TRIGGER WARNING: This post discusses suicide and may be upsetting to some readers.
On July 15, 1974, a 29-year-old news anchor working for an ABC local news affiliate in Sarasota, Florida interrupted her live morning talk show to read the following:
“In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in ‘blood and guts,’ and in living colour, you are going to see another first — attempted suicide.”
She then held a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
Christine Chubbuck died later that night. She was, in fact, the first person to take her own life on live television.
Two years later the film Network hit theatres. In the Sidney Lumet directed, Paddy Chayefsky written satire of the television news industry, the character Howard Beale vows to kill himself on air after learning he's being fired because of low ratings.
“I’m going to blow my brains out, right on this program, a week from today,” says Beale (played by Peter Finch). “So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that.”
Though according to The New York Times, Chayefsky's script was not in fact influenced by Chubbuck's death, Howard Beale's famous rant makes its way into a new film about her death.
In Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine (which opened August 24th in select cities), actress Kate Lyn Sheil, plays an actress named Kate who is preparing to star in a biopic about Chubbuck's life. She recites Howard Beale's rant in the mirror to psych herself up so she can perform her character's suicide scene.