Watching Studio60

I’d like to think that anyone who’s a fan of Studio 60 and the work of Aaron Sorkin has enough appreciation for what writers bring to the TV and movie screen to support the current writer’s guild strike. I’ve been following news of the strike on various blogs, and am always amazed and a little hurt by those who take the position that writer are overpaid babies doing a job anybody can do. Those folks are clearly watching the wrong shows.

The folks on this LiveJournal message board, on the other hand, know what it’s like to watch good writing. In an effort to support the writers, and having dealt with some of the same attitude I mentioned above, the first poster asks “What quotes have Hollywood writers given you?” And other posters have chipped in with many great lines, including a fair amount from The West Wing and a few from Studio 60. Could any hack write that stuff? I think not, and I hope we won’t have to learn that the hard way.

Meanwhile, two actors who played Studio 60 network executives have been mentioned in the news as standing up for the writer’s guild. Amanda Peet hit the strike picket line with screenwriter husband David Benioff and their eight-month-old daughter, Francis Pen. I usually feel bad checking out celebrity baby photos, but if they’re snapped striking, they want to be seen, right? Meanwhile, Steven Weber was named in the Hollywood Reporter as one of the actors in attendance at a big WGA rally Friday.

Jon Robin Baitz — the playwright who wrote “The Long Goodbye” episode of The West Wing and created the current show Brothers & Sisters — has been blogging about his strike experience for the Huffington Post and mentioned Aaron Sorkin extensively in one entry:

A few blocks away, Aaron Sorkin is in previews for a new play about the birth of television. I think about that, about Aaron, whom I used to see when his play A Few Good Men was on while my own Substance of Fire was playing a few blocks away. We used to stop and talk on the street about how stupid we were to even be playwrights. He too wore a tie to rehearsal in those days, and when I asked him why, way back then, he said “Because Mr. Abbott did.” I smiled and went to my own show, shaking my head. (George C. Abbott.) A long time ago.

You can’t earn a living as a playwright anymore. And if we lose this fight, being a TV writer is going to be harder too. So what is the value of narrative in our culture? Do the money guys value the worth of the story tellers in their marketplace enough to have an honest dialogue about paychecks and future income? I think about that. About how great West Wing was, and how Aaron encouraged me to try my hand at TV. Gave me my first network job, an episode of West Wing. It was his last season, and we had been friends for a long time, and he was tired. And he was embattled. But he was idealistic, and single minded, even while he was burning out from that show.

Ironically, it may be a different strike that’s most on Sorkin’s mind right now: the Broadway stagehands’ strike that’s threatening to delay the official opening of The Farnsworth Invention. The strike started on Saturday, and like the writer’s strike, there’s currently no end predicted. Farnsworth is set to open on Wednesday, if the stagehands get faster results than the writers have.

Studio 60, NBC, writer’s guild strike, stagehands strike, aaron sorkin, jon robin baitz