First, Chayefsky himself, one of the few screenwriters in history whose talent for eloquent rage and sharp characterization made him as much a star of his films as any actor or director......
The second loss involves the creative power Chayefsky was able to wield over his projects, unheard of for any writer. (The title credit of this movie reads "The Hospital by Paddy Chayefsky". Think you'll ever see a credit like that again in today's cinema? Don't hold your breath.......)
That couldn't last. Even though Chayefsky's contracts demanded that his scripts be transferred to the screen exactly as written, even he fell victim to the Cult Of The Director. "Altered States", his modernized Jekyll & Hyde reinvention, fell into the wild hands of director Ken Russell,who circumvented Chayefsky's ironclad demand by having the actors race through his dialogue in screams, shouts and mumbles. For the first time in his career, the disgusted, outraged writer used a pseudonym for his film credit......
"The Hospital", however is reverently served by director Arthur Hiller........and the long, meticulously crafted speeches written for the actors (something else unheard of in studio films) are performed to perfection by the two leads, George C. Scott and Diana Rigg.
On its surface, the film aims its punishing slings and arrows at the crumbling American health care system, much of which still resonates today. (An officious Hospital administrator hectoring pain-wracked ER patients for their Blue Cross membership numbers).......
But Chayefsky used the foibles and woes of medicine as a way to cast an angry eye on a bigger malady......the breakdown of societal institutions overall and the relentless chipping away at the middle class.....the glue, as Chayefsky saw it, that was still holding the country together....barely.
With his personal life destroyed and on the verge of suicide, Dr. Bock (George C.Scott) manages to find love and renewed purpose after an all-night-long ravishment of Barbara Drummond (Diana Rigg) the leggy, freewheeling young daughter of one of his patients.
Barbara's demented father (Barnard Hughes), a doctor himself, has taken to exacting deeply ironic vengeance on the incompetent doctors and nurses who through casual negligence, caused the death of his elderly hospital roommate. All he really has to do to kill them is to knock them out cold, leaving them at the mercy of the lethal care provided by the bungling hospital bureaucracy. In no time at all, the hapless staff, as Chayefsky puts it.....neglects them to death.
It's pure cinematic electricity watching Scott launch into his Chayefsky-written rants at the top of his considerable lungs. One huge qualm though......if Chayefsky was alive to write this same script today, we doubt he'd have Dr. Bock kicking off his and Barbara's night of marathon, redemptive sex with what appears as violent rape.......that surely won't fly today.....
Five years later, the writer would lob a nuclear-sized attack on TV and the idiotic pop culture in "Network"........a film which frighteningly predicted the simmering unrest of the populace combined with the dumbing down and sensationalist pandering of all the media they consumed. (Look carefully at the lunatic programs on Chayefsky's fictitious network and you can spot the toxic seeds of Trumpism......)
You'll rarely ever find films made where the screenwriter served as the primary creative force......in today's movies, we almost never hear of any project described as overwritten.....
Which makes "The Hospital" and its creator especially dear to the BQ. Take 4 stars (****) as our prescription......not much healing in Paddy's hospital......but a rare, immensely entertaining encounter with a rare entity.....a writer's movie.
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