Howard Beale: All I know is, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being, goddamn it. My life has value."
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.
Diana Christensen: The time has come to re-evaluate our relationship, Max.
Max Schumacher: So I see.
Diana Christensen: I don't like the way this script of ours has turned out. It's turning into a seedy little drama.
Max Schumacher: You're going to cancel the show?
Diana Christensen: Right.
Howard Beale: I would like at this moment to announce that I will be retiring from this program in two weeks' time because of poor ratings. Since this show is the only thing I had going for me in my life, I've decided to kill myself. I'm going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. 50 share, easy.
Laureen Hobbs: Well Ahmed, you ain't gonna believe this. They gonna make a TV star out of you. Just like Archie Bunker. You gonna be a household word.
Great Ahmed Kahn: What the fuck are you talking about?
Max Schumacher: 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 fuckin' Disney right off the air.
Mary Ann Gifford: You fuckin' fascist! Did you see the film we made at the San Marino jail breakout demonstrating the rising up 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.
Howard Beale: I want you to go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."
Max Schumacher: I feel lousy about the pain that I've caused my wife and kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken, and all of those things you think sentimental, but which my generation calls simple human decency. And I miss my home, because I'm beginning to get scared shitless, because all of a sudden it's closer to the end than the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me, with definable features.
Max Schumacher: She does have one script in which I kill myself: An adapted for television version of "Anna Karenina", where she's Count Vronsky and I'm Anna.
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.
Nelson Chaney: The affiliates won't carry it.
Frank Hackett: The affiliates will kiss your ass if you can hand them a hit show.
Howard Beale: We'll tell you anything you want to hear, we lie like hell.
Diana Christensen: Well Max, here we are: Middle-aged man reaffirming his middle-aged manhood, and a terrified young woman with a father complex. What sort of script do you think we can make out of this?
Narrator: It was a perfectly admissible argument that Howard Beale advanced in the days that followed. It was, however, also a very depressing one. Nobody particularly cared to hear his life was utterly valueless. By the end of the first week in June, "The Howard Beale Show" had dropped one point in the rating and its trend of shares dipped under 48 for the first time since last November.
Narrator: That evening, Howard Beale went on the air to preach the corporate cosmology of Arthur Jensen.
Secretary: Mr. Hackett's trying to get through to you.
Max Schumacher: Tell Mr. Hackett to go fuck himself.
Diana Christensen: Let's stop kidding ourselves. Full-fledged messiahs don't come in bunches.
Howard Beale: No, no. I'm gonna blow my brains out right on the air, right in the middle of the 7 o'clock news.
Max Schumacher: You'll get a hell of a rating, I'll guarantee you that. 50 share easy.
Howard Beale: ...I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest, I don't want you to riot, I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression, the inflation, the Russians, or the crime in the streets. All I know is that first... You've got to get mad.
