Faye Dunaway

I quite like everyone's performance in this - those who say that some of the acting is too broad are mistaken - it is a biting satire. The dialogue is of course heightened polemic - and the emotions and gestures displayed have to match what they're saying.

I think Faye Dunaway is one of the best living American actresses. And when I think of the casting of this film, she's the actor I can't really imagine being replaced by anyone else. She's a superb actress - ever see her in Hogan's Goat? Dunaway stars as a soft-spoken, genteel, romantic and fragile woman married to a popular Irish immigrant politician in the late 19th century. It's hard to imagine a greater contrast with the characters she plays in Network. Or think of her physical timidity in Three Days of the Condor - and her movement, stances in Bonnie & Clyde.

Yet this character (if we think of the dialogue) also matches much of Dunaway's manner in real life. I've seen her in a number of interviews - and she's intense, thoughtful and very smart -just watch any of her interviews. In her answers generally, Dunaway makes great efforts to convey both the both the scope and details of what she's thinking. She speaks quickly, intently. (She'd have made a great lawyer).

Suppose Dunaway hadn't played her, whom would they have cast in 1975? I'd want an American actress for the part - to have a foreigner (even one of the many English actresses with wonderful American accents - e.g., Jane Seymour or Charlotte Rampling), changes the impression of the character. The character is supposed to be "one of us" - the young pretty girl who's risen swiftly in a new era. Among the American actresses of the time, I can't imagine Marsha Mason or Madeleine Kahn, Dyan Cannon or Katherine Ross, Susan Anspach or Mia Farrow, Karen Black or Barbara Streisand, Candace Bergen or Ali MacGraw, Diane Keaton or Barbara Harris, Susan Blakely or Joan Hackett handling the role nearly as well.

Lee Remick might have done this very well - she was a mighty fine actress, had the looks for the part, and is quite capable of playing a hard woman (think of The Competition) but she was a little old for the part in 1975 (a woman whose youth is emphasized so much).

I suppose they'd have given the role to Jane Fonda - but she'd played so many very hard as nails parts - They Shoot Horses, Klute, etc. And Fonda's different than Dunaway - Fonda's characters always seem quite grounded in reality. They may (usually are) quite driven - but they don't seem to take wild cerebral flight with the sharpness and edge of a knife slicing the air - as Dunaway's can do - and as she does here. Dunaway's characters can be crazily intense - it's thrilling to watch - and I can't say the same of the intense characters played by Fonda in say, Julia or The China Syndrome. And this part is best played crazily intense.

Fonda would have played it - and far less interestingly.

By the way, on the movie generally, I remember seeing the movie when it was released - and just thinking "Wow! WOW!" but I did not then assume - and don't now assume - the movie's messages were meant to be taken as a measure of the true state of affairs. Yes, ratings are important - vital - because television relies on advertising - the alternative is either just a few stations supported by voluntary contributions - or government financed through compulsory payments from owners of television sets and computers - or taxes. After all, the money for all it costs to make television programs has to come from somewhere, and I'd rather it come indirectly from a measure of its popularity (the ratings) than having the government tell us how much we must pay for television - and thus get involved in the content of that programming (as it would - if government was the means of payment).

But as an example, the "corporations rule the world" speech (wonderfully done - very dramatic and great to watch) is of course untrue. E.g., ask any oil company doing business in west Africa whether it can control the safety of its facilities - or ask McDonald's whether it controls the circumstances of its continued operation in Russia. Corporations don't rule the world.