I hope I don't get killed by the studio for giving too much away, but this entire movie is going to be three scenes, and three scenes only, that all take place in real time … There will be no time cuts. And these three scenes are going to take place backstage before a product launch. The first one being the Mac, and the second one being NeXT, after he had left Apple, and the third one being the iPod. Basically my goal is, I don't know if you remember the ad campaign he did, it was the Think Differently campaign … "Here's to the crazy ones," that's how it began? If I can end the movie with that text, with that voice-over, if I can earn that ending, then I'll have written the movie that I want to write.
The sun may have set on the first season of The Newsroom, but that just means we've got a full nine months for all manner of mash-ups, supercuts, and general subversive reappropriation to make their way onto the Internet before Season 2 premieres in June 2013. Vulture already has a state car on this train, and has mashed up the generally frazzled, horrified, and shocked state of the NewsNight staff with classic film scenes, to pretty seamless effect. Sam Waterston flying into a rage, Jack Torrance flying into a rage, potayto, potahto.
Shut. It. Down. I seriously gotta hand it to Sorkin and his "writing staff" — this 'ship has been built up so sneakily and subtly that the the whole "I'm single because you haven't asked me out, Don" (really, aren't we all?) moment felt like the best kind of going-away present. Seriously, it's like we've been refreshing our Google Alert for Bigfoot news only to have the Loch Ness monster swim right up to our cubicle. I'd also like to point out that Don was inexplicably swinging a knife around during a large portion of their conversation, which was like the Loch Ness Monster showing up with cupcakes. Don and Sloan are supposedly the most people-stupid in a show full of people-morons, but they're also the most self-aware, so they might just beat Jim & Maggie to the consummation finish line. (That's the added bonus of having months go by between episodes: It's a lot like NBC cutting to commercial during racewalking — you can't be mad because it's the one sport in which we can be reasonably certain not much happened while we were away, save for a bunch of people walking around quickly and occasionally falling down. Phew, glad I could get in such a timely joke before the end of the season.)
Hottest speechifying
"I don't know who told you you're a bad guy, but somebody did. Somebody along the way. Somebody or something convinced you of it, because you think you're a bad guy, and you're just not. I'm socially inept but even I know that. So because you think you're a bad guy, you try to do things that you think a good guy would do. Like committing to someone you like, but maybe don't love. A sweet, smart, wholesome Midwestern girl. I could be wrong, though; I usually am."
Sloan has conveniently neglected to mention that she has a third Ph.D. in Emotional Science.
Taylor Swift's Fatal Attraction: Her relationship with rising high school junior Conor Kennedy continues at warp speed. "Swift is certainly taking her one-and-a-half-month romance rather, well, swiftly. Since meeting the 18-year-old Kennedy in July, the six-time Grammy winner, 22, has rearranged her schedule to spend as much time with him as possible." Although the rumor that she bought a house across the street from the Kennedy compound has been debunked, she is still giving off some serious Stage 5 Clinger vibes. "Swift loves that her new guy (son of Robert Kennedy Jr. and the late Mary) gives her entrée to the storied political family. She says it's a fantasy come true. She's very smitten." Isn't she always, though? "Pals are concerned she's repeating a troubling relationship pattern," citing the insanely fast pace of her monthlong fling with Jake Gyllenhaal, which ended when he dumped her unceremoniously. "She's always rushing into love. We all wonder why she can't take it slow." Because she thinks fairy-tale, love-at-first-sight romances are real, and always decides that whomever she is dating at the moment is The One (regardless of what the dude might think). "For years, Swift has harbored a not-so-secret infatuation with Conor's iconic family. One insider says Conor's cousin Ted Kennedy Jr. even calls the crooner a Kennedy groupie!" Well maybe Conor Kennedy is a Taylor Swift groupie! And they're not groupies, they're Band-Aids! She started collecting Kennedy memorabilia last year, after reading The Kennedy Women. She met Rory Kennedy at a screening of a doc about Ethel Kennedy, and was invited to spend her Fourth of July at the compound in Hyannis Port. She and Conor Kennedy have been inseparable ever since, although that may change in the fall when he goes back to, uh, high school.
