·
I
don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or
scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going
bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the
street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no
end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat,
and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we
had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's
supposed to be.
We know things are bad — worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything
everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are
living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us
alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted
radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. 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. [shouting]You've got to say: 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! 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!
I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick
your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this
anymore!' Things have got to
change. But first, you've gotta get mad!...You've got to say, I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE
THIS ANYMORE! Then we'll figure out
what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But
first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and
yell, and say it: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND
I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!
·
Edward George Ruddy died
today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union
Broadcasting Systems and he died at eleven o'clock this morning of a heart
condition! And woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble! So, a rich little man with
white hair died. What does that got to do with the price of rice, right? And
why is that woe to us? Because you people and sixty-two million other Americans
are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people
read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because
the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a
whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of
this tube. This tube is the Gospel. The ultimate revelation! This tube can make
or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome,
god-damn force in the whole godless world. And woe is us if it ever falls into
the hands of the wrong people. And that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy
died.
Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communication Corporation
of America. There's a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett
sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the 20th floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the
most awesome, god-damn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows
what shit will be peddled for truth on this network.
·
So, you listen to me.
Listen to me! Television is not the
truth. Television's a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a
carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers,
jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the
boredom-killing business. So if you want the
Truth, go to God!
Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever
gonna find any real truth. But, man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you wanna hear. We lie
like hell. We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer
and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how
much trouble the hero is in, don't worry. Just look at your watch. At the end
of the hour, he's gonna win. We'll tell you any shit
you want to hear.
We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day,
night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions
we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and
that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the
tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness.
You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are
the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them
off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the
middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!.
·
Last night I got up here
and asked you people to stand up and fight for your heritage, and you did, and
it was beautiful. Six million telegrams were received at the White House. The
Arab takeover of CCA has been stopped. The people spoke, the people won. It was
a radiant eruption of democracy. But I think that was it, fellas. That sort of
thing is not likely to happen again. Because at the bottom of all our terrified
souls, we know that democracy is a dying giant, a sick, sick dying, decaying
political concept, writhing in its final pain. I don't mean that the United
States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, the most
powerful, the most advanced country in the world, light-years ahead of any
other country. And I don't mean the Communists are gonna take over the world,
because the Communists are deader than we are.
What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the
freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It's the individual that's finished. It's the
single, solitary human being that's finished. It's every single one of you out
there that's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent
individuals. It's a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized,
deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as
human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.
Well, the time has come to say is 'dehumanization' such a bad word?' Whether
it's good or bad, that's what is so. The whole world is becoming humanoid,
creatures that look human but aren't. The whole world, not just us. We're just
the most advanced country, so we're getting there first. The whole world's people are becoming
mass-produced, programmed, numbered, insensate things.
·
I was married for four
years, and pretended to be happy; and I had six years of analysis, and
pretended to be sane. My husband ran off with his boyfriend, and I had an
affair with my analyst, who told me I was the worst lay he'd ever had. I can't
tell you how many men have told me what a lousy lay I am. I apparently have a
masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely, and can't wait
to get my clothes back on and get out of that bedroom. I seem to be inept at
everything except my work. I'm goddamn good at my work and so I confine myself
to that. All I want out of life is a 30 share and a 20 rating.
·
This was the story of
Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had
lousy ratings.
Howard Beale: I'm gonna blow my brains out right on the air, right in the
middle of the seven o'clock news.
Max Schumacher: Well, you'll get a hell of a rating, I'll tell you that. A 50
share, at least. We could make a series of it. "Suicide of the Week."
Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? "Execution of the Week."
Howard Beale: "Terrorist of the Week."
Max Schumacher: I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen,
automobile smash-ups: "The Death Hour." A great Sunday night show for
the whole family. It'd wipe that fuckin' Disney right off the air.
Howard Beale: [on the air] Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the
24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I announced on this program that
I was going to commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll
tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit. I just ran out of bullshit.
Harry Hunter: [picks up ringing phone
in editing room] Mr. Schumacher's right
here, do you want to talk to him?
Howard Beale: Am I still on the air? I really don't know any other way to say
it other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give
for living. And if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the
God bullshit.
Max Schumacher: [on the phone] Yeah, Tom, what is it?
Howard Beale: We don't know why we go through all this pointless pain,
humiliation, and decay. So there better be someone somewhere who does know. That's the God bullshit.
Max Schumacher: He's saying that life is bullshit, and it is, so what are you
screaming about?
[hangs up]
Howard Beale: And then there's the noble man bullshit. That man is a noble
creature that can order his own world who needs God? Well, if there's anybody
out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live
in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of
bullshit. I don't have anything going for me. I haven't got any kids. And I was
married for 33 years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So I don't have any bullshit
left. I just ran out of it, you see.
Diana Christensen: I think we can get a hell of a movie of the
week out of it, maybe even a series...Look, we've got a bunch of hobgoblin
radicals called the Ecumenical Liberation Army who go around taking home movies
of themselves robbing banks. Maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping
heiresses, hijacking 747's, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd
open each week's segment with their authentic footage, hire a couple of writers
to write some story behind that footage, and we've got ourselves a series.
