"When you're doing a show, you're living entirely in that world, only trying to deal with all the issues in your show," says [film and Tv-maker Paul] Haggis. "But then the show goes into people's homes and it becomes their show. Suddenly you have no control over what happens. And when you discover that the stories you're telling don't have the same meaning to other people that they did to you — wow, it's a real smack in the face."
Oh, good. Something to look forward to.
Sorkin contends that TV drama is robbed of some of its punch when it's turned into a roman à clef. "There were too many people looking at this show like it was the cover of 'Abbey Road,' " Sorkin says. "It was never an autobiographical show. I'm a lot more than a recovering cocaine addict. Jordan McDeere and Jamie Tarses had one letter of the alphabet in common. It was really a lot of silliness." (Young and aggressive, Tarses had a brief run as ABC's programming chief, the first woman to hold such a position at a network.)
Weeeeeeel...I agree with some of this. I said as much when West Wing critics seemed incapable of viewing it as anything other than apologia and revisionist myth-making for the Clinton administration. But, Sorkin's denials aside...come on.
Studio 60 may not have been as explicitly autobiographical as something like Almost Famous, but, still: Come on. Who's kidding who here? Reading autobiographical intent into the show may have been "a lot of silliness," but it's silliness he's being disingenuous if he says he wasn't expecting.
I suspect Sorkin is fighting a losing battle. We've become a nation of prying eyes, snoops hungry for the inside story. It's surely telling that Sorkin's old time slot is now occupied by a reality show about real-life wedding crashers, people eager to barge into someone else's life. For Sorkin, TV is an all-too accurate barometer of our ideals. As he puts it: "TV has a very measurable effect on our national mood. When TV gets bitchy and pissy, you find Americans getting bitchy and pissy too."
Again I agree with this, but only to a certain point. As much as TV celebrates low-standards, the lack of shame in seeking fame and the "talent" America's allegedly got. I'm not sure we have become that nation of prying eyes-only that the TV executives think we have, or perhaps more to the point: It's in the interest of the billionaires to treat us as though we have.
I also think TV's effect on the national mood is very much a chicken-or-the-egg type question. Is Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader a hit because we're pissed off about how stupid we are, or...
In a way Sorkin may have come around to a final way of handling failure: acceptance. "Expectations were high and I couldn't come close to meeting them, so you'd have to say our show failed in a big way," he explains. "But when you get to write 22 episodes and have them produced exactly the way you want — well, as someone I know once described it, 'Things are OK when the things you complain about are the things you used to dream about.' "
Thank you for knowing that, Aaron. If you'd been moaning about Studio 60's failure in the ratings, I don't think I could have taken it.
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