

Mm. Which I think, I guess you [00:33:00] could also think about this psychologically. So what, what is this process, however pathologically you may say it is, what process is it serving for him? And I think it's giving someone whose life's task and meaning have been taken away from him through his firing, because you really get the impression that Howard Beale is all about his career.

I think in the beginning of the film, it says either that he's unmarried or doesn't have children, essentially hints that he doesn't really have a life outside of delivering the news. That's all taken away from him, and so there's an idea that something like mania, grandiose beliefs, and a psychosis gives you your life's task back.

It gives you this sense of purpose and this sense of meaning. So that's the impression I get psychiatrically.

Tom: Yeah. But it's funny, like this feeling of like meaning, the search for meaning.

I

mean, maybe that's sort of like the backdrop to the whole film. Yeah.

Like,

h- what do we do to try and fill our lives with meaning?[00:34:00] 

Alex: Yeah. And, uh, I mean, I talked to an existential psychotherapist last week, and that's obviously all about meaning.

You know, existential psychotherapy is really geared at how to- helping people find meaning in their lives. Mm. Because if you don't, you know, things will occupy that void- Mm ... which are very unhelpful. Like, for example, vague, undirected anger, as it happens in this film. I think it's also really telling that when Howard Beale goes totally off the rails and his show fully converts from a news show to a madman of the airwaves show, behind him on the set is stained glass, which is just like a church.

Mm. So he very much fills the role as preacher. Yeah. And it's been a major, like, criticism again of modern secular society that there is this God-shaped hole that until now we've very much struggled to replace. And so people find meaning in all sorts of other ways, [00:35:00] some fairly benign, like sports, others less benign, like extreme ideologies, political extremism, some just, you know, violence, various other things.

So I think this film captures that quite nicely.

Tom: Yeah. And the way we... I don't know. It's like the way we're frightened of ourselves. Like it made me think of,

I think we talked about him last time, , the c- the century of the self. Mm-hmm. Bernays and, and this sort of, this thing after World War II of, of we cannot trust the masses anymore. We need to manage them.

And,

and there's something about Network that really captures this thing of like mass management and, and what it's doing to us and what it's doing to our psyche. And I don't know what's better. I don't know if it's better to have world wars and you know what I mean? Like, I don't know. It's not, you know, I, I'm not, it's beyond my pay grade to, to, to say, but I think this, this, [00:36:00] like you said, the transition away from religion or maybe from religion, we went to nationalism from nationalism and, and I think what networks, Network articulates and, and, and the speech that the guy gives to Howard Beale later in the film, the head of the conglomerate, and he says to him, "There are no nations anymore."

Mm-hmm. "There are only conglomerates."

Alex: It's just a system of money.

Tom: It's just a system of money. And so- That's the world that was being articulated at the time that we... I don't even know if we live-- we're living in it in its pomp. I feel like we're living in it as it's even that is sort of disintegrating or something.

But,

but we don't know how to endow our lives with meaning, or many of us don't know.

Alex: We're not encouraged to.

Tom: No.

Alex: It's not a conversation that's on the table. We don't talk about it in families. We don't talk about it in educational systems. Mm. We don't talk about the basic fact, which is [00:37:00] people need to find a way to have meaning in their life, and if you don't do that proactively, in some sense, as I referenced earlier, it will happen for you.

Like, something will fill that gap. Hopefully, that's a benign thing or maybe even a good thing. Mm. Very often it's not.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. And the people in the film don't know how to fill their lives with meaning. I mean, in a way, Schumacher is the most conflicted. Max, you know, he's the most conflicted. He, he-

Alex: he got meaning from journalism at one point

Tom: got meaning from journalism. You do feel that he has a sense of morals or-

Alex: I, 

I, um, I took a bit of an issue with Max Schumacher in the film. So firstly, I would say my favorite performance is Faye Dunaway's performance in this film. Uh, and it's a performance that's primarily one of a unemotional person, work-obsessed.

She's quite... She's depicted, even in [00:38:00] her own words, as quite a masculine woman. , And there's one very important exception to that. So she's basically illustrated as a woman with no vulnerabilities. She says, "I don't feel. I don't feel emotions. I don't love. I don't fall in love." But then there's one moment at the end of the film when she and Max are breaking up, where she asks him in a whispered tone not to leave, not to leave, and that was her one moment of vulnerability.

My understanding is Lumet didn't want her to have any vulnerability- Mm ... but somehow or another, I guess this moment slips past. And- Well,

Tom: yes. It's an interesting question. We

Alex: an interesting

Tom: question. Yeah.

Alex: Um, Max is breaking up with her, and I don't love Max Schumacher the character in this moment 'cause I feel like he's projecting all of the badness into her, all the badness about his affair.

He pays lip service to the fact that he betrayed his wife. But I think- The sense you get is that he's giving her all of the emotional weight and the gravity, and he says, "I'm going to leave you alone in your [00:39:00] icy solitude." But in my view, looking at her and looking at Faye Dunaway's performance in that scene, she's actually feeling quite a lot, which leads me to think she's not actually this purely psychopathic character everyone wants her to be.

But actually, maybe a lot of this so-called unfeelingness is a defense. Who knows why she might have that. Mm-hmm. But actually, maybe she's... can feel a hell of a lot when she's vulnerable, but she does a lot to protect herself from being vulnerable.

Tom: Yeah.

Well, clearly. I mean, it,

it's funny. I, I, I noticed that as well when I re-watched the film 'cause, 'cause I know that story about Lumet insisting that she, she doesn't try and give any redeeming, uh, qualities.

