The One with Aaron Sorkin

Prologue

Aaron Sorkin’s Writing Process

Choreographing Conflict in The West Wing

Choreographing Conflict in The Social Network

Making The Social Reckoning

One Cool Thing

Bonus Segment

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Episode 753 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig is off directing his show this week, and, man, he is bummed because today on the show we welcome a longtime fantasy guest. Aaron Sorkin is a writer, director, and showrunner whose credits include A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The American President, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The Newsroom, Steve Jobs, and The Social Network. His newest film, The Social Reckoning, follows the saga of the whistleblower who revealed the Facebook files. Welcome to Scriptnotes, Aaron Sorkin.

Aaron Sorkin: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

John: I’m so excited to be talking with you. Obviously, we could spend hours talking about the entirety of your career. You’ve written so many great things. With your blessing, I really want to focus in on craft because my thesis, which you can feel free to dissect and pull apart, is that I think what makes your writing so singular is you are so good at choreographing conflict within a scene. You can set up situations in which characters get to wrestle with an idea, and we get to enjoy them playing with an idea. That’s what I love to see in your scenes.

Aaron: That’s really nice of you to say. I cling like a life raft. I cling to intention and obstacle. Somebody wants something. Something’s standing in their way of getting it. I need that before I can write a scene.

John: Great. I want to talk into your approach of when you start writing a scene, when you have enough information about a scene or project overall. We’re also going to look at two of your scenes from previous films to talk about that sort of choreography that’s happening within those scenes of ideas and intentions colliding to make those scenes work. Of course, we need to talk about this new movie because it’s the second movie you’ve made about Facebook. We’re going to talk about why, what’s new, and how different your approach was between the two versions of Facebook and the characters within it.

Aaron: Sure.

John: In our bonus segment for Premium members, I’d love to talk about you have such a giant resume. You’ve done so many things, but there’s also things that you haven’t shot. If we were novelists, if we were painters, we would see the entirety of our career, but there’s stuff that we’ve done that’s frozen 12-point Courier. I’d love to talk about what’s on Aaron Sorkin’s shelf.

Aaron: This isn’t going to win me any friends in the WGA, but I don’t have anything in the drawer.

John: Nothing? Not a one?

Aaron: Just so I can win back some friends in the WGA, it’s just because I haven’t written that much. I’ve written 11 screenplays and made 11 movies. Social Reckoning is my 11th.

John: That’s incredible.

Aaron: If I was more prolific, if I had written more, I’m sure that there’d be plenty that wouldn’t be shot.

John: In the bonus segment, let’s talk through why there’s not more stuff up on the shelf and the loss that we have for historians, that there’s nothing else to go and dig up.

Aaron: Okay, we will.

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John: My first question for Aaron Sorkin: Do you enjoy writing, or is writing a thing you have to do to get through to get to the next stage?

Aaron: I know that there are some people who say they don’t enjoy writing; what they enjoy is having written. I enjoy writing. What is agonizing is not writing. If you were just to take a section of time where we could say legitimately that I began here and I finished here, most of that would be time not writing.

Most of that would be climbing the walls, pacing around, I don’t know how to start, I haven’t found the intention or an obstacle, I’m googling how to fake your own death, but when I am able to write, when I do have that intention or an obstacle, when I’m loaded up and can write a scene with energy, it’s not coming out like ketchup; it’s really, I’ve got it now, that feels great.

John: Yes, it does feel great when you’re in that flow, and it’s all clicking. I want to distinguish between all the time you’re pacing around; do you consider that writing, or do you consider that the mind storm that’s happening that is not the writing?

Aaron: I consider that writing. At least that’s what I try to convince my friends and family of, and certainly the people I’m working for, that this counts as writing too. Pacing around, I drive around a lot and listen to the music I listened to in high school. For some reason, that does something for me. That not writing time is contributing toward writing the screenplay, the episode of television, whatever it is that I’m writing. It’s so many nights you go to bed without having accomplished anything.

John: Yes. Those nights when you’ve not accomplished anything, is it that you didn’t have the key to unlock how to start the thing, or that you knew parts of the scene but you didn’t know the central core thing? Can you diagnose what was it that didn’t get the work done that day?

Aaron: Again, that somebody wants something. Something is standing in their way of getting it. Usually, the conflict is a conflict of ideas. I need to get two people in a room who disagree with each other. It can be about the correct time of day. It’s because I don’t have that.

John: Has your process changed a lot over the course of your career? The Aaron Sorkin who’s writing A Few Good Men versus the Aaron Sorkin who’s doing The Social Reckoning, are they the same writer?

