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shadowkat[Warning this post is filled with horrid typos and I'm too lazy right now to go back and edit it. So if you hate that? Skip.]
The following passage is from Proust's "Du cote du chez Swann" or "Swann's Way", as translated by Lydia Davis:
[The narrator has innocently conveyed to his parents a pleasant encounter he had with his uncle and his uncle's lady of the evening aka 'mistress'. His parents reacte as one would expect, distressed and horrified. But the passage is in essence about a lesson the narrator learned, a sort of epiphany about human nature and communication. How the information we wish to convey is often not received in the way it was originally intended.]
I imagined, like everyone else, that the brain of another person was an inert and docile receptacle, without the power to react specifically to what one produced into it; and I did not doubt that in depositing in my parents' brains the news of the acquaintance I had made through my uncle, I was transmitting to them at the same time, as I wished to, the kindly opinion that I had of the introduction. My parents unfortunately deferred to principles entirely different from those I was suggesting they adopt, when they wished to appraise my uncle's action.
The passage gave me what can best be described as one of those "AH-HAH" moments last night while reading it. Actually I'd read it the night before as well, loved it so much, that I went back and re-read the last ten pages proceeding it - so I could understand what happened. (Have discovered it is close to impossible to read Proust, when one's mind is worrying over or at other things.) At any rate, what I thought was - oh, yes, that's the problem when watch or read art - we carry along our own experience and baggage and our own expectations. What we think may not be what was intended and what ensues is a sort of battle between the reader of the work and the author of it - over what it means. Leaving the artist feeling a bit befuddled and at times frustrated, wondering, I'm certain, if there is much point to creating the work at all.
Just finished reading an excellent review in The New Yorker regarding the new TV show of the moment, Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip. Why, you ask is this show getting so much critical attention, while other new shows such as Shark, The Nine, Six Degrees, Jericho, the Class, etc are getting so little? Ah. Because of the shows premiering this season it is the only one that is not copying an old motif.
The critic, Tad Friend, puts it quite well - "Sorkin's characters don't get into pickles in the usual TV ways: breaking the law to help a victim(Law & Order:SVU, [and I'd add just about every other cop procedural on television]), obeying unseen voices ("Medium;Ghost Whisperer), having sex with the wrong person ("Desperate Housewives", [I'd add:"Grey's Anatomy", "Without a Trace", "House", and several others]), ; or burying a goombah in a landfill ("Sopranoes" (and I'd add Nip/Tuck, Smith, and others)). They get into pickles because they mouth off - and it's great television because television prizes banter above all forms of conversation. Other shows' characters get mouthy ( think of Dr. Gregory House on "House" or Ari Gould on "Entourage"), but Sorkin 's spar and bluster like the flap-jawed flacks in "The Front Page" [the play version of His Girl Friday]."
Sorkin with his director pal, Thomas Schlamme, also does an excellent bit of stage-crafting that I seldom see- which is he manages to get across a broad range of plot-threads within 60 seconds via direction and dialogue.
What Friend found fault with and I completely agree with Friend, and it is the reason that a few of my friends never got into The West Wing, is this: "Sorkin's dialogue falls on the ear better than it holds up to scrutiny. When Harriet asks Cal (Timothy Busfied), the director, who kept Wes (the guy who gives the "Network" like spiel at the beginning) on the air, if he's O'K, he responds to her not as a friend but as a straight man."
This may explain why a lot of people viewed Studio 60 as a comedy. It's not by the way. It was and is meant to be a drama, much like West Wing. In a drama's time slot. Drama's length. And contain's a drama's content. So, no, you weren't necessarily meant to find the following bits of dialogue funny.
(I smiled at them, but what the hey?):
"Cal: I've been told to sit tight and wait for word.
Harriet: Word on what?
Cal: I faced off with Standards during a live broadcast, Harry. The guys I know who've done that feel lucky when they can get a job directing 'Good Morning America.'"
or wwhen the new TV President, Jordan, tells Danny, the TV director, she'll keep his secret:
"Danny : That's nice, but I have no reason to trust you and every reason not to.
Jordan: Why?
Danny: You work in television."
According to Friend - the main problem is the characters at times act like constructs to get the writer's point across, a sort of voice-box for the writer's message. And their problems feel undramatic - they can only accuse one another of meanness or stupidity.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. Although admittedly West Wing did that at times. Making the dialogue the point and not the character. It's not all the time. But occassionally. And there is a feeling in Studio 60 that everyone may be trying too hard, that the writer may be a tad too self-referential. But to me, at least, it was minor. In a television landscape of rehashed plots and gimmicks, this series feels fresh and new to me. It may be the only show I saw this week that did not have the stupid music video montage tagged on at the end of it. But it is flawed - then again name a tv show that isn't? I've seen most of them, including the current internet obession "The Office", which relies far to heavily on the documentary gimmick for my taste. Often it's characters feel like sock-puppets as well. And that is the problem with writing dialogue, how to keep one's characters from sounding like sock-puppets.
Dialogue is not easy. People are known to err on one side of the fence or the other. They'll either attempt to make the dialogue sound like 'real life' - completely improvised, or it will sound too rehearsed, and neat like a ventriloquist's dummy. The Office errs in my opinion at times on the "real life" ramble, as did Arrested Development, while Sorkin occassionally errs on the other end.
I prefer the other end of the spectrum. Rambling speech bores me in drama. I don't enjoy documentaries and find fake ones annoying. That said, I did laugh at The Office this week. And not for the first time. But I don't care about any of the characters or like them. They aren't people I'd want to work with, see, or spend time with. So while it's funny, it does not have that one essential ingredient I need to watch a TV show. I have to be intrigued by the characters.
Why do I bring up The Office and Studio 60 and put them together? Because both shows made me laugh.
And both held my attention. But, I will probably stick with Studio 60 and may dump the Office in favor of Ugly Betty, we'll see. For the reasons, I listed above.
I meant this to be a completely different post than it turned out to be. Oh well. Hope it made some sense at least.
The following passage is from Proust's "Du cote du chez Swann" or "Swann's Way", as translated by Lydia Davis:
[The narrator has innocently conveyed to his parents a pleasant encounter he had with his uncle and his uncle's lady of the evening aka 'mistress'. His parents reacte as one would expect, distressed and horrified. But the passage is in essence about a lesson the narrator learned, a sort of epiphany about human nature and communication. How the information we wish to convey is often not received in the way it was originally intended.]
I imagined, like everyone else, that the brain of another person was an inert and docile receptacle, without the power to react specifically to what one produced into it; and I did not doubt that in depositing in my parents' brains the news of the acquaintance I had made through my uncle, I was transmitting to them at the same time, as I wished to, the kindly opinion that I had of the introduction. My parents unfortunately deferred to principles entirely different from those I was suggesting they adopt, when they wished to appraise my uncle's action.
The passage gave me what can best be described as one of those "AH-HAH" moments last night while reading it. Actually I'd read it the night before as well, loved it so much, that I went back and re-read the last ten pages proceeding it - so I could understand what happened. (Have discovered it is close to impossible to read Proust, when one's mind is worrying over or at other things.) At any rate, what I thought was - oh, yes, that's the problem when watch or read art - we carry along our own experience and baggage and our own expectations. What we think may not be what was intended and what ensues is a sort of battle between the reader of the work and the author of it - over what it means. Leaving the artist feeling a bit befuddled and at times frustrated, wondering, I'm certain, if there is much point to creating the work at all.
Just finished reading an excellent review in The New Yorker regarding the new TV show of the moment, Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip. Why, you ask is this show getting so much critical attention, while other new shows such as Shark, The Nine, Six Degrees, Jericho, the Class, etc are getting so little? Ah. Because of the shows premiering this season it is the only one that is not copying an old motif.
The critic, Tad Friend, puts it quite well - "Sorkin's characters don't get into pickles in the usual TV ways: breaking the law to help a victim(Law & Order:SVU, [and I'd add just about every other cop procedural on television]), obeying unseen voices ("Medium;Ghost Whisperer), having sex with the wrong person ("Desperate Housewives", [I'd add:"Grey's Anatomy", "Without a Trace", "House", and several others]), ; or burying a goombah in a landfill ("Sopranoes" (and I'd add Nip/Tuck, Smith, and others)). They get into pickles because they mouth off - and it's great television because television prizes banter above all forms of conversation. Other shows' characters get mouthy ( think of Dr. Gregory House on "House" or Ari Gould on "Entourage"), but Sorkin 's spar and bluster like the flap-jawed flacks in "The Front Page" [the play version of His Girl Friday]."
Sorkin with his director pal, Thomas Schlamme, also does an excellent bit of stage-crafting that I seldom see- which is he manages to get across a broad range of plot-threads within 60 seconds via direction and dialogue.
What Friend found fault with and I completely agree with Friend, and it is the reason that a few of my friends never got into The West Wing, is this: "Sorkin's dialogue falls on the ear better than it holds up to scrutiny. When Harriet asks Cal (Timothy Busfied), the director, who kept Wes (the guy who gives the "Network" like spiel at the beginning) on the air, if he's O'K, he responds to her not as a friend but as a straight man."
This may explain why a lot of people viewed Studio 60 as a comedy. It's not by the way. It was and is meant to be a drama, much like West Wing. In a drama's time slot. Drama's length. And contain's a drama's content. So, no, you weren't necessarily meant to find the following bits of dialogue funny.
(I smiled at them, but what the hey?):
"Cal: I've been told to sit tight and wait for word.
Harriet: Word on what?
Cal: I faced off with Standards during a live broadcast, Harry. The guys I know who've done that feel lucky when they can get a job directing 'Good Morning America.'"
or wwhen the new TV President, Jordan, tells Danny, the TV director, she'll keep his secret:
"Danny : That's nice, but I have no reason to trust you and every reason not to.
Jordan: Why?
Danny: You work in television."
According to Friend - the main problem is the characters at times act like constructs to get the writer's point across, a sort of voice-box for the writer's message. And their problems feel undramatic - they can only accuse one another of meanness or stupidity.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. Although admittedly West Wing did that at times. Making the dialogue the point and not the character. It's not all the time. But occassionally. And there is a feeling in Studio 60 that everyone may be trying too hard, that the writer may be a tad too self-referential. But to me, at least, it was minor. In a television landscape of rehashed plots and gimmicks, this series feels fresh and new to me. It may be the only show I saw this week that did not have the stupid music video montage tagged on at the end of it. But it is flawed - then again name a tv show that isn't? I've seen most of them, including the current internet obession "The Office", which relies far to heavily on the documentary gimmick for my taste. Often it's characters feel like sock-puppets as well. And that is the problem with writing dialogue, how to keep one's characters from sounding like sock-puppets.
Dialogue is not easy. People are known to err on one side of the fence or the other. They'll either attempt to make the dialogue sound like 'real life' - completely improvised, or it will sound too rehearsed, and neat like a ventriloquist's dummy. The Office errs in my opinion at times on the "real life" ramble, as did Arrested Development, while Sorkin occassionally errs on the other end.
I prefer the other end of the spectrum. Rambling speech bores me in drama. I don't enjoy documentaries and find fake ones annoying. That said, I did laugh at The Office this week. And not for the first time. But I don't care about any of the characters or like them. They aren't people I'd want to work with, see, or spend time with. So while it's funny, it does not have that one essential ingredient I need to watch a TV show. I have to be intrigued by the characters.
Why do I bring up The Office and Studio 60 and put them together? Because both shows made me laugh.
And both held my attention. But, I will probably stick with Studio 60 and may dump the Office in favor of Ugly Betty, we'll see. For the reasons, I listed above.
I meant this to be a completely different post than it turned out to be. Oh well. Hope it made some sense at least.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 07:10 pm (UTC)I REALLY enjoyed the pilot.
I think it will get better from here too. There is inevitably a problem with first episodes trying to get the information to you. I remember when Brett Butler's show premiered and the first bit was an expository monologue she delivers to John Goodman (cameo-ing as a motorcycle cop who has pulled her over). It was terrible. By comparison, Sorkin's sneaking the information to us works pretty well.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 09:59 pm (UTC)I agree with you. And I think it will just get better as we move forward. According to the TV critics who've seen three episodes so far - it does. Exposition is hard to do well. Sorkin doesn't do a bad job of it though - he kept my interest. It was one of the few shows I actually enjoyed this week.