Show Business: Chayefsky: ‘Network Is True’

Paddy Chayefsky is a veteran of what is now known as TV’s golden age, that period in the ’50s when there was original, live drama every night and when the networks, uncertain of where they were going, were willing to experiment with talent and quality. Though TV has expanded beyond all recognition and is technically light years beyond those pioneering days, it has, in Chayefsky’s view, entered its own dark ages. In its frantic race for ratings, it has become debased, an extension of a corporate way of life that Chayefsky sees “dehumanizing all of us. ” Last week Chayefsky talked to TIME about Network—and the real, unreal world of television. Excerpts:

People say to me: “Jesus, you moved into some pretty surreal satire.” I say: “No, I still write realistic stuff. It’s the world that’s gone nuts, not me. It’s the world that’s turned into a satire.” We never lied. Everything in the movie is true—with some extensions. It’s very hard to describe simply and realistically what is going on without being grotesque. I think the movie is right now.

The networks were concerned about ratings when I was working in TV in the ’50s, but the condition has been seriously aggravated. If I were in control of a network, I think I would be satisfied with a mere million-dollar profit instead of a 150 million-dollar profit. I would supply on prime time a healthy chunk of beauty and commitment. I think the American people deserve some truth—at least as much truth as we can give them—instead of pure entertainment or pure addiction.

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Let’s at least show the country to ourselves for what it really is. It includes more than pimps, hustlers, junkies, murderers and hit men. All family life is not as coarse and brutalized as it is presented to us on TV. There is a substantial thing called America with a very complicated, pluralistic society that is worth honest presentation. If I were in charge of a network, I would insist that one-third, at least, of prime time be used to depict that, whether people watch it or not, because some people will watch it.

Television coarsens all the complexities of human relationships, brutalizes them, makes them insensitive. The point about violence is not so much that it breeds violence—though that is probably true—but that it totally desensitizes viciousness, brutality, murder, death so that we no longer actively feel the pains of the victim or suffer for the mourners or feel their grief. When the Hindenburg blew up, the reporter broke down on the radio. I can’t imagine anything like that happening today. I imagine a detached, calm description of the ship going up in flames: “I do believe there will be no survivors.” We have become desensitized to things that are usually part of the human condition. This is the basic problem of television. We’ve lost our sense of shock, our sense of humanity.