Monday, March 3, 2008

Small Slice of Shakespeare

“The Focus Group.” By Aaron Sorkin. Perf. Matthew Perry and Sarah Paulson. Dir. Chris Misiano. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Season 1, episode 3. ABC. 1 October 2006. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007.

I try to keep my finger on the pulse of Shakespeare in the media, even if the reference is relatively small or the Shakespearean matter relatively limited. All right, I admit that I have a list of Star Trek episodes that take their titles from Shakesperare.

In Season One, episode three of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (thus far, a very cleverly-written television show, providing much interest in terms of Christians and Christianity in the media), Sarah Paulson’s character performs a brief speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream while imitating the voice of Holly Hunter.

As I said, it’s small and limited, but it’s Shakespeare! Hurrah!

Note: A later post includes a clip of this scene.

Links: The Show at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the show from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

1 comment:

JennyK said...

I loved Studio 60, and think it was a shame that it was cancelled after one season. I agree that it was nice to see a more balanced view of Christians in the media.

Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest