Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip
written by Aaron Sorkin
(In the middle of a live TV broadcast, Executive Producer Wes Mendell (Judd Hirsch) steps on camera and commits professional suicide by delivering this speech. It is interrupted frequently by the people in the production booth.)Wes: (to the audience) This isn't gonna be a very good show tonight and I think you show change the channel. You should change the channel right now, or better yet turn off the TV. (audience laughs) No, I know it seems like this is supposed to be funny, but tomorrow you're gonna find out it wasn't and I'll have been fired by then. This isn't supposed--this isn't a sketch. This show used to be cutting edge political and social satire, but it's gotten lobotomized by a candy-ass broadcast network hell-bent on doing nothing that might challenge their audience. We were about to do a sketch you've already seen 500 times. Yes, no one's gonna confuse George Bush with George Plimpton, we get it. We're all being lobotomized by the country's most influential industry which has thrown in the towel on any endeavor that does not include the courting of 12-year-old boys. And not event the smart 12-year-olds, the stupid ones, the idiots, of which there are plenty thanks in no small part to this network. So change the channel, turn off the TV. Do it right now…
And there's always been a struggle between art and commerce, but now I'm telling you art is getting is ass kicked, and it's making us mean, and it's making us bitchy, and it's making us cheap punks and that's not who we are... We're eating works for money, "Who Wants to Screw My Sister", guys are getting killed in a war that's got theme music and a logo. That remote in your hand is a crack pipe...( Booth Business) And it's not even good pornography. They're just this side of snuff films, and friends, that's what's next 'cause that's all that's left. And the two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho-religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott. These are the people they're afraid of, this prissy, feckless, off-the-charts greed-filled whorehouse of a network you're watching. This thoroughly unpatriotic-- Cal (Timothy Busfield): Go VTR! Go VTR! Roll titles! Now!
Credit and many thanks to Templeton Moss for this monologue, it is very much appreciated.