September 27, 2000
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript: Allison Janney
PBS.com
 | The Emmy-winning "West Wing" actress discusses how her tough-talking press secretary, C.J., compares to her real-life White House ounterparts. The following are extended excerpts of her interview with the NewsHour. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. |
ALLISON JANNEY: The first thing I did was panic because I knew nothing about politics, nothing. I didn't follow the political races, nothing, and I was kind of terrified to enter into this world I knew nothing about. And so Dee Dee Myers very graciously took me out for dinner, and we talked about her job. I think the most interesting thing that Dee Dee Myers told me was that a lot of what goes on in the White House, in terms of who talks to who, it's all just personality driven, as opposed to what your job is and who you're supposed to talk to. It's not about that. And so as a woman, it was just twice as hard for her to be in with the right group and know what she needed to know. She was invaluable.
And then I read Howard Kurtz's "Spin Cycle," which was pretty informative. But I am lucky enough to have Aaron [Sorkin, the show's creator] write what I have to say. So just have to go up there and just act like I know what I'm talking about, which is what they do, too, but they really know what they're talking about.
Keeping pace with the press
TERENCE SMITH: One of the things that your character does that people like Marlin Fitzwater and Joe Lockhart say is true to life is that the press secretary is always racing to catch up, to find out what's going on. Do you have that sense?
ALLISON JANNEY: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it is a very difficult job because you are the servant of two masters. And Joe Lockhart, once, actually let me start a press briefing in Washington, and it was strange. I felt strangely comfortable, though, going in there. But [UPI White House correspondent] Helen Thomas came up to me afterwards, and she said, "I just want to give you some advice. As the press secretary, you represent the American people. That's who you represent. You can't--" I mean, she was basically telling me that I had to tell, give up the goods to the press and to the people because that was where my duty lay, where my obligation was and not to the president. And I was like, "Well, Helen, I'll take that under consideration."
TERENCE SMITH: That's funny.
ALLISON JANNEY: It is. I don't know how they do it. But Joe Lockhart, and Dee Dee Myers, and Mike McCurry, all three of whom I've met, are all, they're great people. They're smart, and they're funny, and interesting, and I just really enjoyed meeting all three of them.
TERENCE SMITH: How important is it for your character to be as real and credible as possible?
ALLISON JANNEY: Part of the reason why "West Wing" works so well, I think, is it gives a human face to these people who work in these extraordinary jobs that we all know from the news, but you never get to see the human side of these people.
Truth in fiction?
TERENCE SMITH: Do you think it is possible, within the limits of dramatic license, to convey the truth of what goes on in the White House even better in a fictional show than conventional news reporting can do?
ALLISON JANNEY: Yes, because I think that the news reporters generally have a certain bias or a story they're looking for that's maybe not the real story, and they're sort of cynical in a way, so you maybe don't get to hear the whole story in the newspaper. And in our show, you get to see what comes out on the news, but you also get to see what happened before that story came out to the news--like what the president went through to have to make a decision whether to bomb this country or put someone to death. You get to see what he personally goes through as a man struggling with his own beliefs.
TERENCE SMITH: You dealt with a subject in the first season, the census, and the idea of undercounting the census that most news organizations don't touch.
ALLISON JANNEY: No. And I thought Aaron was crazy. I read that, and I was like, "Well, this is going to be the most boring thing ever." And then as we did it, we had such a good time, and I learned, right along with C.J., as did my friends who watched the show. And now I can guarantee you everyone who saw that show is going to fill out their census because they saw how, and they learned how important it actually was and what it means.
TERENCE SMITH: In fact, the show is really very issue heavy.
ALLISON JANNEY: Yes, it is. It is. It's the White House, and I guess it has to be.
TERENCE SMITH: And yet the public seems to be ready to take it in.
ALLISON JANNEY: I know. It's unbelievable. It's a wonderful sign, though. I mean, I guess they really were hungry for it, if they're watching it. You know, there must have been a need that Aaron has filled. It's just extraordinary. I think it's a good sign that, that people are interested in it.
Political and personal conflict
TERENCE SMITH: The only complaints I've heard, in fact, are from pretty conservative Republicans who are unhappy with the fact that the show and the presidency depicted in it is that of a liberal Democratic president.
ALLISON JANNEY: Yes. This is what I would say to them, this season, in particular, Aaron is focusing on the Republican side of things, too, to bring in more conflict, which is going to be more interesting and fiery. We're bringing on a new character for a while that's a Republican, who's going to be working for Bartlet, and we have, you know, Marlin Fitzwater now as a consultant, who is Republican. And I think that Aaron really recognizes the potential there for some great story lines because great drama is all about conflict, and what's a better conflict than Republican-Democrat. So I think that Republicans might be happy with the way things are going to happen this season, in terms of their side is going to be definitely more apparent.
TERENCE SMITH: The people who have had this job before, the Joe Lockharts and the Marlin Fitzwaters, do have trouble envisioning an ongoing relationship, a romantic relationship, between a press secretary and a member of the press.
ALLISON JANNEY: I do too. C.J. does too. And I sort of think that that relationship is not going to be going any further. I think that Danny, Tim Busfield's character, wants it to, and that'll be interesting stuff to play, too, because I think that C.J. has definitely decided this is not good because it's already come up in her professional life, where people are asking, "Are you making that decision because of Danny or because of, you know, what's really going on?" And that's not good.
TERENCE SMITH: And is she cutting it off or deciding to end it for that reason?
ALLISON JANNEY: Yes.
TERENCE SMITH: The internal conflict.
ALLISON JANNEY: I think she would never let anyone know what her real feelings were for Danny. She probably cares about him a lot more than she lets on, but it's not going to go any further.
TERENCE SMITH: Joe Lockhart had a fun observation. He said that watching the show, he liked it that whenever C.J. was cut out of the loop, something bad happens.
ALLISON JANNEY: I love that. Anything to let people know that you can't leave the press secretary out of the loop or you're going to be in trouble.
TERENCE SMITH: How literally do you think viewers, take this show as a representation of life in the West Wing?
ALLISON JANNEY: I think it's what they hope life is like in the West Wing because these are all good people trying to do the right thing, and I think they really want it to be what it's like. And from the people that I've personally met in the West Wing, I would say that we're pretty right on track. They're pretty great, wonderful people that work in the White House in this administration. I mean, it's the only one I've met or had the opportunity to get close to, but they all seem like really wonderful people who really care about their jobs and what they're doing.
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript: Aaron Sorkin
PBS.com
 | "The West Wing" writer and creator talks about how the line between fantasy and reality factors in when he plots out the program. The following are extended excerpts of his interview with the NewsHour. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. |
AARON SORKIN: There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.
TERENCE SMITH: Right. And it's our king and it's our palace.
AARON SORKIN: That's right. So obviously it's a fascinating world. There really isn't a story that you can't tell inside of it. It's very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you're not at all limited. It's populated by people who, by and large, have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me, it was just a great area for storytelling.
The timing of the creation
TERENCE SMITH: Was the timing of this creation in any way pegged to or motivated by the huge attention on the White House vis-a-vis the Monica Lewinsky affair?
AARON SORKIN: No. I think, if anything, it was slightly hindered by it. The show was meant to premiere a year before it had. I turned in the pilot script of the episode to Warner Brothers and to NBC I think about three weeks [after] Monica Lewinsky came on our radar screen. And at that point, there was a feeling that there was a bit of a "snicker" factor attached to the White House and that we wouldn't be able to do the show, the kind of show that we wanted to do.
TERENCE SMITH: You made a decision, obviously, not to include that aspect of the Clinton White House.
AARON SORKIN: Absolutely. And it's too bad because there's actually, you know, there's some great stories you can get out of scandals. But they've already done it. So, yes, a conscious decision not to include any of that.
TERENCE SMITH: Right. You tackle some very heavy issues, important national and international issues. Why so issue heavy?
AARON SORKIN: It's important to remember that, first and foremost, if not only, this is entertainment. "The West Wing" isn't meant to be good for you. We're not telling anyone to eat their vegetables, and we do not consider it important in the sense that you're saying.
TERENCE SMITH: In the news sense.
AARON SORKIN: Exactly. Our responsibility is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. That said, there is tremendous drama to be gotten from the great, what you would say, heavy issues. There's also drama to be gotten from issues that most people would consider very dry and wouldn't want to pay any attention to. Those are the fields you're going to plant. Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word "census," and people fall asleep. It's a questionnaire. It turns out it's terribly important. There is a genuine issue there with two sides who disagree fairly passionately on it. Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That's what I look for.
TERENCE SMITH: It's interesting, we went back and looked at the news coverage of the census, and it was barely there at all. You devoted an episode to it.
AARON SORKIN: Yeah. Well, you know, I have a luxury that news outlets don't. I can tell stories, and it's more difficult for them to tell a story. With news, "It's just the facts, ma'am." I already have a built in set of characters that an audience enjoys being with for an hour. In other words, I already have their attention, and I have the luxury of making it fun, which news organizations don't and probably shouldn't.
A Valentine to public service
TERENCE SMITH: That raises a question that perhaps you can get at issues, including serious issues, that news organizations find hard to do.
AARON SORKIN: It raises a question, and it also raises a problem, which is that, as I said, my first, if not only, obligation is to entertain. A news organization has a much different responsibility. I might not be telling you the whole story. I might not be telling you a story in a manner that is properly sophisticated. I would hate for anyone to limit the scope of their education on a subject to me. And, frankly, every teacher I've ever had in my life would agree with what I've just said.
TERENCE SMITH: And yet polls show that the American public draws some, or even a lot, of information about politics from late-night comedy and perhaps the White House from "The West Wing."
AARON SORKIN: Perhaps. And because of that, despite the fact, once again, we're writing a television show here and not a newspaper, we do take that responsibility seriously. We want people to have faith in us. I can justify those two things by simply saying, when that stops happening, when we lose our credibility, the show isn't as good.
TERENCE SMITH: How important is reality, to be faithful to the facts?
AARON SORKIN: Well, and I don't want to get too fine with you here. But the appearance of reality is more important than reality. What do I mean by that? We're about to shoot an episode on Air Force One, for instance, and we're going to take liberties, small liberties, with Air Force One, as we take small liberties with our White House set. You are going to absolutely believe this is Air Force One, and it's going to have the effect that we want it to. And that's all that matters.
If it's important that you, the first thing that's important is that you buy that this is a real White House. And it's not necessarily true that I need to make a real White House in order to sell that to you.
TERENCE SMITH: Do you believe that it is possible for a dramatic show like this to actually get at the truth of what happens in the White House more successfully than conventional news reporting?
AARON SORKIN: Well, what a show like this will do that conventional news reporting can't, is, we can show you the two minutes before and after what you see on CNN. By and large, what you're going to see on the news, what you're going to read in the newspaper is the result of something that's happened at the White House, and there isn't much of an opportunity to see how they arrived [at] that. And that behind-the-scenes element is important to me, it's important to the show.
You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we're presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated -- not nearly as black and white as we're led to believe. There, by and large, aren't good guys and bad guys. You're talking about very learned people capable of arguing both sides of an issue, and it's that process that I enjoy dramatizing.
TERENCE SMITH: You also make them, the characters in this show, largely high minded about public service and what they're doing.
AARON SORKIN: Yeah. They're fairly heroic. That's unusual in American popular culture, by and large. Our leaders, government people are portrayed either as dolts or as Machiavellian somehow. The characters in this show are neither. They are flawed, to be sure, because you need characters in drama to have flaws. But they, all of them, have set aside probably more lucrative lives for public service. They are dedicated not just to this president, but to doing good, rather than doing well. The show is kind of a valentine to public service. It celebrates our institutions. It celebrates education often. These characters are very well educated, and while sometimes playfully snobby about it, there is, in all of them, a love of learning and appreciation of education.
