By Sidney Lumet Page #7

including my mother, remember Cossack raids in

which Jews were killed. Among Jews, it was

always called the Soviet Union, with great

respect because it was the hope of the future. [music playing] Anything about Stalin's

crime was denied. It was capitalist propaganda. The fact that it

turned out to be true was deeply upsetting

to a great many people. There was a tremendous sense of

responsibility of taking care of each other, and

that mutual protection created a knowledge of

dependency, which is, to me, a very moving idea. I am not alone. I owe something to other people. And that communal sense

explains a great deal about Jewish life in New York. It's why it became

very left wing. Out of the social behavior

emerged a political behavior. It formed a basic

reaction to injustice that's still part of me today. Cossack! Look out! Cossack! Cossack! [yelling] [horse whinnying] SIDNEY LUMET: The

Rosenbergs, the actual case was quite confusing because

there were other left wing radicals who were

being brought up on various espionage charges. The two of them seemed like

your average left winger, New York left winger. There was nothing-- it

didn't seem to be anything exceptional in their lives. I was shocked when the

execution came, as everyone was because this

had never happened in the history of the country. No one had ever

been put to death for espionage in peacetime. "The Book of Daniel," which

is possibly, in my view, a great book, and the

movie of "Daniel," which is, despite its failure

critically and commercially, I still think one of the best

pieces of work I've ever done. Please, get the

children up there. Daniel! Let them by. [cheers] SIDNEY LUMET: The plot was

about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their two children,

about the consequences of their devotion

to a political cause and the consequences

upon both children, with the sister

dying and the boy in an endless pursuit

of looking for a reason that the sister died. Here are the children! [cheers] SIDNEY LUMET: It's a

movie about what cost does the passion of

the parents create in the rest of the family. [music playing] So when that failed and the

script of "Running on Empty" came along, I was

delighted because I liked the script, but the

main reason that it was the exact same theme. Who pays for the

passions of the parents? It was about two

'60s radicals who blew up a lab that was making

napalm and in the process killed a nightwatchman

who wasn't even supposed to be there and had now

been on the run from the FBI for umpteen years with

their two children. Maybe now we would get this

theme out because the story was much simpler. The story was much

more sentimental. It was about a boy who

wanted to be a pianist. As you know, that failed also. Looking back and

saying, boy, you really must have been on some

sort of internal concern about what happened

with your own kids in relation to you

working so much. You've never talked

to them about it. I never have. I've never asked them, did

you feel deprived of me? Did you miss me? Was I there for you? Even if I was physically there,

which was an easy concession to make, was I there? Was I there in attention

and in heart and soul? I've never asked them

that, but I obviously sure have wondered about it. What's the matter with dad? He's just had a lot to drink. Born in Plattsburgh,

New York July 16, 1944. US citizen! I'm a-- SIDNEY LUMET: The

Judd Hirsch character comes from '30s radicals and

has '30s radicals values. So he has imposed that

culture on his family, and it's one of the sources

of tension in the family. I want to stay. Stay? SIDNEY LUMET: When he says

we cannot break up the unit, we cannot break up the family,

he means more than just father, mother, son, younger son. He means we cannot break

up this cultural family, this cultural unity,

this cultural giving, handing down of one value from

one generation to the next-- the value of radicalization as

opposed to the value of art. Radicals always have

something to offer. I'm not talking about

fundamentalists. I'm talking about radicals. They're different words

meaning different things. And that is lost to

our society and that's why nobody says anything. I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get

up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right

now and go to the window. Open it and stick your head out

and yell, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to

take this anymore! I'm mad as hell and I'm not

going to take it anymore! I'm mad as hell. I'm not going to

take it anymore! I'm mad as hell and I'm not

going to take it anymore! I'm not going to

take it anymore! I'm mad as hell! I'm mad as hell! I'm mad as hell and I'm not

going to take this anymore. I don't think "Network"

represented a change in attitude for

me from the way I felt in the '60s to what

I was not perceiving in the '70s, '80s, et cetera. I think that we grow up. Being poor draws me

to radical material. I've been lucky. I've been able to do movies

about that kind of life rather than living

that kind of life. I did not do what

a great many movie people did in the late

'60s and early '70s. I did not go down to Selma. I did not go down to visit

Martin Luther King in prison. My activization stopped

really with May Day marches, in which I

would walk with Actors' Equity Association. I for me did it

in a more, to me, more satisfying way, which is

to take it as subject matter. I love "Network" for

the obvious reasons. First of all, it's a

hell of a good picture. HOWARD BEALE (ON TV):

I'm going to blow my brains out right on this

program, a week from today. 10 seconds to commercial. HOWARD BEALE (ON TV):

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, about 50 share, easy. SIDNEY LUMET: I knew that

I would have a tough time in the studio system. On the one hand, I was

very, very headstrong-- I still am-- but I didn't

have final cut in those days. And I know what would have

happened, which was I would get into arguments and maybe

even fights of some sort and they could always

take their revenge out in re-cutting the picture. And that is about as painful

thing I think for a director as anything that can happen. The business of

management is management. SIDNEY LUMET: I didn't have

an adversarial relationship with Hollywood. Look, if you know

anything about movies, you know there's 100 glorious

years of rather wonderful work that's come out of there. The department thing is

what really bothered me. I went to a production

meeting with 26 people sitting around a table. Now of those 26

people, 20 of them were heads of departments

who would never have anything to do with my picture. They were never going

to be on location. They wouldn't come along. They'd never leave Hollywood. And they would have an

awful lot to say about it, including one man who was the

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