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February 28, 2006
'West Wing' star signs on for 'Studio 60'
By Nellie Andreeva
Reuters
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "The West Wing" co-star Bradley Whitford has reunited with the show's creator for the NBC drama pilot "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."
The project, which also stars Matthew Perry and Amanda Peet, is set behind the scenes of a fictional broadcasting network's flagship late-night sketch comedy show.
Whitford will play a producer-director and recovering cocaine addict who has come back to run the sketch show he used to work for. Also joining the cast is Sarah Paulson, who plays a Christian fundamentalist, and Timothy Busfield as the control-room director.
Whitford won an Emmy in 2001 for his role as deputy chief of staff Josh on "West Wing." Paulson most recently appeared in the feature "Serenity" and on HBO's drama "Deadwood."
Busfield, who also enjoys a successful career as a TV director, also will serve as a producing director on "Studio 60." He often has collaborated with Sorkin. He starred in the Broadway run of Sorkin's "A Few Good Men"; was a director on the writer-producer's comedy for ABC, "Sports Night"; and had a recurring role on "West Wing."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Posted by Jo at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2006
TV dramas track shifting U.S. moods
By John Aloysius Farrell
Denver Post
Washington - Jed Bartlet's presidency made its debut on Sept. 22, 1999, with White House aide Sam Seaborn in the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel, guilelessly hitting on Laurie, a lovely law student who moonlights as a prostitute.
Seven seasons and buckets of Emmys later, "The West Wing" goes dark this spring, cutting a link to our credulous days, before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Aaron Sorkin's dappled drama did his country a service by reminding us, in the wake of Monica and impeachment, that public service can have noble purpose.
"Say they are smug. ... Say their approach to public policy makes you want to tear your hair out. Say they like high taxes and spending your money. ... But don't call them worthless," GOP lawyer Ainsley Hayes tells fellow conservatives after spending a day amid the Democrats at the Bartlet White House.
"The people I have met have been extraordinarily qualified," Hayes says. "Their intent is good. Their commitment is true. They are righteous, and they are patriots."
Sorkin's fluid, sweet, sometimes hokey pen ("The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight") was well-served by a talented ensemble anchored by Martin Sheen. Not since Captain Kirk strode the bridge of the starship Enterprise has so choice a ham as Josiah "Jed" Bartlet filled the little screen.
Could anyone but Sheen have pulled off the second season finale, tormented by fate, alone and ranting in the nave of the National Cathedral, calling God a "feckless thug" and cursing Him - "Cruciatus in crucem! Eas in crucem!" - in Latin?
Well, maybe "Deadwood's" Ian McShane.
"Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh," McShane's maleficent Al Swearengen, the owner of Deadwood's Gem saloon and brothel, advises the town's doc.
It is apt, as "The West Wing" departs, that HBO's "Deadwood" will return for a third season, with its decidedly post-Sept. 11 sensibility, top-notch writing and acting.
Politics is the spine of each series. In the rancid mud of the Black Hills, in 1877, Swearengen and his fellow sociopaths are organizing a society, no less than Jed Bartlet and Leo McGarry.
The tenor of our times has changed. Sorkin's White House was richly romantic, befitting the innocent, confident days of the 1990s. Today's Washington is like David Milch's Deadwood, steeped in dread, corruption and sin.
In Deadwood, innocents are slaughtered. Force rules. Its characters are maimed - by grisly tumors, psychological afflictions,
deformities and addictions. Only the villains seem whole. We see how thin is the veneer of civilization; how close chaos.
Milch's gift is to make us care, by showing the stitch of humanity in all but the most psychopathic villain.
Few Broadway plays or motion pictures have offered a more profane, disturbing - or moving - soliloquy than that given by Swearengen while he's serviced by one of the Gem's prostitutes, recalling the day his mother abandoned him, as he steels himself to extinguish a dying preacher's life and suffering.
Tales of power, and bloody third acts, have mesmerized audiences since the days of the groundlings at the Globe. Sorkin genuflects to Shakespeare, and Milch - a former Yale literature instructor - quite packs "Deadwood" with Shakespearean asides, clownishness and cadence:
"General Crook bears victory's garland for having routed the Miniconjous at Slim Buttes."
"A man, as it happens, a rival of mine, learning the secret of a great man's lieutenant, would make that lieutenant his slave."
"Keenness to my shortcomings don't blind me to seeing a-right, that when a boulder needs hauling, I will haul a boulder."
"Ah, Gentlemen! Ah! What news?"
Sorkin steered "The West Wing" for two seasons after Sept. 11, and his successors have soldiered on for another three years. They sought to keep the show relevant, with plots that turned on Bartlet's response to various terrorist attacks.
