Oops.
tumblr essays
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Tuesday, June 26th 2012
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Sunday, June 24th 2012
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10:30pm|reblogged from The New Yorker:
If you’re planning to watch Aaron Sorkin’s new show “The Newsroom,” which premieres tonight on HBO, you may want to think again: http://nyr.kr/MsynVN
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Wednesday, June 20th 2012
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Firewall & Iceberg on Aaron Sorkin’s New Show
In this podcast, Sorkin’s new show The Newsroom is subjected to a round of criticism, chief of which is the tone of smugness and the unrealistic main character.
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Friday, December 30th 2011
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“
This is always what I wanted to do. What I love about it, I love the sound of dialogue, I love writing dialogue. My parents took me to see plays all the time as I grew up, and lots of times I was too young to understand the play—I saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when I was nine, but I loved the dialogue, it just sounded like music to me, I wanted to imitate that sound.
As a result of my introduction to it being dialogue and not story-telling and never being one of those guys sitting around the campfire and “I’ve got a million of ’em, let me tell you a story” … My Achilles heel is plot, which sometimes I consider this necessary intrusion on what I really want to do which is write dialogue, and that’s why I talk about just “build the car first” and then I get to do the kinds of things that I want to.
“—Aaron Sorkin on The Hollywood Reporter’s Award Season Roundtable Series: The Writers Uncensored. (There must be a place in one of the circles of Hell where people are forced to transcribe Aaron Sorkin interviews.)
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Wednesday, July 20th 2011
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Aaron Sorkin and Truth
I came upon an old account of Sorkin’s quirky internet forum forays that most likely effected his luddite philosophy after some back-and-forth arguments between the two parties that did not make Sorkin stand out very well to say the least. The forum’s meticulous analyses of the show have unraveled aspects of The West Wing that I did not notice when I watched the show years ago. I implore everyone to read the post for all its points and the presentation of Aaron Sorkin that will differ from what you will be used to reading. One of the points conveniently elaborates on my critique of Sorkin’s writing as theatricality over reality and poetry over prose. In the sixteenth episode of season four titled “The U.S. Poet Laureate”, the laureate, Tabitha Fortis, channels Sorkin’s voice in a soliloquy, as his characters are wont to do:
An artist’s job is to captivate you for however long we’ve asked for your attention. If we stumble into truth, we got lucky, and I don’t get to decide what truth is. (…) I write poetry, Toby; that’s how I enter the world.
Res ipsa loquitur. Quoth Aaron Sorkin himself:I and everyone else here are, honestly, thrilled that there are these fan sites where strangers get together and talk about the show and like the show/don’t like the show (I’d prefer if you liked the show) but you ought to disabuse yourselves of the notion that what we do is debate a point and then declare a winner. We’re just telling our little stories and doing our lame jokes. And hoping you’ll keep tuning in.
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Monday, July 18th 2011
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My Fundamental Problem with “The West Wing”
The aforementioned quote by Aaron Sorkin led me to conceive of the best way to formulate my problem with the otherwise great show The West Wing.
President Bartlet is obviously too likable and one-sidedly good to be anything like a realistic president—the same which can be said about everyone around him, all of whom are in line with Sorkin’ melodramatic atmosphere and cadenced dialogue replete with orchestral fanfare.
The fundamental problem harks back to the maxim attributed to Mario Cuomo: “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” Sorkin’s world is at odds with the gritty reality of prose, and the presidential term of Bartlet is governed by as much poetry as his presidential re-election campaign.
Even if people weren’t familiar with Cuomo’s maxim, many will still understand the meaning of it today in the wake of Barack Obama’s campaign and painfully pragmatic presidency—regardless of where you find yourself in the political spectrum.
Politics is about killing your darlings, forging tenuous alliances and getting people to like you—not because of who you are, but in spite of.
Bartlet is infallible. No real person is—least of all an accomplished president.
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Tuesday, July 12th 2011
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“My parents took me to see plays, starting when I was very, very little, and I was too young to understand Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when I was nine years old, but I loved the sound of dialogue; it sounded like music to me, and I wanted to imitate that sound. So, as a result, I am very weak when it comes to plot, because I didn’t understand what was going on on stage, but I do enjoy writing dialogue that sounds like something.“—
Aaron Sorkin on the bonus material of The Social Network.
I am glad to see that he admits to this, because I find that he tends to fictionalize reality in a fashion that prefers theatricality to reality.
