6
Friday, March 11, 1977
University Dallv Kansan
'Network' offers shallow critique of boob tube's awesome power
Bv CHUCK SACK
Reviewer
On United Broadcasting Systems' evening news, anchorman Howard Beale announced the goddam propaganda force in the whole goddam world." It is also a "goddam amusement park" and the electronic parent to a generation who "learned life from Bugs
On its surface "Network" appears to be a sharp, sartificial stick thrust into the video glass eye. The film begins with Beate (Pele Finch) ending a live broadcast by threatening to commit suicide on the show next week.
When the Nielsen ratings improve after this declaration, Diane Christensen (Faye Dunaway) and her husband Frankie The news, which runs at an annual deficit, is transformed into a tabloid with Beale as a mad prophet. His claion cry is, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it
ONLY UBS NEWS President Max Schumacher (William Holden) opposes the change, and after a series of internal power struggles and bitterly funny twists, "Network" arrives at an apocalyptic conclusion. Yet for all of Beale's shrill diatribes, the film is devoid of any penetrating insights into the medium's deficiencies.
Despite all the claims about it being outrageous and controversial, "Network" is a cream pie throw broadside at the most extreme of the things American dream. Make no mistake—it is very entertaining. But it has deeper faults stemming from the fact that both writer Paddy Chayefsky and director Sidney Kushner have their professional teeth into *The* television.
CHAYFSKY, by virtue of being the film's dominant creative force, is most blameworthy. His characters are an two twelfth century romance, set in western; they deserve allegorical titles
instead of names. Max Schumacher is Contemporary Broadcasting. Diane Christensen, who seduces him, is Programming, and his faithful wife of 25 years in Boston Broadcast Journalism. These are Cost Accountant Executive and Corporate Management.
Once you discern the pattern, Chayefsky's of heralded dialogue sounds stilted, rather than poetic. Schumacher's wife was always one of the great winter romance; your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years." He counters with something about her voice.
THESE LITERATE, self-perceptive
The Cinema
speeches are the everyday language of television executives? No wonder UBS is the laughingstock of the industry. Its executives read too much.
Cayefaky does attempt to update the screenplay by sprinkling the dialogue with four-letter words. Mild as most of these epithets are, they interrupt his carefully-crafted phrasing and sound false in the first children trying to act grown up by swearing.
Many other directors would have taken the edge off this writing by letting the actors improvise enough to give the conversations a little more life. We treat her the赡as if it, we were holly.
WORSE, LUEMT fails to downplay some of the more strident material. Beaal's later speeches should be played behind other speakers, though they might never though we might otherwise miss the message. There are so many close-ups and establishing shots that "Network" looks like an expensive made-for-TV movie. The parody would be devastating if it were in-progress.
However, both men do have talents associated with television writing and
directing. Laramel can handle actors, and in the "Pawnbroker," "Sermoip" and "Dog Day Afternoon" managed to capture one stunning performance per film. When he played the major role as in "Murder on the Orient Express," he proves unequal to the task.
This time he seems to have lavished most of his attention on William Holden, who has never looked so relaxed or been more effective. Peter Finch generates his own manic excitement, and Faye Dunaway is left floundering in the gaps.
HOWEVER, Chayefsky rescues the minor roles. Because these characters, played by Ned Beatty, Robert Duvall and Beatrice Straight, don't require much development and are given quick, meaty scenes, they look good.
Ultimately, "Network" goes awry by overstating its case that TV is the primary instrument of our dehumanization. It rails against both news and programming. The network cooperates with a terrorist group for a better audience share, and there is even a titrating scene in which the corporation that owns UBS comes under fire.
BUT IT NEVER, never raises its voice against the sponsors who purchase the public's attention for six minutes of every prime-time hour. Both Chayefsy and it infected with the TV entertainment to tamper with the real muscle behind the boob tube.
Consequently, the film fails to damage its target, and one can foresee the day when CBS, ABC and NBC will try to outbid each other for the honor of showing "Network." Contrary to the film's advertising slogan that television will never be the same, the medium can easily assimilate this film and create a new one. The situation comedy, it's so harmless
If UBS were really a maverick network, Chayefsky and Lumet would have changed Beale's cry to: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to watch it anymore!"
