Paddy Chayefsky

I do want to say how proud I am of Patti. You know, she's willing to step up and do something like go into the jungle...Neither one of us are celebrities; I prefer to be compared to people like Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and others in history, not these comparisons.

Ex-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, talking about his wife Patti's joining the cast of I'm a Celebrity -- Get Me Out of Here!

I am scarcely the first to notice this, but Paddy Chayefsky, the author of Network, was some kind of prescient genius. In his invaluable annual Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin notes that the movie "looks less and less like fantasy as the years pass." I'll say. 33 years ago -- 33 years ago! -- Chayefsky saw it all coming: reality TV, infotainment, the blurring of news and entertainment divisions, the manufacture of celebrities out of nothing. Everyone remembers Peter Finch as Howard Beale, "the mad prophet of the airwaves," but what about the other segments on Howard's show?

Sybil the Soothsayer (telling us what's going to happen tomorrow and next week)
Jim Webbing and His "It's the Honest Truth" Department (another angry man telling it like it is, on behalf of middle-of-the-road white guys everywhere)
Mata Hari and Her Skeletons in the Closet (celebrity shockers!)
Vox Populi (interactive segment with viewers voting on their opinions on the issues)

How is this line-up materially different from what we see on cable news nowadays? Not at all. Glenn Beck (who is a mad prophet, all right) has explicitly evoked Howard Beale as a model.

Some of the best scenes in Network are the behind-the-scenes negotiating sessions, which are both hilarious and sinister. My favorite is the revolutionaries dickering over the contract language for The Mao Tse-Tung Hour ("The Communist Party's not gonna see a nickel of this goddamn show until we go into syndication!"). One imagines that the confabs between Rod and Patti Blagojevich, their agents, and the reps for I'm a Celebrity were a lot like these scenes. Only it's not "outrageous satire" (Maltin's phrase) anymore: it's our reality. Paddy, you nailed it.