We're Screwed 2009 Pt. 1

NETWORK. Watching this movie got me thinking of how prescient this movie is and how fitting it is to view this movie during our current recession/depression. I have watched the movie before but was not sure beforehand because the first time I was, well, slightly drunk, a journalism student at the time, and viewing it with drunk people who quickly decided the movie was not what we expected. In other words, we didn't get it. In fact, just about all I can remember from the first time I saw it was the Angela Davis-esque character shouting, "Don't f*** with my distribution!" (I don't know what our standards are at this blog, so I thought it best to play safe for the children). So watching it again for real, I can't help but think that it seems as if Sidney Lumet directed this movie to come out this fall. And he is still around and kicking so Lord knows he could. What I would like to start is a bit of a discussion on movies for this recession/depression. Could we call it a decession? Or perhaps a repression? Hmmm....that last one seems a little philosophical. Anyway, on with the show.

There are two reasons why I found this to be fitting for a "We're Screwed 2009" film festival. The first is this speech -- one of the most famous soliloquies in a medium not known for the use of such a device. You are probably already familiar, but I think it is significant enough to include the "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" speech here. What is shocking is that at most one only has to change a handful of words and this could be 100 percent accurate right now:



The background of the poor economy and the nods to what is actually happening in the world make this a great template for what I imagine we will see in the next few years. Not every movie coming out will be about the economy -- in fact I expect few will. But there will be many that can use the backdrop and I hope some of theme employ it as deftly as do Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky.

The other reason I find this film to be of particular note is it's scathing representation of the media. What's scary is that it exaggerates for effect the merging of the entertainment and news divisions and now the events of the movie seem to predict the future quite well. In the 1970s there still existed a level of independence in the news division but now it is in most cases strictly under the control of the head of the network. Jeff Zuker is the head of NBC and oversees both the entertainment and the news. As a former Today show producer, he is in many ways responsible both there and at the network as a whole in further blurring those lines when the morning "news" show seems more Entertainment Tonight and Dateline NBC turned over to all true-crime celebrity stories last year. There was a rumor that before CBS picked up Katie Couric (hello? hard news?), Jon Stewart was someone in whom they were interested. The plotline with Faye Dunaway can seem so outlandish but possibly because she plays her as an incredibly smart woman who has a great deal of intellectual depth in her essentially ghoulish work, she does not come across as a harpie. This certainly ranks as one of the best films about the media because of the way it explores to a great deal of accuracy how we ended up with the sad state of television news that we have now. There may not be a real Howard Beale, but Glenn Beck, to whom he is now being compared, is not too far off (note to Beck: Beale was insane so you might want to stop courting the comparison). But just like in the movie, the people watch him so he's a sensation and it is the desire to give the people what they want to see that is paradoxically turning the media, especially television, into a useless entity for those same people.

It might be that this is a movie like The Graduate that just nails something so well that it seems like it was written for ever viewer that sees it, but I don't think that's quite the case. First of all, The Graduate is a better overall film (there is way too much going on in this movie and it feels quite disjointed), and secondly it doesn't really grab me at a personal level. What the movie does do is really nail the concept of the failure of the media and the connection of the big business, infotainment, and a depression. Because of that, the movie makes for fantastic viewing right now. My challenge for you is that we should start a little string of entries on movies for this depression. I'm thinking of others and I look forward to seeing if you come up with any. And please God I hope you don't get inspired to write about The Grapes of Wrath -- that would be too depressing and I don't want to think of breastfeeding homeless men.