Network quotes

View Quote Frank Hackett: Well, the issue is: Shall we kill Howard Beale, or not? I'd like to get some more opinions on that.
Diana Christensen: I don't see we have any options, Frank. Let's kill the son-of-a-bitch.

View Quote Secretary: Mr. Hackett's trying to get through to you.
Max Schumacher: Tell Mr. Hackett to go **** himself.

View Quote Howard Beale: I'm gonna blow my brains out right on the air, right in the middle of the seven o'clock news.
Max Schumacher: Well, you'll get a hell of a rating, I'll tell you that. A 50 share, at least. We could make a series of it. "Suicide of the Week." Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? "Execution of the Week."
Howard Beale: "Terrorist of the Week."
Max Schumacher: I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: "The Death Hour." A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It'd wipe that ****in' Disney right off the air.

View Quote Diana Christensen: I'm sorry for all those things I said to you last night. You're not the worst **** I ever had. Believe me, I've had worse. You don't puff or snorkel and make death-like rattles. As a matter of fact, you're rather serene in the sack.
Max Schumacher: Why is it that a woman always thinks that the most savage thing she can say to a man is to impugn his ****smanship.
Diana Christensen: I'm sorry I impugned your ****smanship.
Max Schumacher: I gave up comparing genitals back in the schoolyard.

View Quote Max Schumacher: I'm the man that you presumably love. I'm a part of your life. I live here. I'm real. You can't switch to another station.
Diana Christensen: Well, what exactly is it you want me to do?
Max Schumacher: I just want you to love me. I just want you to love me, primal doubts and all. You understand that, don't you?
Diana Christensen: [weakly] I don't know how to do that.

View Quote Max Schumacher: You need me. You need me badly. Because I'm your last contact with human reality. I love you. And that painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day.
Diana Christensen: [hesitatingly] Then, don't leave me.
Max Schumacher: It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love.
[Kisses her]
Max Schumacher: And it's a happy ending: Wayward husband comes to his senses, returns to his wife, with whom he has established a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her arctic desolation. Music up with a swell; final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week's show.

View Quote Laureen Hobbs: Don't **** with my distribution costs! I'm making a lousy two-fifteen per segment and I'm already deficiting twenty-five grand a week with Metro! I'm paying William Morris ten percent off the top, and I'm giving this turkey ten thou per segment, and another five to this fruitcake! And Helen, don't start no shit about UBS again! I'm paying Metro twenty-thousand for all foreign and Canadian distribution, and that's after recoupment! The communist party's not gonna see a nickel out of this goddamn show until we go into syndication!
Helen Miggs: C'mon Laurene. The party's in for seventy-five hundred a week of the production expenses.
Laureen Hobbs: I'm not giving this pseudoinsurrectionary sectarian a piece of my show! I'm not giving him script approval, and I sure as shit ain't cuttin' him into my distribution charges!
Mary Ann Gifford: [screaming] You ****ing fascist! Did you see the film we made of the San Reno jail breakout, demonstrating the rising of the seminal prisoner class infrastructure?
Laureen Hobbs: You can blow the seminal prisoner class infrastructure out your ass! I'm not knockin' down my goddamn distribution charges!
Great Ahmed Kahn: [fires off his gun through the ceiling] Man, give her the ****ING overhead clause. Let's get back to page twenty-two, number 5, small 'a'. Subsidiary rights.

View Quote Frank Hackett: Mr. Jensen is unhappy with Howard Beale and wants him discontinued.
Diana Christensen: He may be unhappy, but he isn't stupid enough to withdraw the number one show on television out of pique.
Frank Hackett: Two billion dollars is not pique! That's the Wrath of God! And the Wrath of God wants Howard Beale fired.