Network - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Network or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Network

[ethel]

In the UK/US stage adaptations of the film, Faye Dunaway's Diana is played by Michelle Dockery (UK/2017) and by Tatiana Maslany (US/2018). Peter Finch's Howard Beale: Bryan Cranston (UK & US). William Holden's Max Schumacher: Douglas Henshall (UK/2017) and Tony Goldwyn (US/2018). Robert Duvall's Frank Hackett: Tunji Kasim (UK), etc.

[kristina]

Sidney Lumet openly admitted that he was furious to have the picture lose to Rocky (1976) for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

[norma]

Filmed entirely on location, with no movie sets built. However the newsroom and control room and studio audience scenes were all filmed in Canadian TV studios, for the simple reason that no TV station in New York could spare their newsrooms or stages for enough time for the movie's shooting schedule.

[bernard]

United Artists agreed to make the film despite having recently settled a lawsuit brought on by producers Paddy Chayefsky and Howard Gottfried that challenged the company's right to lease their previous film, The Hospital (1971), to U.S. television network ABC in a package with less successful film. Later, United Artists backed out, fearing the subject matter was too controversial. Once MGM agreed to make the movie, United Artists suddenly did a reversal, choosing to co-produce the film with the competing studio that, six years later, would buy United Artists outright following the debacle of Heaven's Gate (1980), a financial and public relations nightmare that prompted United Artists' parent company, Transamerica, to bail out of the film business.

[claude]

Henry Fonda turned down the role of Howard Beale, saying that it was "too hysterical." Glenn Ford and George C. Scott did also. Although William Holden turned it down, he was cast in the other male lead and was nominated for Best Actor along with Peter Finch.

[willard]

Per UBS's coverage of Sarah Jane Moore's attempted assassination of Gerald Ford, the film's events begin on September 22, 1975.

[tom]

Faye Dunaway revealed in her autobiography that she wanted Robert Mitchum to play Max.

[lynn]

Diana Christensen is loosely based on Lin Bolen.

[eli]

William Holden had some reservations about the scene where he and Faye Dunaway are in bed making love and, in her excitement, she exclaims about the ratings of her successful television show. At a climactic moment she cries out, "We're getting more publicity out of this than Watergate!" "Such scenes are not to my liking," Holden later said. "I believe lovemaking is a private thing, and I don't enjoy depictions of it on the screen." He rationalized that, "If nobody had been in bed on the screen before, I might have hesitated." But he went with it, understanding that "The scene was not meant to be pornographic. It was meant to disclose a character flaw, the fact that Faye talks all the way through it tells more about her. It was Paddy's way of getting the dialogue out." Holden did allow, however, that he felt "the scene was meant to be more amusing than it came off."

[ruby]

The famous line as specifically written by Paddy Chayefsky - "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" - became, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" when uttered by Peter Finch, with the first 'as' omitted. Finch had become so exhausted working on that particular scene, he accidentally dropped the 'as,' causing writer Chayefsky much grief, but not enough to prompt director Lumet to change the filmed dialog.

[veronica]

Sight & Sound magazine conducts a poll every ten years of the world's finest film directors to find out the Ten Greatest Films of All Time. This poll has been going since 1952, and has become the most recognized poll of its kind in the world. In 2012 Dutch helmer Cyrus Frisch voted for 'Network'. Frisch commented: "Even Berlusconi might have learned a few things about the power of the media watching this film."

[manuel]

The three Oscar winners, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, and Beatrice Straight, share scenes with William Holden, but they share no scenes with each other. Finch and Dunaway, who won the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars, have no scenes or dialogue together in the film.

[carl]

Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor were approached for the Howard Beale role, but neither was interested. Cronkite's daughter Kathy Cronkite agreed to play left-wing radical Mary Ann Gifford, a character loosely based on Patricia Hearst.

[javier]

Upon its original release, the film was a co-production of MGM, which released the film in the U.S., and United Artists, which MGM bought five years later, distributing internationally. Due to a series of mergers and acquisitions that happened in the years following its release, Warner Bros. now handles domestic rights as owner of films produced by MGM up to 1986, while MGM, an in-name-only successor to the similarly-named studio that existed when the film was made, handles foreign rights as owner of the United Artists library.

[phyllis]

14 years later, Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway would also appear as husband-wife in The Handmaid's Tale (1990).

[albert]

In the script Max confesses to his wife his affair with Diana before the sex scene between Max and Diana. In the final cut the sequence of the scenes were reversed.

[michele]

In the film, Max and Diana refer to their affair as "a many-splendored thing", an inside joke, since William Holden had starred in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955).

[frederick]

Is one of only two films that has been awarded three acting Oscars, the other film being A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Although both were nominated, neither film won the Best Picture Oscar that year.