The “Life is Bullshit” Speech from Network (1976)

The following comes from the script of the 1976 film Network, starring Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Robert Duvall, and Ned Beatty. The film is a dark comedy about how economic and corporate interests distort the standards of broadcast reporting. The story revolves around the character played by Peter Finch, Howard Beale, a network anchorman who goes mad after becoming too lucid about life, and is then used by Network executives as a sensationalist presenter. This is probably my favorite movie of all time. It has been so for quite a few years, ever since I first watched it in my early thirties. While the film has many memorable speeches, such as when Beale yells "I'm mad as hell, and I' not going to take it anymore" on TV and the private speech by the network owner, Arthur Jensen, where he yells "You have meddled with the forces of nature Mr. Beale, and you will atone!", the following speech made earlier in the film is still my favorite.

Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the twenty-fourth, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday, I announced on this program that I would commit public suicide. Admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll tell you what happened. I just ran out of bullshit. I don't know any other way to say it except I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living, and, if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don't know why the hell we're going through all this pointless pain, humiliation and decay, so there better be someone somewhere who does know; that's the God bullshit. If you don't like the God bullshit, how about the man bullshit? Man is a noble creature who can order his own world, who needs God? Well, if there's anybody out there who can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me man is a noble creature, believe me, that man is full of bullshit. I don't have anything. I don't have any kids. And I was married for thirty-three years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.