He was an exceptionally witty maniac who made his bi-polarity work for him. “Altered States” was inspired by the hydrotherapy treatments he was getting at that time. My firend, the late great Dorothy Dean, knew him and was astonished at how clsoe the speeches of his most discomboulated characters were to the actual Paddy.
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How many of our most forward looking works (The Matrix, The Social Network, Inception) actually truck in archetype and conservatism?
Paddy Chayefsky was a true profit of the age of media infiltration and corporate hegemony. Miles and eons ahead of Michael Moore or even Jon Stewart.
An obscure reference: In MARTY, which Chayefsky wrote (first as a teleplay and later as the Oscar-winning movie), he appears in a brief acting role. He’s seen in the back seat of a car, enveloped by shadows. He plays a character named Leo, who has three lines of dialogue in the scene. Chayevsky had to join the Screen Actor’s Guild and pay dues of $140 for a bit part that paid him only $67.
http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2011/08/02/judy-vs-lenya/
i meant “true prophet” of course. wow. talk about freudian slips.
Films such as “The Matrix” and “Inception” are highly overrated. “Brainstorm” beat “Inception” to the punch by nearly 30 years and is far more pleasing from a visual perspective (and I can say this with the utmost authority as I saw both films within weeks of each other at the same cinema on the same screen). Plus I shall take either Natalie Wood or Louise Fletcher over Ellen Page any day. “Inception” was just a bunch of Escher style optical illusions laid out one after another with a bunch of “Matrix” style fight scenes. It was okay, but not brilliant by any means. As for “The Matrix” itself, it wasn’t ahead of its time—a film like “Looker” on the other hand was very much ahead of its day. “The Matrix” really took its central idea (a computer generated illusory world and “them” controlling us) from John Carpenter’s “They Live”—and the back alley brawl between Roddy Piper and Keith David was more fun than all the “Matrix” fight scenes put together. In short, “Inception” and “The Matrix” really had nothing daring, nothing really new to say about our world. Paddy Chayefsky, on the other hand, was a genuine prophet, comparable to someone like Rod Serling (“The Twilight Zone”) who used drama to comment on social issues of the day, yet those stories remain timeless and are enjoyed by millions of people decades later. Paddy Chayefsky was to cinema what Rod Serling was to television. Think about it: if everything on TV was as great as the stuff that Rod Serling wrote, Paddy Chayefsky most likely wouldn’t have written “Network”!
MARK IS SUSPENDED IN GAFFA
August 1st 2011 marks thirty years since the world lost one of its greatest satirical dramatists, Sidney Aaron “Paddy” Chayefsky. Paddy’s gift was “telling it like it is” about our world through the power of writing and entertainment. There is absolutely no telling how high his greatness could have soared—imagine all the screenplays he could have written during the ‘80s! It makes me wonder what Paddy Chayefsky would have made of the absurdities of the past thirty years. What would Paddy have said about today’s internet culture and the phenomenon of mobile telephones, the demise of the art of human interaction? Paddy Chayefsky was a mad prophet ahead of his time, much like his most legendary character creation, Howard Beale from “Network”. Films such as “The Bachelor Party” and “The Hospital” and of course “The Americanization of Emily” have sentiments that ring true to this day. He was also one of the very few screenwriters who would have his name share the screen with the name of the film during the opening credits. Paddy was a cut above and everybody knew it. Today I don’t think there is anybody writing anything remotely like he did many years ago.
I AM THE PARACLETE OF CABORCA, THE WRATH OF THE LAMB AND THE ANGEL OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT!
Mister Paddy Chayefsky, thank you for the wonderful films and ceaseless inspiration—I salute you!