Trivia for
Network (1976) More at IMDbPro »

• Henry Fonda turned down the role of Howard Beale, saying that it was "too hysterical."
  
  
• Throughout the entire movie, we never actually see Diana speak to Howard.
  
  
• Director Sidney Lumet said that he shot the film using a specific lighting scheme. He said in the film's opening scenes, he shot with as little light as possible, almost shooting the film like a documentary. As the film progressed, he added more light and more camera moves and by the end of the film, it was as brightly lit and "slick" as he could make it.
  
  
• The only music heard in the film comes from commercials and television show themes.
  
  
• To date (2008), it is one of only two films in history to win three Academy awards for acting. The other is A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
  
  
• Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor were approached for the Howard Beale role, but neither was interested. However, Cronkite's daughter Kathy agreed to play left-wing radical Mary Ann Gifford and her character is loosely based on Patricia Hearst
  
  
• Black radical Laureen Hobbs's character is loosely modeled after communist activist Angela Davis
  
  
• The first film to win Oscars for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), ten years earlier.
  
  
• The director and the screenwriter claimed that the film was not meant to be a satire but a reflection of what was really happening.
  
  
• The movie's line "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" was voted as the #19 movie quote by the American Film Institute
  
  
• In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #64 Greatest Movie of All Time.
  
  
• The movie's line "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" was voted as the #79 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
  
  
• According to Shaun Considine, the author of "Mad As Hell: The Life and Work of Paddy Chayefsky", George C. Scott was offered the role of Howard Beale but declined without reading the script, apparently due to his having once been offended by director Sidney Lumet. Whatever happened, exactly, the hatchet must have been buried at some time, as George C. Scott made his final feature film appearance in the Lumet-directed film 'Gloria (1999)'.
  
  
• In Shaun Considine's biography of Paddy Chayefsky, it is revealed that Glenn Ford and William Holden were the finalists for the role of Max Schumaker. Holden's recent success in The Towering Inferno (1974) was believed to have been the deciding factor in his casting.
  
  
• Beatrice Straight is only on screen for five minutes and forty seconds, making hers the briefest performance ever to win an Oscar.
  
  
• 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, UA backed out, fearing the subject matter was too controversial. Once MGM agreed to make the movie, UA suddenly did a reversal, choosing to co-produce the film with the competing studio that, six years later, would buy UA outright following the debacle of Heaven's Gate (1980), a financial and public relations nightmare that prompted UA's parent company, Transamerica, to bail out of the film business.
  
  
• Ned Beatty once remarked that actors should never turn down work. Beatty further observed, "I worked a day on "Network" and got an Oscar nomination for it".
  
  
• Arthur Burghardt, the actor playing Great Ahmet Khan, was a vegetarian. For the scene where he was to munch on a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burghardt stuffed his cheeks with paper towels and smeared the grease on his face before the camera rolled, instead of actually eating meat.
  
  
• James Stewart turned the film down because of the strong language.
  
  
• To celebrate Faye Dunaway's first Oscar victory, husband-to-be photographer, Terry O'Neill, arranged to meet her at the Beverly Hills Hotel at 6:30 am the morning after the Academy Awards for a photo shoot. What transpired was the famous image of a listless Dunaway, reclining beside the tranquil hotel swimming pool with her Oscar statuette standing upright on the table beside her. Thrown in for good measure were various newspapers scattered on the ground and table, the headlines of which mostly echoed the previous night's festivities. Dunaway had not slept since her win and so appears totally fatigued, prompting O'Neill to title his photograph "The Morning After" shot.
  
  
• Peter Finch died before the Academy Awards were to take place, where he was nominated for Best Actor. He won, making him the first performer ever to receive a posthumous award at the Oscars. The second winner was fellow Australian Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008) in 2009.
  
  
• Kay Lenz was offered the lead female role but turned it down due to her commitment to the TV miniseries "Rich Man, Poor Man" (1976).
  
  
• According to Sidney Lumet the "Mad as Hell" speech was filmed in one and a half takes. Midway through the second take, Peter Finch abruptly stopped in exhaustion. Lumet was unaware of Finch's failing heart at the time, but in any case did not ask for a third take. What's in the completed film is the second take for the first half of the speech, and the second half from the first take.
  
  
• Peter Finch convinced Sidney Lumet to cast him as Beale over his concerns about his Australian accent, by sending him a recording of him reading the New York Times with a perfect American accent.
  
  

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