The Newsroom: Sorkin's HBO Joint

i'd watch sam waterston kick an orange

WHILE SHOUTING

"How do you fix breaking news?" oof

wow, the 1992 fall season is looking strong.

Does Sorkin have a second type of story he can tell.

walking, talking

or

talking, walking

Men makin' tough decisions in the spotlight.

is there a giant clock on the wall anywhere

i'd like to hit sorkin over the head with a giant clock.

you know i wasn't sure about this but now that i see olivia munn is in it and jeff daniels' appears to maybe be playing that ol sorkin fave the reasonable republican that hates actual republicans but maybe he's prolife or wants lower taxes or something, well, now i'm all in.

this looks unbelievably stupid but i will probably watch all of it

i couldnt do studio 60 but there was something so war-criminally horrible about the skits in the show, this just looks like standard sorkin missing the point in politics

Pilot directed by Daytrippers/Superbad Greg Mottola.

i was down w/ studio 60 right up to the gilbert and sullivan metaskit. never looked back.

depending on when this is on i'll probably watch every bit of it also. also maybe it's just jeff daniels plus newsroom but is anyone getting more of a clooney stupid earnest vibe from this instead of sorkin stupid earnest vibe?

haha the gilbert and sullivan thing was exactly where i bailed too

annoyingly, best episode of Studio 60 was the second-to-last one. Fuckin' waste of time to spend all his time writing all those bullshit sketches and saves the real character story work for when he's burned all his bridges.

ugh can we have the Finkleman show back instead pls

annoyingly, best episode of Studio 60 was the second-to-last one. Fuckin' waste of time to spend all his time writing all those bullshit sketches and saves the real character story work for when he's burned all his bridges.

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 3 April 2012 02:32 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this terrible show having the all-round for-every-body ultimate-happy-ending ate into whatever goodwill it had generated. real bad.

this also looks bad in a kinda prefab way, but I will watch & maybe enjoy it. the kind of tall-professional-woman berates sitting-mastermind-man thing is studio sixty all over again

I will totally watch this, and probably totally resent it. It seems to basically just be Studio 60 minus all the West Wing guys, right? At least he won't have to write SNL-type skits into this one.

instead he'll get to write as many political talking heads as he wishes

Was that Dev Patel floating around in the background of the trailer?

jane fonda sighting too!!

emily mortimer too i think

Sports Night is a classic to me but i kinda feel like he's gotten too much freedom to indulge himself on TV at this point and is better off in the movie world where people can use the strengths of his screenplays and abandon the rest as they like

ugh no way

er not to some dude, to the trailer

haha

Dev Patel and Emily Mortimer are in, yes.

I thought that was David Cromer interviewing Daniels:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/theaterloop/chi-david-cromer-in-a-trailer-for-hbos-newsroom-20120403,0,3745613.column

"progress is slow but I'm in it for the long-haul" plus hand-wave and head-turn is the most Sorkinesque moment possible. It's like the Sorkin Singularity

lool @ this whole thread

haha great thread

I'm both eager and trepidatious

did you see the graduation address he gave? he called all the students dumb. the parents loved it. the parents love that guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpKC50uFVQ0

This one, going for The Social Network II angle (or the Girls demo):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgFZbrwmndA

http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Peter-Finch-in-Network.jpg

This show would seem so much more relevant if I or anyone I knew actually watched TV news, ever.

Also much like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5E9RV9TyEo

"By 1980, every show on television was about a divorced Jew who lives in New York City and goes on a blind date with Tom Selleck."

This show is really getting savaged, huh?

I thought this was a good piece about Sorkin's oeuvre:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_completist/2012/06/the_complete_works_of_aaron_sorkin_from_the_west_wing_to_the_social_network_to_the_newsroom_.single.html

yeah, good article (although i disagree about the value of some shows/movies vs. others)

I think THR liked it, but I just read the first little blurb. I don't think Seitz has reviewed it yet, but he was tweeting that it was corny a few weeks ago but he seemed to be enjoying it.

Pretty sure it's gonna be shit though.

Mostly thinking of Emily Nussbaum's New Yorker review, though I've seen a few other pans as well.

its metacritic rating is mad yellow

such a huge disconnect for me between how much i expect from sorkin (esp w/ evidence like few good men, social network, west wing, sports night) and what he's been delivering on tv these days (studio 60 + now this). i don't think he's being lazy -- maybe he needs a few good editors?

the Slate piece touches on it but i definitely think he needs collaborators -- his recent screenplays that are adapted from real life source material and directed by people he doesn't typically collaborate with >>>>>>>>>> his recent TV stuff where he has full freedom to rehash West Wing and Sports Night to diminishing returns

think it's a potent combination of his own ego (and yes, lack of editors/filters) and the fact that his best TV work was at the cusp of the Sopranos/Wire/Deadwood/MadMen/Breaking Bad era that made us all expect a lot more. West Wing just had to be better than...ER.

Social Network was good because of Fincher working against the screenplay (sort of what that Slate article said, I think).

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/tv/blogs/the-stream/2012/06/how-to-write-a-monologue-like-aaron-sorkin.html

i actually like his speeches and enjoy the way he breaks down what he does there, but god his faux-Network speeches are getting so "you could kick a ball in the street"

Yep, they are really hitting all of my love/hate buttons. Kat Dennings walks onscreen in yesterday's episode and I was like OK this is being written specifically to fuck with me. That was some all-star 'OMG seriously this show is the worst/I can't wait for next week's episode!!' casting.

so i finally watched all of this, all fast at once the other day

kind of not feeling it enough to say anything about it, not sure it merited it - it was enjoyable enough but minor, nothing new to add even to the sorkin canon. a recovery from the worst problems of studio 60, but not really much insight into the news specifically or any of its character(-types). schlump otm re alison pill tho <3.

been thinking though that a better approach to understanding ~~~the essence of sorkinism~~~ is probably in terms of time. specifically, the question of what he can/can't do with his usual combination of structures. and why combine *those*. the just-in-time success plot, the therapeutic admission plot, the unapologetic deposition plot, the 'bad timing' and past-he-can't-get-past romantic plots.

"everybody at my work does"

some very nice rat-a-tat dialogue in this ep.

are sorkin, mamet, and rhimes the only distinct television writerly voices?

maybe in comedy Caspe of happy endings/marry me, and even i guess Chuck Lorre?

milch, whedon, i dunno i would not be surprised if david e kelley shows had a 'voice'. i haven't watched enough of them but i kind of recall one. bochco?

i don't know how localized the responsibility for it is but whenever abrams-related shows from alias onward put interpersonal-relationship-dialogue in their characters' mouths, i feel like there's a characteristic blankness to it.

dunno if i can recognize milch, whedon, kelley voice scene to scene in the writing itself. in the storyline, sure.

sorkin, mamet and rhimes all have a moment-to-moment rhythm, a distinct feel for beats, crescendos, pauses.

I've caught a few eps of this without knowing what it was- every one of them seems to end with Jeff Daniels blowing up at somebody/everybody and quitting, while Sam Waterston gently smiling and looking like he's about to pass out. The dialogue is so full of shit I keep thinking it's supposed to be a comedy but apparently not.

i love the sync in the opening credits between this big ostentatious orchestral drum roll & a sharp cut into explosion footage

hahahaha now that was the revolting Newsroom I remember

i think a cool newsroom finale would be jeff daniels blowing himself up to prove a point of some kind

the resultant viscera spells out "ethics" across the side of the ACN building, magisterial but restrained horn fanfare, fade to black

ahhahaha sorkin hates the internet so much

also omg the dialogue is so bad this episode

there was a pretty reasonable new york magazine piece recently about how the newsroom was an unpromising concept because it tried to attach a sort of noble credibility to contemporary news television, it comes through when you hear jim talking really confusingly idealistically about the honour of cable tv

Ave Maria over the wedding/arrest. I bet when they were filming those scenes they thought it was going to be really cool, and then they saw the episode and were like WTF Aaron, come on. This is not a lord of the rings battle.

lol gawker stalker

Ave Maria bit was clearly trying to recreate Hallelujah over Bartlet giving the order to shoot down that Qumari dude + Simon Donovan getting toasted in the 7/11 in the West Wing. It didn't work at all.

then they did it again this ep!

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/08/tweeting-towards-bethlehem-newsroom-week-5/

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: There’s a term in poker for when you bet too much and you don’t make great decisions: you are ON TILT. Aaron Sorkin was ON TILT last night.

Also: potential drinking game each time someone says "your generation."

Already missing this show, there's nothing else in the same vein on tv.

man this was such total garbage

lol @ a 90min finale of a show about news having abt three lines of dialogue about Mandela on his death bed and 89min of soap opera tropes

I've been told there was a musical number

at a wake

at least neal came out looking ok

*takes down website for entire week*

omg the musical number.

sorkin shows are the sound of boomers slowly disintegrating and their bonedust fluttering into the breeze

*takes down website for entire week*

― gr8080, Monday, December 15, 2014 10:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha ha

Haha y'all didn't feel anything for any of these characters? neal and maggie were a little annoying, but the rest? Their corny earnestness just made them more endearing! The whole show was ridiculous but that's what made it great, enjoyment of it demanded the viewer take it less seriously than it wanted to be taken, if that makes sense.
Like how was will maccavoy walking into the garage of his newly dead best friend and having an impromptu jam session on accoustic guitar with his best friends newly depressed cello playing grandson not the most entertaining thing you saw all year.
Have never seen the west wing/studio 60 but the writing here seemed as sharp as his movies. charlie and sloan were some of sorkins best characters.

the show spent so much time presuming i would FEEL FEELING about Will and Mac or goddamn Jim and Maggie that i was pleasantly surprised when Don and Sloan ended up being the most compelling relationship in the show. Lisa is still the show's MVP for her speech when she got fed up with Jim and Maggie's passive aggressive love triangle bullshit.

I love that this didn't even wind up producing as many episodes as Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom.

some dude otm. olivia munn really came out of this show surprisingly well.

i'm still kinda confused what people were ever so mad at her about.

it's about ethics in fictional journalism

Haven't read thread but this is good at an ally mcbeal level and i am in love with mac

how far in are you

mostly I just need to know if you've gotten to the bin laden scene

Ive been busy so just catching decent comedy snippets and showy dialogue and devastating silhouettes of macs blouse/skirt game but "we" have in fact blitzed through to the season 2 finale since last friday

I recall a stretch in the second season that sort of threatened to be OK, and then they got to the college rape storyline and it was all downhill sharply from there

the 'buckle up sweetie, here's why America used to be good and now sucks' monologue should have gotten this shit cancelled after the first episode

Absolutely the worst thing to ever air on HBO, including Arli$$.

As they say, "One man's Mede is another man's Persian."

oh man, this was actually p bad huh. the whole season is just gonna be emily mortimer's beseeching face & endless cycles of affirmation & reaffirmation & pledging & repledging of commitment to a non-specific noble idea.

schlump

Well make up yr mind which is it

Finished this, hobbes otm with summary rly

If you tried to take it as seriously as it wanted, more fool you id say.

The hamfisted smug arguments on all sides, well again if you choose to see these as things worth railing against sure youd get vexed but this was a zingy sexy sitcom about how much jeff daniels could try to get sorkin away with and i repeat macs blouse/skirt/winsome trinity is unbeaten

sorkin is lame is how i break it down to an extent