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Politics Schmolitics, Uncategorized

Aaron on the Side of Caution

The problem with The Trial of the Chicago 7 begins with the title. The eponym of the court case that charged several antiwar activists with causing a riot during the 1968 Democratic convention implies seven coequal protagonists, an obvious impediment to the tidy storytelling expected of a 130 minute movie. By necessity, such an adaptation will leave a lot on the cutting room floor. If the viewer accepts this artistic license, however, they must still reckon with what writer/director Aaron Sorkin added and what he omitted, and why. Overwhelmingly, his narrative decisions were made to tamp down partisan conflict, and to declaw a group of people whose radicalism would both offend and shame the film’s target audience of modern liberals. 

Many wings of the antiwar movement of the 1960s and 70s, especially the Yippie strand led by Chicago Seven defendant Abbie Hoffman, forwarded an explicit goal of “heightening the contradictions” between activists and the violent repression exacted against them by the government. At every conceivable turn of The Trial of the Chicago 7, Sorkin does the opposite, jumping through hoops to reduce the distance between radicals like Hoffman and the prosecutors who sought to put him in prison for a decade. It appears Sorkin’s main objective was to make all the defendants acceptable to viewers whose ideal mode of activism is a BLM mural sponsored by Shell Oil. 

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the larger Sorkin-verse and its smothering brand of centrism (or to anyone who knows Sorkin took on the job of chronicling the Chicago Seven before he’d even heard of them). There is, however, an important distinction between forwarding a worldview through the vehicle of fictional characters and forwarding that worldview through history. If one could argue the bipartisan utopia of Sorkin’s presidential drama The West Wing rendered liberals completely unprepared for the blunt savagery of the GOP in the twenty-first century, the inciting media was still a fantasy, one that proclaimed This is how politics should be. Whereas The Trial of the Chicago 7 purports to tell us how politics were, and are. This is why a corrective is desperately needed. 

Continue reading Aaron on the Side of Caution →
Studio 60 on Roosevelt Avenue

Studio 60 on Roosevelt Avenue: Episode 12

STUDIO 60 ON ROOSEVELT AVENUE
EPISODE 11
WRITTEN COMPLETELY BY AARON SORKIN TOTALLY ALONE AND UNDER GREAT DURESS
RELIVE THE EXCITING INAUGURAL SEASON!
PILOT | EPISODE 2 | EPISODE 3 | EPISODE 4 |
EPISODE 5 | EPISODE 6 | EPISODE 7 | EPISODE 8
EPISODE 9 | EPISODE 10 | EPISODE 11

LOGLINE: Once the nation’s best and most respected baseball GM, Sandy Alderson has been reduced to trying to revive a moribund franchise in the depths of deepest, darkest Queens. Along with his sharp-witted and adoring protégés, he fights off the seemingly endless series of controversies and crises that beset him while trying to run a sports team in the country’s most bustling metropolis, and still look fantastic while doing it. Can the pressures of such an important job crush this singularly talented and gifted individual genius?

ACT I

The office. PAUL DEPODESTA and J.P. RICCIARDI are standing near a Xerox machine as it whirs away, crumpling up pieces of copy paper and shooting them, basketball style, into a large, overflowing recycling bin.

DEPODESTA
If you could be any tyrant in history, who would you be?

RICCIARDI
Define “tyrant.”

DEPODESTA
Autocratic giant ruling his land with an iron fist.

RICCIARDI
Why would I want to be that?

DEPODESTA
Imagine you had no choice. Which one would you pick that would be the least distasteful to you?

RICCIARDI
I guess…Louis XIV. Seems like you’d be pretty far removed from most of the horror, and you could wear powdered wigs. How about you?

DEPODESTA
Abraham Lincoln.

RICCIARDI
What?! Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a tyrant!

DEPODESTA
The South thought he was. That’s why Booth yelled “sic semper tyrannus!” just before he shot him.

RICCIARDI
That’s a loophole. I didn’t know I could pick Lincoln.

DEPODESTA
Shoulda come with me on that trip to Gettysburg.

MACKENZIE CARLIN walks in, looking annoyed.

CARLIN
What are you two doing? You’re supposed to be copying all the 40-man-roster salary info for today’s meeting.

DEPODESTA
We are. And while we do, we are having a very important discussion abut tyranny, while also playing recycling bin basketball.

RICCIARDI
And I’m winning, mostly because I didn’t call Abe Lincoln a tyrant.

CARLIN
[grabbing the overflowing recycling bin] Is somebody gonna clean this thing out?

RICCIARDI
Yes, I assume somebody will. Could you put it down? I’m trying to line up a three pointer.

CARLIN
[rooting through the trash] What is this?

RICCIARDI
It’s you looking through garbage, for some reason.

CARLIN
No, this.

CARLIN pulls out something from the trash. It looks like a card. She shows it to RICCIARDI and DEPODESTA, who immediately look intrigued.

Cut to DAVID EINHORN’s office. He’s sitting on the edge of his desk with a large square of grass-covered sod in each hand, weighing them carefully. He hears a knock at his door.

EINHORN
Come in, but this better be important. I’m trying to choose grass for my dog’s new putting green.

CARLIN, RICCIARDI, and DEPODESTA enter.

