Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (TV Series)

Pilot (2006)

Michael Stuhlbarg: Jerry

Quotes 

• [Jerry tells Wes to cut a sketch] 

  Wes Mendell : Who's it gonna offend, huh? Tell me.

  Jerry Jones : Wes...

  Wes Mendell : Just give me the names.

  Jerry Jones : People who, religious people. God, Wes, and you knew that when you

  [stops short] 

  Jerry Jones : - What do you want me to say to the fifty million people who are gonna go out of their minds as soon as it airs?

  Wes Mendell : First of all you tell them that we average nine million households, so that's at least 41 million who are full of crap. And the second, you can tell them that living where there's free speech means sometimes you get offended.

• Wes Mendell : This show used to be cutting-edge political and social satire, but it's gotten lobotomized by a candy-assed broadcast network hell-bent on doing nothing that might challenge their audience. We were about to do a sketch you've seen already about five hundred times. Yeah, no one is going to confuse George Bush with George Plimpton. We get it. We're all being lobotomized by this country's most influential industry! It's just thrown in the towel on any endeavor to do anything that doesn't include the courting of twelve-year-old boys. Not even the smart twelve-year-olds - the stupid ones! The idiots - of which there are plenty, thanks in no small measure to this network! So why don't you just change the channel? Turn off the TV. Do it right now. Go ahead.

  [in the control booth] 

  Jerry : Get the camera off of him!

  Cal Shanley : And put it on what?

  Jerry : Cut the boom mike then!

  Cal Shanley : It's his show! I take my instructions from him!

  Wes Mendell : [Wes is still talking]  ... struggle between art and commerce. Well there's always been a struggle between art and commerce, and now I'm telling you, art is getting it's ass kicked, and it's making us mean, and it's making us bitchy. It's making us cheap punks - that's not who we are! People are having contests to see how much they can be like Donald Trump?

  Jerry : Are you bleeping this out?

  Tech : He hasn't said anything you're not allowed to say.

  Jerry : He's telling people to change the channel!

  Cal Shanley : I don't think you have to worry about anybody changing the channel right now.

  Jerry : Get him off or you don't have a job tomorrow!

  Cal Shanley : I'm running a live national broadcast right, can you threaten me later?

• Wes Mendell : We're eating worms 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 hands is a crack pipe. Oh, yeah, every once in a while we pretend to be appalled...

  [in the booth] 

  Jerry : Cal!

  Cal Shanley : I'm waiting for him to say something that isn't true.

  Jerry : Who else in here knows how to do this?

  Cal Shanley : Don't talk to my control room!

  Jerry : Get him off!

  Lilly : [aside]  You have two kids in school.

  Cal Shanley : What?

  Jerry : She said you have two kids in private school whose father is five seconds away from never working again.

  Wes Mendell : America's broadcasters have turned into pornographers. It's not even good pornography! It's just this side of snuff films. And friends, that's what's next because that's all that's left.

  Lilly : Cal, come on...

  Wes Mendell : ...And the two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the mention of a boycott. These are the people they're afraid of...

  Cal Shanley : All right, stand by VTR...

  Lilly : [into headset]  We're gonna cut in early.

  Wes Mendell : - prissy, feckless, off-the-chocks greed-filled whorehouse...

  Jerry : There it is!

  Wes Mendell : - of a network! And you're watching this thoroughly unpatriotic motherf...

  Cal Shanley : Go VTR now!