Diana Christensen quotes

View Quote (on the phone in her apartment) Lou?... Lou... Lou!... YOU'RE his freaking agent, Lou! I AM COUNTING ON YOU TO TALK SOME SENSE INTO THE LUNATIC! NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT DYING DEMOCRACY AND DEHUMANIZATION!... Our share stock is shrinking, and we're doomed for! ANOTHER COUPLE OF WEEKS OF THIS AND THE SPONSORS WILL BE BAILING OUT!... Look, this is a breach of contract, Lou! This isn't the Howard Beale we signed! YOU BETTER GET HIM OFF THAT CORPORATE UNIVERSE KICK, OR SO HELP ME, I'LL PUT HIM OFF THE AIR! I'VE TOLD HIM, LOU, I'VE BEEN TELLING HIM EVERY DAY FOR A WEEK! I AM SICK OF TELLING HIM! NOW YOU TELL HIM!

View Quote I'm interested in doing a weekly dramatic series based on the E****enical Liberation Army. The way I see the series is: Each week we open with an authentic act of political terrorism taken on the spot, in the actual moment. Then we go to the drama behind the opening film footage. That's your job, Ms. Hobbs. You've got to get the E****enicals to bring in that film footage for us. The network can't deal with them directly; they are, after all, wanted criminals.

View Quote By tomorrow, he'll have a 50 share, maybe even a 60. Howard Beale is processed instant God, and right now, it looks like he may just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.

View Quote Look, I sent you all a concept analysis report yesterday. Did any of you read it? [Aides stare blankly at her] Well, in a nutshell, it said: "The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression; they've turned off, shot up, and they've ****ed themselves limp, and nothing helps." So, this concept analysis report concludes, "The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them." I've been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network. I want counterculture, I want anti-establishment. I don't want to play butch boss with you people, but when I took over this department, it had the worst programming record in television history. This network hasn't one show in the top twenty. This network is an industry joke, and we'd better start putting together one winner for next September. I want a show developed based on the activities of a terrorist group, "Joseph Stalin and His Merry Band of Bolsheviks," I want ideas from you people. This is what you're paid for. And by the way, the next time I send an audience research report around, you'd all better read it, or I'll sack the ****ing lot of you. Is that clear?

View Quote [flipping through the newspaper] You know, Barbara, the Arabs have decided to jack up the price of oil another 20%... uh, the CIA has been caught opening Senator Humphrey's mail... there's a civil war in Angola... another one in Beirut... the, uh, New York City's still facing default... they finally caught up with Patricia Hearst... and the whole front page of the "Daily News" is Howard Beale.

View Quote 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?

View Quote [immediately after making love with Max] What's really bugging me now is my daytime programming. NBC's got a lock on daytime - lousy game shows - and I'd like to bust them. I'm thinking of doing a homosexual soap opera, "The ****s": The heart-rending saga about a woman hopelessly in love with her husband's mistress.

View Quote I was married for four years, and pretended to be happy; and I had six years of analysis, and pretended to be sane. My husband ran off with his boyfriend, and I had an affair with my analyst, who told me I was the worst lay he'd ever had.

View Quote I watched your 6 o'clock news today; it's 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. So, I don't think I'll listen to any protestations of high standards of journalism when you're right down on the streets soliciting audiences like the rest of us. Look, all I'm saying is if you're going to hustle, at least do it right.

View Quote [shouting] Son of a bitch. We've struck the motherlode!

View Quote Look, we've got a bunch of hobgoblin radicals called the E****enical Liberation Army who go around taking home movies of themselves robbing banks. Now, maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, hijacking 747s, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd open each week's segment with their authentic footage, hire a couple of writers to write a story behind that footage, and we've got ourselves a series.

View Quote We're kidding ourselves. Full-fledged messiahs don't come in bunches.