TERENCE SMITH: What are some of the issues you're going to tackle in the second season?
AARON SORKIN: Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight. But I can tell you, thus far, education is a constant thing that comes up--a nuclear test ban treaty, Social Security, AIDS in Africa in our fourth episode. I worry. I feel like I say these things, and I can hear people clicking off their remote controls across the country. I just hope that, by now, people trust that no matter how heavy or no matter how dry an issue might be, we are always adhering to our first rule, which is you have to have a good time while you're with us.
Liberal or conservative?
TERENCE SMITH: Let's look at the politics of this show. This is a liberal Democratic president. How did you decide to make it that way?
AARON SORKIN: Well, that was easy. My father wouldn't let me in the house if it wasn't. I think what's important is that the tendency probably in television would be, if you were going to do a show like this, you better have a White House that drives down the middle of the road, one designed to bother as few people as possible. This is a White House, particularly early on in the season, that bothered quite a few people, people on the right.
And I'd like to say a couple of things about that, if you don't mind. One is that I don't think that television shows or, for that matter, movies or plays or paintings or songs can be liberal or conservative. I think that they can only be good or bad. I think that if this is to be a credible White House, we are very familiar with the vocabulary of government now. We all read the newspapers, we all watch the news. There are going to be words like Democrat and Republican. People are going to take sides, and people are going to argue.
The characters on the show are capable of arguing all sides of an issue. Oftentimes, their position is not what you'd expect it to be. In the third episode last season, Bartlet took a position on a military response that was so hawkish it frightened the joint chiefs. But, finally, if you don't mind a bit of a sales pitch, the show has, in some quarters on the right, has been attacked for being too liberal. And at a time when the FTC report has come out and Hollywood is being scolded, I think it's a good idea to notice that "The West Wing" is a show that has no gratuitous violence, no gratuitous sex. It has featured the character of the president of the United States kneeling on the floor of the Oval Office and praying. This, I would think, would be exactly what conservative Republicans would want to see on television.
TERENCE SMITH: Are you going to ever have Bartlet run for re-election? I mean, are we going to see an election in the show?
AARON SORKIN: We are. Well, in fact, the universe of "The West Wing" is two years off of reality. So we have midterm elections this season, and they are eager to win the House back. In the season opening two-part episode, we go into extended flashback sequences to three years ago the original primary campaign, showing how all of these people came together in the first place. But hopefully we'll be on the air long enough so that he can run for election again.
TERENCE SMITH: Is there anything you want to tell people about the premiere?
AARON SORKIN: No. The premiere, interestingly, as I said, it's a two-parter that I had written assuming that it was going to be aired over two weeks, and it's now going to be aired back-to-back. And I've seen it many, many times now, and I'm just concerned that somehow I forgot something in the writing of it, where if you air it on the same night, it won't work. But other than that, I hope they enjoy it, and we're very proud of the episode. It's a very ambitious episode, the most ambitious we've done.
TERENCE SMITH: You've got a cliff hanger to resolve. You do that right away?
AARON SORKIN: We do do that right away. Anyone who wants to know who got hit is going to find out in the first 90 seconds. We are telling two stories at once. We're telling the story of the shooting happened at about 10 o'clock at night, and we're telling the story of the next 12 or 14 hours of what happens when the president is shot at. And needless to say, the world wakes up in the middle of the night.
It's very serious, from the military implications and whatnot, to an interesting constitutional question. The constitution only gives the vice president authority in the event of the president's death or if the Cabinet has voted on the 25th Amendment. Absent that, the vice president isn't an understudy. He doesn't automatically get this authority. I can't tell you how, but the issue comes up in this episode, as well as any number of other things.
September 16, 2000
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript: Bradley Whitford
PBS.com
 | "The West Wing" actor who plays Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman looks at the program's tone and its differences from press coverage of the real White House. The following are extended excerpts of his interview with the NewsHour. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. |
BRADLEY WHITFORD: You need to be real enough to be believable, but you don't necessarily have to be real enough to be real. And there is a distinction. We're telling a story. And the demands of that are different from the demands of, really, a documentary. The audience must believe in order to keep faith in the story, and that's the sort of level of reality that you go to.
Checking reality
TERENCE SMITH: So to get that, how much research or work did you do about the role of a deputy chief of staff?
BRADLEY WHITFORD: Well, it was interesting, because in the end it came down pretty quickly. The Stephanopoulos book--which I retitled "Everything Brad Whitford Needs To Know To Do This TV Show"--was very helpful, just because it gave a sense of the sort of smell and the texture and the level of intimacy with the president, which I was just unaware of.
I've always been a political junkie, so I've always done a lot of political reading. I thought it was a great untapped arena, because in shows like this you have personal stories against a backdrop of inherent conflict. There is so much theatricality and so much conflict here.
And the reservation the networks always had was, "Well, everybody hates politicians"; to which my answer was always, "More than they hate lawyers?" So you know, I think just in terms of research, though, I mean, we're constantly--We are fed by, you know, each trip here [to Washington, D.C.] and any contact that we have.
TERENCE SMITH: Well, did you go and meet and talk to your counterpart?
BRADLEY WHITFORD: Yeah. And you know, the White House's view of us was always, I think, kind of comical. They were happy to be heroicized and happy to be played by people wearing makeup with music behind them. But I think they didn't have a lot of time for us to sit around their office.
Drama and news
TERENCE SMITH: Can a show like this, with dramatic license, convey the truth about a White House, even better than conventional news reporting?