I think that's, from my perspective, we don't have either Lumet or Faye Dunaway with us to tell us, but I think sometimes actors can get scared that the audience won't like them. Mm-hmm. And they can make choices that [00:40:00] are kind

of

trying to make their characters redeemable, or they're winking at the audience going, "I'm playing a, you know, a bad person, but don't hate me."

And it's, it can be conscious or it can be unconscious. And I don't know if that's what was happening with Faye Dunaway. But I have a feeling that Lumet was trying to keep her on the straight and narrow, and then there is that one moment. And, and what's lovely about that scene is also he leaves, and the door shuts, and it cuts back to a close-up of hers for just one moment of this incredible vulnerability.

And then it's next. And in the next thing she's saying, "We should kill Howard Beale." She's back to- She's back to... But, but, but it's, it's-- Sometimes when you're, when you're working with actors, from my experience, you need to not be frightened of being in tension with them because [00:41:00] sometimes you have to keep them in a state of tension.

Mm-hmm. Because they might want to make choices that are sentimental. And there's something about the tension between him and her that then eventually ex- is expressed in that wonderful last moment that you talk. And also Lumet edited the film. So it's, it's a choice. He, he knew what he was doing, and there's such a great payoff that this person who seems so un- unfeeling suddenly has this feeling, and you go, "Oh my God, she's in there.

She's really in there." Yeah. But she can't find her way out.

Alex: And it's a great payoff 'cause they just use it once Yeah And they don't redeem her in the end. You know, they just say, "Okay, there is a person," but actually, for the most part, she's gonna go back to her normal coping strategy of being a little bit, being quite psychopathic

Tom: But, but in a way, even if she w- that's what we're like, you [00:42:00] know? We, we- How many of us have had that breakup and have gone, "No, I'm gonna... You know, I'm different now. I'm..." You know, and then, and then, and then the next day, and we're not different. We

Alex: We're- We thought

Tom: we were. We were convinced. When it happened, we were convinced that we were different, and then the next day comes or a week after

Alex: We're worryingly the same

Tom: we're upsettingly the same. And we might even remember that moment and go, "God, I remember thinking I was gonna be different, and here I am. I'm not different at all." Which is, again, is kind of in the film, you know. How much are we able to change? How much are we able to grow? Um, and I think Ch- Chayefsky from, from...

is quite scathing about that. I, I don't think he, he- Yeah ... he has much faith. He's, he's a kind of European pessimist in that sense, even though he's American.

Alex: And I guess one other thing, one big psychological takeaway that I got from the film, which I think is really important and everyone should be aware of, is [00:43:00] your environment does shape your psychology much more than we realize.

So it's not only that you might fail to grow in all the ways that you may want to, although that is a problem. See, you know, uh, psychotherapy Yes Uh, but also, if you're embedded in a system that doesn't have an ethical core and that has a lot of bad incentives, you tend to take on the characteristics of that system if you let it, and this happens to almost every character in the film 

Tom: Well,

it's really interesting 'cause w- what, what, what I started saying, you

know,

Chayefsky started the project with a desire to look at television. He didn't start with characters and, and in his first, um, drafts of

Alex: television is the character almost

Tom: Yeah. Television, in the same way that in the hospital, the hospital is the main, you know.

Television is the main character of the film. Mm-hmm. And in a sense, what you just said is, [00:44:00] is so interesting because he started out with these kind of... He literally called them, like, the hot shot. So Diana, her-

Alex: They're archetypes

Tom: yeah, she was the hot shot. You know, Howard Beale was Cronk- Cronkite, Cronkyte he called it, like he misspelled it.

You know, like the, the old codger. The, he... And he just... But then he, he just started investigating these people's lives and their history of living inside this system, and I think it's so powerful what you just said about... I think so many times we think we only exert influence on our environment. Yeah. And we forget or we neglect how much our environment exerts influence on us and, and changes our inner makeup, and I think Network is an incredible depiction of that, isn't it?

About what it does to people.

Alex: Yeah, and I- one of the most striking examples in the film is...

So [00:45:00] they- there's this group called the Ecumenical Liberation Front, and they're like a Marxist group, and they're recruited by the network to produce this television show that's covering the, the adventures of this gang, and it's gonna be really high ra- highly rated television 'cause it's basically televising crimes on air.

And by- from the- at the beginning of the film, they're Marxist radicals. They're led by, like, an Angela Davis-type character, and that's clearly the idol- the ideology of, of their preference at the time. And by the end of the film, they're dressed in, like, nice clothes, and they're talking about ratings, and they're talking about the other shows that they compete- They're obsessed with ratings

They're obsessed with ratings. Obsessed

Tom: with it, yeah.

Alex: So they're taking on the characteristics of the system.

Tom: Yeah.

Alex: It reminds me of another film, completely different film that I saw recently called "Annihilation." Have you watched "Annihilation"? So it's an Alex Garland-

Tom: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, I've seen it, yeah.

So 

Alex: is basically about

Tom: this

Alex: force that lands on Earth and creates this area called the [00:46:00] Shimmer- Mm ... which is essentially this area of radiation that's slowly expanding outwards, and it subsumes everything within it. And, and people that enter this area, uh, they start to change. They often go crazy.

They do things they wouldn't normally do. The plants all change, their morphology changes. Mm. And it's a bit like- systems are like that. Systems change you. They change the way you think, and they change your perception. I'll give you an example. So when I was doing my training and I worked- started working in mental health systems, people tend to go into those systems very idealistically.

They want to help people, help people with mental health problems, et cetera. As you start working in the A&Es, the busy hospital wards, you have constant huge amounts of tasks to do. You're under a lot of stress. Very soon, if you're not careful, you start to see your patients and everything you're doing through the metrics of that system.

