Dear Aaron Sorkin...

[aprilsnark]

"There are only two possible reasons for 'Studio 60' failing - it was either my fault or it was just one of those things. On some shows, you can make mistakes and still survive. But with this one, I made too many mistakes for it to survive."

Good for you for saying it. You get some of my respect back. However...

Sorkin sees a more insidious

Comments

[gurudata]

Hiho,

I think we're reading the second quote differently. He's expressing a very writer-mentality frustration. When I read it, I don't see that he's denying the connections, but rather he's miffed that the connections were more important to the media than the quality and nature of the show itself.

It would be as if somebody wrote a song about a personal experience, and all the reviews obsessed about that connection and failed to ask far more relevant questions such as "is it a good song?"

And frankly, I see his point. As a more casual viewer who actually enjoyed the show and didn't care what it was based on, I myself was a tad sick and tired of the media commenting on how the show was a messed of version of his own history. I have no idea why it should matter. A story has to come from *somewhere*; it should make 0 difference if it came from his own life, the life of his neighbour, or was completely 100% written out of thin air - it's either a good story, or not, and that's what should have been important.

Certainly, if I had been writing S60, I would have found it damned frustrating that people never talked about the show being good or bad on its own merits and only cared that a) "it's based on his life" and b) "it's not west wing"... Who wouldn't?

Cu,
Andrew