Tommy, Johnny, and Bumble - Charlize Dunaway
By Roger Arsht
December 10, 2020
Bumble Bartleby Burroughs had just walked into the barbershop when Tommy and Johnny started firing questions at him. “Bumble, I was just telling Johnny that ‘The Godfather’ is the greatest movie ever made. He’s arguing that it’s ‘Citizen Kane’. Who’s right?”
“Give the man a chance to take off his coat,” Jane Peterson, the Manager of the barbershop, called at the two men. “He needs a chance to breathe.” Jane knew that Bumble had been a high school teacher for twenty years, and that he was brittle. If he didn’t properly acclimate, he was prone to flee the shop. The last time he left, Jane found him next door at the Laundromat staring at washing machines on their spin cycle.
“It’s okay, Jane. I’m feeling good.” Bumble pulled a chair next to the checkerboard. “Well, it sure as hell wasn’t 'Spotlight' in 2016. 'Mad Max: Fury Road' with Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron was the best film that year.” Cheers and applause from the men in the barber chairs and in the waiting area erupted in the usually placid shop.
“Any movie with Charlize Theron should win the Oscar for Best Picture,” Johnny piped in. “She’s got…”
“Knock it off, Johnny,” Jane said disapprovingly.
“I was going to say talent.”
“Bullshit,” Jane said firmly.
“Seriously, Bumble.” Tommy ‘Big Nose’ McGee redirected the conversation. “We know that 'Fury Road' being passed over didn’t smell right. But what is the best movie ever?”
“Network,” Bumble said firmly. “What a cast. Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Robert Duvall, Peter Finch, and Ned Beatty.”
“Wasn’t Faye Dunaway the Charlize Theron of her time?” Johnny asked.
“Kind of,” Bumble affirmed with a nod of his head. “The movie was directed by Sidney Lamet and written by Paddy Chayefsky. It was forty years ahead of its time.”
“That’s the one where the crazy news guy tells everyone to go to their window and shout ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.’” Tommy stood and pantomimed going to the window and yelling those now famous words.
“That’s right. Howard Beale is the news anchor for the UBS Network. His ratings are tanking and he gets fired. Instead of simply retiring, Beale returns to the air in a new, desperate persona. He starts to believe he is speaking on behalf of God and he begins to rant and rave on the airwaves. His ratings and the network’s ratings skyrocket.”
“So why is it your best?” Tommy asked.
“Because it marks the moment when the media world realized that the once impenetrable wall between the entertainment and news divisions blurred. It’s when the networks discovered that the news divisions could make money. Faye Dunaway’s character comes to the news division from entertainment. She doesn’t understand that what Beale is doing is wrong and a product of his mental deterioration. All she sees is ratings. The movie predicts the rise of twenty-four-hour news networks.”
“If you want to call them that. There’s nothing about them that qualifies as news,” Johnny said with a laugh.
“They’re actually entertainment networks. Their material is designed to appeal to a portion of the viewers who hold certain political views. We also can’t call them news networks because ‘news’ implies there are journalists employed by the networks who actually research stories.”
"If we can’t call them news networks, what should we call them?” Johnny asked. “I know. Let’s call the news networks the Charlize Dunaways. That way we can sometimes think fondly of them,” Tommy finished.
“I like calling them the Charlize Dunaways or the Faye Therons. Trump and his followers call them ‘fake news', but that’s not accurate because it implies that there’s ‘real news’. What happened to real news?” Johnny rejoined.
“Investigative journalism costs too much. Imagine the discussion in the producer’s office when one of his reporters says they need two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to investigate the Russian election interference, Hunter Biden’s or Donald Trump’s tax returns, election fraud, or Seth Rich’s murder. They’d get laughed out of the room. Why would the news networks pay for factual content when they can simply create the narrative they want by giving airtime to supposed experts rather than people who actually did some research?”
“Last week you used the word mendacity to describe lying liars. What would you call the news stations?” Tommy asked.
Faye Dunaway’s character describes it best when she tells the President of the network that their show is ‘straight tabloid'. You had a minute and a half of that lady riding a bike naked in Central Park; on the other hand, you had less than a minute of hard national and international news. It was all sex, scandal, brutal crime, sports, children with incurable diseases, and lost puppies.” Bumble was on a roll.
“It took Beale, an insane man, to break the code,” Johnny said.
“That’s why Ned Beatty’s character tells Beale that he has ‘meddled with the primal forces of nature and YOU…WILL…ATONE!’ We worship television and we give too much credibility to what we are shown.”
Just then, Jane pushed the ‘on’ button on the remote, and the Phillies game appeared.
“At least this is real,” Johnny shared with enthusiasm.
Bumble’s head dipped. His head eyes shifted from side-to-side until he bolted from the store.
“What just happened?” Johnny asked.
“Bumble has strong feelings about sports. He doesn’t believe that sporting events are any more credible than the news.”
“Where did he go?”
“Next door to the Laundromat. He’ll watch the clothes and water tumble around for a while. It comforts him.” Jane paused for a moment and then a smile came to her face. “Maybe I can teach him how to fold.”