604

It's hard to believe, but my favorite movie bar none — Network — is 30 years old this year.

Network is the only videotaped movie I ever bought. And when Warner Home Video releases the DVD version next Tuesday, I'll buy that, too.

The CNN announcement of the DVD's release is absolutely correct — Network is just as meaningful today as it was in 1976, when my wife and I took in a show on a quiet Boston Sunday afternoon, and were blown away. It's a little dated, sure. But it's still as "prescient as ever."

Here's a sample speech, as spoken by corporate mogul Arthur Jensen to the mad Howard Beale. Jensen speaks the words thunderingly, like an angry god in whose hands the worthless sinner, poor mad Howard, cowers before the blistering rebuke:

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.

It may have sounded a little far-fetched in 1976, but it surely rings true today.

Great movie...