So you start to think less about patients and their problems and how can I help them, but you [00:47:00] start to think about performance indicators. You start to think about times before discharge. Yeah. You start to think, "Okay." You think about people as just diagnoses as opposed to people. Mm. So

Tom: Yeah.

Alex: this is a very real thing.

It doesn't just happen because of capitalism. It happens in any system. If you're, if you're in the system and you don't think about it proactively, you take on the characteristics of the system

Tom: But is that also-- is that a good and a bad thing, or is that a, a-- what-- do you have a stance on it, like?

Alex: I don't think it's necessarily a good or a bad thing.

I think it's, again, a feature of human nature, but it speaks to the importance that systems need to have an ethical core to them. That when you're designing a system, you need to think about the big picture and what is this for. So if you think about network, back in the day, so in the mid-'70s, you had these huge television conglomerates that put on sitcoms and various other kinds of shows, and they made a lot of money.

And the news part [00:48:00] of these conglomerates was not intended to make money, and it was fine that they didn't. And it was considered a public service that these broadcasters did to use the immense privilege of having a broadcasting system with only two or three competitors in the US, that you deliver this public service and you educate the people in a dry, objective, unglamorous way about what's going on.

And that is a big-picture ethical point of view, right? What I just said. And what we see throughout the film is actually, no, we could, we could use this because so many people watch already, and people do crave news, and they need information. We can hijack this, make it even more entertaining, slowly but surely drain the substance from it, and then make it into another profit-making entity.

Yeah. So it's this kind of, uh, a loss of ethical consciousness. I think you need... You know, it's gonna be a natural feature that when you're part of a system, you take on its characteristics, and that's why you need to design systems very [00:49:00] carefully. You need to design them with ethics in mind. Mm.

Tom: Hmm. And do you think we are now?

Alex: I, I think this is above my pay grade.

Tom: think

Alex: depends on the system. You know, what I saw on the NHS is obviously the NHS isn't one system. It's a collection of smaller systems, like an A&E department is one, a ward. Um, and what I find, found is there'll be pockets of really great systems, pockets of really great culture, where the people in charge of that ward or that clinic or that A&E department, they had enough gravity, and they had enough good people to create that culture, uh, that was very positive and very helpful and kept those ethics in mind.

And the metrics were a tool rather than the metrics become the ultimate objective. Yeah. Again, it's more right hemisphere than left hemisphere. And then there were departments and teams and cultures where unfortunately that wasn't the case. So I don't know if you can make a statement about sort of all the systems- No

but [00:50:00] it's a huge danger, you know?

Tom: Well, I guess it's funny, in one of the drafts, the early drafts, Chayefsky was toying with the idea that the conclusion wouldn't-- He wasn't aiming for the conclusion to be the murder of Howard Beale on TV, but rather the, the, the, the news becomes lies.

Oh. And the network decides that they want to try and, uh, engage America in a war with China.

And they start trying to use Howard Beale to... And it's a dir- it, it's a direction that he abandoned and, and, and I, I think it works better in the film. But when I think about where we're living now and the transition from, you know, news You know, Diane attacks Schumacher and she says, she says to him, "It's entertainment anyway.

You're just presenting it in this sort of very serious way, but it's still entertainment. You're just putting it in a certain form." Which, which I think has something-- there's something to be said about that. But [00:51:00] the film depicts the transition fr- of news into entertainment, and I think now we've moved into this place where, where we talk about, you know, fake news.

Like, where w- we can't even agree on what is true. Like, so it's not even just about ... I think that's what I mean when I talk about the fragmentation of things. Like, that it's not even, like, the, the centralized version of a story. It's this sort of multitude of endless mini stories that no one can decipher.

And, and, and what's fascinating about the characters of Beale and Schumacher is it's also the decline of a sort of patriarchal, white, male-dominated society, and they sort of don't know who they are in this new world, in the world of Diane Christiansen.

You 

Alex: know? Yeah. Yeah.

Tom: They don't know how to find themselves.

Um, [00:52:00] and, and I think when, when he attacks her at the end, like you said, you know, that, that this sort of mean-spirited speech that he gives about going back to his wife, and I think he's also ridiculing himself and his own role in the fantasy. But I think it's also a really beautiful depiction of men not knowing what their place is in the world anymore, and maybe that's another place where it connects to Taxi Driver.

You know? Mm. This sort of, this feeling that the ground is shifting from under them and that their once very central voice, which of course they saw as moral

Alex: and-

Tom: just ... just, is- Traditional ... traditional, is suddenly being shaken. And I think that's-- I don't know. I had all kinds of ambiguities about the film when I watched it the other night.

Like, I thought that was one ambiguity of, on the one hand I, I kind

of... The,

the reactionary in me or the traditionalist in me went, "Yes, we should go [00:53:00] back to the way things were." And then a part of me went, "No, mate. It's done." Like, your world is over. When-- Do you know what I mean? It's moving on. It's moving on to something else.

But, but there was also something funny about the fact that I was watching a film satirizing TV, and I was like, but film is also a dream machine. It's just a different dream machine. Like- And then TV criticizes TikTok, and TikTok will... Do you know what I mean? And, and it made me think of, um, you know, with I mentioned Marshall McLuhan, but, like, this thing of one of the things that I can't remember in which book he talks about, you know, this thing of, like, the medium is the message.

Mm-hmm. Like, he says that the new medium always uses the content of the old medium to get people into it. And s- and you can see, like, when TV started, it started with theater and Vaudeville and variety shows, and then it slowly became its own-

Alex: Thing ... [00:54:00] thing. Mm-hmm. 

