"Network" was always one of my favorite films. Not only is it an entertaining two hours with the screen, a great story, well acted and directed, but there's always been a little Howard Beale in me, and Paddy Chayefsky really nailed what television was to become from his creative view in the 1970s. We're lucky to have the script from this 1976 film, and its availability still today. And here is Tim Dirks review of this multiple-award-winning film.
But this morning it is with sorrow that I'm feeling like the cabbie in the story told by the movie's character Max Schumacher a couple times in the film (available in the video starting at 1:00 minute in through 2:10):
. . . anyway, they were building the lower level of the George Washington Bridge.So that's what I have to say to State29: "Don't do it, buddy!" All your fans have their whole lives ahead of them (as do you), and those lives will be a lot less rich once devoid of the "insightfully vulgar" education and entertainment you provide us on a regular basis.
We were doing a remote from there...and nobody told me!
A minute after 7:00 a.m. I get a call.
"Where the hell are you? You're supposed to be at the George Washington Bridge."
I jump outta bed, throw my raincoat over my pajamas. I run downstairs. I run out in the street, hail a cab, and I say to the cabbie "Take me to the middle of the George Washington Bridge."
And the cabbie turns around and he says... he says, "Don't do it, buddy! You're a young man. You got your whole life ahead of you!"
Didn't I ever tell you that one before?
At a minimum, why "delete" the blog? It's an important bit of Americana at this point. Deleting it would be like book burning -- or like a deceased brother-in-law of mine who, upon discovering that what he had been painting had become popular and was worth a lot of money, chose that moment to burn all his canvasses rather than be viewed as a commercial popularizer.
The crooks and creeps and cronies are hoping it's true, saying that soon there will be no one watching and commenting on their doings.
But what I'm saying is, "Don't do it, buddy!" Don't do it my anonymous friend and inspiration.
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