Aaron: Yes. In that, I don’t write an outline. I hope no one hearing this is taking this as a recommendation. If you can write an outline, yes, sure, go ahead. What I do is—and this is after a long period of time of not doing anything—when I can get there, index cards and a corkboard. It’s kind of like walking through the woods at night with a flashlight. You can only see as far ahead as the beam will go, but the further you walk into the woods, the more you can see. If I know what the first three scenes are going to be, I’ll put those index cards. I don’t dip my toe in.

I really have to know what that first scene is, almost to the point where writing it is kind of an afterthought. It’s almost secretarial because I’ve got the scene. When that happens, again, it’s a joy. I’m very physical when I’m writing. I say everything out loud. I’m the first person to play all the parts. I’m up and down from my desk. I’m that kind of thing. You start adding a couple of index cards and a few more. There are going to be points where you say, “Okay, I hardly ever, at this point, know how it’s going to end.” I’m not waiting until I have an ending.

I don’t have that kind of patience. The difference between being on page 1 and page 0 for me is life and death. I want to write that first scene, not just because I want to get started, but because I want to show off a little bit. I’ve written that first scene. I really like it. The only way anyone’s ever going to see it is if I write the 100 scenes that come after that. That’s how it goes.

John: You’re writing that first scene with a few cards up on the corkboard. Have you written it? Is it the whole corkboard–

Aaron: No, no, I’ll start writing. There are a few cards up on the corkboard, and then a few more and a few more. Suddenly, somewhere in the middle, the dam is going to break, and I will be able to put up almost all the cards. Somewhere in there, I’m going to be able to put up the last card. You know what it’s like if you do a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of pieces, and you’re looking for the corners and the sides, and now, “Oh, this is going to be a part of the horse’s head,” that kind of thing, you can start to see things, and those index cards go up. That’s a good feeling.

John: Let’s reverse your jigsaw puzzle metaphor, though, because the classic way to do a jigsaw puzzle is you find the corners and you do the full outline first. You do the edges first. That doesn’t seem to be your instinct. Instead, you’re like, “I find these pieces that fit together that form this part of this picture, and now, I’m excited to see what the rest of it is”?

Aaron: Yes. What I can’t do, if we’re going to stick with the jigsaw puzzle metaphor, I can’t skip around. I know what this scene’s going to be in the middle, so go ahead and write that, and then fill it in.

John: I will absolutely skip around. I tend to write very much like how we shoot movies. You don’t shoot them in sequence. I write them with what appeals to me that day to write, and it’s worked for me, but it’s not a thing I recommend to others.

Aaron: It has worked for you. I envy that you can do that. I can’t.

John: Yes, it’s fine. We’re all different and good. Craig Mazin sent a question. I’m going to read Craig Mazin’s question for you. “Do you ever get intimidated by yourself? Meaning, when you start something new, you’re thinking about all the great things you’ve done and feeling the burden of that because I, Craig Mazin, am intimidated by Aaron Sorkin and all the great things he’s done. Is there any sense of competing with yourself?”

Aaron: Well, first of all, my thanks to Craig. That’s a nice compliment. No, I don’t think so. Not the way he means. I’ve done things where there have been high expectations, and those high expectations aren’t an advantage, but I’m proud of them anyway.

John: Your name has become associated with a style. People talk about a Sorkinism, or it feels Sorkin. Is that flattering or frustrating?

Aaron: It’s flattering. It’s very flattering, though I haven’t been able to figure out what they mean. I haven’t been able to figure out what the Sorkin style is.

John: We’ll figure that out in this podcast. We’ll get there.

Aaron: We’re going to get there.

John: One of the things I’ve noticed about your scenes is, in the middle of a scene, you’ll introduce an idea that is orthogonal to the main point of it. It doesn’t seem to be related, and yet the characters will keep grabbing onto that as a handle to recur. Sometimes that idea will also recur later on. It’ll be a recall later on in the show or in the movie. That feels like a Sorkin-y kind of idea. Where did that idea come from? It did not feel germane to necessarily the conversation we’re having, and yet people are doing it. Is that a thing you recognize in yourself?

Aaron: It is, yes. I recognize doing that. Here’s something that I don’t do. From time to time, I get a chance to speak to students, screenwriting majors in college. They’ll talk to me about theme. Theme isn’t really something I think about until the end. It sort of presents itself. When I go in, I’m not thinking, “Well, the theme is,” and “How do I–” I don’t know how to write a theme. Again, I can only write intention and obstacle. As you walk through the dark woods with the flashlight and you can see more as you go, I will see that a theme or themes have presented themselves.