Editor's note: As evidenced by last week's slew of Jim/Maggie fanvids, the Newsroom fan community has been more and more prolific as the season has worn on, which is why, in lieu of hot speechification, this week's 'shipping report will feature the hot fanworkification that has been the fruits of their labor. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just search Don Keefer on Tumblr and see if it doesn't make you feel a little less alone in the universe.
Will & Mac
There's only one week of The Newsroom left, and it's as if Sorkin & Co. realized they were given a quantity of smoldering glares that will expire if they don't use them up by the end of the season. This makes for eminently 'shippable, GIF-able television, but so far the good folks at fuckyeahwillmac.tumblr.com have been dragging their feet. (Otherwise I would totally have embedded Will's face post-crazy-Mac-speech, which in five steamy seconds conveyed all the passion and drama locked away in Habib Sr.'s volumes — VOLUMES! — on Willkenzie.) These are the most fascinating people on television, and their feelings have never been more important.
It's been more than a year since Mac originally held up her hand-drawn signs and inspired Will to be the integrity, and since then she has perched, pixie-like, on his shoulder, nodding along as he ultimately made all the Right Decisions, and forgiving him his superficial flaws, like the smoking habit, and the tendency to use his show as a bully pulpit. But this week not even Will McAvoy could resist the power of the Anthonys Twain (Casey and Weiner). I was originally thinking that if Mac were an actual pixie, she'd be Crysta in Fern Gully, who turned a human man into a boy pixie so they could save the rain forestnewscountry universe together, but this week she's more like the Pan's Labyrinth pixies who try in vain to stop their master from eating the big delicious Casey Anthony grape, and wind up getting their heads chewed off by Jane Fonda.
After a bit of Will/Mac overload last week, the youngs are taking over the 'Shipping Newsroom leaderboard in a big way. Don continues his journey of redemption this week by flying (ugh, I'm sorry) in the face of federal regulations and a very uptight Julie Delpy doppelganger to report the news, even if his only audience is the cabin of their mysteriously business-class-free aircraft (United Airlines: not elitists, it turns out!). But if Bin Laden's death was the top story, the lead-in was Elliot and Don's gratuitously in-depth investigative report on the state of the latter's relationship with Maggie, and now those strangers on a plane are fully briefed on the two most generation-defining stories of 2011. And while they seemed pleased overall with the efforts of Seal Team Six that evening, they are so totally over Don & Maggie's on-again-off-again drama. SO ARE WE.
Hot speechifying:
Julie Delppelganger(?): "Maggie's a lucky girl."
I am sitting in the International Ballroom in the Beverly Hilton Hotel during the twilight of the 2012 Summer TCA Press Tour, as HBO, like every other network and cable channel has done this week, previews its upcoming movies with a series of panels and Q&As. In a matter of minutes, Aaron Sorkin, Oscar-winning screenwriter and creator of critical whipping-boy The Newsroom, will take the stage to face a room full of the writers and tweeters who have led the witch hunt against his show. Sorkin has only granted a handful of interviews as the first half of the season has rolled out to an increasing chorus of boos from Internet Girls and Boys from around his beloathed Twittersphere. But today he's sitting down, cracking open a tiny bottle of Evian, and bringing on the firing squad. It's the can't-miss event of this year's TCAs, and I'm about to die of anticipation.
With the summer TV pickings so terribly slim this year, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida has had to get creative in the search for some scripted romantic intrigue until her CW shows come back. Here's your week in ’ships on HBO's The Newsroom.
Editor's note: I'm somewhat pressed for time this week, so we're express ’shipping this episode. Also, despite all appearances, I don't necessarily hate this television program, and there were a lot of things to like about last night's show! Terry Crews and David Krumholtz are there now!
1. The Newsroom & the Internet
"I'm going to single-handedly fix the Internet!" Will proclaims after a couple of on-air comments plucked from the ACN BBS were not the kind of reasoned, intelligent arguments he had expected from an anonymous online commenting system. The Information Superhighway has reared its ineffable head a few times before now, but it's really starting to emerge as the MPDG of The Newsroom — the quirky, impossible-to-tie-down nymph who will confound and delight our fictional staffers (LOLs, asterisks) and our IRL showrunner alike (at least have your erstwhile writing room brainstorm like 50 commenter screen names for you to choose from before settling on "LollipopLollipop.") So many bullets could have been dodged this week if they had just switched to Facebook commenting; at least then users would have to set up a fake account and populate it with pictures of other people's cats before firing off their death threats.