Strictly modern
"Bijin 3", a modern oriental painting, won $100 for Roger Shimuraum, associate professor of art, in the third annual Juried Painting Show at the Lawrence Arts Center, Ninth and Vermont streets. "Bijin 3" is one of the latest pieces in Shimuraum's
"Oriental Masterpiece" series, in which oriental prints and paintings are modernized by combining several old images into a single new one. The show, sponsored by the Lawrence Arts Center, consists of 27 paintings from 23 artists and runs through March 31.
Aged fiddler still has fun
Arts & Leisure
By JANE PIPER Staff Reporter
"Cactus Jack," from Pittsburg, had the distinction of
A light touch, a fiddle under its chin, and the sound of aplaure have kept 80-year-old McMurray young at heart.
after 89 years of fiddling, he said he was content to play just for fun now. "I gave up fiddling professionally 20 years ago," he said. "I don't play for money I don't play because you don't grow old so fast."
Reviewer
Color field art succeeds partly
Color field painting, to be successful, requires convincing logic and execution behind it to carry off the broad expanses of pure or slightly modulated color without becoming simplistic. See TEXTS 787, GALLERY, painter Douglass Freed succeeds only partly.
Freed's show, which runs through March 30, is difficult to react to because the work tends
At the Gallery
By LEROY JOHNSON
to fall into a design category,
yet it possesses some fine art
attributes as well. By applying
his large areas of color with an
air brush, Freed obtains sensual tonal variations impossible to get any other way. But this also gives the work a slickness that works against its expressive inclinations.
FREED MAINTAINS that his paintings are meant to have zen connotations. Titles like "Islamic Bliss" and "Spiritual Candide of Soul" and "Mystic Rose" indicate this desire. But something is lost in the process of transferring these ideas into art.
Certainly the colors vibrate,
pulse and under beautiful
and subtle transformations.
And these effects aren't always
easy to achieve. But color effects aren't in themselves enough.
By trying to erase the last vestige of the artist's hand, Freed also has removed some of his presence—an essential ingredient in any fine work of art. It is the color that leaves the paintings almost naked in their simplicity.
FREED SAYS he is strongly influenced by Mark Rothko, a
I couldn't do it without my guitar player, McMurray said, complimenting his accompanying, Greg Allen, 2148 W. 29th St. the two men met for the show Saturday to release the songs.
McMurry said a good guitarist was important to cover up any mistakes he might make.
But mistakes come rarely to a man who has spent 69 years polishing his art. McMurray took his only lessons (a dozen for $6) in 1908 when he was 11. From then on he taught himself.
MECURYM SAID there always has been an audience for fiddling and country music. He didn't hear the term "bluegrass" until the 1940s.
many commitments. He was
asked to play at his best friend's
funeral several years ago but
she too grieved to concentrate
I heard the rabid Ralph fiddle outside where he got caught," McMurray said. "Then he bought me one of my own." Ralph SAID there
McMurray said he would like to organize a bulldog fight in Pittsburg soon and fiddle there, but well with the townpeople.
Although he occasionally plays publicly now in the Pittsburg area, McMurray said his age kept him from making
When he hears a tune he likes, he tapes it and listens several times before repeating it by ear.
He said he practiced every day to keep from getting rusty.
Mc Murry said that playing by ear was stressed now in lessons for beginning fiddlers. He finds it a good trend, as long as students learn to read the notes also.
I haven't lost ability to play," he said. "Everything I played today I learned in the last three years."
Arts & Leisure
"THE CLOSEST I've ever come to it was playing at a shotgun wedding." he said.
Highlights
Theater
HE PROVED Sunday that his talent was still strong as he kept the crowd stomping in time to hear the band's performance, the Slippers' and other tunes. Nearly 300 people attended the four-hour festival sponsored by the Kansas Folk Lore Center as well as KANU's bluegrass program.
