Dial File: ‘Network’ to ‘Mad City’: Remember when it seemed ridiculous?

Thursday, Nov. 13, 1997 | 10:32 a.m.

"HAUNTING" IS THE only word for it.

While watching Dustin Hoffman's hellbent hambone of a reporter at the center of "Mad City," a curious refrain kept playing in my brain: "I'll bet he digs deeper because to him, news comes first."

Anyway, what really gnawed at me during "Mad City" is how remarkably plausible, and therefore frightening, it all seemed, this tale of an insatiable electronic media and a reporter who manipulates a dangerous hostage situation (John Travolta plays the gun-toting sad sack) to serve the TV gods, virtually erasing the line between reporting news and creating it.

Certainly a slew of movies have mined the rich vein of TV tawdriness: "Broadcast News," "Up Close and Personal" and "To Die For" among them. But the last word on the subject came first: Paddy Chayefsky's prescient "Network," the scathing satire that-- ominously -- doesn't seem half as outlandish now as it did in 1976.

On "Network": The evening news turns into a carnival freak show, with correspondents including "Sybil the Soothsayer." On TV: The "Psychic Friends Network" flourishes and on the increasingly fluffy "NBC Nightly News," it seems Sybil is waiting in the wings at the first sign of a ratings hiccup.

On "Network": Anchorman Howard Beale's personal anguish is squeezed for ratings juice. On TV: People's personal anguish -- including being rounded up by "Cops" and video specials of folks attacked by animals and swarms of bees, dropping out of burning buildings, robbing and shooting each other at convenience stores and crashing in spectacular fashion on high-speed chases -- is squeezed for ratings juice.

On "Network": A Black Panther-style militant group signs a series deal and argues over residual rights. On TV: Neo-Nazis bust Geraldo's nose and the Ku Klux Klan takes to cable access. On "Network": An on-camera assassination is carried out as a ratings blockbuster. On TV: Joey Buttafuoco's teenage concubine shoots his wife in the head, unleashing three TV movies. One "Jenny Jones Show" guest murders another.

With 21 years of hindsight, the ferocious bite of "Network" could be seen as eerily prophetic now, but reassuringly ludicrous enough back then to suggest that such insanity was a long way away, a real threat only in Chayefsky's blissfully rebellious soul.

But "Mad City" -- while I don't believe any local TV types have manipulated stories as depicted in the flick -- seemed alarmingly possible in this cable-clogged, competition-crazed era, suggesting how far we've come toward Paddy's vision of media madness.

RAZING 'SADDLES': WARNING: RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION AHEAD.

With that said, I was appalled while rummaging around the dial last Saturday afternoon and happening upon Channel 13, which, under the umbrella title of "The African Heritage Movie Network" -- hosted by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee -- aired Mel Brooks' Western parody "Blazing Saddles." Or, rather, what was left of it, after politically correct, agenda-driven editing left it in tatters.

Presenting movies that proudly showcase the African-American community? Grand idea. Grotesquely twisting a comedy classic to fit an image of ethnic pride? Shame on them. Even Ted Turner's dastardly colorization of classic black and white movies wasn't this galling.

Their noggin-numbing editing included banishing the word "friggin" and the last name of Madeline's Kahn's uproarious Lili Von Shtupp (a Yiddish word roughly translated as carnal activity). Every use of the "N" slur -- although Brooks' use of it contrasted the wrongheaded racism of white frontier fools against the whip-smart heroism of Cleavon Little's black sheriff -- was also excised. (You may recall that it was liberally used in "Roots").

Hacked off as well: The entire, hysterical scene with Brooks as a Jewish Indian confronting a band of black settlers (perhaps because it contained a derogatory Yiddish word for blacks?); and the payoff to a scene that satirizes a sexual stereotype about black men. However, the butchering did not extend to an unedited slur against gays and a scene lampooning gay dancers.

That, presumably, will be lopped off during the "Gay Heritage Movie Network" version someday.

If "Blazing Saddles" -- which included Richard Pryor as one of its writers and was made before political correctness rendered America near humorless -- was deemed unfit to wear the mantle of "African Heritage Movie" as written (and it was an obvious compliment to blacks, who were the movie's smartest characters), they should have shown something else.

But thanks to misguided, politicized editing with all the finesse of a Ronco Veg-O-Matic, a wildly funny movie that grandly poked fun at racism was transformed into a confused, bleep-ridden racial polemic.

When will this nonsense end?

SURFIN' THE SCENE: A big, wet, juicy Bronx cheer -- THHHHHMMMMMPPPPP! -- to NBC for relegating the riotous "3rd Rock From the Sun" to Wednesdays, where its alien fanny is getting kicked by "The Drew Carey Show." NBC, phone home ... A big, wet, juicy kiss -- S-M-A-C-K! -- to Paramount Television, which has signed Nathan Lane of "The Birdcage" fame to a sitcom deal. He'd be the most talented comedian to hit the sitcom circuit since Kelsey Grammer first puzzled us with his pompous palaver ... Johnson & Tofte signed a new three-year contract with KKLZ 96.3-FM. Yippee ...

By February, NBC will have to meet the Warner Bros. fee demands for "ER" -- which, say published reports, could reach a staggering $10 million per episode -- or risk seeing its series supernova shoot over to another network. (Who do these "ER" people think they are to ask for that kind of money -- utility infielders batting .210?) But this is the network that made the "Seinfeld" gang the financial masters of their domain. Expect it to answer "ER's" demand for blood money -- STAT.

CROON A TUNE: Visions of Dr. Johnny Fever, Venus Flytrap, Herb Tarlek and Les Nessman (and his Silver Sow Award-winning "Hog Reports") inspired Henderson reader Phil O'Leary to tell us that "got kinda tired of packin' and unpackin'; town to town, up and down the dial" was from The Mighty 'KRP -- "WKRP in Cincinnati."

Congrats, Phil. Just in time for Thanksgiving, you win one of those turkeys from that classic episode in which Mr. Carlson dropped the gobblers from a helicopter. He thought turkeys could fly. Well, it's a bird, isn't it?

Next? What theme gushed about a kid who was "a one-boy cuddly toy, my up, my down, my pride and joy"? You know the drill: Be the first to tell us, spell your name and provide your daytime phone number and we'll sing your praises to the immediate world, right here in Dial File. (Is your belly button puckering and unpuckering in fevered anticipation?)

MUSIC, MAESTRO: Thanks to the hugh ratings success of the recent, multiracial "Cinderella" on ABC's "The Wonderful World of Disney," industry buzz says that more musicals are on the way. Good news for hit-hungry ABC. My suggestion: Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," the infamous demon barber of Fleet Street and maker of "meat pies." It would slaughter "60 Minutes" with such Disney-esque lyrics as:

"Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. He served a dark and a hungry god. He shaved the faces of gentlemen who never thereafter were heard from again."

It starred Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury on Broadway. They could call it "Murder, She Wrote: The Musical."