In the end matter of a New York Times profile of Johnny Knoxville’s bruised, aging balls, I read this:

“Dave Itzkoff is a reporter at The Times. His book, Mad as Hell, about the making of the movie Network, will be published in February.”

This news is exciting because of my feelings for that film, arguably America’s best film satire, and because Itzkoff is such a good reporter and graceful writer, one of the few journalists who can interest me in reading about popular culture. The following video is one I’ve previously posted in which Paddy Chayefsky appears on a talk show in the 1970s to discuss Network and the coming global, technocratic, interconnected culture.

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Paddy Chayefsky, that brilliant satirist, holding forth spectacularly on the Mike Douglas Show in 1969. It starts with polite chatter about the success of his script for Marty but quickly transitions into a much more serious and futuristic discussion. The writer is full of doom and gloom, of course, during the tumult of the Vietnam Era; his best-case scenario for humankind to live more peacefully is a computer-friendly “new society” that yields to globalization and technocracy, one in which citizens are merely producers and consumers, free of nationalism and disparate identity. Well, some of that came true. All the while, he wears a fun, red lei because one of his fellow guests is Hawaii Five-0 star Jack Lord. Gwen Verdon, Lionel Hampton and Cy Coleman share the panel.

Chayefsky joins the show at the 7:45 mark.