But events in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, proved too big to contain within a fictional West Wing. Milch gives us a metaphor instead. Like it or not, we can see ourselves in the muck and gore of Deadwood.
Posted by Jo at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2006
Politics as usual
By CARL KOZLOWSKI
Pasadena Weekly
Emmy-winning actor Bradley Whitford has been living a truly charmed life.
Not only is he a major player in the ensemble cast of NBC's "The West Wing," which in seven seasons has won more Emmys than any show in TV history, but he's also the husband of Jane Kaczmarek, who has also spent the past seven seasons on TV racking up Emmy nominations playing the mom on Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle."
All good things, however, must come to an end, and, as such, both series are facing their final episodes in May. As "The West Wing" passes into memory, it leaves behind a legacy of an idealized fictional presidency that often contrasted sharply with the real-world scandals of the Clinton and Bush administrations.
The series offered a vision of the political world in which real issues were battled over with intelligence and dignity - two traits that seem to be becoming ever more rare in the real-life Washington, DC.
As he contemplated the end of the show and its impact on the culture, Whitford, a resident of Pasadena, spoke with the Weekly about some of the differences between his real and fictional existences.
PW: What do you feel has been the greatest impact of "The West Wing"?
Whitford: This show has exceeded my wildest expectations because it's been about something that is important and has been increasingly urgent as people, since 9/11, wherever they are on the political spectrum, feel that government matters. The show has gone through an interesting shift, since we began during the Clinton presidency and we were considered sort of the moderate, ethically pure fantasy of the Clinton administration.
I actually don't think the country has swung as far to the right as people say, but it became sort of the alternate, pathetically inadequate fantasy government for people of a different political persuasion than Karl Rove. More than anything, it's a miracle to make a living at this little extracurricular activity. It's even more of a miracle to do it in a manner that's not completely humiliating, and even more of a miracle that it becomes something people actually respond to.
Everybody feels in the wake of [co-star John Spencer's recent death] there's no question that this is the time, because this is not a show you want to drag out creatively. There's a sense with the real fans of the show that you're leaving them wanting a little more, which is good.
When the show's creator, Aaron Sorkin, left a couple of seasons ago, there was some speculation about whether the show's quality would go down or its political orientation would shift. How did the transition play out in your mind?
It's just not true that things have shifted. I've been in those writer rooms and there's never been a decision made to pander to a political point of view. One thing Aaron understood was that [the show's fictional president, Josiah Bartlet], especially early on, in terms of foreign policy, was extremely hawkish. He was not a weak liberal. If anything you had to hold him back because he would over-respond.
Aaron knows the trick with this show is that you cannot dramatically have an easy, pat answer if you're setting up obstacles and problems to play with in a story. I don't think there was a shift like that. When the show was first pitched, the network was afraid if you make the president a Democrat, Republicans won't watch, which is not true. A public defender can go home and watch the prosecutors on "Law and Order" as entertainment.
You have to present it in a credible way, and you would be weak if you said Bartlet was independent. This year as the show focused on the race to be the next president we thought about what Democrats fear in an opposing candidate. This idea was born when Schwarzenegger was on his way up: They'd fear a socially liberal, fiscally conservative California Republican who could take California out of the electoral tally.
What do you think about the plot parallels that have occurred over the years between the series and real-life events? Were writers aiming for that level of reality?
I think that one of the eternal questions is if God is a really wonderful writer, or is He the worst writer? [laughs] If we did an election episode where what happened in 2000 happened and one of the candidate's brothers happened to be governor of the state that won it for him - it would be just unbelievable.
On our show, Aaron would say he'd tear things not from the headlines, but from Page 28. Except for the 9/11 episode [in which the series did a special episode discussing the impact of the terrorist events with a group of fictional schoolchildren], Aaron really shied away from feeling that the show was a response to what was happening. He wanted more latitude than that.
Not to elevate the significance of the show, but public discourse in this country basically doesn't exist anymore. [The political parties] present publicity and go through talking points. There's really no genuine discussion in public; it's dueling publicity. The show, because it's fiction, actually had the opportunity to show characters who aren't sure how they're going to deal with something.
That's a very rare thing to see because we live in a propaganda culture, and that goes for both Democrats and Republicans. The thing about the show I'm so surprised no one ever writes about is that, basically, it's a backstage comedy. The percentage of time that politicians have to spend in how to present themselves and the theory and formulation of it in a way that the public will stand behind them is almost show business, which is sad.
Surely, you must have some people who've asked you or other cast members to run for office yourselves.
We get asked to run for office, and [series co-star Martin Sheen] has been asked a lot. In every election, the one question the press asks after a debate is: Does this candidate seem presidential? As if having character is some sort of pandering these poor guys have to go through.
