Watching Studio60

This is the final installment of my summary of the DVD commentary on the Studio 60 pilot, with Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme. We’re picking up from yesterday’s Part 6, and again, since Sorkin and Schlamme are generally speaking as one creative entity, I’m not going to worry over who said what unless it’s apropos. To start from the beginning, go to Part 1.

As Matt and Harriet squabble in the hallway, the discussion turns to all the details on the walls of the set that the camera catches. They wish there could be a tour through the set to show how detailed it was. The lobby set included window cards and photos of 50 or 60 years of things in the theater. As soon as the set was finished and painted, Schlamme handed the crew Sharpies and had them write all over the walls. There’s all kinds of funny graffiti, and the set looks lived in.

Sorkin says that when he was writing the script, he would send eight or ten pages at a time to Schlamme. The writer was imagining just a genetic sterile soundstage as the backdrop, but it was the director’s and production designer Carlos Barbosa’s idea to make it an old vaudeville house that had become a movie theater and then been purchased by the network to become a live broadcast studio. That lived-in setting provides a lot of warmth.

Sorkin reveals that Schlamme was also the one with the idea for staging scenes in pieces of sketch scenery. It started way back in the teaser, where Wes and the standards-and-practices guy argue in half a subway car. So the half a taxicab that’s lying around is the perfect place for Matt and Danny to have a conversation. While they were designing the set and building things, they noticed that people would just naturally sit in that cab when they wanted to talk. In fact, Sorkin and Schlamme had a meeting there. It seemed like something that would happen in this world when people wanted to talk privately.

That seems typical to them of the theater, the sense that private conversations are always being held in public areas. The struggle to be private in public creates tension. It’s like being in a big family, you can’t escape, and so arguments happen in front of others. Privacy is not going into a room and closing the door, it’s going to some arena and hoping people are not listening to you. But in fact, you’re exposed

As we watch Matt and Danny talking to Jordan, Sorkin mentions that beginning with the Christmas show, and the official start of the Jordan-Danny romance, people have been asking him when Danny’s attraction to Jordan began. And he identifies that point as … right now, when Jordan gives Matt the script for the sketch that he left the show over the first time, the sketch that Wes just lost his job over now, and suggests they put it in the show. There’s a moment when Danny looks over at her, surprised, and maybe that’s when Cupid’s arrow struck.

As the episode nears its end, Sorkin says that, “I knew only two things at the beginning when I was writing the pilot. I knew how it was going to start, with the executive producer of the show having an on-air meltdown, and I knew that it was going to end with the David Bowie song [“Under Pressure�?].”

But wait, there’s still a moment, before we go, to say something about “the brilliance of Tim Busfield.�? They’ve worked with him before, and according to Schlamme, “Aaron has spent a career�? with him. His character, Cal the director, represents the salt of the earth, and the hundreds of people who make the show go on. They love the idea that these two guys are going to run the show, but Cal’s the one who can hold everything together and be the emotional backbone. It’s the scene where Matt and Danny ask Cal to stay on, even as he’s feared he’s going to be fired for letting Wes stay on the air. The commentators mention how good Busfield is in the scene, heart and soul right there. And when Danny says to Cal, “We need you to stay,�? Sorkin says, “That’s just how I feel about Tommy.�?

The commentary ends with the declaration that they hope we liked the pilot, and the 21 episodes that came after that. Well, some of us did, anyway.

_{Photo by Terri Mauro}

Studio 60, NBC, DVD, audio commentary, pilot