George Bosch: A series about a bunch of, uh, bank-robbing guerrillas?
Barbara Schlesinger:What are we gonna call it - the Mao Tse-Tung Hour?
Diana Christensen: Why not? They've got 'Strike Force', 'Task
Force', 'SWAT'. Why not Che Guevara and his own little 'Mod Squad'. Look, I sent you
all a concept analysis report yesterday. Did any of you read it? Well, in a nutshell,
it said, 'The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all
sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression. They've turned
off, shot up, and they've fucked themselves limp and nothing helps.' So this
concept analysis report concludes, 'The American people want somebody to
articulate their rage for them.' I've been telling you people since I took this
job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional
programming on this network. I want counter-culture. I want anti-establishment. [She shuts the door] I don't want to play butch boss with you people.
But when I took over this department, it had the worst programming record in
television history. This network hasn't one show in the top 20. This network is
an industry joke. We better start putting together one winner for next
September. I want a show developed, based on the activities of a terrorist
group. 'Joseph Stalin and his Merry Band of Bolsheviks.' I want ideas from you
people. That is what you're paid for. And, by the way, the next time I send an
audience research report around, you'd all better read it or I'll sack the
fucking lot of you, is that clear?
Nelson Chaney: All I know is that this violates every canon of respectable
broadcasting.
Frank Hackett: We're not a respectable network. We're a whorehouse network, and
we have to take whatever we can get.
Nelson Chaney: Well, I don't want any part of it. I don't fancy myself the
president of a whorehouse.
Frank Hackett: That's very commendable of you, Nelson. Now sit down. Your
indignation is duly noted; you can always resign tomorrow.
Louise: Then get out. Go anywhere you want. Go to a hotel, go live with
her, but don't come back! Because, after 25 years of building a home and
raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each
other, I'm damned if I'm gonna stand here and have you tell me you're in love
with somebody else! Because this isn't a convention weekend with your
secretary, is it? Or -- or some broad that you picked up after three belts of
booze. This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion
before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that
my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed
to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back
like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it! And if you can't work up a
winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance! [sobbing] I hurt! Don't you understand that? I hurt badly! Does she love
you, Max?
Max Schumacher: [about Diana] I'm not sure she's capable of any real feelings.
She's television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny. The only reality
she knows comes to her from over the TV set. She has very carefully devised a
number of scenarios for all of us to play, like a Movie of the Week. And, my
God, look at us, Louise. Here we are going through the obligatory
middle-of-act-two 'scorned wife throws peccant husband out' scene. But don't
worry, I'll come back to you in the end.
Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale,
and I won't have it! Is that clear?! Do you think you've merely stopped a
business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars
out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal
gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of
nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no
Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West.
There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven,
interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars,
electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of
life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the
atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have
meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little
twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no
America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and
DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world
today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state - Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax
solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and
investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and
ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably
determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr.
Beale; it has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will live,
Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine,
oppression or brutality - 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. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
Howard Beale: Why me?
Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch
you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.
Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.
Max Schumacher: And I'm tired of finding you on the god-damn telephone every
time I turn around. I'm tired of being an accessory in your life! And I'm tired
of pretending to write this dumb book about my maverick days in the great early
years of television. Every god-damned executive fired from a network in the
last twenty years has written this dumb book about the great early years of
television. And nobody wants a dumb, damn, god-damn book about the great years
of television...After living with you for six months, I'm turning into one of
your scripts. Well, this is not a script, Diana. There's some real actual life
going on here. I went to visit my wife today because she's in a state of
depression, so depressed that my daughter flew all the way from Seattle to be
with her. And I feel lousy about that. I feel lousy about the pain that I've
caused my wife and my kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken and all of
those things that you think sentimental, but which my generation called simple
human decency. And I miss my home because I'm beginning to get scared shitless.
Because all of a sudden, it's closer to the end than it is to the beginning,
and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me - with definable features.
You're dealing with a man that has primal doubts, Diana, and you've got to cope
with it. I'm not some guy discussing male menopause on the 'Barbara Walters
Show'. I'm the man that you presumably love. I'm part of your life. I live
here. I'm real. You can't switch to another station...I just want you to love
me. I just want you to love me, primal doubts and all. You understand that,
don't you?
Diana Christensen: I don't know how to do that.
Max Schumacher: You need me. You need me badly. Because I'm your last contact
with human reality. I love you. And that painful, decaying love is the only
thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day.
Diana Christensen: [hesitatingly] Then, don't leave me.
Max Schumacher: It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can
live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be
destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed.
Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed.
You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to
joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder,
death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of
life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space
into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent
madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I
can feel pleasure, and pain... and love.
[Kisses her]
Max Schumacher: And it's a happy ending: Wayward husband comes to his senses,
returns to his wife, with whom he has established a long and sustaining love.
Heartless young woman left alone in her arctic desolation. Music up with a
swell; final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week's show.
