awww, poor widdle auteurs

[schmerica]

I have never seen "Rescue Me" and thus have no opinions or comments on any of its plot points, but the tone of this article bugs me somewhat.

2. Trying to explain yourself on an Internet message board can be like attempting to lecture on Shakespeare in the middle of a rugby scrum.

...

Enter Tolan, a veteran screenwriter ("Analyze This") who says he innocently believed he could expand the discussion by posting his thoughts on a popular website, Television Without Pity.

Perhaps it was the site's name that gave him pause. Before posting his first comment, "I sat there and thought, 'Should I do this? My gut is saying no,' " he said in a phone interview Friday. "I thought maybe I could explain some things.

"But all you do," he has since concluded, "is paint a target on your back."

...

In the forums at Television Without Pity — TWOP, to initiates — users analyze plot points and story arcs with a zealotry that would not be out of place in a debate over Mideast politics or abortion law.

Comments

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Have they learned NOTHING from Aaron Sorkin's adventures on TWOP (though I think it was still MBTV then)?

*shakes head*

For all my Joss issues - and they are many - I've always thought he does well pandering handling his interaction with fans, and more of these TV PTB types who want to get online and interact could learn from him.

[nightlarke.livejournal.com]

May I enquire as to just what the Aaron Sorkin debacle was all about?

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

I don't know the whole story, I just know he clashed with one of the mods on the West Wing forum (back when it was still Mighty Big TV) and in response he wrote the Lemon-Lyman subplot into "The US Poet Laureate" in which Josh called his fans muumuu-wearing chainsmokers who never leave the house and have no lives. It was...unattractive on his part to respond to criticism that way, imo. In a later episode, he also had Josh go off on a White House temp who wore a Star Trek pin. Sorkin and his fans are unmixy things.

[nightlarke.livejournal.com]

Wow. Lame like woah.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

yes, he could explain... and it's attempting to lecture... *headdesk*

*needs a big barthes' the death of the author icon*

[hockeysaurus.livejournal.com]

Guh.

I do, however, like the fact that he makes it analogous to lecturing on shakespeare in the middle of a scrum.

*hee*

[elbomac.livejournal.com]

I wasn't able to read the article, but I do watch Rescue Me, and the quality of the discussion on the RM boards is pretty limited, in my opinion (at least when I was still going there). It seemed mostly to be about "Franco's hot" and "Tommy's a bastard." I can see how that might be frustrating to a writer.

But you would think they'd have learned from the Sorkin debacle.

[hiddenw.livejournal.com]

Annoying tone and yet... so on the nose.

[daughtershade.livejournal.com]

Isn't it like one of those wank laws that if a writer compares themselves to Shakespeare that they automatically lose?

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

It's like that wank law in that people who bring up Hitler aren't always calling the other side Nazis -- sometimes they're trying to make a bigger historical point, but they're not "allowed" to because of The Law of the Internet. This guy wasn't comparing himself to Shakespeare, he was talking about the difficulty of complex discussion in certain online venues. But the fact that he used a word as fraught with danger as "Shakespeare" tells me he was ill-prepared for online life at all. Sending a baby onto Omaha Beach. Tsk. And then he reels back, stunned... and no doubt, like Mr. Sorkin, he'll draw the wrong lesson from this.

[sloganeer.livejournal.com]

i do watch Rescue Me, and they're doing some seriously fucked up things -- and i use 'fucked up' in its literal sense here -- and tolan is a fool if he didn't think he would become a target.