I've been working on this show seven years, and Martin apparently seems presidential. He would say, "I hope that the relationship between seeming and being presidential is extremely casual."
There's one unforgivable thing in politics. You can have a tawdry affair in the sacred Oval Office, a totally inappropriate affair, or you can send people to war with flawed intelligence, and all of those things will be forgiven. But the one thing that's unforgivable is being bad on television. Al Gore, Howard Dean - it's the death penalty. It goes for Republicans, too. It's very sad to watch people's reaction to someone bad on television, but there's no reaction to bad policy. Being bad on television is what I should be worried about.
You and Jane are residents of Pasadena and are members of All Saints Church. How did you decide to settle on this end of town, rather than in the stereotypical climes of Malibu or the West Side?
We very consciously did not want to move away from here. We were living in Hollywood years ago when we started going to All Saints Church, and through that discovered some of the schools out here. I grew up in Madison, Wis., which is ironically the size of Pasadena. It felt more Midwestern, and it was more about raising kids out here rather than the creepy Hollywood scene you get on the West Side. There's much more of a "there" here. Pasadena has its own identity and is a great place to raise a family.
All Saints Church has weathered a national controversy lately, as the IRS is threatening to revoke their tax-exempt status due to a pre-election speech by Rector Emeritus George Regas that was deemed too overtly political. As a member of that church, how did you feel about that?
I'm very familiar with the sermon that Regas gave and it's absurd that they should be investigated. We live in this time where the definition of being religious means you adhere to dogma. It has nothing to do with executing values anymore, and my feeling about All Saints is that it is all about executing values, values that I believe in. They are much less concerned with dogma than executing the great universal values of love and forgiveness.
It's very upsetting to me, as someone who's a political junkie, that it's a great virtue to name yourself a Christian and use it as a tremendous political advantage that gives you a moral standing, but then we don't hold these people to actual standards. Maybe you believe the best response to 9/11 was to invade Iraq, maybe you still think that tens of thousands of [Iraqi] lives later, it's still fine, but don't tell me it's Christian.
Maybe you think executing prisoners through the death penalty as a way to reduce crime is fine, but it's not Christian. Maybe you think giving a schmuck like me on TV a quarter million [dollars] in tax relief over the last five years when I didn't need it, while we have record deficits and soldiers without armor - it's not Christian.
Jesus wasn't a supply-side guy. This is a really polarizing, horribly polarizing time, and it's really obscene to me that people take all the politicians and use faith as a label and then don't execute the values that it's all about. If you are going to make these choices, don't tell me it's Christian; it's not.
02-16-06
Posted by Jo at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)
'The West Wing' to honor Spencer
United Press International
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- "The West Wing" used an Air Force honor guard for the funeral of character Leo McGarry, whose portrayer John Spencer died of a heart attack in December.
A military newspaper said the episode featuring the funeral of White House Chief of Staff McGarry will air April 16 on NBC, the New York Post reported.
An Air Force color guard was used because the fictional character was an Air Force veteran, the Post said.
It was not revealed how the show planned on handling the loss of the actor, the Post said.
Posted by Jo at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
Farewell, Mister President
The Age
SLATE, THE ONLINE magazine now owned by the Washington Post Company, has for a long time kept close account of the collected "Bushisms", the President's frequent collisions with his native language. "Syntactical crack-ups", "tautologies", "spoonerisms", "missing negatives", "verb reversals", and, brutally, even "ignorance" are among the category mistakes they list. (One example of the last came in 2000, when Bush informed an audience in Texas: "The legislature's job is to write the law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret the law." Which cut Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis right out of the historical picture.)
Bush's overall approval ratings are parlous these days, but with solid majorities in both houses of Congress, a weak Democratic Party, and an increasingly conservative tilt on the Supreme Court, the President's opponents for the past six years have understandably flirted with political despair - and, for an hour a week, the escapism of the let's-pretend presidency of Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing.
But now the escapism is leaving the scene. The West Wing, which will expire in May at the end of its seventh season, adopted the ginned-up patter of William Powell and Myrna Loy in the Thin Man pictures and brought that staccato rhythm to the sky-lit halls around the Oval Office. Even when the show was still funny and fresh (and it hasn't been since its creator, Aaron Sorkin, left two years ago), The West Wing was as earnest and high-minded as Yes, Minister was wickedly cynical. Decent, hard-working, noble, highly educated senior staffers walked the corridors at impossible speeds - "pedaconferencing" - clutching briefing books and deadpanning their way through the occasional nuclear bio-weapons attack.