I’ll decide, “I like that theme.” When I go back now and write the second draft, I’m going to hang a lantern on that, cut away the stuff that didn’t have anything to do with that.
By the way, the other thing that I don’t do is I won’t start rewriting until I get to the end. Here is a recommendation. I really encourage young writers: get to the end, get to a fade-out. Even as you’re going, if you realize, “That wasn’t good, that wasn’t good,” get to the end.

You’re going to know a lot more about what you’re writing when you get to the end, and then go back to the beginning and write it knowing what you know about the piece.

John: As you sit down to do a day’s work, are you reading the scenes before this? Are you running your fingers through the scenes before this, or are you starting clean on a new scene?

Aaron: I’m going through the couple of scenes that come before. I don’t have to read them. I know them. I really believe in writing with energy. It becomes physical energy. If you are mentally prepared to write the scene, which is to say if you know what this person wants in the scene, if you’re really prepared, then the energy that you write it with, it can make its way onto the screen.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Aaron: It really can. I wrote the last movie Mike Nichols directed before he died. One didn’t have anything to do with the other. He didn’t die because of the screenplay.

John: At least you got to direct one of your movies before he died.

Aaron: Oh, I got to spend a couple of years with Mike Nichols, which was like, yes, you’re just getting paid to go to grad school. He says that every scene has to be one of four things, and I just want to remember what they are. A negotiation, a fight, a seduction, or a discovery. That every scene has to be one of those four. A discovery that’s either a discovery for one of the characters or a discovery for the audience: “Oh my God, there’s a bomb under the table.”

John: Those seem like the right instincts behind a scene. I introduced this idea of, within a scene, you’ll throw in some new ideas like, “Wait, how does that tie into what we’re actually doing?” I’m going to try to do this in this interview and see if this actually works. You wrote the adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway. Congratulations. It was fantastic.

Aaron: Thank you.

John: Tell me about Harper Lee. What is your theory on Harper Lee and why Harper Lee wrote exactly one brilliant thing?

Aaron: Aha. Interesting, and I see what you did. I don’t know Harper Lee at all. I never met her, spoke to her. Again, it’s not related, but she died shortly after approving me as the person who was going to write the stage play To Kill a Mockingbird. She wrote a classic American novel. Nothing else except this other book, which probably she didn’t want published, Go Set a Watchman–

John: There’s discussion whether it might have actually predated To Kill a Mockingbird.

Aaron: It did predate. She wrote that. A publisher read it and gave her notes. The notes resulted in To Kill a Mockingbird. There’s some dispute over whether she ever wanted it published and whether it may have been published against her wishes. I don’t know any more about that than anyone who reads the newspaper.

John: Do you have a theory of what it’s like to be a person who was capable of writing something so great and never could do that again?

Aaron: I have a couple of theories. One is that simply she was not happy with the fame and the noise that comes along with publishing a book that is that successful that gets turned the next year into a movie that’s that successful. I think she wanted her small-town life. I suppose it’s possible she had one story to tell, but it doesn’t seem like it because To Kill a Mockingbird is a series of stories that she’s telling that all add up to something.

John: Yes, it is.

Aaron: I don’t know the reason.

John: It’s fine. I just thought if anyone had a theory of the case, Aaron Sorkin might have a theory of the case behind it.

Aaron: You know what? I’ve thought a lot about To Kill a Mockingbird, but not that. I haven’t put a lot of thought into Harper Lee; I just put a lot of thought into the story.

John: Let’s go back to writing the script. You have done some cards on the corkboard. You’ve started writing. You’re going to write all the way through and finish first before you show it to somebody else. Who do you show it to first? Who, now in 2026, do you like to show that first draft to?

Aaron: It depends. In the case of The Social Reckoning, David Fincher was the first person who read it. He read it the day after I finished. His response was fantastic. David has been a great cheerleader, a great supporter. Often, Scott Rudin is the first person to see it. There are just a couple of people in my life close to me I’ll show the pages to.

John: What are you looking for in that first read? Are you looking for validation? Are you looking for praise? Are you looking for– point out the flaws? What helps in that first read?

Aaron: I want to know, in that first read, have I successfully completed the pass? “The story that I told, did you get it?” I’m not talking about themes. I’m talking about the once upon a time, if at all. Did you understand that story? I once got in trouble. It was the newsroom. We had made the pilot of the newsroom. We were doing press. It was one of these speed-dating press sessions where I sit in a room. For five minutes apiece, reporters were brought in.

