You have
to give Aaron Sorkin credit: The man loves TV even when it’s not loving him
back right now. I wasn’t too sad to see the scattershot Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
suffer a surprisingly quick and quiet demise, and neither were that many of
you. But rather than rush back to the TV drawing board to figure out another
scenario that will allow for long, uninterrupted takes of two people walking
fast and conversing in hallways, Sorkin is heading for the bright lights and
big city…of Broadway.
Of
course, the idiot box is still coming with him, in a manner of speaking. You
see, it all started as a screenplay Sorkin wrote about the very beginnings of
television called The Farnsworth Invention. Predictably enough, the story is an early
20th century-set ensemble drama that centers on two central figures,
electronics whiz Philo T. Farnsworth and mogul David Sarnoff, who each have
vastly different visions for where the then-new medium can go and what it can
accomplish. The screenplay was reworked as a play for w workshop a few months
back as part of a program called Page-to-Stage. Now, it’s not only going to
make a big time fall run, but no less than Spielberg has thrown money into the
venture as a producer.
Of
course, with any moderate amount of success, this very well could be heading
back to the screen, as so many Broadway productions do these days. Sorkin’s
already going to be making his mark there as the writer of the upcoming Mike
Nichols/Tom Hanks flick Charlie Wilson’s War. What’s even
more interesting is that Sorkin now expressed interest on working with the same
stage team for a musical that would be based on The Flaming Lips’ bizarre masterpiece
Yoshimi
Battles The Pink Robots, which, even at this early date, looks to be
more of a sure bet than the Lips’ own long-delayed feature film Christmas
On Mars.