ANY AGE is good to begin playing, he said, if it isn't forced on an unwilling child.
"AN EVENING OF DANCE DRAMA," last performance at 8 tonight, William Inge Memorial Theatre.
"LA DAMA DUENE," The Spanish Theater Repository of New York, 8 p.m. March 21. Swarthout Recital Hall.
Concerts
Businessmen, children and cowbirds greeted McMurry as he came on stage and lifted his bow. By the end of the first song, a crowd of "Cactus Jack" fans, with the enthusiastic
"The average person is better off sticking to one instrument," he continued.
"I'm having more fun than anyone else here," McMurry said. "We meet new people—many fine men and—and it's real interesting."
GINO VANNELLI, 8 p.m.
March 13, Memorial Hall,
Kansas City, Mo.
FERRANTE & TEICHER, 3 p.m. March 13, Music Hall, Kansas City, Mo.
His idea of an ideal fiddler is one who can make the sound like a violin. He said that he couldn't reach that level.
GUNTHER SCHULLER,
guest conductor, and RALPH
WIRSHAUM BISON, violaceus
KIRLISH CITY
Philharmonic, 8 p. March 15
and 7.30 p. March 16. Music
Hall, p. March 16. Plaza
Hall, p. March 16.
JIMMY WALKER and SHERRI LEWIS, March 22-27. Gold Buffet Celebrity Room, Kansas City, Mo.
OZARK MOUNTAIN
DAREDEVILS, 9 p.m. March
22, Uptown Theater, Kansas
City, Mo.
Five of those professional years, from 1931 to 1938, were spent in Coffeeville where he was an eight-piece band. The group had a daily 30-minute radio program and their popularity kept them booked nearly every night at dances in southeastern
ANGEL and David LaFlamme, 8 p.m., March 19, Lyric Theatre, Kansas City, Mo.
UTOPIA, featuring TODD
RUNDGREN, 8 p.m. March 23,
Music Hall, Kansas City, Mo.
STAN KENTON and his orchestra, 8 p.m. March 18, Lyrical Theatre, Kansas City, Mo
Recitals
"A regular fiddler is a violinist who hasn't made the grade. "McMurray said smiling, "I'll put him inside in that category."
DAN RAWLINGS, bass-baritone, Student Recital Series, 8 tonight. Swarthout.
ALBERT GERKEN, carillon,
3 p.m. Sunday, campanile.
JUNIOR MUSIC FESTIVAL
National Federation of Music
Club members for musicians
under 18 years a.m. to
afternoon, Saturday and
Sunday
BILL STANLEY, trombone,
Student Recital Series, 8 p.m.
March 22, Swarthworth.
well-known New York artist whose strong yet simple abstractions also consist of large rectangular areas of slightly modulated color. Rothko, with a much greater depth of feeling by allowing the texture and quality of the paint to show.
Some of Freed's paintings succeed better than others in conveying his metaphysical ideas, for example, shimmers in shades of alizarin crimson to the point that it's difficult to focus upon. Others such as "Spiritual Mountain" and "blue and grey, full flat."
Films
"The War Game," a mockery of the civil defense procedures in the U.S., won Academy Award in the U.S. and was banned from British television.
ROBIN MAAS, soprano Student Recital Series, 8 p.m March 24, Swarthout.
There lies the dilemma of Freed's work: are they exercises in color theory and interaction alone, or do they succeed in competing with the viewer's own mystical inclinations? The decision is difficult.
JERRY WOOD, 9 to midnight, tonight and tomorrow night, Off the Wall Hall.
Nightclubs
CAROL COMER, Kansas City jazz singer, 9 to midnight, tonight and tomorrow night. Paul Grav's Jazz Place.
EDVARD MUNCH, THE WAR GAME and the TRAP- Films of Peter Watkins, who was a student in campus, as he was last fall. "Munch" is about the Norwegian artist of that name, claimed to be an expressionist. The film was made from diaries kept from the early part of the war, going back to the early 1900s.
MARTA TH HAEHL, and MARTHA HAEHL,
singer. 9 to midnight, tonight.
