Director: Sidney Lumet
Actors: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty
Movie trailer:
Movie quotes:
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.
Howard Beale: 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 work, 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 TV’s 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. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! 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 going to 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!”
I just found this funny review of The Incredible Hulk in The Guardian. The critic Peter Bradshaw captures the experience most people must have had when watching this not-so-good movie:
“Hulk. Smash!” Yes. Hulk. Smash. Yes. Smash. Big Hulk smash. Smash cars. Buildings. Army tanks. Hulk not just smash. Hulk also go rarrr! Then smash again. Smash important, obviously. Smash Hulk’s USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema. Hulk take all effort of cinema, effort getting babysitter, effort finding parking, and Hulk put great green fist right through it. Hulk crush all hopes of entertainment. Hulk in boring film. Film co-written by star. Edward Norton. Norton in it. Norton write it. Norton not need gamma-radiation poisoning to get big head. Thing is: Hulk head weirdly small. Compared with rest of big green body. …
I didn’t read this TIMES article until today, but I’ve actually thought about this before. Why are there no movie stars anymore? What’s the difference between the actors of the past, of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age, and those we’re having today? And then it crossed my mind, if anybody, George Clooney is a movie star. There are many great actors, but real movie stars? George Clooney, definitely. Another talented actor I thought could have become a movie star was Heath Ledger, who recently passed away.
George Clooney wasn’t supposed to say yes. A reporter interviews a movie star at a restaurant or a hotel lobby or an office, with his publicist lurking in the corner, ready to cut off any vaguely interesting questions. But to come over to my house for dinner? That’s a trap no sucker has ever shoved a famous foot into. Partly because there are so many unknowns—you’re stuck alone chatting up the family while the reporter cooks, you accidentally let slip a cruel joke about a wedding photo, you somehow use the bathroom wrong—and partly because who the hell wants to spend Saturday night stuck at some dork’s house eating undercooked lamb? Would Gwyneth Paltrow come over? Johnny Depp? But George Clooney said yes, of course, why not, sounds fun.
P.S.: Watched Michael Clayton yesterday. Very good movie based on an astounding screenplay, although it had a few “lengths”. Tony Gilroy is one of Hollywood’s best screenwriters as of today, in my opinion. The dialogue he writes is mostly to the point, but what sets Gilroy apart from most other writers currently working in the LA film business is his ability to use an extraordinary structure to tell the movie’s story. He did it when writing the Bourne movies (watch Bourne 2+3 back to back if you’d like to know what I’m talking about) and he did it again with Michael Clayton, which he also directed.
