farnovision

"Cheated" by a "Total Fabrication"

I suspect we're going to be seeing more assessments of The Farnsworth Invention like this one, as more people come away from the play wondering how much of it has any connection to anything that really happened:

In addition, I felt a little cheated to learn that a key scene in the play is a total fabrication. It's impossible to know how much of the story really happened the way Sorkin presents it, and how much of it is embellished for dramatic purposes.

Now, let's be fair: the play is not a complete fabrication from opening curtain to final curtain call, but there's certainly enough "dramatic license" taken on key points that anybody who wants a history lesson is going to have to do a lot of digging.  The problem, of course, is that in our culture, most people would rather sit back and be entertained for two hours and think that will suffice.  Few people really care about where dramatic license might cross the line into outright mangling of the facts.

It's just unfortunate when the entertainers think that their ability to amuse an audience is sufficient substitute for any responsibility they might have to educate as well. 

Is This How He Will Be Remembered?

Link: TheStar.com  Sorkin pens Broadway play.

Before Sorkin gave us Sports Night and then The West Wing, he became obsessed with Philo Farnsworth, the alcoholic loser and electronics genius.

The Great Deception Continues

The dramatic focus of Aaron Sorkin's play The Farnsworth Invention revolves around the idea that Farnsworth had a "light problem."  His television camera requires too much light, he anguishes over the solution that must be "right under our noses," and then pretty much gives up when Zworykin comes up with the solution.

This woefully simplistic interpretation of the technical issues that confronted television researchers in the 1920s and 30s is the fundamental, crippling  flaw in a drama that claims to be based on history. 

Unfortunately, that revisionist interpretation is now being taken as fact, as demonstrated in this blog post by Arthur S. Leonard a professor at New York Law School:

The story is ultimately tragic: the brilliant Farnsworth, who had the basic scientific insight making television possible as a teenager, managed to bring the concept to the point of realization -- almost, lacking one last technical fix, which was managed by Vladimir Zworykin, a scientist employed by Sarnoff at NBC.

 

Mr. Leonard is essentially correct that solving the "light problem" inherent in early television camera tubes was a "technical fix."  Unfortunately, RCA built its entire "we invented television" PR campaign on Zworykin's having come up with that "technical fix."

Now, this play completely overlooks the fact that Farnsworth made many contributions to to improving camera sensitivity, portraying him instead as inept and incapable.   And, as we can see from posts like Mr. Leonard's, the play will only perpetuate those myths, rather than correcting them.

It's sad to think that Pem Farnsworth devoted the last 35 years of her life to setting the record straight, and wound up selling the rights to her book to somebody who has made such a hash of it.

The Buzz is Builiding

The official "opening" of The Farnsworth Invention on Broadway is still ten days away, so there won't be any full-scale reviews of the play until next week, but that hasn't stopped the New York Times from running a lengthy profile of the playwright:

The two men never met but clashed in courtrooms over rights and patents for more than a decade, and though it’s tempting to interpret the story as a 20th-century tragedy, a perverse David-and-Goliath parable in which David gets stomped, Mr. Sorkin’s intent was more complicated. The two geniuses are dueling narrators, each telling the other’s story, their alternating voices spiced with personal animus, moral ambivalence, anguish and regret.

“Both characters have a utopian vision for what television could be,” Mr. Sorkin said. “And we already know the punch line of that joke. So for me it’s not a story about television. It’s an optimistic story about the spirit of exploration.”

 

The article also makes note of the play's genesis:

The story of how “The Farnsworth Invention” came to be written has a pretty good plot itself. It dates to the early ’90s, when Fred Zollo, a producer, approached Mr. Sorkin with the idea of turning a memoir by Elma Farnsworth, Philo’s widow, into a biopic.

 

As some of you know the origins of the idea go back farther than that, like to to the mid  '70s, when a couple of wanna-be TeeVee producers thought it would be a bright idea to make a movie for television about the kid who invented it.   

More from the Great White Way

Blogger-type "reviews of the previews" keep showing up in the daily alerts:

So it’s probably anti-climactic to say I loved the show. I liked the way he had Philo Farnsworth and David Sarnoff, the two main characters, narrate each other’s story. I liked how the scenes flowed seamlessly across time and space, from New York to San Francisco, with not much more than two tables and two chairs for scenery. And I really, really liked Hank Azaria and Jimmi Simpson. Damn good acting all around, but Simpson in particular was unbelievably amazing.

Elsewhere, we learn that even though it has yet to open, "Invention" is one of the bright spots in the Broadway box office totals:

The Farnsworth Invention is making a good showing as well, up 13 percent over the last week. figures at the box office dropped 11 percent, the largest of any theatre on Broadway.

Generally, response to the play has been favorable. One would have to say the prospects for its actual official opening look pretty good.