Gubernatorial hopeful revives famed film rant

Howard Beale, the fictional news anchorman, comes undone in the widely acclaimed 1976 film "Network." He's been notified that the ratings are down and he's going to be dumped. He goes off-script while on air, and vows to kill himself on live TV.

Driven by the resulting spike in ratings, cynical network directors bring him back, to rant. Disheveled and depressed, Beale, played by actor Peter Finch, blurts out his famous spiel.

"I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

" . . . You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING . . . My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' "

Fast-forward 34 years to the candidacy for New York governor of Buffalo developer Carl Paladino. After winning the Republican primary Tuesday night, he delivered that slogan - also printed on big orange campaign signs - to supporters. "We are mad as hell," Paladino declared. "New Yorkers are fed up."

But "Network" was a satire by Paddy Chayefsky. And just for the record - and for historical context - Paladino's campaign manager readily acknowledges this and explains how it came to be recited, in part, this year.

"We understand that in 'Network' it was used in the context of an insane man, that's true," said Paladino's man Michael Caputo. "But we're not making a movie here.

"Regardless of what the character in 'Network' did, the message resonated," Caputo said. "I remembered it [the movie] from my childhood. At our first campaign meeting, we sat with tea party and local leaders and we're all talking, and I surfed YouTube, and found the clip. And I turned my laptop around, and showed everyone. And they said 'That's it - that's the message.' "

Younger adults, even some involved in this year's state campaigns, may not generally know the back story of why this Howard Beale was howling in his raincoat, hair soaked.

But many of them have seen a 16-second snippet of Finch's performance - in which he rises from his chair and delivers the "mad-as-hell" speech - because it is played on sports stadium Jumbotrons to rally crowds.

In a year of tea-party activism, bank-bailout backlash, tax-cut debates and small-business anxiety, someone might find it fun to use other clips from "Network." One possibility: Ned Beatty, playing the sinister corporate executive Arthur Jensen, lectures Finch one-on-one in a darkened boardroom.

"The world is a business, Mr. Beale," Jensen says, evoking the utopia of "one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."

Chambers of commerce might pass on making this a slogan. But again, "Network" was supposed to be a satire.