CARLIN
I thought you’d want to see this.

CARLIN hands EINHORN the card. He too is immediately intrigued.

Continue reading Studio 60 on Roosevelt Avenue: Episode 12 →

Studio 60 on Roosevelt Avenue

Studio 60 on Roosevelt Avenue: Episode 11

STUDIO 60 ON ROOSEVELT AVENUE
EPISODE 11
WRITTEN COMPLETELY BY AARON SORKIN TOTALLY ALONE AND UNDER GREAT DURESS
RELIVE THE EXCITING INAUGURAL SEASON!
PILOT | EPISODE 2 | EPISODE 3 | EPISODE 4 |
EPISODE 5 | EPISODE 6 | EPISODE 7 | EPISODE 8
EPISODE 9 | EPISODE 10

LOGLINE: Once the nation’s best and most respected baseball GM, Sandy Alderson has been reduced to trying to revive a moribund franchise in the depths of deepest, darkest Queens. Along with his sharp-witted and adoring protégés, he fights off the seemingly endless series of controversies and crises that beset him while trying to run a sports team in the country’s most bustling metropolis, and still look fantastic while doing it. Can the pressures of such an important job crush this singularly talented and gifted individual genius?

ACT I

SANDY ALDERSON enters the front office through a large set of glass doors and is immediately flanked by J.P. RICCIARDI, PAUL DEPODESTA, and MACKENZIE CARLIN, who trail him as he walks through the office

ALDERSON
So what’s the bad news, chums?

RICCIARDI
A Native American civil rights group believes our stadium was built on a Seminole burial ground.

ALDERSON
Inform them there were never Seminole tribes in this area but we have the utmost respect for their ancient and sacred beliefs nonetheless. Next?

DEPODESTA
Our new third baseman wants a patch on his uniform to commemorate Jerry Garcia.

ALDERSON
If he can sew it on himself, he’s welcome to. Next?

CARLIN
The city’s board of health has traced an outbreak of swine flu back to one of our concession stands.

ALDERSON
Then I guess we’re sending out for pizza today. Is that all? Sounds like an easy day, by my standards.

CARLIN
No, there is also a huge guy in a muscle tee in your office, demanding to speak with you.

ALDERSON
We didn’t lead with that, huh?

CARLIN
Always put your best stuff last.

ALDERSON enters his office and sees JOSE CANSECO sitting at his desk, feet up, frantically mashing a cable remote and flipping through channels on a large wall-mounted flat screen. An enormous, messy meatball sub sits on the desk. CANSECO is wearing very faded zubaz and a muscle tee that stops just above a protruding gut.

CANSECO
Do you guys get the pay porn channels here? I think this girl I knew in rehab is gonna be on one of ‘em in like five minutes.

ALDERSON
By all means, make yourself at home.

CANSECO
I already have.

ALDERSON
Yes, clearly. I was being…never mind. What do you want?

CANSECO
Don’t you wish they could make, like, a buffalo meatball? You got buffalo wings and buffalo chicken sandwiches but no buffalo meatballs? How come nobody’s done that yet? I would eat the hell out of a buffalo meatball sub. I’d eat the hell out of two of ‘em. Not even blink, man. I don’t care what I do.

ALDERSON
What do you want from me, Jose?

CANSECO
Remember when we talked in the parking lot the other day, Sandy?

ALDERSON
Yes, I recall you scaring me half to death, then ending our meeting with a vague threat.

CANSECO
C’mon, that’s all water over the bridge. I’m here because I can help you, Sandy.

ALDERSON
Yes, my office was dangerously low on marinara stains. I appreciate you helping out in that department.

CANSECO
No, in the playoff hunt! If you guys wanna make a run at the championship cup, you’re gonna need a bat like mine in your lineup.

ALDERSON
You do realize that at this point in the season, we can’t add any more players, because if we did, we’d have to expose someone on our 40-man roster to waivers, which…what am I saying, of course you don’t realize that.

CANSECO
Just gimme a tryout, Sandy. Let me prove there’s still some sugar left in this gas tank!

ALDERSON
Why do you even want to play baseball again? You look like you’ve been exercising to a John Belushi workout routine.

CANSECO
Because I miss it, Sandy. The crowds, the cheers, and yeah, even the boos. I miss the way I felt when I would walk out on a baseball field—alive, truly alive. I haven’t felt that way in years, and I want to feel it again, even if it’s just once before I die. And I also have at least three exes on my ass for child support payments. They repossessed my PS3, man!

ALDERSON
Fine. I’ll call up the coaches and scouts and get them to…

CANSECO
No, Sandy, I want you to give me a tryout. Throw me some BP. It’ll be just like old times!

ALDERSON
I never threw batting practice in Oakland.

CANSECO
I mean the old times the way they oughta be!

ALDERSON
[sighs] Fine, just give me a minute.

ALDERSON skirts around the desk and grabs the doorknob for his private bathroom.

CANSECO
I wouldn’t go in there. Someone clogged it up real good.

ALDERSON
Was that someone you?

CANSECO
I’m not sayin’ nothing. I ain’t no snitch!

Continue reading Studio 60 on Roosevelt Avenue: Episode 11 →