Sunday, June 10, 2007

 

Shut up studio 60 fan

This is a from an article about about Aaron Sorkin in January.

Last week, several dozen members of the press, on a field trip from the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, got a look inside the thought process of the man behind the show, Aaron Sorkin.

The end result of Sorkin’s hourlong aria to the critics clustered around the giant oval desk in the “Studio 60” writers’ room? I just don’t know what the man wants.

He said he doesn’t mind critiques or negative press. “It’s the cost of doing business,” he said more than once. “Not everything is for everybody.”

But it’s hard to square those remarks with several of Sorkin’s statements on Tuesday. First, his contention that the press isn’t writing about the content of his show, and is only focused on its disappointing ratings, doesn’t ring true.

“When the people are reading, `Gee, this show is tanking,’ they’re less likely to tune in than [if the pieces said] `Gee, there’s this show that everybody’s really excited about,’” said Sorkin, who noted that the show would have more of a romantic comedy feel going forward. “But that’s not your problem, it’s ours. Hopefully the next step will be that the ratings will tick up and you’ll start writing about that - or even better, about the content of the show.”

But people - television critics, bloggers, television critics with blogs, pretty much anyone with a computer keyboard - are writing about the content of the show. They’ve written that, despite a promising premise, many early episodes were heavy-handed and full of digressive rants. And they’ve said that the show within a show’s sketches are, well, bad.

A Los Angeles Times piece on Dec. 25, which included a collection of interviews with comedy professionals and with members of a sketch-comedy troupe reiterated these critiques.
That piece clearly got under Sorkin’s skin - he spoke forcefully about it for several minutes Tuesday. It seems that piece doesn’t qualify as “the cost of doing business.” Why? Because the people in that article are not “real comedy writers.” And the writers Deborah Netburn interviewed “are unemployed.”


“I read the headline and [I thought], `Does [Stephen] Colbert not like the show? Does Billy Crystal not like the show? Tina Fey? Seth Myers? Real comedy writers - do they not like the show? No, she wasn’t talking about those people,” Sorkin said. “I would encourage you to go to the Web site for Employee of the Month, the improvisational comedy troupe that was complaining about the show, you will discover that they are unemployed and disgruntled.”
I guess Sorkin skimmed over the comments from a comedy showrunner, and the part in which a former “Saturday Night Live” employee was interviewed. Another employed professional interviewed for the piece,
Ken Levine, wrote for “M*A*S*H,” “Cheers” and “Frasier.” In TV comedy, you don’t get much realer than that.

“I am a fan of his work, was hoping ‘Studio 60’ would be better, and would further hope that the criticism writers offer him would be taken constructively and not defensively,” Levine said in an e-mail.

Still, the subject of online critiques of his work - which the L.A. Times piece cited - set Sorkin off again.

“I do believe that we’ve seen an enormous rise in amateurism,” Sorkin said. “One of the things I find troubling about the Internet, as great a resource tool as it is, and as nice as it is that we can all communicate with each other, and that everybody has a voice - the thing is, everybody’s voice oughtn’t be equal.”

“You people are credentialed journalists in here… There’s a certain understanding that you had to be good to have gotten that job,” Sorkin continued. “When The New York Times quotes a blogger, saying `PastyBoy2000 says this,’ suddenly you give it the imprimatur of the New York Times - that’s, first of all, lazy on the part of The New York Times, second of all, incredibly misleading.”

I actually can't explain all that i think is wrong with the above excerpt. But I am not credentialed by a real newspaper so really whatever I think is probably stupid. I want to point this out. You know the show has become truly unbearable when the fans are equally bad. You don't catch very many people being self-righteous about the tv they watch. I mean there are plenty of people self-righteous about not watching tv, but once you are on the tv chat, there is not a whole lot of, I am better than you because I like House and you like Heroes. But then on yesterday's Wapo chat there was the following exchange:

Washington: Is it just me or do these last episodes of "Studio 60" seem preachier than ever? It's so meta I hardly can stand it.

Lisa de Moraes: Last night's episode was very odd. NBC, NBS or whatever the networks is called, is contemplating spending $10 million to rescue the brother of a cast member on their SNL show? Huh? Ditto the come-pray-with-me bit at the end.

Arlington, Va.: Yeah, "Studio 60" was strange -- because it was a well written and complex episode of television. It wasn't "reality" garbage. NBC is going to have a large audience of idiots for the 8 p.m. hour next year. Enjoy it.

It actually was not. It was not a complex episode of television at all. But that is not the point. This Arlington, VA guy thinks he is smarter than you because he likes Studio 60 and you don't. Seriously.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

 

Knocked Up

This review by Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post pretty much captures my feelings about the movie.


She basically says that it is a great, funny movie, but that it is hard to believe the central romance of the movie. She gives her reasons very eloquently and so there is no reason for me to repeat them here. But I want to add something. She is too old for him! We are not given Alison's age in the movie, although we are given Ben's (which is 23). Is Alison supposed to be 23 too? Because it does not feel like she is playing a 23 year old woman. She just seems too comfortable in her job. She just struck me like a character out of Sex and the City. Her reaction to Ben at first reminded me of that episode in which Carrie talks about dating men in their twenties. And her whole approach to the baby reminded me as that of Miranda: which was something along the lines of this is something my career will have to deal with. Katherine Heigl is almost 29 and Seth Rogen is 25. 3.5 isn't always a huge difference but it can be. The whole premise of the movie is that she is more or less maturely ready to have this baby, and he has to grow up. Well, there is no question Ben's development is arrested. But he is being compared to her level of development. Is doesn't seem quite fair to compare a person in their early 20s with a person in their late 20s.

I mean my particular problem with the couple is the same as everyone's problem with the movie as a whole, that Alison is not a particularly well-defined character. I think maybe if they had given her more context: particularly a specific point in life, the coupling might have seemed more realistic.


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