It’s hard not to write about this without starting to sound like Dennis Hopper’s character from “Apocalypse Now.” This might be the most wonderful thing being done on the internet (and yes, that includes your friends blog, that video of a cat, and Faye Reagan. Okay, not Faye Reagan).
Some person, or group of people, has revived Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip as a Twitter feed.
Actually, just reading that sentence, it doesn’t feel as monumental, clever, funny, and strangely moving as the feed itself. Let me try to break to break it down for you:
Remember Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip? Aaron Sorkin, noted genius and chemical enthusiast, took the concept of Sports Night (behind the scenes at the creation of a Sports Center-type show) and The West Wing (behind the scenes at the creation of a fantasy world where politicians aren’t soulless Knell Beetles) and applied it to giving us a glimpse behind the scenes at a Saturday Night Live-type show. It debuted behind the Sorkin brand name and on the strengths of one of the most perfect pilot episodes ever produced… and then quickly went off the rails.
There were three reasons Studio 60 isn’t in its 5th critically acclaimed season right now:
1. Religion. Sorkin decided to have his main sexual tension between a born-again Christian (Harriet) and an avowed, crazy-Christian hating atheist (Matt). Surprisingly, the American people (usually so happy to have an honest conversation about religion), weren’t in the mood to hear people debate the existence of God each week, even if it was in witty Sorkinisms.
2. Iraq. Remember the Iraq war? I know it’s hard to keep all our wars straight, but in 2006, Iraq was still a pretty big deal. So big, in fact, that Sorkin decided one of the characters should have a brother fighting in that war. Then he made that character get captured. Then we spent three episodes dramatically waiting for the outcome of that capture. Then we … wait, what the hell, I thought this was a show about Saturday Night Live!? Yeah, exactly.
3. Unfunny sketches. 30 Rock — the OTHER show about an SNL-style show — wisely only gives us glimpses of their sketches. And when they do, they’re intentionally bad. Studio 60 — which was in part about one-man-band Matt Albie heroically fighting his pill addiction while spinning genius comedy gold all by himself — suffered when they actually showed us those sketches, because they sucked. It would be like if one of those CW shows about high school spent 75% of its dialog about the hottest cheerleader in school and then we discovered the part was being played by Rhea Perlman. It was hard to buy into the Matt-as-genius dialog after seeing his horrible sketches.
But even with those three strikes against it, Studio 60 had its share of die-hard fans. I was one of them (in fact, you can read my reviews of the show at my old website [Name Redacted]. Hurry, look them up before someone in a suit decides the 200K of hard drive space is too much to spare for archives, when there are Jay Leno video clips waiting to be posted!) Despite its flaws, Studio 60 had some of the smartest writing on TV as well as a murderers row of actors in even the bit parts.
So, what about the Twitter feed?
Someone has made Twitter accounts for seven of the regulars on the show, including Matt Albie and Danny Tripp. Interestingly, the feed avoids some obvious choices like Harriet or Simon in favor of more obscure characters like creator of “Peripheral Vision Man” Ricky Tahoe.
The concept is that the fictional Studio 60 sketch show actually exists and is being produced, as we speak, by our favorite Aaron Sorkin walkers and talkers. The seven characters tweet what’s happening in the studio (and in their lives), as Friday night’s sketch show comes together. Real fans of the show (notably Paul F. Tompkins, whose tweet alerted me to the existence of this whole thing) interact with the characters, all playing along with the idea that the show and its characters are real.
So what’s happening is this giant piece of performance art, with none of the Studio 60 Twitterers breaking character, and everyone who is tweeting and retweeting them taking the idea seriously. I even asked for an interview (or at least a quote) from Matt or Danny and was directed to a phone number for NBS — National Broadcasting System, the network Studio 60 is supposedly broadcast from. I called it and left a message, but so far no one has written or called me back. The most I’ve gotten is a tweet from Danny to “tune in on Friday night.”
It’s so very wonderful.
