Too Many Mistakes

GQ interviewed Aaron Sorkin recently in commemoration of the 10th Anniversary DVD set of Sports Night, which is in my personal top 5 Sitcom list. Yup, it's been 10 years since that great series was aired and then cancelled prematurely by ABC.

The interview spent far too little time on that great series, if you ask me. What I found most interesting was what he had to say about Studio 60, his latest series. A couple of snippets:

Why didn’t Studio 60 work?
I made too many mistakes. I would give anything to go back and get another bite of that apple. Basically, to use a sports analogy, you can have the best team in football playing the worst team in football. But if the best team in football throws four interceptions, they’re not going to win.

That sounds a little arrogant.
I’m helped by a staff of people who have great ideas, but the scripts aren’t written by committee. I was too angry when I wrote Studio 60. The show became like the cover of Abbey Road. Everybody was trying to figure out who this character was in real life or what that incident was trying to be. But the anger—it was a post-9/11 anger. We were going through a time when the television networks were so sensitive toward appearing patriotic. And patriotism was just being questioned all over the place. It just seemed like the wheels had come off our national culture.

Do you feel guilty about Studio 60’s failure?
I felt like I had let so many people down—from Warner Bros. and NBC to the cast and crew. You live and die with these things. It is a feeling that you can’t look these people in the eye anymore. Someone like Matt Perry.

"I made too many mistakes." That's a heck of an understatement, Mr. Sorkin, sorta like, "That Phelps guy sure can swim fast." I can imagine it'd be hard to look Perry (or most of the cast, or most of your fans) in the eye, but y'know what? Like most of your fans, I'm more than willing to come back for your next shot at a series.

The interview was worth it just for this line:

[The Internet]’s a bronchial infection on the First Amendment. Nothing has done more to make us dumber or meaner than the anonymity of the Internet.

One last thought, in case anyone in the gift-giving frame of mind might have missed it--the link to the DVD of the 10th Anniversary edition of one of my very favorite shows, with all sorts of cool bells and whistles, is right here.