Tom: And then now on, like, YouTube, on... You know, you can see how people are emulating the shapes of TV, but now it's slowly becoming its own thing.

But really the purpose is to be, like, a gateway drug that just keeps moving us closer and closer. Well, at least I felt that after watching the film this time, that it was like the only purpose of it was to get us to merge with ... w- with technology. Like, to get us closer and closer and closer to the machines, and further and further away from each other.

And, and there's something really terrifying about it, and, and in a way, the content of it is, is irrelevant. I had another thought. Maybe this is a bit tangential. I don't, I don't, I don't know if this is... It wouldn't be interesting to anyone at all. But, like when you talked about systems, I remember when I was younger than now making films, and I just made my first feature film, [00:55:00] and I was asked, invited to do TV programs.

And I, I love TV. I watch a lot of TV, a lot of bad TV as well.

Alex: well. Yeah.

Tom: But I could feel that one of the things about TV in particular is that it's very formulaic. You know, you shoot every scene in a particular way that is repeatable. It's a factory for fiction i- in the case of what I do.

Alex: You can't use the camera as much as a character as you can in a film.

Tom: as you can in a film.

You can't be... I don't think. I don't think you can be as, um, individualistic In your point of view on things. You have to really service a bigger machine that you're a kind of cog in.

Alex: Which is why I guess the director of a television sh- program, a specific episode matters less than

Tom: than- Yeah. They're, they're completely replaceable.[00:56:00] 

As, as, uh, Davi- uh, Cronenberg said once when I asked him why he doesn't direct TV, he said, uh, "I'm not a bus conductor." Mm-hmm. You know? He, like, he's like, "I'm not interested in just moving things from the page into the screen. I'm-- I, I, I need something to happen." And at the time when I was being offered these jobs, and I've always been very poor And I have.

You know, it's the truth. Yeah. And I would always wrestle with it and be like, "Oh, maybe I should just do this," and you know. And then I saw this interview with Chantal Akerman, the great filmmaker, and she said that when she was young, she didn't take on any, uh, commissioned jobs. And the interviewer said to her, "Why?"

And she said, "Because when you take other people's structures into you, you don't notice it, but it changes your inner makeup." "And if you do it before you've even found out who you are artistically, you'll just end up [00:57:00] using their shapes, and you'll never find anything that is truly yours." It

Alex: your creativity. Yeah.

Tom: Yeah. And I remember watching this interview and thinking, "I can't do this to myself. I have to stay with the not knowing of who I am for longer." Because as soon as I engage with these systems, they'll tell me who I should be, and they'll go, "This is how you shoot a scene, and this is how you tell a story, and this is how you do it."

And that's fine, and what you get in return is money. You know what I mean? You get a fair bit of money if you're good at it. B- but if you don't go down that route, you might not find anything. You know, you might discover that you actually have no artistic voice. But you might discover something. Yeah. And when I was young, it felt worthwhile to stay with the not knowing of who I was artistically for longer.

Little did I know that [00:58:00] it meant I was sentencing myself to a life of poverty. But, but I really remember feeling like it was a choice between money and my artistic voice. Mm-hmm. And I didn't know how to do both. Maybe some people know how to do both. I didn't know how to do both.

Alex: It feels like walking a tightrope.

Yeah. How do you engage with a structure and l- even learn from the structure? 'Cause these things, the li- blend... You know, I talked about mental health systems. I learnt a lot of really useful stuff working in a mental health 

system. Mm-hmm. 

But how do you maintain your individuality While working within a system Yeah.

Tom: And I think it's funny, , you know, you- as you know, I served in the army, and I had a very difficult time in, in the army, and I kinda lost my marbles. But one of the things I think that made me lose it was that I, I was convinced during basic training that I was being very clever, and that I was keeping this ironic [00:59:00] distance of- Right

everything that was happening to me. And then I realized that I hadn't. That actually this thing was so powerfully structured that it was placing things in me, and I couldn't bear it, and I had to get out, you know, at, at great costs and dan- you know, to me. And, and I think there is something in me that's very wary of systems now, to- sometimes to my detriment.

Maybe as you said, sometimes overly wary. You know? Mm-hmm. I'm too protective of myself from, from... And I think maybe that's a place that I really relate to Pajitnov Chayefsky's voice. I mean, you can really feel his utter contempt for systems and his unrelenting belief in the individual or, or in rebellion or something.

And it, it's very addictive. I don't know if it's very grown up. Do you know what I mean? It's very [01:00:00] seductive, but I don't know if it's fully true, but it makes for a good story. Yeah.

Alex: I thi- I, yeah, I, I don't know if it's fully true either because I do feel, again, I, we do need to exist in systems. We need to be part of society, which is a system.

Yeah. And I don't think... I don't think d- there are some, there are some ideologies which demonize society- 

Mm ... and 

there are some ideologies which demonize the individual, like communism probably is the best example of that, and I don't think either have it right. I think you c- the, the gold is to be found in managing the tension and facing it forthrightly, and to not, um, let yourself go too far to either side.

But how do you remain wrestling with it, acknowledging there will be compromises and difficulties? No easy thing, what I'm saying.

Tom: No. But it, it-- I think it makes you confront, or at least as I'm listening to you, and I think that is something that exists in the film, and the question exists somewhere in the film, [01:01:00] as much as it can exist in a big Hollywood film.

Um, fu- futility and mortality. And,

you

know, he s- he says, Howard Beale says at one point, "We're not even here to entertain you. We're just here to elevate your boredom."

Alex: your boredom."

Tom: And it's like this terror of the nothingness That if for one moment we will be quiet with our own freaking minds, we will just lose our shit.

Yeah. Because we will have to go, "I don't know why I'm here. I don't know what put me here, and, and I'm- And- ... and one day I won't be here."

Alex: And the problem is you need to confront that at some point, as in y- you not confronting the boredom and then all the things that leads on from that, your own mortality and these existential thoughts. This is something I discussed with the existential psychotherapist, so she told me this. Mm. You don't confront those at your peril.

Tom: [01:02:00] Yes.

Alex: It's a big-- It's almost like you need to get a vaccination to get immunized. Yeah. You need to confront this dark stuff of life to live a much richer life. And I do think one of the huge problems we've faced that's become way worse since network is we never have to be bored ever, because this brings me to the simulacrum idea.

So we're living

Tom: this- Can you tell me what that word means?

Alex: So my understanding is simulacrum means essentially a simulated reality, so it's almost like "The Matrix." We can live, you know, in a-- If we're awake for 18 hours, we can live half of those hours or more looking at different screens.

Yeah. 

And because the screens, the TikTok videos, YouTube, television, even films, they're so convincing, we confuse them with reality. You know, we watch a nature documentary, we think we're in nature on some unconscious level. Yeah. But we're not in reality, 'cause all of this media are representations, [01:03:00] re-presentations of reality.

But because we confuse them with reality, they're very s-seductive. They, they feel very immersive. They suck us in, and they make us feel almost as though we're living a life, but we're not. And that's where I think technology addiction comes in. Overuse of this stuff will make you into, in Howard Beale's words in the films, one of those humanoids, like close to being human, close to having a human life if you spend all your time on technology, but not quite.

And when I've seen clients who have technology addiction... You know, people can hear this and say, am I being a bit hyperbolic?

Tom: When

Alex: comes to real technology addiction, I have had clients come to me and say, "I don't feel, like, joy. You know, I don't know what it's like to feel joy. I'm, I've never really had a relationship."

These things happen. Mm-hmm. So I do think it's something, the simulacrum idea is something we need to take really seriously, that we have people who are living the majority of their lives almost [01:04:00] living a life, but not quite.

Tom: But I feel like

Alex: describing ... No, 

Tom: describing me. No, I mean, I'm being p- s-sort of mostly facetious, but not com- I mean, I'm not-- I don't feel like I'm addicted to technology. Yeah. And I think, again, as, as y-you know, we've met a few times now, like I'm quite a reactionary in many ways, and I feel like I... And yet it's so powerful that I do find myself...

That horrible moment where I find myself taking a holiday from one screen on another screen. Like literally the best I can do is go from my phone to the computer or from the computer to my phone and-- or, you know, I, I, I, I make sure that I have two s-sessions if I'm, if I'm not w-working with other people, like s- two sessions a day of reading, like reading a book.

And I'm finding that I'm struggling to stay concentrated, and I'm finding that I'm struggling to stay concentrated for the length of a whole film [01:05:00] without checking my phone, which certainly wasn't the case even two or three years ago. And the fear is, I think is a, is, is some kind of fear of encountering some deep loneliness in me that the phone-

Alex: it's fear-based rather than just, like, habitual, you've used the technology a lot and therefore...?

Tom: I, I, I-- It's a combination, but I think fear is definitely... When I, when I sit with it, when I, when I hover and I don't take the phone and I sit with what's coming up, there's this fear that my life is empty. Yeah. And it's funny 'cause people who know me probably wouldn't say that my life is empty. I do a lot of interesting things, I hope, and stuff.

But it's an existential question like, you know, existential therapist. Like it's, it's

not,

it's not of the moment. It's, it's, it's this fear of something that's always there, which is...

I don't know.

Alex: Is there, is this it?

Tom: Yeah. It's a kind of emptiness that's, for me at least, that's always there and, [01:06:00] and, and... And we have to learn to live with it. But the phones

Alex: and the

Tom: computer, I don't know, they just offer such an easy answer. Mm-hmm. It's like, you know, boop, boop, boop, you just press the button and it just gives you, pow, something and you're just...

I don't know. It's, it's, it's very curious. And in that sense, when I watched the film, I thought as extreme as the film is, it's not nearly as extreme as-

Alex: As what it turned out to

Tom: as what it, as where we ended up going. Um- Yeah. And it's incredible that a film was able to, to be prescient for h- for its time and to continue.

You know, often when a film or a work of art is very meaningful for its time, it fades pretty quickly. It, it's, it's of use for that moment. Do you know what I mean? But sometimes these rare things happen, and I think "Network" is one of them, which is somehow it was, it was useful to them then, and it remains useful to us now when I watch it.

Like-

Alex: yeah, in "Network," they talk about the [01:07:00] generation gap. So the older people in the film refer to the younger people as the age... the people raised on television, raised on Bugs Bunny, and they've claimed that being raised on television has importantly warped their sensibility and importantly warped how they see life.

And you can make that argument. You can make the argument now, you know, the ways social media has changed things and the way people raised in the late '90s, early 2000s, um, may have a very, very different outlook, a more fragmented outlook. Again, m- living life with all of the, I guess, trappings and sensibilities of having had way too much screen times, talking in memes, for example, talking me- in memetic language- Mm

um, having narrower attention spans, all, all of these things. Again, I, I think... So it's h- it's har- it's really hard, it's genuinely hard to overstate how prescient the film was.

Tom: Yeah. [01:08:00] No, it's, it's super interesting. Again, I always wonder if it's, if there's a level of sentimentality to that, and every generation thinks the new generation is doomed.

But, you know- 

Alex: so taking my point of view, I'm not even saying they're doomed, but just importantly different.