John: Brutal.

Aaron: At that point, very, very few people had seen the pilot outside of the people who made the pilot. A reporter came in, and she said that she saw the pilot. She watched it twice. I said, “Is that because you liked it or because you didn’t understand it?” She thought I was calling her stupid. When I was honestly asking, “Did you have to watch it because you didn’t understand it?” To this day, she’s mad at me because she thought I called her stupid.

John: You’re giving that first read on a thing. It reminds me of when you’re shooting a scene, an actor finishes a complicated thing. They look to the director. They look over, “Did that work? Did it land? Did I successfully deliver this thing?” It’s not just they want praise; they actually want to know. They cannot see themselves. They have no outside observation of all powers.

Aaron: Yes, that happens. I used to roll my eyes when someone would say to me, “Well, you’re too close to it.” Come on, I’m too close to it because I’m the world’s leading expert in this thing that I just wrote. Now, there have been times, because exactly what you just said, where I feel like, “Holy cow, I like this, and I simply don’t know if anyone else will, or even if they understand the story that I’m telling.” I don’t write terribly complicated stories.

John: Yes, you write fairly complicated stories, Aaron Sorkin.

Aaron: It’s not Inception.

John: That’s true. I hadn’t thought about it. That’s absolutely true. We had Christopher Nolan on here, and we were talking through the momentum. It’s like, “All right, sure.”
Now, I want to talk about the difference between writing characters once for a movie, which is most of the movies you’ve written, versus writing them again and again and again, like for The West Wing or for other TV series. It’s a different thing. You have a different understanding of those characters. You have a different understanding of the strength of the character, but also the actors playing it. How does the writing change when you’re writing for established characters week after week?

Aaron: Well, series television, except for the first episode and the last episode, it’s all middle, which is a lot of fun. It’s a great forum to write in. I say it’s fun, even though what isn’t fun for me, this is the only part of television I don’t like. With a movie or a play, if it’s not going well, if you’re stuck, you can call the studio, call the producer, call whoever it is that’s waiting for it, and say, “I know I said I was going to get you a first draft in June. It’ll probably be the end of the summer.” They may not like it, but they’ll live with it, and they’re used to it.

With television, you have concrete, hard deadlines. You have air dates that you have to meet, which means you have to write anyway if you’re not writing well. You have to write when you’re not writing well. Then you have to put that on the table for the cast and crew for the read-through, and then you have to point a camera at it. That’s a tough pill to swallow when you knew there was just a pebble in your shoe the whole time while you were writing. That’s the part I don’t like.
The part I do like is what you’re talking about: that you can take characters that the audience now is very familiar with, and you can stretch them just a little bit that way in an episode and a little bit that way in an episode. You can put them into situations. The audience is already rooting for them. It’s a different style of storytelling, one that I like a lot.

John: Limited series. Why has Aaron Sorkin not made six limited series? Because it feels like you have the best of both worlds where you have the control and time that you would have in a feature, and you also have more cold opens and all the benefits of TV without the crushing schedule.

Aaron: Why indeed. Why indeed. It’s really appealing to me. I think that really some of the best theater in America right now is happening on streamers with limited series, so all I need is an idea, and when I don’t have an idea, it’s impossible for me to imagine ever having an idea. Even though I have felt this way after every single thing that I’ve written, including in television.

I wrote 88 episodes of The West Wing, the first four seasons, and 87 times after I’ve finished, I’ve just turned to everyone and said, “Guys, I think that’s it. I’ve used every word I know in every order I can think of to put it. I think that’s it for the show.” It happens every time. It happens after every movie. It happens after every play. As you and I speak now, we’re four weeks away from the premiere of The Social Reckoning, and I don’t have an idea for anything yet, so I’m open. Write me suggestions, yes.

John: Throw things your way. A couple of months ago, Curry Barker, who wrote and directed Obsession, was sitting in the chair you’re sitting in right now, and he was saying that something that was incredibly important for him was watching the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass that you taught, and it was really meaningful. His dad got him that. His dad also got him the Scriptnotes book, and so a young filmmaker who was doing things. Tell us about the MasterClass.

Aaron: Well, first of all, I want to take the Curry Barker MasterClass. Seriously, this man has got game. He really does. He has got a breaking ball.

John: He’s going to be so excited when we clip this and send it to him.

Aaron: Oh, okay, well, he’s the real deal.

John: Yes.

Aaron: The MasterClass, I had a lot of fun doing that.

John: You were one of the first ones.