Sister Kettle's, PEGGY ROBY,
tolksinger. 9 to midnight,
singer.
ROCK ISLAND LINE, a rock band, 9 to midnight, March 14, Off the Wall Hall. MELVIN LITTON, folk singer, 9 to midnight, JAM SESSION, 8 to midnight, March 16, Off the Wall Hall. JOAN PAUL MC-CLELLAN and BETH SCALET, 9 to midnight, March 17, Off the Wall Hall. LEE AND DEENIE MURPHY, queer musicians, 9 to midnight, Off the Wall Hall.
THE LEE MCBEE BLUES
BAND, 9 to midnight, Saturday,
the Opera House.
CAR WASH—A variation of the "Grand Hotel" format in
SARROW, a rock band, 9 to midnight. March 21, Off the Wall Hall. JAM SESSION, 8 to April 23, Off the Wall Hall.
BOB WIRE AND THE OPEN RANGERS, country and western, 9 to midnight, March 19, the Opera House.
"The Trap" is a cynical look
JAM SESSION, 9 to midnight. March 24, Paul Gray's Jazz Place.
Leetures
which all the events take place in one day at a white-owned car wash, staffed primarily by the men and the name actors (Richard Pryer, George Carlin and the men) are wasted in cameos. (PG)
**ROCKY**—A down-to-earth version of the Cinderella story, costumed in boxing trunks. Sylvester Stationone's easy humor and powerful acting give the game an entertaining punch. (PG)
SPENCER RESEARCH LIBRARY—"Earth, Air, Fire, Water: The Sciences in Spen- ceary," "Book Designs," North gallery; "Fire! The Story of the Lawrence Fire Department, 1859-1976," Kansas Collection; "organizations," Archives of plants.
SILVER STREAK—If not for Arthur Hiller's weak direction and the miscasting of Gene Wilder, this could have been a suspense film in the light tradition "of the movies" ashes." As is the piece is nearly derailed until Richard Prorv got on board. (PG)
"THE DECORATIVE IN ART" or "Decorative is Not a Dirty Word," Miriam Schapiro, New artist, 8 tonight. Pearlson Hall Student Center, Kansas City, Kansas-Kansas City, Kansas
COUSIN, COUSINE - A delightful, airy romp of a movie about two cousins by marriage and their background of family-green Chimes Tacchelli's eccentric monsters provide most of the comedy, and actress Marie Christine Barrault gives a twist.
11TH INTERNATIONAL TOURNEE OF ANIMATION—Seventeen short animated films from eight countries show that animation is not limited to that which pervades children's
SPOONER • THAYER MUSEUM OF ART—The Salie Casey Casey Collection, Main Gallery.
at life in Sweden in the year 2000.
CORNUCOPIA RESTAURANT - David Graves, water colors: George Malyas, pen and ink drawings.
K ANSAS U N I O N
landscape, through Saturday;
the National Cone Box Show,
an exhibition of miniature ceramic
works.
Exhibits
WATSON LIBRARY— "Women's Studies," foyer.
ELIZABETH B. MATKINIS
ELIZABETH B. MATKINIS
American Sampler: A Look at
Life in the 1800s', 80 prints and
the Library of
GROVENHAM
LAWRENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY—Pat Hannon, charcoals, oils and pastels; Ann Johnson, walnails; Helen Johnson, walnails; Judy Wetherby, walnails; Judy Wetherby, fabrics; through March.
MC DONALD'S GALLERY-
preschool art from the
Lawrence Licensed Child Care
Program for children
back of the Young Child, April.39.
173 GALLERY, Duncan
LAWRENCE ARTS CENTER—Third Annual Juried Painting Show, featuring work by artists from school and students, through March.
Last year,the story of their early years won 11 Emmys. Now,see them in their White House years.
One of the most celebrated events on television last year was the story of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt in their early years. Now, Jane Alexander and Edward Herrmann continue their portraits of the Roosevelts in "Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years." Don't miss it.
'Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years' Sunday, March 13, 7 P.M. on KIBW-TV-Channel 12
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