Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American screenwriter, producer, and playwright. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men and The Farnsworth Invention; the television series Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Newsroom; and the films A Few Good Men, The American President, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth9 June 1961
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
It's a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.
I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, "You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy. I'm a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?" And I really, really don't.
If I were running a television network, I would do a terrible job. That said, it would have been nice in sweeps month to have that as our lead-in.
And my friends, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
Believe me, for a 28-year-old writer, getting a check for $200,000 was a big deal indeed,
I send them a lot of 'West Wing' hats, and they send me a lot of White House T-shirts and that kind of thing,
I can justify those two things by simply saying, when that stops happening, when we lose our credibility, the show isn't as good.
The play was written before a lot of things that have informed how we feel about the military, but I think it is going to resonate.
I don't think I write differently when I'm writing a screenplay, as opposed to a stage play or a teleplay. Maybe if I were in a film class and there was time to think about it, we could point out differences.
I'll get cast occasionally as sort of the jerk version of myself, and I have fun doing that. But it's really better for everyone if I stay behind the camera.
I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue. But when I'm writing, the way the words sound is as important to me as what they mean.
As an audience member, I like the sound of something that's been written - I like it to sound written. And then, of course, you can't do it without the musicians who can play it.
As a dramatist, you're looking for points of friction...
That's a very real feeling - that I don't have a story to tell. I'm not a pure storyteller. I have a tough time with story.