Watching Studio60

As I did with the DVD documentary, I’m going to do a rundown of the only other special in the set, an audio commentary on the pilot by writer Aaron Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme. Rather than do it in one long piece, I’m going to break it up into parts to run throughout this week. For starters, today, the teaser:

As the episode begins, Sorkin and Schlamme jump right in talking about the set. (In most places here, they’re talking as one creative entity, instead of giving individual points of view, so I’m not going to sweat identifying who said what unless it’s appropriate.) Of the outdoor establishing shot of the theater, they mention that it’s the Palladium on Sunset Boulevard, heavily augmented by CGI – including the second floor, the Studio 60 signs, and the searchlights.

The camera moves inside, and they talk about the fantastic indoor set. Schlamme recalls that when he read the pilot script, he reflected that it “wasn’t necessarily the history of television, it was the history of people putting on a show.� So it seemed necessary that it should be taking place in an old theater, like David Letterman working out of the Ed Sullivan theater. Schlamme and Sorkin and the designer and crew visited old theaters and came up with the idea of building their own two-story theater. The basement would hold the dressing rooms, the first floor was production, and the second floor were offices for the writers. And thus the basic set language for the show was established.

Now we’re seeing Judd Hirsch on the screen, and they’re talking about his participation in the episode. The actor was on loan from Numbers, and for that reason was not able to appear on the show again. He was the original choice for the part, but the producers assumed he would not be available, and went through a long list of alternatives. Finally, “as with Martin Sheen in The West Wing,� they went back and actually asked their original choice, and CBS let him do it.

Hirsch had only a little time to shoot the scene, and a script with “a lot of language.� He had to do that long speech over and over, and “every time got a huge round of applause from the extras.� Speaking of those extras – the lead actors were very good about hanging out on the set for twelve hours just milling around in the background, to make the show really look like a show. Another reason, mentioned later, is that the show had to look like something they had been doing for years and years, and so the actors started hanging out to live that experience.

More on the set: After they started building it, it became clear that financially they could not complete it the way they wanted to for the pilot. So construction continued as the show went on, but not everything is there in the first episode.

When it comes time for Felicity Huffman’s little moment – Sorkin points out that she’s as good at playing herself as she as at playing a character – the chatter stops and we’re left to watch the scene in silence, from Huffman being given a choice of the slutty dress or the very slutty dress, to her conversation with Hirsch’s character over the awfulness of the monologue, to his resigned and not very comforting assurance that her instincts aren’t wrong and it really does stink, to her declaration that she needs “the very slutty dress, and somebody else to wear it.� Even knowing that line was coming, I still laughed.

As the opening sketch of the show-within-the-show begins, Schlamme mentions that if he had had a whole set, he would have started with a tight shot of the two actors in the Oval Office — so that you wondered, “What are we doing there?â€? – and then pulled back, back, through the control room, and into other areas. But the control room wasn’t finished yet, and it couldn’t be done.

When Hirsch’s big speech comes up, Sorkin acknowledges that obviously, he’s seen Network, everybody watching should go see Network if they haven’t already, and he conceived this scene as a homage to Network. He mentions that “Tommy’s so great at shooting tension,� pointing out all the reaction shots and backstage scurrying that weren’t in the script, but in the director’s vision.

Schlamme talks about the difficulty of putting the scene together. They only had Judd Hirsch for a limited time, and had to shoot him first. Fortunately, it was something that worked with one camera on him. Later, after the control room set was done, they were able to shoot all those scenes, and had to work it around what was already shot with Hirsh’s monologue. Some additional backstage dialog was added, even talking over the speech, which was unfortunate, said Schlamme, because the part talked over “is equally fascinating.”

There’s also a nod to Snuffy Walden, for providing the music that underscored the scene in a subtle way, but helped to build up tension.

And, the teaser ends. Go on to Part 2, “Jordan.”

_{Photo by Terri Mauro}

Studio 60, NBC, DVD, commentary, Aaron Sorkin, Thomas Schlamme