The Newsroom premiere

[Recreant]

I found it pretty uneven. It got really good once the BP stuff started though.

I can't stand Thomas Newman's music in this. The music during the opening credits made me expect to see Forrest Gump as an anchor.

[Ire]

Also, edge. I expected more edge. Sorkin has carte blanche doesn't he? It's HBO not TNT. It felt pg-13 very pg-13.

And I don't mean will mcavoy snorting blow off of an intern's ass, well, maybe gratuitous sex in a cubicle wouldn't suck. But edgy characters if not mcavoy then supporting characters and moral quandaries with downsides. Last night was pretty much all win.

Has writing for the movies mollified Mr. Sorkin?

[TheKeenGuy]

Feels very much like the blend of SPORTS NIGHT and THE WEST WING that I expected it to be.

Nowhere near the quality of WEST WING, but that show was lightning in the bottle, especially when it came to the indelible casting.

I get the feeling there will be some tweaks between the pilot and the rest of the season. We haven't even been introduced to Olivia Munn's character. I'll have to wait for the Blu-Ray though. Only saw the pilot because HBO put it on YouTube.

By the way, did anyone else think at first that the other news anchor was played by SOUTH PARK's Matt Stone?

[mge457]

An article from Deadline earlier today:

Aaron Sorkin's "Sorkinisms" (AKA Self-Plagarism)

Hollywood has never concerned itself with self-plagiarizing. Ergo this video, which calls itself a “tribute to the work of Aaron Sorkin: the recycled dialogue, recurring phrases, and familiar plot lines. This is not intended as a critique but rather a playful excursion through Sorkin’s wonderful world of words…” (And I have swampland in Arizona to sell you.) Let’s see how long it takes before Sorkin’s new HBO series The*Newsroom starts relying on Sorkinisms.

EDIT - The video also forgot 'never ever sick at sea' in both Malice and Charlie Wilson's War.

I think if anyone had written even a 10th of what he's done, there is bound to be significant overlap. While repeated, it's some of the finest dialogue I've ever heard (not that my opinion means **** though).

Fun fact: He wrote season 1 of The West Wing, while also writing season 2 of Sports Night. That's 45 episodes of network television in 1 year!

[JoeBanks]

Cocaine is a helluva drug

[Deion22]

Ya, he was on that white girl heavy. Real heavy.

[SI_NYC]

Any show about TV News sooner or later drops in the obligatory Murrow and Cronkite integrity speech (as in the premiere). I hope if it comes up again Sorkin finds a way to get a variation of this one in (below) because it seems to have held up.

"If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable."

[jboffer]

Originally Posted by mge457

An article from Deadline earlier today:

Aaron Sorkin's "Sorkinisms" (AKA Self-Plagarism)



EDIT - The video also forgot 'never ever sick at sea' in both Malice and Charlie Wilson's War.

I think if anyone had written even a 10th of what he's done, there is bound to be significant overlap. While repeated, it's some of the finest dialogue I've ever heard (not that my opinion means **** though).

Fun fact: He wrote season 1 of The West Wing, while also writing season 2 of Sports Night. That's 45 episodes of network television in 1 year!

Wow. That was ridiculous.

[holly]

he is beyond sick and a genuis. he's uneven in the way only people that manic can be. in so many hours of writing, who can fault him for a repeated character line here or name there?
btw, he was writing a bizillon hours of tv at once - also developing that much more tv and movies at the same time. hated that premiere and literallly threw a shoe at the tv - but i have never walked in those shoes. can only hope to.

[nic.h]

Originally Posted by holly

but i have never walked in those shoes. can only hope to.

My nerdy dream is to one day write for one of his shows. Any one of them will do. Even just once. That's all I ask. Any. Single. One.

I don't need to walk in his shoes. Just right next to them.