Aaron: Yes. I didn’t know anything about it. These guys came to me, and I liked them. They are bright guys doing the MasterClass. I think we shot it over two or three days. Fantastic crew. Their artistic vision was great. There were four or five students in the room. They were all really bright. Every time I hear from somebody who said they took the MasterClass and they really liked it, I really wish I could go back and do it again. I’m sure I could do it better. I didn’t know that anybody would be watching, so I’d like to do it again.

John: All right, you’re here first. We had some listeners who wrote in after the Curry Barker episode who had taken the MasterClass, and one of the great quotes from there was that you should be waiting for the pitches you can hit. Do you remember saying that?

Aaron: Yes, I do. I don’t remember saying it, but I believe that I said it.

John: Yes, it feels like an Aaron Sorkin thing.

Aaron: Here’s what I mean. I found out writing Moneyball—I’m going to get the stats wrong now, I’ll get the numbers wrong—but in the course of a nine-inning game, on average, a baseball player will see something like 20 pitches, and on average, just 1 of those 20 pitches will be what the player considers his pitch. It’s low and away, it’s high and inside, it’s a breaking ball that doesn’t break, it’s their pitch that they love. Most of the time, a baseball player gets out. If they only get out two-thirds of the time, they’re going to the Hall of Fame.
Most of the time, when a player gets out, that’s it; they go back to the dugout. Every once in a while, you’ll see a player get out and smash the Gatorade thing; it’s because they blew it on their pitch. They were waiting for their pitch, and they swung a moment too early, a moment too late, a moment too high, a moment too low.

What I mean by the writer waiting for their pitch: when I’m asked, what am I looking for for the next project, it’s not, “Well, I’m looking for a romance, I’m looking for a comedy, I’m looking for a bank robbery, a period piece.” I’m looking for my pitch to hit. I’m looking for an idea where I feel like I have a chance—a chance—of doing well writing this.

John: You’re doing well at hitting a home run, because that’s the difference, because you’re not going to bunt.

Aaron: I’m not going to bunt. I want to hit a home run every time. Everybody wants to hit a home run every time. However, we’re going to stick with this baseball metaphor.

John: Sure, and again, Craig is so angry he’s not here for the baseball metaphor.

Aaron: Oh, I’m sorry. Home run hitters, for a long, long time, the strikeout king in Major League Baseball was Jay Bruce, just because home run hitters are apt to strike out more than people who are just trying to hit a single, trying to hit a double. What am I doing? I’m trying to write a good first scene, and then trying to write the next scene. Another piece of Mike Nichols advice: go from something that works to the next thing that works to the next thing that works.

John: Continuing the metaphor, you can’t hit anything if you’re not connecting, and so it’s finding what the connection is that your bat will be able to hit that ball and send it flying.

Aaron: Right.

John: If I look back at my career and the frustrations I have is I was swinging on some things I shouldn’t have swung on, where even the best version of my doing that project wasn’t going to be worth my time. Those things happen. It’s recognizing I wish I’d basically taken that piece of advice 20 years ago.

Aaron: Listen, a lot of writers, especially early in their career, don’t have the luxury of waiting for their pitch. They’ve got to eat. Oftentimes, writers, again, especially young writers at the beginning of their career, they’re going to be writing things that are outside their wheelhouse, that aren’t in their comfort zone, that it’s very hard to get enthusiastic about.

John: Over the course of your career, you’ve written so many movies. I’m thinking about A Few Good Men, which gets reduced down to a sound bite, “You can’t handle the truth.” That movie is chock full of fantastic scenes, but that’s the one thing people hold onto. Is it at all frustrating that you have a movie that is so good on every other level, and that’s the one moment? Did ever that bother you?

Aaron: It is not in any way frustrating that Jack Nicholson was in that movie and delivered the line memorably. By the way, I should mention the play.

John: Yes. Oh, yes, you’re doing the play again.

Aaron: Yes. It previews on October 8th at Lincoln Center the night before–

John: Oh, so you’re going to be busy.

Aaron: The month of October has such potential for career implosion.

John: Yes. I have a hunch that both will be successful.

Aaron: Thank you. I hope you’re right.

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John: Let’s take a look at a scene from The West Wing. I want to get into this idea of conflict choreography. Obviously, The West Wing is full of people wrestling with political ideas, but I’d love to look at a scene which is just a two-character relationship scene, and the conflicts that are involved in there. We’re actually listening to the back half of the scene. This is Season 2, Episode 18. It’s a two-hander between Josh and Donna. The first part of this scene is a walk-and-talk through the office, but the second part is the two of them sitting down in an office and having this conversation.
Before we get into this, the first half is the walk-and-talk. You’re so associated with walk-and-talks, but is that a Sorkin thing, or is that a West Wing director thing that gets associated with you?