Tom: Yeah. I really feel that. I actually feel up until COVID, 'cause I teach a lot, you know, and up until COVID, I felt like my students were roughly of the same world as me, and then they weren't.

And maybe that's just an age thing. Maybe it was just I moved from one age bracket to another. But I think something happened in the world. There was something about the generation of the kids that spent that huge chunk of their childhood or teenage years alone at home in front of a screen, which has changed them.

Mm-hmm. And they just seem different to me. I experience them as different. And, and, and before, even if there was a [01:09:00] big gap in years, there was a sense that we existed roughly in the same universe, and now many times that's not the case. Mm. And I've tried to not be frightened of that and to just embrace that and to be curious about how they experience the world and how that might be different to me, and to see whether I can offer anything to them.

Um,

but definitely

there's a feeling of

like

a baton that was passed from the previous generation to me In my work, let's say, or in my teaching, and I'm now wondering how to pass that on- to, to the people who I'm teaching. It needs to go through a level of adaptation that-.. that, um,

we, we didn't have.

We just accepted it-

Alex: it. Mm-hmm. It's

Tom: true. 

Alex: Are there any takeaways you would want people to get from this film?

Tom: Um, don't be scared of yourself. Don't be scared of the silence and the, and the, and the empty...

Or [01:10:00] whatever. Don't be scared of whatever is going on, and see what it's like to sit with not knowing, um, how you feel. Um, because there's so many ready-made answers, you know? There's so many-

there's so much out there ready to just fill that gap.

Alex: Yeah. I think echoing what you're saying, one takeaway I have is learn to be a creator, not a consumer.

Mm. And I don't mean necessarily like you actually have to create a thing, but learn to kind of generate in your life and not just passively consume. 'Cause right now the world is all set up for passive consumption. You can do it all day. You can do it for n- low or nominal cost. Yeah. But see, even if in the most subtle ways you can start to become a creator in your life, that might be, you know, you're at a workplace, see if you can generate ideas for ways to do something different at your work.

You're trying to some- think of something to do with your friends, see if you can come up with a new off the beaten [01:11:00] path idea. See if you can find some small creative exercise you can do in your day, like some writing, or even you can make videos now- Mm ... more easily than you ever could before. Not necessarily for an audience.

Yes. But be very aware that the default human life in the West right now is you're gonna be slotted into the path of, "I am a passive consumer." And you need to, in my view, for your own human spirit, go against that. I mean, enjoy, you know, some of the beautiful art you can enjoy, but then also create a creative generative strand

Tom: Well, it's, it's sort of being a create-- You know, it's, it's being a creative person in the sense that one's life is a work of art that you're making. Um-

Alex: See what impact you can have on your own life. Yeah.

Tom: I think that's something we can all remember. I mean, I think for me, I get so consumed with the making of actual art that I forget To my boss, uh, in a school I teach in [01:12:00] Denmark who is a person I really love and admire, she said to me last time I was there, she just looked at me one day.

She went, "You work too much." Mm-hmm. And I said, "What, what do you mean?" She said-- She just looked at me, stared me in the eye, and she went, "You know what I mean. You work too much." You know what she

Alex: know what she meant?

Tom: Yeah. I, I work too much.

Alex: work too much.

Tom: But in the sense that work, when you love what you do, it can, it can be all-consuming and, and, and that's very beautiful and enlivening thing.

But it can also become a bit narrow and myopic in its own sense, and it can block other things from entering into your life. And I think she was sort of saying to me, " You need to try and be more balanced." Uh, you know. I don't know if that's possible, but I think that was what she was trying to say to me.

Alex: Yeah. That, that was actually the other takeaway I had, which is you are what you repeat.

Tom: Mm.

Alex: repeat something, you slowly become that thing.

Tom: you become 

Alex: with ratings and having the highest-rated news program, you kind of become that machine. [01:13:00] Yes. Uh, I've noticed it with content creation, podcasting. You do that too much, and you start to see everything through the lens of media. And I think this especially applies to short form, so not necessarily recording a couple of hours conversation like this, but taking this conversation and saying, "What are the 30-second clips that would work well on Instagram?"

Mm. You know, this, this goes back to this thing of how do you negotiate with the systems around you. It is good to make short clips of the podcasts you make, but do that too much and you start to favor, I think, style over substance, and you become obsessive in all the wrong ways about performance over contribution, if you 

like.

Tom: Yeah. Uh, maybe that's another takeaway that I think of. I think when-- This, this time when I watched the film, I really thought about performativeness. Mm-hmm. Uh, performativeness of opinions, performativeness of morals, and the difference between [01:14:00] really trying to have an ethical center, a rooted eth-ethical approach to life, which is sometimes I think means engaging with ambiguity and ambivalence and not knowing what the answer is.

Mm-hmm. And a sort of performative morality that

can,

can be eventually quite hollow and, and leave one empty. And I think there's something about the film and the questions that it asks of the audience. It really, I think, in a brilliant way, forces you to sit with your own inner compass and, and go, "Well, who am I in relation to these unfolding events?"

You know? "What's my- Take, what would I do?

Alex: Because there aren't a lot of heroes really. There's no heroes to identify with.

Tom: No. Again, and I think that's, that's, uh, kind of part of Chayefsky's radicalism is the hero is the TV.

Alex: Hmm. You 

Tom: know? Mm-hmm.

That's the [01:15:00] hero. Mm-hmm. Um, and the film starts and ends with a shot of TVs.

The thing that is inside the TV, that's the story inside the story, but the story is the TV.

Alex: The story is this is w- how television is changing- Us. Yeah ... changing us and the impact. Yeah. Um, I guess similar to what you're saying, a, a last takeaway I had is that this cathar- this emotional catharsis

Tom: that

Alex: see in the film, so Howard Beale is having these huge emotional rants, that can be in a trap.

