Dead
Gorgeous
you could see her, briefly, being trailer-trash vulgar. You had to add up quite a lot of bit parts before you realized that she could do everything. Sorkin himself noticed her when
she fell downstairs in
Primary Colors
, having been scared into epilepsy by the wanton attentions of a presidential candidate more like Bill Clinton than Jed Bartlet. As C.J. she can give
it everything she’s got, and there seems to be no limit. C.J. is a six-foot clothes horse who happens to be divinely bright and funny. Surrounded by men who specialize in the sarcastic riff,
she can hold her own and often shoot them down over her shoulder while racing away from them with her elegant version of the show’s typical gait, that of an Olympic walker on the point of
being disqualified for breaking into a run. But she is more likely than they are to have the vapours in her office when something has gone wrong.
C.J.’s panic attacks are the sole concession to a sexual stereotype in a show that scarcely recognizes either the traditional differences between the sexes or, indeed, sex itself. By what
amounts to an evolutionary change, sex is sublimated into displays of verbal bravura. This has the effect of doubling the oomph when there is a temporary relapse into what might just conceivably be
a standard mating ritual. The scene when C.J. instructs Danny Concannon to kiss her is recognized among Wingnuts with an historic memory as the hottest thing since Bacall first blew smoke at
Bogart. Danny is the accredited White House correspondent of the
Washington Post
and he shouldn’t really be fooling with a professional enemy, but he can’t resist her. It is
very easy to believe. C.J. ranges between little emotional moments like that and grandstand virtuoso press conferences in which she parries the thrusts of her massed assailants with glittering
wisecracks.
Janney is going to end up with a decade’s worth of Emmys stuffed in her garage. Yet without this role she would have had the same kind of film career as, say, Paula Prentiss, who was the
best thing in a dozen movies that nobody remembered. Janney could never have been a bankable film star. Almost exactly twice as tall as Al Pacino and with a face radiating an uncomfortable degree
of nous, she just didn’t look right. With due allowance for gender and altitude, the same rule applies to most of her male colleagues. Playing Toby Ziegler, Richard Schiff can fully deploy an
uncanny knack for ensemble acting that was perfected through hard years of near neglect, including a stretch so far off Broadway that the adjective off-off hardly covers it. Like Janney he has
never been billed above a movie’s title or anywhere near it. But one of the strengths of the modern cinema in the US is the depth and strength of character acting that backs up the star
system. The character actors get less to say than the stars but what they get is better.
The West Wing
was Schiff’s chance to say better things at length. The DVD set of the first
season carries, among its additional features, a set of interviews with the actors. Janney says something we might have guessed: that most of C.J.’s more technical dialogue has to be
explained to her before she delivers it to us. Schiff says something we might not have guessed, but should take notice of: if he had stayed in movies he would never have had a chance to work like
this, because movies can’t do it – only an extended television series can. The same applies to Bradley Whitford, who plays Josh Lyman. Whitford is an attractive actor but not a leading
man for the big screen, which is well staffed with males who set the female audience dreaming just by the way they look. In
The West Wing
he can set them dreaming just by the way he
sounds.
Whether he set his secretary dreaming was an open question for at least thirty episodes. Finally the shine in Donna’s eyes became unmistakable. Donna, played by Janel Moloney, has a double
function:
Gorgeous
you could see her, briefly, being trailer-trash vulgar. You had to add up quite a lot of bit parts before you realized that she could do everything. Sorkin himself noticed her when
she fell downstairs in
Primary Colors
, having been scared into epilepsy by the wanton attentions of a presidential candidate more like Bill Clinton than Jed Bartlet. As C.J. she can give
it everything she’s got, and there seems to be no limit. C.J. is a six-foot clothes horse who happens to be divinely bright and funny. Surrounded by men who specialize in the sarcastic riff,
she can hold her own and often shoot them down over her shoulder while racing away from them with her elegant version of the show’s typical gait, that of an Olympic walker on the point of
being disqualified for breaking into a run. But she is more likely than they are to have the vapours in her office when something has gone wrong.
C.J.’s panic attacks are the sole concession to a sexual stereotype in a show that scarcely recognizes either the traditional differences between the sexes or, indeed, sex itself. By what
amounts to an evolutionary change, sex is sublimated into displays of verbal bravura. This has the effect of doubling the oomph when there is a temporary relapse into what might just conceivably be
a standard mating ritual. The scene when C.J. instructs Danny Concannon to kiss her is recognized among Wingnuts with an historic memory as the hottest thing since Bacall first blew smoke at
Bogart. Danny is the accredited White House correspondent of the
Washington Post
and he shouldn’t really be fooling with a professional enemy, but he can’t resist her. It is
very easy to believe. C.J. ranges between little emotional moments like that and grandstand virtuoso press conferences in which she parries the thrusts of her massed assailants with glittering
wisecracks.
Janney is going to end up with a decade’s worth of Emmys stuffed in her garage. Yet without this role she would have had the same kind of film career as, say, Paula Prentiss, who was the
best thing in a dozen movies that nobody remembered. Janney could never have been a bankable film star. Almost exactly twice as tall as Al Pacino and with a face radiating an uncomfortable degree
of nous, she just didn’t look right. With due allowance for gender and altitude, the same rule applies to most of her male colleagues. Playing Toby Ziegler, Richard Schiff can fully deploy an
uncanny knack for ensemble acting that was perfected through hard years of near neglect, including a stretch so far off Broadway that the adjective off-off hardly covers it. Like Janney he has
never been billed above a movie’s title or anywhere near it. But one of the strengths of the modern cinema in the US is the depth and strength of character acting that backs up the star
system. The character actors get less to say than the stars but what they get is better.
The West Wing
was Schiff’s chance to say better things at length. The DVD set of the first
season carries, among its additional features, a set of interviews with the actors. Janney says something we might have guessed: that most of C.J.’s more technical dialogue has to be
explained to her before she delivers it to us. Schiff says something we might not have guessed, but should take notice of: if he had stayed in movies he would never have had a chance to work like
this, because movies can’t do it – only an extended television series can. The same applies to Bradley Whitford, who plays Josh Lyman. Whitford is an attractive actor but not a leading
man for the big screen, which is well staffed with males who set the female audience dreaming just by the way they look. In
The West Wing
he can set them dreaming just by the way he
sounds.
Whether he set his secretary dreaming was an open question for at least thirty episodes. Finally the shine in Donna’s eyes became unmistakable. Donna, played by Janel Moloney, has a double
function:
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