Aaron: It’s a Tommy Schlamme thing.

John: I know Tommy Schlamme.

Aaron: I’m happy to take credit for it, but it’s a Tommy Schlamme thing. The executive producer of the show, the director of the pilot, the director of a number of episodes, but he created the look of the show. Maybe a week before shooting started on the pilot, they were building the set. We shot it at Warner Bros., over on Stage 17. We were building the set, and he came into my office and said, “Come with me to the set. I want to show you something.” He had the first 10 pages of the pilot.
“We’re going to be in this room, and then this room, and then this room.” He said, “Would it be okay with you if I just brought in a Steadicam operator and we took Leo from here to here to here?” I said, “Sure.” That’s how that started.

John: That’s how it happened. Also, it had to be a plan, to some degree, because you’re building sets in ways that everything does connect.

Aaron: Yes. Everything connects. Also, we put more windows, more glass on the set than we actually have in The West Wing, just because we knew we needed a lot of throat. Tommy understood that the things that I write don’t have a lot of visual interest. He wanted background moving.

John: Fun fact, Tommy Schlamme was attached to my very first ever screenwriting project, How to Eat Fried Worms, over at Imagine Pictures a zillion years ago.

Aaron: He talks about how to eat fried worms.

John: Yes.

Aaron: What happened?

John: We never shot. We should have shot, but never shot. It never got to the place. I learned so much doing that. I got to work with Tommy on different drafts of it. It just never happened. That was one of those cases where I had sold it as a pitch. I got my first draft, a rewrite, and two polishes all paid. I just learned so much about screenwriting and studio screenwriting from that project. Not a failure. No.

Aaron: Not at all.

John: Let’s get to the scene. This is this two-hander between Josh and Donna. We’ll play it here.

Aaron: Okay.

SCENE FROM THE WEST WING – 17 People: Season 2, Episode 18

Donna: I’m going to give you a little gift right now, which you don’t deserve.

Josh: Donna, if you’ve got your old Catholic school uniform on under there, don’t get me wrong, I applaud the thought, but–

Donna: Okay, what I need is for you to stop being like you for a second.

Josh: Okay.

Donna: [sighs] When I came back, you remember I had a bandage on my ankle?

Josh: Yes.

Donna: I told you I slipped on the ice on the front walk.

Josh: Yes. You know why? Because you didn’t put down the kitty litter.

Donna: I was actually in a car accident.

Josh: You were in a car accident? Seriously, you were in an accident?

Donna: It was no big deal.

Josh: You told me it was a late thaw.

Donna: Yes, I did. Anyway, they took me to the hospital. I called him and he came down to get me. On the way, he stopped and met some friends of his for a beer.

Josh: He stopped on the way to the hospital for a beer?

Donna: Yes, and so I left him, which was the point of my telling you this. I left him, so stop remembering that. What I remember is that you took me back when you had absolutely no reason to trust me again, and you didn’t make fun of me or him, and you had every reason to.

Josh: Duh.

Donna: You’re going to make fun of them now, aren’t you?

Josh: No.

Donna: Because that’s why I didn’t tell you in the first place.

Josh: I’m not going to make fun of them.

Donna: Good.

Josh: But just kind of a dumpkiss where you–

Donna: He was supposed to meet some of his friends. He stopped on the way to tell them that he couldn’t.

Josh: And had a beer?

Donna: Does this make you feel superior? Yes, you are better than my old boyfriend.

Josh: I’m just saying, if you were in an accident, I wouldn’t stop for a beer.

Donna: If you were in an accident, I wouldn’t stop for red lights.

END OF SCENE.

Aaron: I miss those two.

John: As we get into this, I’ll note that the reason we picked this scene is because one of Meredith’s friends has these four pages printed out and up on her wall.

Aaron: Aw, really?

Meredith: It’s true. She does.

Aaron: That’s so nice.

John: Tell us about that scene.

Aaron: First, let me tell you about the episode. It’s 17 People, right?

John: Yes, that’s the name of the episode.

Aaron: I love that episode because, well, there are a number of reasons. What would happen from time to time is we’d be over budget for the year. We’d be over budget. Tommy would come into my office and say, “I need you to write a bottle show,” meaning no new sets, no guest cast, no background. We’re just going to take this show down to its bare bones.

John: Strip it down to studs, yes.