Tom: Hmm. 

Alex: Because catharsis without, uh, again, catharsis without substance, catharsis without an ultimate ethical aim is a bit meaningless. It can give you this feeling of, "I'm part of something. You know, I can go outside the window and yell, 'I'm mad as hell. I'm not gonna take it anymore.'" As you said at the beginning, it can be quite meaningless unless you do the real introspective work to, to look at what do I actually care about?

What do I want to move [01:16:00] towards? And then anger can be a very useful tool for that. It may not be the tool you want sustainably. Anger is good to, to kind of move out of apathy. 

Tom: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: You don't want to live your whole life on that anger. W- some people do. Mm. Tends to lead to burnout.

Tom: Yes.

Alex: But in that beginning stage, to wake you up, it can be very useful, but not without a point.

And I guess that's a lot of what we see nowadays, is anger being misdirected.

Tom: Splurged.

Alex: You know, cla- you know, the classic example, if we're looking at news television is, uh, directing anger towards immigration, for example. 

Tom: And 

Alex: And you're gonna harness this feeling of disenfranchisement that people have- Yes

rile up their anger, f- have a useful target in the form of immigration, and that gets people to mobilize people to do what, what you want.

Tom: Yes. 

Alex: Yes. 

Tom: which, again, is part of what Jessup, the, the, the guy, the head of the, the conglomerate tries to do with Beale.

You know, he, he [01:17:00] tries to go, "I've got this prophet. Now I'm gonna get the prophet to say what I want him to say." Mm-hmm. And it's interesting that it doesn't work in the film, uh, in the sense that the ratings start, start falling. But I think the,

you know,

again, populist leaders and, and, and, uh, we- we've seen so much of this, but this thing of,

like,

anger.

People are so angry. Like I w- I, you know, I follow football- And certainly in this country, I mean, people get so angry about football. And it's very seductive to pour your frustrations and your disappointments into-

Alex: And even your enthusiasms ... yeah,

Tom: and your enthusiasm, it's true, and your passion, and all of it, into a 22-year-old kid who's kicking a football and going, "He did this to me," you know?

And, and they- part of what they get paid for, I think what they get p- get paid so much money for, more than their abilities to kick the football, is their [01:18:00] willingness and emotional ability to tolerate-

Alex: Criticism ............that

Tom: level of scrutiny and, and kind of, uh, online abuse. And, and it's funny because it happens to me, it happens to friends of mine, really intelligent people, and sometimes you have to go, "It's just a football game."

Like,

there's a lot going on in life. But, but, but interestingly, and yeah, it's, it's a tricky thing, this thing of like

the, the,

entertainment-izing of the whole world. The whole world has become a thing for us to consume and judge, you know, because it's all at our fingertips all of the time, and so we're, we're constantly making our opinions about everything and I think I think there is a sort of cultural stagnation at the moment, um,

partly

because there's not enough movement between the unconscious and the conscious betw- betw- you know, in the way that things

can,

can come a-- [01:19:00] kinda come flooding up, not in the toxic, horrible Trumpian way, but in the kind of-

Alex: Introspective way

Tom: yeah, an, an enlivening and enriching and, and like a new wave of excitement. And, and I think network comes from a cultural moment where that was rife, and you can still feel how it's buzzing with that energy.

Alex: And it's because to get that exploration of the unconscious, you need quiet. You need to be in a quiet room by yourself doing something creative, going inwards, and you just, there's every opportunity now to just avoid that.

Tom: Yeah. And you need to not be scared- Mm ... of how it will be perceived.

Alex: Yeah. The fear, you kinda have to lose the fear of making a mistake or looking stupid. Yeah. And I

Tom: And I think, again, when I- I f- I see it myself, but I certainly see it with my students, you know, the, the, the...

We, we call it, like, with, with one group I taught where it was very, very strong, we ref- we started refer to- referring to it as the Eye of Sauron. There was, there was- I love that ... because [01:20:00] that, because they were so paralyzed. And eventually I was like, I said, "Let's talk about it," you know, "What's going on? Why are you so frightened?"

And, and they said, "Because I feel like someone is watching me." And I said, "Well, who? Who do you feel is watching you? Is it someone in the group?" And they were like, "No, it's just a big eye watching me all of the time." And that was a big epiphany for me when, when my students were able to articulate that to me, because I live with all kinds of anxieties, but I don't live with this feeling that there is a big eye looking at me all of the time.

Alex: time.

Mm-hmm.

Tom: And they did.

Alex: And you can't-- You don't blame them because we've got eyes- Yeah ... everywhere.

Tom: Yeah. We've got eyes everywhere. And eventually, as you said about institutions, we internalize these eyes and, and- Mm ... and we start believing that someone is always looking at us, looking into us.

Judging us.

Judging us.

And, and it's really frightening to live [01:21:00] like that, and it's really stifling, and it's very hard to open your chakras to- Mm-hmm ... mysterious material that w- might come from within you. Um, and yet I know intuitively, or I feel at least, that that's where the exciting stuff, that's where the networks come from.

Mm-hmm. You know, when someone just sits, like you said, in a room and listens to the m- to the undercurrents. Yeah. You know, that's where Kafka comes from. That's where it comes from. Um, and if you're not allowed to do that,

Alex: You just replicate.

Tom: You just replicate.

Alex: Mm. On that note-

Tom: note-

Alex: favorite question, and I think the most important question- Okay

is wha- what film do you pair this f- with for a double feature?

Tom: Okay. So I've got a long list for this. Okay. It's not long, but it's a few films. Okay. I would say I would definitely pair this with "The Hospital," the film Paddy Chayefsky wrote, [01:22:00] uh, five years before this about... set in a hospital about, uh, uh, the head of a department who, who's, who...

having a nervous breakdown. Um, it's not as eloquent a film. I mean, s- the script is fantastic. It's not as- Like mega as, as, as a network. Also Hillier who directed it is a fine filmmaker, but he's not Sidney Lumet. But it's still a really fascinating film. I would say Adam Curtis, "The Century of the Self," that people can watch on YouTube or on the iPlayer in the UK.

Alex: the UK.

Tom: There is a film called, um, Sweet Smell of Success, McKendrick film with Burt Lancaster as a writer of the most powerful tabloid column in New York in the '50s, and the way he wields that power in order to destroy people's lives. And, and a film called Ace in the Hole, Billy Wilder, which again is about, uh, the corruption [01:23:00] of ratings and what it does to people.

Alex: The films I had for the other feature, so I had my number one pick is "The Social Network." 

Okay. So we're going from "The Network" to "The Social

Tom: Yeah. Nice.

Alex: 'Cause I see it as the logical extension. Yeah. Um, it's also about, you know, people start with this nice idea, Facebook, we're gonna connect to other kids in college, I mean, albeit motivated by a lot of spite from Mark Zuckerberg. But then it becomes this behemoth that kind of sucks everyone up, distorts their worldview.

Tom: Also stylistically another very verbose film.

Alex: Very verbose. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom: Good. That's a good choice.

Alex: Uh, thank... I'm so validated that's fucking... Um, and similar, you know, you said directors do different things to get something out of the actors. David Fincher, who directed "Social Network," my understanding is what he does is he makes them do relentless amounts of takes, and you see that something, there's something about the fatigue of a lot [01:24:00] of his worlds and his performances.

We can really understand, okay, this person has done 60 takes of this film, but it has a very powerful effect.

Tom: Yeah. I, I mean, and, and that's, you know, Bresson used to do that as well, and Kubrick, you know.

You can wear down conscious inhibitions. You can, you can-- Again, it's funny. When you're, when you're working, everyone comes with their ideas. They come with their best ideas. And you know, the first take is what they planned, and the second take maybe is a bit better than that, and the third take is something.

By the fourth or fifth take People usually don't know what to do anymore. And then it kind of goes bad. Mm-hmm. And, and often that's a good place to stop,

 you know? Like it's, It's,

fine to stop if, if, if... I mean, it's, it's all to do with the tactics you want to use. But if you survive that and you get to 10, 12, 15, 20, there's a kind of letting go that can happen where people just go, "I don't know.

I'm just gonna [01:25:00] do anything." Yeah. "'Cause I just don't know what this guy wants from me anymore, so just I'm just gonna say the lines." And it can be really good. Yeah. Like it's a really funny thing. It can be really revealing.

Alex: I, I feel that way about repetition even on, at a large scale. So even think about this podcast You know, there's something about making-- If you go from no, you've never recorded a podcast to make one, that's, that's interesting.

That's an interesting step. And then you've made like five. Mm-hmm. And then that's kind of interesting. What's that about? And then you make 20, 25, and now we're on like 165 or something, or 17- I think 170-something.

Tom: Wow.

Alex: And it feels different. You know, it doesn't feel different from one episode to another.

Mm-hmm. But 170 feels very different to 50, which felt very different to zero.

Tom: Yes.

Alex: So I really believe in the power of repetition. Obviously, you might strategize in between- Yeah ... as an actor might do in between takes. Yeah. But also repetition has a momentum of its own. 

Tom: Yes. 

Alex: That if you do something enough, [01:26:00] strange things happen, bad things happen, good things happen, and there's something adventurous about just saying, you know, "I wanna keep doing this and see what happens, and open myself up to the serendipity of it."

Tom: Yeah. For sure. I mean, and, and... But, but then, you know, we're talking about Lumet. Lumet was such-- I don't think Lumet was a, is a, is a lesser director than Fincher or Kubrick or, you know. He's a different director, but Lumet very rarely did more than three takes. Mm. You know, like we said with Peter Finch.

Alex: But he made a lot of 

films.

Tom: He made a lot of f- And he, and he made a lot of great films, and he ma- and he got a lot of as- astonishing performances out of actors in a different- Different way ... way, and a different type of texture of performance maybe. Um, so, so partly it's about being, again, it's about being true to yourself when you're making a film.

Um, Kubrick needed to do 70 takes. Fincher needs to do 70 takes. That's fine. If that's what they need to do, that's what they need to [01:27:00] do. Lumet needed to do one. Mm-hmm.

Alex: Mm-hmm.

Tom: And, and, and, and both are fantastic, and we can relish in, in what they're making. I think sometimes people feel like a need to go, "This..." I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but like, "This is the way to greatness."

Yeah. You know? And I don't think it's true. Like you, you have to make the films that you make.

Um, and I love Lumet. You know, and, and there's a levity and an energy to his films

that,

that maybe other types of films don't have. Mm-hmm. You know?

Alex: We're out of time. Tom, thanks so much for coming on. As you guys probably know by now, Tom is running the crowdfunding campaign for his upcoming film, which he's doing the post-production on, "A Life of One's Own," based on psychoanalyst Marion Milner and her life. We talked about that on the podcast a couple of weeks ago.

I'll put the link to the crowdfunding campaign in the description, and not only can you support the project, but you [01:28:00] can get access to cool extras, merchandise, special screenings. Check it out. Go watch "Network." Tom, thanks so much for, for coming on.

Tom: Thank you for having me.