My Love for everything Sorkinesque
I love Aaron Sorkin. I love the way he can make normal conversations into a political, cultural minefield. Every movie, every series that I have seen, you see people saying exactly the right thing and with such conviction at the right time, you keep thinking why can’t real life be like this? A perfectly orchestrated mental bacchanalia.
I have been over indulging the last few weeks. Newsroom got over so I switched to West Wing. I never watched it, one because it was not one of those series my classmates in grad school were into at the time. The more I watched it, the more I fell in love with the way these characters talked. Every episode is a treat even when you that it is so over the top that you want to say “cmon! That’s not possible” because they speak with such conviction and sound so earnest that you want it to be true. I finally closed the chapter with American President which might not be the best of the movies but the dialogue (oh, the dialogue!). I fell in love with this movie when I was in class 12 when I had no idea who the writer was (and that he had a cameo in the movie!)
In the mean time I have been reading all about the media attention that surrounded Newsroom (this was strictly during office hours when I couldn’t indulge in series watching). Every one of the so called serious journalists are pissed off at Sorkin because he is making a mockery of the their profession. But even these naysayers cannot pretend to not like it, it’s the show that they so want to hate but are still watching it, waiting for him to mess it up. His shows/ movies are to be taken with a grapefruit-sized grain of salt. But they are so sleek and buoyant in ways that have very nearly gone out of style that you can’t not enjoy them.
I have been over indulging the last few weeks. Newsroom got over so I switched to West Wing. I never watched it, one because it was not one of those series my classmates in grad school were into at the time. The more I watched it, the more I fell in love with the way these characters talked. Every episode is a treat even when you that it is so over the top that you want to say “cmon! That’s not possible” because they speak with such conviction and sound so earnest that you want it to be true. I finally closed the chapter with American President which might not be the best of the movies but the dialogue (oh, the dialogue!). I fell in love with this movie when I was in class 12 when I had no idea who the writer was (and that he had a cameo in the movie!)
In the mean time I have been reading all about the media attention that surrounded Newsroom (this was strictly during office hours when I couldn’t indulge in series watching). Every one of the so called serious journalists are pissed off at Sorkin because he is making a mockery of the their profession. But even these naysayers cannot pretend to not like it, it’s the show that they so want to hate but are still watching it, waiting for him to mess it up. His shows/ movies are to be taken with a grapefruit-sized grain of salt. But they are so sleek and buoyant in ways that have very nearly gone out of style that you can’t not enjoy them.
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