With the summer TV pickings so terribly slim this year, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida has had to get creative in the search for some scripted romantic intrigue until her CW shows come back. Here's your week in ’ships on HBO's The Newsroom.
Will & Mac
Willkenzie ’shippers, your patience has been rewarded! With congressional creepster Wade out of the picture, Will and Mac might finally have a chance to sort out their feelings for each other. Baby steps, though — it wouldn't be The Newsroom without a little ACN floor show interlude with some light public displays of personal history thrown in for good measure (tap-dancing lessons! Blatant lack of understanding of the basic premise of This Old House! Get a room, you guys!), and Mac, with the help of the entire ACN staff, hit a home run this week with her elaborate Rudy role-play scenario. Some guys want you to dress up in a Princess Leia slave outfit and play Call of Duty with them, and some want you to massage their egos by reenacting their favorite Sean Astin film in their honor. Mac knows which kind of guy she's dealing with.
Hottest speechifying: "It took six months to build the city of Dubai, you really think they were renovating the same mid-century colonial for 15 years?" What is a mid-century colonial? And This Old House has been on since 1979 and is still airing episodes. Just trying to keep you honest, Will.
The gimmick at the bleeding heart of The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s divisive paean to broadcast journalism, is that the show is set in the very near past, allowing Will McAvoy and the rest of the tireless, occasionally tiresome News Night crew to tackle recent issues with a level of hindsight and perspective only possible in the present. Yesterday, though, reports broke that Sorkin had suddenly started behaving in the most 2012 way possible by firing nearly his entire writing staff.
On Monday, mild-mannered NPR Q&A assassin Terry Gross got Aaron Sorkin on the "Fresh Air" hot seat. And while Gross boldly declares herself — try to hold down your retching noises, most of America — an actual fan of The Newsroom, she doesn't hold back from lobbing the same criticisms most of you have been shouting at your TV since the show debuted. (The best parts of the interview are when she points out something ridiculous, and then, before Sorkin can respond, starts giggling to herself about how ridiculous it is. Never stop being you, Terry Gross.) You may have heard some of this stuff from Aaron before: He's not claiming that he is smarter than everyone else, but rather is presenting characters who are, and he's not saying some of this is not not preposterous, etc. But since this is one of Sorkin's biggest platforms since the Monday-morning sport of Newsroom bashing got going for real, the show may be worth a listen. So: Explain thyself, Aaron Sorkin!
With the summer TV pickings so terribly slim this year, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida has had to get creative in the search for some scripted romantic intrigue until her CW shows come back. Here's your week in 'ships on HBO's The Newsroom.
Will & Wade
Mac asks Will if it's OK for her boyfriend Wade to pitch a story to Will, because this is The Newsroom and we're supposed to see the characters' inability to stop thinking about current events and integrity even 10 minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve as some kind of mark of indefatigable professionalism, and not a form of psychosis. This one has some legs, folks. Mac should know better than to leave these two alone in the cozy confines of Will's cigarette-stale office together, especially when the champagne is flowing and the housing crisis in still in full swing.
Hottest speechifying:
Will: Countrywide? I don't know what to tell you. You've got guys flooding the market with bad mortgages, lying to investors, making billions of dollars, but most incredibly, discussing it by e-mail. I don't mean to insult you, but how do you not get a fraud conviction?"
Man, Wade basically walked into that office dressed in a purple muscle tee and eyeliner and asked to be truth-banged.
This week The Newsroom turned up the heat with an OMG-worthy makeout sesh between Maggie and Don — the first display of physical intimacy on this series, which was also very, very gross. I've watched enough vampire shows to know that original pairings are made to be broken (this rule applies to pretty much every contemporary drama except Friday Night Lights), so why are we even pretending this is a thing? Also, Don is wearing some sort of horrible tribal necklace while shirtless in bed; no wonder she was pretending to be so engrossed with her BlackBerry.