In Yes, Minister, the conceit was that the civil service assistants recognised their superiors as hopeless twits and covered for them. In The West Wing, the young staffers, supervised by a wizened, indulgent chief of staff, serve a president who is a thatch-haired New England aristo, Nobel prize-winning economist, devoted father to three brilliant and beautiful daughters and equal partner to his wife (a doctor of wit and sophistication), devout Catholic, ace Latinist, student of American history and, above all, good decent liberal, yet not damp-palmed. He could make the tough decisions (i.e. drop a bomb when needed) but had the humanity to look sternly into the middle-distance - an expression signifying moral vexation - when lives were lost. In other words, he was Bill Clinton or John Kennedy without the personal issues. He was Truman with a finer mind and more polish. He was certainly not George W. Bush - not one bit.
In between the riffs of snappy repartee, Bartlet's noble satraps would step to centre stage and unburden themselves of some of the most mind-bendingly un-ironic speeches about virtue and public life since Tacitus carried a briefcase.
Rob Lowe's character, speechwriter Sam Seaborn, who kind of had a thing with a hooker, but that was OK because she was a smart hooker putting herself through law school, uncorked this soliloquy in the episode Six Meetings Before Lunch: ". . . education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defence. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet." It was irresistibly decent in an indecent moment. And note the characteristic funny twist of doubt at the end. That was the thing: nobility undercut by comedy.
Apparently, affection for the fantastical goodness of the Bartlet White House was not limited to America. During the last campaign season in England, I was in London to write a profile of Tony Blair for the New Yorker and asked the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, whether it was true many of the same people at No. 10 who had been influenced by the Clinton White House also had a thing for the Bartlet White House. Powell denied it. A day or two later, I was tagging along with the Blair campaign in Gravesend, when one of his press aides, Hillary Coffman, and I fell behind and nearly lost him. As she raced after her boss, Coffman said: "Do you remember that episode of West Wing when Josh and Toby miss the motorcade and they're left behind in Indiana? We can relate."
In the United States, at least, many right-wingers could not bear the show. Some conservative commentators were not content with their absolute dominion over the real-life political scene and begrudged liberals their teary, weekly ecstasies. John Podhoretz, a columnist for Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and the son of Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of American neo-conservatism, called The West Wing "political pornography for liberals". After Sorkin's drug abuse problems became public, Podhoretz wrote, "I don't know about you, but frankly, I don't need any lessons on theology, destiny, public service, job creation, pay equity, or conservative ideology from a crack addict."
Nice. For a while, all of Sorkin's political consultants on the show came from the ranks of the Democratic Party: Dee Dee Myers, a former Clinton press secretary; Pat Caddell, a former pollster and strategist for Jimmy Carter, and Lawrence O'Donnell, who worked for the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he was on the Senate finance committee. Eventually, the producers of The West Wing broadened the staff. Broadminded as ever, they called on the advice of . . . John Podhoretz.
At a certain point, the show's implicit critique of the Bush White House - its untruths, its failures, its distinctly un-Sam-and-Toby-like figures such as Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, the President's inability to put together an English sentence, much less parse a Latin verse - lost its capacity to sting. Another series, co-starring yet another good president of the United States, came to occupy the space. Just as The West Wing was the favoured guilty pleasure of the chattering classes five years ago, 24 seized some portion of the liberal imagination, and we came to trust an African-American president called David Palmer - sonorous, moral, unfailingly right-minded - to keep fantasy America safe from fantasy terror at least for a few seasons.
After Palmer was written out of the series, a third sound-stage chief executive entered our lives. Geena Davis, first seen in her underwear in Tootsie in 1982, is now the accidental make-believe president of the United States in Commander in Chief. She has already brought us back from the brink of make-believe nuclear war with North Korea. We feel safer already.
The West Wing returns to Australian television on February 23 on the ABC.
Posted by Jo at 06:05 PM | Comments (0)
No Good-Bye Blues for West Wing - Yet
By Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith
The National Ledger
Feb 10, 2006
"The West Wing" may be shooting its last few episodes, but the creators and cast aren't suffering the goodbye blues -- yet. They're too busy readying for the final charge of the revered seven-year-old series.
That, at least, is the word we're getting from members of the team. "It's hard to believe it's ending, because we have so much to do," notes Janel Maloney. And writer-producer Lawrence O'Donnell adds, "I don't think we're going to feel like it's ending until we're actually shooting the final episode." That won't happen 'til the end of next month.
In the meantime, O'Donnell says, he and the rest of the creative team are finding "Everything is different. A lot of things can happen in a series that's ending that can't happen when it's ongoing." That means a lot of artistic freedom, and "a lot of chances. It forces characters to look at each other in ways they haven't before once you're bringing things to conclusions."
It's like the presidential candidates currently being played by Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits, says O'Donnell. "You know their campaigns are going to conclude. They're going to wake up one morning and the campaign will be over and that huge intense vibration in their daily lives stops, and then what?"
Posted by Jo at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)