Prepare Yourself For A Perfectly Outrageous Motion Picture.
Paddy Chayefsky. It’s highly probable that you are not familiar with the name. But let me tell you, he was quite a filmmaker. A hell of a writer. During the 50s, 60s, and 70s he was a man to watch. Just check his credits:
Academy Awards
| 1977 | Winner Oscar | Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Network (1976) |
| 1972 | Winner Oscar | Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced The Hospital (1971) |
| 1959 | Nominee Oscar | Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen The Goddess (1958) |
| 1956 | Winner Oscar | Best Writing, Screenplay Marty (1955) |
So he got three bloody Oscars + one nomination. And this is not all. Here, the basic resume:
Primetime Emmy Awards
| 1956 | Nominee Primetime Emmy | Best Original Teleplay Writing Goodyear Television Playhouse (1951) For episode “The Catered Affair”. |
| 1955 | Nominee Primetime Emmy | Best Written Dramatic Material The Philco Television Playhouse (1948) |
BAFTA Awards
| 1978 | Nominee BAFTA Film Award | Best Screenplay Network (1976) |
| 1973 | Winner BAFTA Film Award | Best Screenplay The Hospital (1971) |
Golden Globes, USA
| 1977 | Winner Golden Globe | Best Screenplay – Motion Picture Network (1976) |
| 1972 | Winner Golden Globe | Best Screenplay – Motion Picture The Hospital (1971) |
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
National Society of Film Critics Awards, USA
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
Writers Guild of America, USA
| 1977 | Winner WGA Award (Screen) | Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen Network (1976) |
| 1974 | Winner Laurel Award for Screen Writing Achievement | |
| 1972 | Winner WGA Award (Screen) | Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen The Hospital (1971) |
| 1956 | Winner WGA Award (Screen) | Best Written American Drama Marty (1955) |
Cannes Film Festival
1955 Palm D’Or Winner Marty (1955)
The scene that made Chayefsky famous
According to the Network script
(..) the scene was to unfold on a stormy evening starting at the apartment of the Schumachers, as their daughter, Caroline, looks out onto “the rain-swept streets of the Upper East Side, the bulking, anonymous apartment houses and occasional brownstones.” Max then joins his daughter to gaze upon “the erratic landscape of Manhattan,” seeing “silhouetted HEADS in windows—here, there, and then out of nowhere everywhere, SHOUTING out into the slashing black RAIN.” There would be “a terrifying THUNDERCLAP, followed by a FULGURATION of LIGHTNING” that “punctuates the gathering CHORUS coming from the huddled, black border of the city’s SCREAMING people, an indistinguishable tidal roar of human RAGE.”
Chayefsky’s stage directions spelled out a clear vision for the scene, but they did not discourage (director Sidney) Lumet from imagining an alternate presentation. As Gottfried recalled, “One day when we were talking about it, Sidney comes in with an idea. He thought it would be funnier, and perhaps even more effective, if, once the scene started with Peter, that people start shouting it in different areas. Like sitting in a taxi, they’d stick out their heads and shout, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.’ People coming from different places, coming from a taxi, coming from people walking in the street or something like that. I thought the original scene as Paddy wrote it would be far more powerful, and ultimately Sidney agreed. I know he did. That was basically changing the script, which certainly Paddy wouldn’t go in for.”
So director Sidney Lumet stuck to the script.
Once the commitment was made to Chayefsky’s version of the scene, it became “the biggest shooting of the picture,” according to director of photography Owen Roizman. The sequence required three nights of filming, from March 23 through 25, and more gear and equipment than had been used at any point in the New York production, including “fire trucks with water hoses to wet down the buildings, so that we could get a little sheen from the water dripping off the windowsills,” Roizman said, and “huge cherry pickers with lightning machines on them to light each building.… You could practically melt the generator with all the current that it draws.”
In the book Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movie, Dave Itzkoff tells all about the making of the film Network and Chayefsky’s figure. All you need to know.
Marty and The Hospital made him win Oscars number one and two. Please notice that The Hospital poster states that it’s a film BY PADDY CHAYEFSKY.
On making Network
For a few months it may have seemed that Network was a true collaboration, the result of a cast and crew, a director and a screenwriter, working in tandem, if not always in harmony. But once the film was shot, edited, and in the can, the actors, artisans, and crew members moved on to their next projects and their next paychecks.
And when all the moviemaking apparatus was stripped away, there remained one man who would receive the praise and bear the blame for the film, who had fought from its inception to make sure the final product was his vision and that all who saw it knew it was his creation. As the opening-credit sequence for Network declared, after announcing the names of its lead performers, its own title, and the studios that made it, but before acknowledging its director, producer, or any other contributor, this was a film by Paddy Chayefsky.
Funnily enough, this is not the only book about Chayefsky named MAD AS HELL:
More on Screenwriting? Check Subtext: The Magic Dust of Good Screenwriting, Best Screenwriting Books: Dmytryk’s ON SCREEN WRITING, Best Screenwriting Books: ESSENTIALS OF SCREENWRITING, How Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT Was Written, How Stanley Kubrick’s EYES WIDE SHUT Was Written, David Mamet’s Master Class Memo to the Writers of THE UNIT and Top Screenwriter Scott Frank: “I Hate Writing”, amongst many others!
More about Making Movies? Check Oliver Stone’s Great Autobiography is a Must, How Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT Was Written, Film Blocking, What is it?, The 5 Best Books on Making Movies, by Darren Aronofsky, First Assistant Directors: Who Are They?, The World of Movie Posters and Foley Artists: Who Are They?, amongst many others!
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