“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

When evening news anchor Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) hysterically urged viewers to get up out of their chairs, open their windows, and shout, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore,” it turned out to be a seminal moment in American film history.  And with Jimmy Carter preparing to take the reins of power, it couldn’t have come at a more prophetic time.

Beale’s words quickly became part of the American lexicon, and today just about everyone is mad about something — in fact, millions of people are mad about practically everything.  And with good reason.  People on both the right and the left are fed up with the lies perpetrated by the media, government, major corporations, universities — even churches.

Cutting through the odious political rhetoric that is injected into just about discussion today, most people believe that no matter who is elected, taxes will continue to increase, living standards will continue to drop, America will continue to get deeper and deeper into debt, and institutionalized lying will continue to get worse.

But at the time Network was released, I think a majority of Americans still had fantasies about a return to American innocence.  In that sense, then, Network was ahead of its time.  Only the walking dead still believe that America can return to what it was just a few decades ago.  And that makes most of us … well … mad as hell.

While Peter Finch won a much deserved Oscar for best actor in his role as crazed news anchor Howard Beale, it had to be awarded to him posthumously due to his sudden death from a heart attack, at the tender age of sixty, in January, 1977.

But thanks to the miracle of film, his famous, frenzied words from the movie Network live on: