My first play, A Few Good Men, opened on Broadway when I was 28 and didn't close for another 497 performances. I followed that with an off-Broadway disaster called Making Movies. I followed that with a screen adaptation of A Few Good Men and then Malice and then The American President. I followed The American President with a 28 day stay at the Hazelden Centre in Minnesota to kick a cocaine habit. And I followed Hazelden with day work. It saved me from having to come up with an idea. And the nights. And the white piece of paper.Sorkin describes being pushed by various people into the idea of writing a show about senior White House staffers, and states, "Following my usual routine, I thought about the pilot for six months, and wrote it in four days. John [Wells] liked it. Warner Bros. liked it. Then I finally caught a break. NBC didn't want to do it." He enumerates various silly reasons executives have given throughout television history for why certain shows can't be done (among the silliest: "You can't have people with mustaches on TV" -- I guess Tom Selleck showed them), along with NBC's objections to Sorkin's pilot ("Washington shows/political shows don't work"). For the time being, the script just sat on a shelf. At this point, Sorkin got involved in writing Sports Night. (This anecdote made me laugh out loud: "Stu Bloomberg, chairman of ABC, read the [Sports Night] pilot and said he wished it was more like Frasier. I said I wished it was more like Birth of a Nation but life's full of disappointments....") He stayed busy with that for a while, meeting Tommy Schlamme during the course of that show's run. Sorkin then drops discussion of Sports Night altogether, because at this point there were some changes in the executive at NBC and the new guys ordered The West Wing. Sorkin describes the casting (including the surprising detail that Richard Schiff beat out Eugene Levy for the role of Toby Ziegler -- I think Levy's quite talented but absolutely cannot see him in this role). In reviewing the casting of the first season, he comments positively on each actor's audition or presence or star quality or what have you, but of Moira Kelly he says simply, "Moira Kelly was tapped to play Mandy Hampton." Meanwhile, he refers to the jaw-dropping reaction to Rob Lowe's audition, the socks-relocating quality of Janel Moloney's performance in the pilot, the marriage-destroying nature of Allison Janney's charms and talent, etc. Poor Moira Kelly. Sorkin also briefly addresses the overwhelmingly Caucasian casting, saying, "This was making us nervous. The network too. It also wasn't right. There was a wonderfully talented Jamaican actress who was reading very well for [C.J.'s part]. Still, when we closed our eyes at night we wanted Allison." Okay, so hardly anyone would disagree -- who doesn't want Allison? -- but then he just drops the discussion of race in casting altogether. Dulé Hill doesn't get mentioned at all (and then, only in passing) until a couple of sentences from the end of the introduction. Typical of his apparently short attention span, Sorkin moves right along to tell the tale of casting Martin Sheen as President Jed Bartlet and shares, script-style, the dialogue he had with Sheen when they first spoke about the show. Amusingly, Sheen seemed unconvinced that Sorkin actually knew who Sheen was, despite having cast him as the Chief of Staff in The American President. What a humble guy. Sorkin closes with a few remarks about what a great and influential directing style Schlamme possesses, and asks us to remember the contributions made to the show by each of the lead actors, and then the script for the pilot begins. Each of the other scripts has a short preface with a few remarks pertinent to that episode. There's not a lot I can say about the scripts that I haven't already said in the recaps -- I recapped five of the six episodes here -- but for me it's entertaining to read the scripts to see how Sorkin intended the sentences to be structured, and what emphasis he gave them, and how they differ from my perception and transcription thereof. One of the most challenging things about recapping is trying to represent the dialogue accurately, not just in the word-for-word sense (and God bless closed captioning, because there are days that Richard Schiff makes my job rather difficult), but in writing it down so that it conveys the right tone and mood to the reader (who may not have seen the show -- who may, in fact, never get to see the show). I spend a lot of time trying to get that just right, and with a show this wordy, it ain't easy. It's kind of like Babelfish for TV: Sorkin writes it, the actors give it life, and I try to put it back on paper (or screen, more accurately).
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It's also entertaining to read the stage directions and little asides from Sorkin; for instance, in Part I of "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen," when Secret Service Agent Gina Toscano is being questioned by Tommy Cho about what kind of cap the one shooter was wearing, he inserts, before her reply, "(beat--boy is this the wrong answer)." And I love this bit from "17 People": right after Toby questions Jed about whether he was making decisions about the India/Pakistan situation while he was in the middle of an MS attack or episode, Toby states, "You were in the Situation Room as Commander in Chief." Bartlet replies, "I know, I can't believe we're all still here." Sorkin's note following this exchange is: "TOBY is staring at BARTLET. 'How the fuck can you make a joke about that?' BARTLET's staring right back at TOBY. 'Yeah, I made the fuckin' joke, you got a problem I can help you with?'" (Reading this and knowing how Sorkin chafes against network television's profanity rules makes one wonder what the show would sound like if he had his druthers.) The book features a colour photo of the third-season cast on the cover (all looking very fine, indeed, and may I just say, Professor Frink has a shirt exactly the colour and style of the one Toby's wearing), but otherwise there are just three black-and-white photographs in the book: a close-up of Sorkin looking directly at the camera, a candid snap of him (probably at a table reading), and a photo near the end of Sorkin with the cast and crew applauding someone at a table reading in the Roosevelt Room. At the end there's a detailed list of Sorkin's accomplishments and awards. There are a few vexing typos (not the least of which is rendering the name of Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler's name as "Knoffler"), but the way publishing standards have fallen (one of the all-time top ten on my Waiting List of Nurseable Grudges), the lack of proofreading hardly bears mentioning. The look and presentation of the book is generally quite sober and presidential. For those looking for a flashy or fluffy book with lots of photos and colour and celebrity juice all over it, this isn't what you want. If, however, you are one of those people who simply can't get enough of Sorkin's writing, and enjoy savouring its every detail, this book is a must-have.1 2 3