Aaron: Down to its studs. I always liked when he did that. First of all, it meant, “Okay, great. I can write a play.” That’s where I’m most comfortable. The page, it’s not a blank page anymore. I already know some things about the episode. No background. It’s going to take place at night or on the weekend. It’s all going to be in rooms. They say when you bring home a new puppy that you should get a crate that’s just big enough for the dog to be able to turn around in, but no bigger, because those closed-in spaces give them a sense of comfort that they need when they’re a puppy.

I am like that cute puppy. I like the four walls around me, which is what you get when you’re writing a bottle show.

John: He talks about intention because you say you need to know what the intention of a scene is. Let’s talk about the character’s intention in there. What are they trying to do?

Aaron: Josh has been making fun of this ex-boyfriend for a while because Josh is kind of hurt that she stopped working for him to go back to the ex-boyfriend, but then he thinks, when the ex-boyfriend broke up with her, that he was a consolation prize. That she came back there. She is there to finally set the record straight.

John: She comes in with the intention of, like, “Okay, in this conversation, I’m going to make this clear.” He does continuously things to undermine her ability to actually lay out a clear case of what’s happening here. You introduce other ideas: the kitty litter, the other little visual ideas that are pulling us off the main thread so that she has to pull us back onto it. Yet the story she’s telling, we can summon a visual for what actually happened, which I think is also crucial because while the scene is happening in the present tense, her dialogue is about this past moment.

She’s doing a good job of creating this past moment for us. We have a shared experience because Josh is doing a very certain thing, which is echoing back what she just said. He’s actively listening so that we are paying attention.

Aaron: That’s right. There’s a moment in the scene that Janel has, Donna, that for the life of me, I can’t remember if I wrote it as a stage direction, gave it to her as a note, the director gave it to her as a note, or she just did it, but I like it so much. It’s when he says, “You told me there was a late thaw.” She just laughs a little bit, remembering, because of just how sweetly dumb he was to believe that that’s– It’s moments like that really that make those scenes come alive.

John: The challenge is the characters are fully present in the moment, and yet they’re also thinking back to other times. They’re both trying to predict where the conversation is going and trying to remember things that happened before. That’s how we are in real life. We are constantly in this multi-temporal space. We’re trying to be alive and present in this moment, but everything is connected.

Aaron: There’s another thing that they’re doing, and this is really important in the world of The West Wing. They’re working. They are there. They’re at the office, which is the White House. They’re at the office late at night, and they’re in street clothes, and they’re working. Most of the time, for The West Wing to work, we had to believe that these people were working for us always. If they were just goofing around, if it was working for the weekend, if it’s, “I can’t wait to get home,” we wouldn’t be rooting for them the same way we’d be rooting for somebody in another job who was doing the same thing.

John: Or if this totally was a comedy, then it’s kind of fine that no one’s actually really working,-

Aaron: Sure.

John: -except that this is, you can have jokes, but there has to be a thing getting done as well.

Aaron: Yes.

John: We had the conflict. Let’s talk about the choreography, which comes down to me; it’s the punctuation, it’s the stops, it’s the starts. These are all in your script, and yet it’s also coming out of the actor’s mouth. Talk to us about the choreography and figuring out the tempos on the page so that actors have a thing to hold onto.

Aaron: You’re using all the right words because, for me, dialogue is music. What a line sounds like is as important to me as what it means. I think that happened because I started to love plays before I knew what they were about. I grew up in a suburb just outside New York, and my parents took me to see plays a lot, including plays that I was too young to understand: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when I was nine years old. I loved the sound of dialogue. Didn’t really know what was happening in the play, but the dialogue sounded like music to me, and I wanted to imitate that sound.

John: I think a lot of people go to see Shakespeare now, and we honestly can’t fully understand what they’re saying, but it’s nice to hear the rhythms there. It’s comforting.

Aaron: I would say half of Shakespeare’s plays, I do not– I know what’s happening because I have read about what’s happening, but if the play was [unintelligible 00:36:28], I– yes.

John: We go to see opera, and we’re like–

Aaron: Yes. It’s very nice music, but I could not tell you why that lady just killed herself.

John: Yes. [chuckles]

Aaron: The actors will know when they’ve dropped a syllable, and they’ve dropped a beat. In a sense, they’ll go to the script supervisor and say, “I’m saying something wrong. I know I’m saying something wrong,” which is great.

John: Well, the dialogue, I also want to stress, you’re trying to connect the idea, so it’s all one continuous mode of thought, but it’s also so that the rhythms, that the words, they can get to the next thing, that the next word makes sense for them to have said in that moment, that it fits the mouth.

