Sorkin's "Sports Night" is still the best tv show nobody watched. His Philo Farnsworth-fandom also made a brief appearance during season 2 of that show, when the impeccable William H. Macy delivered a rapid-fire (of course) lecture on the history of television and credited Farnsworth.
Sorkin's writing strikes me as over-indulgently clever sometimes, but I'm willing to forgive him a lot, especially because he has this to say about the process of being a writer:
"I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy, I'm a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?!'"
The first two episodes of "Studio 60" get a thumbs-up from me too.
-Janelle Higbee
-----Original Message-----
From: "Covell, Jason"
"'The Farnsworth Invention' tells the story of Philo Farnsworth, a boy genius from Rigby, Idaho who, at 22, 'invented television only to become involved in an all or nothing battle with David Sarnoff, the young president of RCA and America's first communications mogul'. [Thomas] Schlamme described the movie as 'a classic American tale driven by the conflict between a Mormon farmer and a Russian immigrant over the ownership of the most influential invention of the 20th Century.'"
