Having dispensed with the sequel, T.J. Monkey’s can now turn itself to Hollywood’s latest craze. Take a popular thought, recast it, change it radically but not enough to make it appear to involve any original thought, modernize it by making explicit references to homosexual subtexts that really did not exist in the original, and voila – the remake!
On Following the Sorkin
I quit my job this week. I’m going to go on the road, follow my dreams, and follow the Sorkin.
Aaron Sorkin, that is. I really like his sound – it’s something you can get down to, you know?
I used to be a big Tennyson freak. His hard-hitting, thrash Arthurian sound really spoke to me when I was a kid. I know that it really ticked off my conservative, small-town pastor father when I would roll into town with the windows rolled down in my ‘Vette, some Tenny blasting out the window – “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred!” I used to smile inwardly to see the prudish townsfolk look with derision as this young punk cruised through town with this unapologetic lyrical sound blaring. And they hated me ’cause I was all gay, too.
Now, though, I am a big Sorkin fan. What can I say? When you grow up (and you’re all gay and stuff) you develop a taste for the fast-talkin’ style of the Sorkin. His high-speed, intellectual patter can take you from the depths of incomprehension to the heights of vague, possible understanding of a few things he said at the end there.
So many memories. I had my first kiss during the bass guitar solo in the middle of “The American President.” I broke my leg in a brawl started after the gritty drum beat of “Malice” whipped the crowd into a frenzy.
It’s the little things when you’re on the road with the Sorkin that make it so interesting. The way he’ll sit out on a park bench and wail out a few dozen pages of “A Few Good Men” until he picks up a few liberals and takes them back to the bus to discuss child welfare programs. And I’ll never forget the first time I saw him do the live version of “The West Wing – Season 1” – the one where he bites the head off a live rat halfway through the “In Excelsis Deo” episode. I almost burst into tears, there with my boyfriend Eduardo, when I saw that. But I didn’t have to worry with the Sorkin around. Just as he had seeminlgy taken my soul to its lowest depths, he brought it screaming back when he smashed his thesaurus on a speaker.
Yeah, I guess I’m a big enough Sorkin fan to give it all up and take it on the road with him. A lotta folks say he’s dead, but folks say a lotta things. I know the Sorkin won’t let me down like that. Not like Maya Angelou and her ill-fated “I Know Why the Caged Bird Rocks!” Tour in ’98. But we don’t speak of that. Not anymore.