BRADLEY WHITFORD: Well, I'll tell you what they can do -- and I don't know how to express this without mixing about five metaphors. But what's very interesting playing a role like this, and I think what the show does well, is it shows the context of the difficulties of these decisions. And the issue for my character every week, and the issue of the show, to an extent, every week--and here's where the metaphors get mixed--is, how dirty do your feet have to get without suffocating yourself in the mud in order to get an inch of what you really want done?
I think the difficulty of making those decisions is something that we can show in a way that the press doesn't. I think the press feels as though it loses its credibility if it isn't critical in a way that sometimes verges on a kind of bitchiness.
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript: Tommy Schlamme
PBS.com
 | The executive producer of "The West Wing" examines the parallels between his program and its famous real-life subjects. The following are extended excerpts of his interview with the NewsHour. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. |
TERENCE SMITH: How important is it that your show approximate reality?
TOMMY SCHLAMME: I think it's important to us that it be real, as close to the reality as a piece of fiction can be. And what I mean by that is, I think that we all sort of came to this project with the idea that we wanted some emotional truth. What I mean by that is not necessarily everybody said the exact things that you would say, that you would walk the exact way that you would walk, that you would read the exact things that you'd read; but that the overall essence of what it would be like to work in the West Wing would be reflected in our show.
TERENCE SMITH: And do you need, therefore, to be true to the issues that you raise, which really form a kind of backbone of the plot?
TOMMY SCHLAMME: Right.
Keeping a liberal point of view?
TERENCE SMITH: Do you need to be true to those issues, and the way a liberal Democratic president would handle them?
TOMMY SCHLAMME: I think the answer is "Yes." But as you well know being around politics, a liberal Democrat might handle an issue a multiple amount of ways; so that we then have a huge license within that. And we're also not trying to define ourselves as a completely liberal Democratic president, so that he has the ability to make some choices, which you see now in politics far more than you did 25 years ago.
TERENCE SMITH: Do you think it is possible that you can convey the background or process of a decision in the White House even better in some ways than mainstream news media?
TOMMY SCHLAMME: I don't know whether we can do it better, but I think we can do it in a way that makes an audience feel far more comfortable about it. I think that we can make an audience be able to sort of relax and watch the environment around them. When it's all over with, they're actually understanding it better than if they picked up the New York Times even and they watched your show, where they're coming there specifically to be told the truth.
Truth vs. fiction
TERENCE SMITH: Is it at all a scary notion to you that large numbers of Americans might be getting their chief impression of life in the White House and the decisions from your show?
TOMMY SCHLAMME: Yeah, of course it is. And the reason for that is not because we don't have anything to say. I think, as an American, I have something to say. As an American, you have something to say.
But I think what it is, is that it keeps us on our toes, and makes us have to be, if not truthful, at least have to be conscious that what we're saying is going to be heard and is going to shape policy to some people.
TERENCE SMITH: Do you concern yourself with the show becoming even too issue-heavy?
TOMMY SCHLAMME: Sure, we do. We are a piece of fiction, and we are there for entertainment. When we did the pilot, the idea was: "We want to entertain you. We don't want to educate you. If that happens, it's great." I think, because of the amount of press that we've gotten, because of people talking about this show exactly the way you're talking about it, [that] puts a little bit of a pressure on us that we didn't really ask for and we're not looking for. We love to talk about the census, we like to talk about, you know, any political issue we can--if it serves the drama. And that's the reason that we talk about it.
TERENCE SMITH: What are some issues that you'll deal with in the upcoming season?
TOMMY SCHLAMME: I think we have in the third or fourth episode, we have [a segment] about an African country who's coming [to the White House] for an AIDS seminar, and it's a very powerful episode. And it deals with the pharmaceutical companies; it deals with AIDS as a form of genocide in certain African nations. It's under the context of a relationship between the "President" and a leader in an African nation. That's the drama. The drama that we're interested in is their relationship as two men.
TERENCE SMITH: Right. You may be interested to know that two people we've interviewed, Marlin Fitzwater, who was in the White House, and Joe Lockhart, who is in the White House, both believe that, within the limits of dramatic license, you fairly accurately reflect life there.
TOMMY SCHLAMME: Right. It's incredibly flattering to us. Even though it was a wonderful thing to win a lot of Emmies, when we get that feedback, it means so much to us. We're working so hard to somewhat be truthful. And it's a very interesting thing. The higher up that people seem to be in politics, the more responsive they are to our show. It's somewhat the lower level, the entree level, that people are going, "No, you don't do this." You know, they're picking out the specific things that we know you don't do. But the bigger thing, which is these people are working this way, I think people are getting, which is great.
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript: John Spencer
PBS.com
 | "The West Wing" actor discusses how his character -- Leo McGarry, President Bartlet's chief of staff -- fits into the program, and how the program portrays American political thought. The following are extended excerpts of his interview with the NewsHour. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. |
JOHN SPENCER: It's always important for me as an actor to reflect human behavior for a sense of reality. So this role is no more or less important than any other role, concerning the reality factor. I mean, I think art, at best, holds up a mirror to humanity. And unless we are real human beings, something's phony there, and it's not going to be as effective.
TERENCE SMITH: To what degree have you consulted with the [White House Chief of Staff] John Podestas of this world, or the people who have done the job that you are playing?
JOHN SPENCER: After the fact. Aaron gave me a book, the writing of five different chiefs of staff, and I read it before we started the pilot after I'd been cast. And way after the fact, into our first season, I met John Podesta. And I'm just crazy about him. He's a great fellow.
We didn't talk a lot of shop. We talked sort of human stuff: the size of his office; what his hours were, as opposed to my hours. I thought I had him beat, and then I discovered not. He has to do weekends; I don't do weekends.
And then I met Leon Panetta, who is a great, great guy, too, who gave me the biggest compliment. He said, "Any government would be lucky with 'Leo' as chief of staff."
TERENCE SMITH: That's great.
JOHN SPENCER: But you see, it's only 50 percent compliment, because Leo is also Aaron Sorkin. I'm just a sort of instrument who plays him, you know.