The tweets themselves are a mix of details about the supposed show that’ll be airing this Friday night (Aziz Ansari will be hosting, incidentally) and callbacks to plotlines in the original show. They do a delicate dance between satire and homage — like all real fans of the show, the tweeters are well aware of 60‘s shortcomings and don’t back away from them. Matt and Danny are still as close to homoerotic with each other as two heterosexual men can be, Cal is still dealing with one former blacklisted writer after another wandering into the studio, and the sketches still sound as awful as ever (Dolphin Girl!), while being wildly applauded as genius by all the other characters.
Reading the feed is like watching the Studio 60 version of Dungeons & Dragons being played by some of the smartest, funniest people on the internet. Add famous Twitter personalities like Tompkins playing along and you’ve got something that feels special.
What I mean is that Twitter up until this point has been about funny quips, insufferable celebrities, and your friends talking about how good their morning poop was. Entertaining, but ultimately unimportant. What the Studio 60 tweeters are doing feels like very real art, using the medium of Twitter to create an interactive world that we can all be a part of.
Of course, this could be my users of over-the-counter sleeping aide abuse finally catching up with me (I did just catch myself having a false memory about a former blogger named Blay Jack) and this isn’t the important, great-Twitter leap forward that it feels like right now. I urge you to check out the feed yourself (start with @MattAlbie60 go from there) and let me know in the comments if I’ve lost it. Tonight at 11:30 would be a good time to start, as apparently Matt and Danny will be liveblogging the Studio 60 episode airing live from Hollywood.
Based on the fact that Danny Tripp is now following Jake Fogelnest on Twitter, and that Fogelnest’s phone number as listed on his blog is the same as the NBS publicity department, it’s my Sherlock Holmes-like deduction that Fogelnest might be the one behind all this. I’ll send him an email ASAP to see if I can get a comment from him.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start a Homeboys in Outer Space Twitter-feed. …
Clacked by Jay Black 
on Apr 29, 2011 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
){kind=link}
(Please excuse the jammed in nature of that last paragraph about Fogelnest — I saw that Danny Tripp was following him right before this article was sent over and I didn’t have time to weave it in to the story proper. That said, I’ve sent the article along over Twitter and hope to hear back from him).
And by the way, Clique Clack readers, this is a huge deal. Am I the only one who sees how great this? Where is the rejoicing? Where are the 250 comments thanking me for sharing this with them!? AM I TAKING CRAZY PILLS!?!
Sorry, sorry. Gotta remember what my therapist always tells me, “The judge ordered you to stay away from this office.” Okay, feeling better now.
But seriously, tell me, am I crazy or does this little bit of Twitter performance art make the world a much nicer place?
Jay, thanks for sharing this! Unfortunately, I just can’t bring myself to get involved in it, because as soon as I do, the memories of the Harriet debacle come flooding back. You were so right to put it at number one in the list. And really, I would have been ok with you making ‘Harriet and religion’ numbers one through five on the list. It would have had a nice symmetry with what Sorkin was doing with the show. He just wouldn’t let it fucking die. It was a show with an amazing cast, and all manner of potential, that was written into destruction.
Jay, I presume you’ve also seen the West Wing Twitter cast? They’re also pretty good. I’m being followed by President Bartlet, which makes me feel cool.
See, the bad fake sketch I will always remember from that show was “Pimp my Trike!” … I know we give SNL a lot of crap for some of their skits now-a-days, but even they haven’t stooped that low. *shudders*
Actually, the religion debate in Studio 60 is very similar to the one Glee had in the beginning of their season… which is the reason I stopped watching that show.
4. Blond haired bitch.
The actress was just not up for the part and was a hole in an otherwise great cast.
The character wasn’t written well, but Sarah Paulson has proved time and time again that she’s a damned fine actress. It’s a damn shame you can’t see it, my friend.
I twittered your theory with just a random mention of @jakefogelnest and I got a reply!
“Oswald didn’t act alone.”
https://twitter.com/jakefogelnest/status/64173640278740992