Well, it’s better than More as this Story Develops.
Various sources are reporting that the new Aaron Sorkin show about a left-leaning cable news show (like Keith Olbermann’s) will be called Newsroom. Which is fine, and pithy, and functional, if a bit blah. But then again, naming a show after a building didn’t hurt The West Wing. Now get Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford in there, stat!
Actually, the cast does seem to be shaking out for Newsroom. Jeff Daniels and Sam Waterston can carry a show by any measure, while the new pretty faces on the rest of IMDB’s lineup will prove their worth in Sorkin-words-per-minute when the show airs. Meanwhile we have a little snip of dialogue from the show:
Will: Charlie, I can’t go after Halliburton and miss.
Charlie: Oh report the goddam news, Will.
Will: You remember a guy named Dan Rather?
Charlie: Dan got it right.
Will: He’s no longer on television.
Not exactly the stuff we’d be parading around as an example of brilliance, but it’s likely the rest of the script is too thorny and interdependent to withstand a small taster like this. There is something so purely Sorkinesque about it, though: the clean slice through the spin of real-world events. Whether or not you agree with Rather’s claim that the Bush military documents were, in the end, real, it’s fairly obvious (if never acknowledged) that his retirement from 60 Minutes was related to the scandal. Countless articles, Wiki pages, apoplectic Daily Kos readers: Sorkin boils it to two lines.
Who else can’t wait for this?
