Dave Itzkoff, the author of Mad As Hell, The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of The Angriest Man in Movies, is interviewed by TV Time Machine radio host Jim Benson about his compelling book about screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and his classic 1976 movie.
In this audio edition of the TV Time Machine, we are proud to welcome Dave Itzkoff, the author of Mad As Hell, The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of The Angriest Man in Movies. Mr. Itzkoff is culture reporter for the New York Times, and was previously associate editor at Spin Magazine and Maxim.
Over the next audio segments, Dave Itzkoff helps us explore virtually every aspect of writer Paddy Chayefsky’s classic 1976 film Network, and the movie’s amazing prescience about the future of television. Again, for those of you intrepid enough to be mad as hell, feel free to yell out the window, as we look from the present to a past, that has already predicted, our present. 
Listen to the Interview Below
Dave Itzkoff Network audio interview
In this audio segment, host Jim Benson and Mad As Hell author Dave Itzkoff, talk about the early television career of writer Paddy Chayefsky, his ground-breaking teleplay and movie Marty, the genesis of the Network story, who Chayefsky originally had in mind for the William Holden part, why Peter Finch was the last major actor to be cast, and why Faye Dunaway was the most difficult member of the cast to deal with.
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Dave Itzkoff Network audio interview
In this second audio segment, host Jim Benson and Mad As Hell author Dave Itzkoff, talk about the filming of the classic “Mad As Hell” scene, the reaction of the critics, the public, and the television industry to Network when it was released, and the amazing prescience of the film–accurately predicting much of what has happened in television in the nearly forty years since the film made its debut.
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