The Farnsworth Invention
Posted by Maggie
December 12th, 2007 at 08:30am
In Studio 60 West Wing
A while ago I went to see the new Aaron Sorkin play, The Farnsworth Invention. Just the fact that it’s a play by television impresario Aaron Sorkin would be enough for me to mention it here, but it’s also about the invention of television and the history of why we watch the way we watch. In other words, the most interesting topic in the world.
As another show might put it, the facts are these: Philo T. Farnsworth, a scarcely-trained farmboy from Utah, transmitted the first moving image using the process we still use today (sort of). But he never quite got his television to work quite right, and his patent ended up embroiled in a dispute with GE/RCA/NBC and its leader, David Sarnoff. (Philo=Josh/Sam/Danny/Matt, Sarnoff=Jack Rudolph.) In the meantime, Sarnoff was busy laying the groundwork for regulating advertising and deciding what types of things would eventually be shown on television, once it eventually existed.
I know — good stuff, right? Or is that just me?
I found that I really enjoyed myself at the play, despite the things said in these reviews, which are all true. After a season of Studio 60, it may be that I am hardened to Sorkin’s ticks and pitfalls, and now accept them without question. Or it may be that I’m so engrossed in the topic that I don’t actually care that much about the “characters” or “structure.”
I’m leaning toward the latter explanation, because I was just watching a Modern Marvels on the History Channel about Wiring America and I realized I was just about excited that as I was about The Farnsworth Invention, in the exact same way.
I will say: Jimmi Simpson and Hank Azaria are killer. There’s a classic drunken, silly, romantic scene I rather enjoyed. And there was a truly amazing dramatization of the 1929 stock market crash. Make of that what you will.
I didn’t see the play, but I found it strange that when Sorkin was writing for TV, all his TV-industry characters would talk about was theater, and now that he’s finally back doing theater, all his characters are talking about TV. Sorkin is like the Rocket Man.
Jesse and I went to see Charlie Wilson’s War last night, which has a script by Sorkin, and there’s a very Sorkin episode in it that made it past what I assume was a very good script-polisher. Few pedeconferences, though, if I recall correctly.
I can only imagine that the first draft had at least eight walk-and-talks instead of the one or two Nichols pared it down to in the final version.
AS consistently writes pieces that are both interesting and enjoyable. Also they bear repeated viewing and still bear fruit. Fess up, how many times have you been surfing the TV to find ‘A Few Good Men’ or ‘The American President’, an episode of ‘West Wing’ or if you’re lucky ‘Sports Night’, and found yourself drawn into the familiar experience.
His problem is that he is facile. It can bug people - especially critics or other writers.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Aaron Sorkin, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
[...] and Will Arnett. Maggie abandoned the television for one night and went to the theat-uh – to see Aaron Sorkin’s new play The Farnsworth Invention (which is based on the invention of the [...]
I went to see the show the other night and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait for a Broadway show to END. It had its interesting moments ,but they were exactly that, moments.
It grated me to no end as well that an entire B’way cast in 2007 (even if the play is sent in the 20s and 30s, would not have one minority character — EVEN in a TOKEN ROLE.
The cast was lilly-white. The show was a Xmas gift.
I would never have chosen this show if I’d known.
Add all that to the fact that the theater is VERY small and the seats are cramped as hell. Horror.