Close to reality?
TERENCE SMITH: Do you think it's possible with a dramatic show such as yours to get close to, and maybe even closer to, the reality of how decisions are made in the White House than even conventional news reporting?
JOHN SPENCER: Well, I think you get the back story. I think you see the nuts and bolts of the events. I'm not sure, since we are first and foremost a fiction and an entertainment, that necessarily we would be more accurate than news. But we might be more all-inclusive, you know.
TERENCE SMITH: Is it a scary thought to you that some polls show that Americans--some Americans, many Americans--derive their impressions of the White House from your show?
JOHN SPENCER: It's a little scary. As I said before, I mean, our intent is to entertain. Our backdrop is Washington and the government, but we are an entertainment. We're an hour drama, not unlike other hour dramas. It's just that we're about the White House, we're about the seat of government.
TERENCE SMITH: And yet, one thing that people who have been in the White House say about it, one thing they like, is that the characters, especially you and others, are worldly but not cynical about public service.
JOHN SPENCER: Yes. Yes.
TERENCE SMITH: And is that sort of a deliberate message?
JOHN SPENCER: That's an Aaron Sorkinism. I like that, also. I mean, I think a pure reason for doing government service is indeed to serve for the good of the whole. And our administration, the "Bartlet administration," is filled with very devoted and honorable people whose desire is to serve the well-being of the American people. However, I must say, in meeting some of the staff of President Clinton's, especially the young aides and assistants, I was really impressed with the enthusiasm, the need and the desire to serve, the kind of optimistic point of view they all had. I mean, I almost thought they were working on our show.
TERENCE SMITH: Is it possible, in your view, for you and this show to get closer to the real story of what happens in the White House than it is for conventional news reporting?
JOHN SPENCER: I think so, from the standpoint that the conventional news reporters are seeing what an administration is putting out. They are not seeing behind closed doors. They are not, perhaps, seeing true relationships between human beings. We can do that.
I've often said that "The West Wing" is about human relationships, the backdrop is politics in the White House. But, basically, you know, it's about C.J., and Toby, and Leo, and these people who have worked together and formed complex friendships over the years and who are now in the White House. We don't get to see with real politicians because we don't get behind closed doors. When a politician is addressing us or when his staff is addressing us, it's a formulated situation. They are telling us what they have planned to tell us, and we see only that. We do not see what goes into that press release: the meetings, the decisions, the pros and cons. And that's what we're able, as a drama, to portray. And I think that's why, perhaps, people feel more intimate watching us because they see the human beings behind the office.
TERENCE SMITH: Have you been at all surprised by the apparent willingness, judging from the numbers and the ratings, of the audience to listen to drama about very weighty issues?
JOHN SPENCER: I am, in general, surprised, although I actually believe that audiences, for the most part, are underestimated. I think you can show a group of people something that's mediocre, and they can certainly get into it. And then you can bring something in that's a cut above, and their attention will be pulled in that direction. I'm not suure everyone could define why they're looking over there suddenly. But I think cream does rise to the top, maybe it's my optimism.
I think there was some concern when we first were going on the air that perhaps we were too heady, too complex, things moved too quickly, things were not explained. I was overjoyed that Aaron stuck by his guns and thought, you know, if people are going to come along, they will. I'm not going to pander. I'm not going to explain things ad infinitum and be tedious. And I think people do.
TERENCE SMITH: Is there, on the other side of that coin, is there any danger in people drawing policy conclusions from "The West Wing"?
JOHN SPENCER: Well, yes, there is, I would imagine. Again, I have to say, first and foremost, we're an entertainment. So you have to see us as a fictionalized representation of what's really going on. We do not influence policy. People ask me if President Clinton has watched the show. From my few brief meetings with him, having met him, I don't think he's ever seen the show
TERENCE SMITH: Leo, the character you play, he's supposed to have hard edges. Is he a cynic?
JOHN SPENCER: I don't think so. I think he's a realist, but I don't think he's cynical. I don't think a man of his age could be cynical and choose this life. All parts of Leo's life are put on hold, except his service to the government and to the president--and to his friend, who happens to be the president. So I don't think if he were too cynical he would choose that route at this point. I think he'd go into retirement or lecturing, or something like that.
An issue-based drama
TERENCE SMITH: Is it surprising to you in any way that the public has responded to an issue-based drama? Some of the issues are heavy.
JOHN SPENCER: Yeah. I find it amazing, and very encouraging. I've often thought that the viewing public has been underestimated too often by "suits" in higher positions. I think people will watch something that is good, or even less than good--perhaps mediocre; and when shown something that is better, their attention will go over to that direction. They may not be able to define why, but I think it's instinct: The cream rises to the top, if I may be so poetic. I always thought the show was great, and when I read the pilot and decided to read for it, I loved the project. I wanted to do it badly.
I had no idea how the public would respond. I heard two trains of thought. One was that people, with the impeachment trials, would be fed up with government issues. The last thing they'd want to watch is a show about government. Another point of view was, well, they'll kind of be "jones-ing" for, you know, another injection of governmental issues. You're just going to be coming in at the right time. I had no idea. In the arts, you do your best. You put it out there. You have your own belief about the quality of what you're doing. And then, what the public is going to do or not do is sort of just up in the air. You never know.
I've done good things, or things I've thought were good, that found no audience. And I've done things that I thought were so-so, and have found a great audience. So you can't predict that. That's the sort of chance unknown in the equation. It's a little scary. All you can do is do the best job.
TERENCE SMITH: What are some of the issues that you're going to tackle this next season?
JOHN SPENCER: A lot more of the political issues. We're going to go up against Congress a few times. You get to know some aspects of the workers' personal lives a little more. The "first lady" comes back to us--I say with a smile on my face, because I'm crazy about Stockard [Channing, who plays First Lady Abigail Bartlet]. And hopefully, more of the same. I can say, as great as I thought the scripts were last season, and I certainly did, the first six that I've read this season are even better. I know that's a very brazen thing to say, but in my opinion, they're even better. I think we've all, including Aaron, settled in.
Comparing stories
TERENCE SMITH: When you go at a role like this or even a particular script on one of these issues like ethanol or something, do you research it with the people who have been chiefs of staff? Other than the book, you mentioned the book already, but have talked to current or former chiefs of staff about the role?
JOHN SPENCER: I have, but not so much shop talk, especially with John Podesta, who I'm very fond of as a human being. I think he's a great fellow, and we've sort of developed a casual friendship. And it's a funny thing is that I've never talked nuts and bolts with him. I've never talked policy. We talk kind of general information, like size of office or your office is bigger than mine, or mine is painted green, yours is painted salmon.
TERENCE SMITH: But you don't go to a current or former chief of staff with a script in your hand or in your mind and say, "What would the chief of staff do in a situation like this?"
JOHN SPENCER: No. I might, if opportunity presented itself, go to a former chief of staff with that kind of thing. I would be loathe to do it to somebody who is in the administration now. I think it would be dangerous. Areas you don't want to get involved in. You know, I would probably ask Leon Panetta, who I've met and is a great fellow and gave me a, I immodestly say, a huge compliment and said that, actually, it's an Aaron Sorkin compliment, if you really come down to it, he said, "Any administration that would have Leo McGarry as a chief of staff would be very, very fortunate."
TERENCE SMITH: So that's high praise.
JOHN SPENCER: I was, I was very taken and very proud of that remark by him. But, again, that's a dance between Sorkin and myself. He writes the words, I'm the instrument that plays them, but the ideas and the words are his. So it couldn't be John Spencer being chief of staff, it would have to be John Spencer with Aaron Sorkin telling him what to do.
September 13, 2000
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript: Joe Lockhart
PBS.com
 | The White House Press Secretary for President Clinton until the end of September 2000 discusses how "The West Wing" could change public perceptions of the White House and the press. The following are extended excerpts of his interview with the NewsHour. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. |
JOE LOCKHART: I think it's great entertainment. I like to watch it. But I think that, in addition to entertaining, it raises issues that don't get raised that often, particularly with an entertainment-viewing audience. I think people who watch the news at night get exposed to what's going on in the world, and how issues are complicated, and there isn't always an easy answer, and there's some gray in governing, in politics. And I think it's exposing millions of Americans to that.
TERENCE SMITH: Give me an example of an issue that you think they brought up in a way that you think is credible.
JOE LOCKHART: They did a program where a third of the episode involved a recurring story line, and it was the debate on census and statistical sampling. And they did a better job of framing the issue, the politics on each side, and the passions on each side, than anybody in the broadcast world did throughout this debate. We've been having this debate for two years. It's a very interesting debate. It's got to do with the future, and how we're going to allocate our money. It has to do with the politics of Democrats versus Republicans. It's perfect for the kind of arguments we have here in Washington, and I can't tell you that I ever saw anybody put this story on television.
TERENCE SMITH: And they got at it better than the news shows?
JOE LOCKHART: They got at it better, they explained it more directly. The news shows mostly ignored it, and in the sense that they did cover it, they showed lots of people shouting at each other, and I think one of the things that this program does is they give you a little flavor of the shouting at each other, but they also give you a flavor of how the process works, and what it means to people.
There are thousands of people who work in this government who are either Democrats or Republicans, who come to work every day because they care, and they are committed to promoting what they think is in the best interests of this country. And you can read the papers, you can watch the news, you can listen to the radio, and you never hear a damn thing about any of them. And this show, while not real, it gives you a flavor of some of these people. That has to be a positive.
TERENCE SMITH: It actually extols public service.
JOE LOCKHART: Yeah. When this first came out, my initial question for it was, "I hope it's high quality, and I hope they try to get some things real." It was my sense that there have been other programs that have done a lot for vocations. You know, when "LA Law" was a popular program, there was a study that showed law school applications going up. When "ER" was the big program, there was a big surge in interest, I think, in becoming a doctor. If ["The West Wing"] shows people getting involved in government, in politics is actually a positive thing, and you can do good things, and it can be an honorable profession. That was my question at the beginning, and I think they've answered all the questions in a positive way. It is a quality piece of television or I wouldn't sit down and watch it more than once. I don't need to see somebody else playing me on TV. I get that all day.
Close to reality?
TERENCE SMITH: How close to reality is it?
JOE LOCKHART: My sense is, in every episode, they throw something in for an audience of about two hundred. There's one little touch in every show, whether it's the way they walk into a room, the way they say something. And it comes from the people they have helping them, just I think to keep us quiet, so we can't say, "Well, that's not real," because there's something in there--every show. I wish I could think of a good example. But every show, you know, I scratch my head and say, "Oh, I guess they did their research on this."
I think it captures some of the essence of the atmosphere here, the tension, the pace. It captures some of the balancing act that we go through between policy and politics. They obviously oversimplify every issue, in a way, so it can be entertainment rather than reality, but it's, it's a difficult job to balance those two things, and my personal opinion is they've done as well as they possibly could.
TERENCE SMITH: Do people on the White House staff come in the day after the show's on and talk about it?
JOE LOCKHART: Yeah. There's multiple conversations about different story lines that are going on, things that are in the program, things that are real, things that are not real. The biggest thing that goes on here is all the people who feel slighted. You would think that our national security team was protesting in jest, because there's no national security adviser, and foreign policy seems to be handled by a general. They're not protesting in jest. They're really mad. They're lobbying hard, and every time these guys come through here -- and they come through occasionally -- they grab them, and yell at them about, "Why don't you have more national security people?"
TERENCE SMITH: Sandy Berger does?
JOE LOCKHART: Sandy would be one who'd have to plead guilty to that.
TERENCE SMITH: Now one, one characteristic of the show is this pell-mell, rushing through the halls with running conversations on vital issues including very sensitive issues. Is that realistic?
JOE LOCKHART: Well, I took the "rap" for initially saying a 100 positive things about them and then one semi-negative thing when I said, and was quoted in the paper saying, "Who are all these people walking so quickly through the hallways?" which they had some fun with. You know, the physical pace, as you stand around here, is not quite as crowded. It's not quite as many people, but what you see is what happens. You know, policy does not always get made around a oval table. Policy gets made in the hallway, standing outside in the mess, walking to lunch, walking back from lunch. So I think they have captured a little bit of the unique process we have here, that sometimes makes sense, sometimes makes no sense. And they've done it in a way that's exciting, [but] that's not necessarily realistic. They have captured some of the essence there.
Taking on the president
TERENCE SMITH: Key members of the staff are often portrayed taking the president on, directly, on something he wants to do or doesn't want to do, and challenging him and pushing him, and saying, "You can't do that." Is that realistic? Can a staffer approach the president, push a president like that?
JOE LOCKHART: I think that that is certainly done, and in the composite of what is our workplace rules here, that is done. It's not quite done in the real-time, "I have an idea, I'm going to march into the Oval Office and challenge the president with this." It's done in a much broader context of policy moves, and sometimes what feels like a glacial pace. But the hallmark of a good staffer is someone who can challenge the president. The one kind of staffer the president doesn't want is someone who doesn't challenge him, and those people don't stay around very long. There have been some dramatic moments where a decision was being made, you know, going forward with a military campaign, making a big policy decision, where the president goes around the room and the conversation can get heated. But more often than not, it is a less entertaining process that's over time. I don't think that the portrayal that they use does any disservice to reality. It's just a condensed version of reality that's more entertaining.
TERENCE SMITH: What about the press secretary character, C.J.? What do you think of that character and the way it's portrayed, as somebody who has the job?
JOE LOCKHART: Well, I think they obviously portray her in a sympathetic light, and that's very welcome in a position where you don't get much sympathy. I think they capture the tension of trying to serve both the President and the press, and the whole concept of you can never keep everybody happy, and that if somebody's happy you're in trouble because somebody's unhappy.
But I think they have taken head on the whole idea of access, because it's crucial to the job. You can't do this job unless you have access, unless you have people who are willing to tell you everything, tell you the truth, and trust you to be careful with the information. I think we've done pretty well here. I've watched some of the programs where they focused on C.J. and the access issue, and I didn't sit and look at the [TV] and say, "Oh, I know what you mean, that happened to me, that happened to me." But I think there were some people who were in this office before I was, that actually do look at the TV and say, you know, that did happen to me, and that's a problem.
TERENCE SMITH: Well, sometimes, she is struggling to find out what's really going on, or get fully informed, or caught up with events. Is that an endemic press secretary problem?
JOE LOCKHART: I think it's absolutely a problem, but on two levels. One is it's hard to keep up with the volume. It's not a question of someone keeping something from you. There's just so much going on. There's so much input, that sometimes you just can't process it, and you just--you don't have time to go ask the right questions.
There have been previous administrations -- or even within this administration -- there have been times when the powers that be felt it was in their interest to keep the press secretary out of the loop. Thankfully, coming near the end, I think we've sorted all those problems out. But near the beginning, I'm not sure we had, and I think it's pretty well-documented by those who are involved.
That is a real issue, and what's nice about the show is they understand it, and they give you the little moral of the story at the end, which is a press secretary can't serve the function they're empowered to do as far as keeping the press and the public informed unless they're kept informed. Because every time they cut her out, something bad happens, and, you know, that's good.
Fantasy meets reality
TERENCE SMITH: Has Allison Janney [the actress who plays "The West Wing" press secretary, C.J.] come to you to talk about your job and how you do it, and how it works?
JOE LOCKHART: She doesn't call and say, "I've got this script. How would you handle that?" It's not at that level. I've probably sat and talked to her half a dozen times, and she's very interested in what it's really like.
TERENCE SMITH: Have you seen any real clunkers, things where you just shook your head and said, "No -- that isn't right, that would never happen"?
JOE LOCKHART: Their portrayal of foreign policy decision-making is much more superficial and light than their portrayal of domestic politics. They don't have all the players around the table. On domestic politics, they have a lot of players, and they do their best to portray that.
There were a couple of episodes where they had members of Congress down here, and staffers in meetings with staffers here at the White House berating the members of Congress. That doesn't happen. We're very polite. We may disagree, and we may find a way to eventually get our way, but it's not our practice to scream and yell at members of Congress while they're our guests here.
TERENCE SMITH: They have the president doing things, that I wonder if the president really does. In other words, he's firing people, he's hiring people, he's doing a lot of things, firsthand. That isn't realistic. I mean, does he? Or are those things, in fact, done by others?
JOE LOCKHART: Basically, we have a sort of funnel decision making process here, where decisions get made up the chain, and then the chief of staff will go in with a recommendation and go through 20 things a day with the president, saying staff recommends this, staff recommends that, and [the president] will make a decision. The president rarely bursts out of the Oval Office saying, "Get me so and so, I want to fire these three people," or "I want to hire these three people." That's just not effective use of the president's time. I think it goes to the tension between drama, entertainment and reality. If you put a camera in this office, or in the Oval Office, or in the chief of staff's office, you'd lose viewers within the first ten minutes, because most policy decisions are real hard-going, boring stuff. But it matters. It matters what your mining regulations are, and, and the press cares about it when something "blows up" or people start to die, or people start getting sick because someone's been lax in enforcing a regulation, or the regulation doesn't work.
TERENCE SMITH: You, you made the point at the outset that, that a benefit from your point of view is that people, an entertainment audience is getting a look at these issues and the way the White House works. Is there, on the other side of that coin, any danger that people will get their information about the White House and the administration through this show -- and get it wrong?
JOE LOCKHART: I think it'd be a danger if this show was a bad program, and if they were doing cheap ratings stunts. I mean, let's look at the first season. Look at what the reality of what this White House has gone through over the last three years, as far as what the press has covered, and the ratings the press got for some of it. When the press was covering sex, it sold, and look at what must have been the great temptation for the producers, and what must have been the great pressure from, you know, these network executives, to [say] "Why don't you do a couple episodes on that? We know from our news division that sells." But they didn't do it, and I think they should get some credit for that.
On the broader question, I don't really think there's a problem, even if it's not reality, because I think the biggest threat to our system of government, to our democracy, is that nobody's involved. People don't care. People aren't interested. And any way we can find to get people in the door is positive, and I don't personally care if it's not exactly right. Even if it's wrong, if they open the door and if people think this is something worth doing, you're going to start getting the "best and the brightest" to be interested.
Clinton vs. Bartlet
TERENCE SMITH: The president depicted in this show is a liberal Democratic president. Is the program depicting this president?
JOE LOCKHART: No. I think if it depicts anything, it depicts the tension between a pragmatic and an ideological president, and it may depict the idea of what some people who were involved early in this administration, wanted it to be.
I think what it does reflect, though, is that the way you get things done in Washington is to be pragmatic, the way you want to be is true to your ideals. And that's what seems to be the tension they've created. As the program wore on through the year, [that's what] the story line became: "Well, nothing's going well while we're playing pragmatic politics, let's go back to our ideals." That worked.
I think, somehow, that reflects some aftermath of the early part of this administration. But I don't think they're trying to make the president this president.
TERENCE SMITH: They deal with failure in this show. Things go wrong, things don't work, in this show. Is that realistic?
JOE LOCKHART: This, this won't come as a news flash…Things do go wrong, it's part of government and it's the measure of your effectiveness as a leader to deal with things going wrong. I mean, any idiot could be president if things were always going right.
Things don't always go wrong because you knew something was right, but you did the politically expedient thing instead. Things sometimes go wrong because they go wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it, and all you have to do is scramble and try to fix it. I think the show is more simplistic. Things go wrong because someone made a mistake, or things go wrong because we knew we should have done the right thing, but we did the popular thing, or the easy thing. It's not quite that simple.
But they are quite accurate in depicting a president in an Oval Office with his sleeves rolled up, looking around at his advisers, saying, "How did we get here?" "What went wrong?" And, you know, "What are we gonna do?" That's right, and that's part of governing.
Cynicism in the press?
TERENCE SMITH: If it's true, as we're discussing here, that a dramatization can get closer to the truth than the news reporters who are out in the press room, why is that true? What is it about this place that makes it susceptible to that?
JOE LOCKHART: Well, right now, the, the lifeblood of a White House reporter is cynicism. Cynicism doesn't work on television as entertainment, and I think it says something very loudly and clearly about what's wrong with the way the media covers the White House. That comes through on the show. I don't think the press is portrayed in a very positive light. I think much of that's deserved.
I think entertainment, ultimately is about optimism and working things out, and a relatively happy ending. That, you know, good triumphs over evil; the right guys win, the wrong guys lose. And that's not the rules we work with here in the White House. It's generally a press corps that has trouble putting into perspective positive things, jumps on things that are negative, and is ultimately to its core very cynical, and that is one of the reasons that the public has tuned out, not just to the politics in the White House.
I mean, I think the real story of 1997, 1998, 1999, was a press corps that was relentlessly negative on President Clinton and was, by all statistical accounts, completely ignored by the public. They made their decisions about this president, and they didn't need someone on the North Lawn of the White House to tell them what to think. As big a problem as we have in reconnecting with the American public, I think the press has probably a bigger challenge in reconnecting with the public and rebuilding trust, and rebuilding some sort a connection. And what "The West Wing" does is they have the same basic formula, it seems to me, as we have here. But they've surgically removed all of the pent-up cynicism that we've developed in this town over the last 30 years, and you see a much cleaner picture.
Obviously, a television show is not going to fix the problems of our political system, but it's people who are gonna fix it. If people want to get involved because of a television show and they're going to fix it, I don't care how it happens.
September 07, 2000
Aaron Sorkin Profile: West Wing Creator Surprised by TV Success
By SHERRI SYLVESTER
CNN.com
LOS ANGELES (CNN) — In his first two years of television, Aaron Sorkin has written 70 scripts — reams of dialogue — for the Emmy contender "The West Wing" (NBC) and the recently canceled "Sports Night" (ABC).
His prolific tendencies might make you think he has pages of pent-up prose in his head. That's not usually the case, he says.
"I do fly by the seat of my pants," says Sorkin, who is in his late 30s. "Don't be misled by the fact that I have an idea for something in the future. ... That's an anomaly that I have an idea for anything other than what happens on the next page of the script I'm writing right now."
He admits he didn't know the rules of television writing when he began. He had penned the play and screenplay of "A Few Good Men" (1992). His massive research for "The American President" (1995) inspired "The West Wing."
"My first draft of 'The American President' was 385 pages long," he says. "I delivered it to (director) Rob Reiner in a shopping bag."
The average screenplay typically runs 120 pages.
"I'd really fallen in love with my own voice and went on talking for a while," Sorkin says. "I was also enjoying being the President; I was starting wars, ending wars (and) fixing the economy. I had opinions about everything."
From the coast to coast, Sorkin is receiving praise for his efforts. Many Washington insiders watch the show and send him e-mail. Members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences honored "West Wing" with 18 Emmy nominations.
"When I write something, it's always a surprise to me that anyone outside my immediate family is interested in it," he says, "so we never expected anything like this."
Until Emmy night on Sunday, Sorkin will be busy writing the words spoken by all the president's men ... and women.