Aaron: Oh, yes, sure. It needs to fit the mouth. I want these words to be sayable by the actors. I never want it to be the actor’s job to make something work. So often I’ll work with an actor who I can tell, it’s almost like a beaten animal that they’ve spent so much of their career feeling that it’s their job to make something work, that someone has to say to them, “Let the words do some of the work.”

John: Absolutely.

Aaron: The music is important to me. I’ve learned a new trick, and this is maybe a trick that I should have learned a long time ago. As an experiment, when you write a scene, just see what happens if you cut the last line of the scene. Just see what happens. Half the time, I’ll say, “Oh, that is a cooler ending to the scene.”

John: I’m going to try this afternoon.

Aaron: Do you write in the afternoon?

John: I mostly write in the morning. It’s an exception today because we’re recording this. I like to be at my desk at 9:00 AM. I have 9:00 to 11:00 as writing time. If I get–

Aaron: Go to hell.

John: If I did 9:00 to 11:00, I would be done.

Aaron: [crosstalk], go to hell. You, Stephen King, you people drive me crazy.

John: Sorry.

Aaron: The people who can command themselves to write. What do you mean you write from 9:00 to 11:00?

John: Currently, I’m writing two things, and I really, really know what they are. It is just that joy where—I don’t have a corkboard—but I really know what the scenes are, and I wake up actually excited to write those scenes. That’s a luxury. That’s not usual.

Aaron: No, those are great days.

John: Those are great days.

Aaron: Those are great ways to wake up, knowing what you’re going to write. Oh, another recommendation.

John: Please.

Aaron: If it’s going well, end your writing session in the middle. Don’t get to the end of the scene. If you can, end before the punch line to a joke so that when you wake up the next morning, you don’t have any thinking because you know exactly what you’re going to do. You’re excited about it. You know what it’s going to be.

John: I’m very excited to write these next scenes, which is not always the case.

Aaron: Hardly ever.

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John: I’m so excited to look at the next scene. This is from The Social Network. This is a different kind of music, a different kind of conflict. Again, a scene I just love.

SCENE FROM THE SOCIAL NETWORK:

Gage (reading Mark’s letter): “When we met in January, I expressed my doubts about the site, where it stood with graphics, how much programming was left that I had not anticipated– The lack of hardware we had to deal with, the site use, the lack of promotion that would go on to successfully launch the website.”

Gage (asking Mark): This was the first time you raised any of those concerns, right?

Mark Zuckerberg: I’d raised concerns before.

Divya Narendra: Bullshit.

Tyler Winklevoss: Not to us.

Gage: Gentlemen, I’m talking about at the meeting in January to which this letter is referring.

Mark Zuckerberg: Yes.

Gage: Let me rephrase this. You sent my client 16 emails. In the first 15, you didn’t raise any concerns.

Mark Zuckerberg: Is that a question?

Gage: In the 16th email, you raised concerns about the site’s functionality. Were you leading them on for six weeks?

Mark Zuckerberg: No.

Gage: Then why didn’t you raise any of these concerns before?
Mark Zuckerberg: It’s raining.

Gage: I’m sorry?

Mark Zuckerberg: It just started raining.

Gage: Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention?

Mark Zuckerberg: No.

Gage: Do you think I deserve it?

Mark Zuckerberg: What?

Gage: Do you think I deserve your full attention?

Mark Zuckerberg: I had to swear an oath before we began this deposition, and I don’t want to perjure myself. I have a legal obligation to say no.

Gage: No, you don’t think I deserve your attention?

Mark Zuckerberg: I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have a right to give it a try, but there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention. You have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing. Did I adequately answer your condescending question?

Sy: I have 12:45. Why don’t we say that’s lunch?

Gage: Back at 2:30.

END OF SCENE.

John: Oh, I love that scene so much. It’s just terrific. As you watch that scene, what do you see? What do you remember?

Aaron: Oh, I have great memories of shooting it, obviously. I like the scene, too. What I was thinking as I was watching this, I knew at the outset that part of the structure was going to be these dueling depositions. He’s being sued by the Winklevoss twins here and Eduardo Saverin there. There’s going to be these dueling depositions. The challenge was going to be that it just can’t seem like we’re constantly cutting to exposition. That’ll be easy enough to just have the lawyers do a recitation of you did this, and you did that.

Disguising exposition is a skill that a writer needs to develop. It’s very important. Exposition being the only part of drama. If drama is exposition, inciting action, action, reversal, climax, denouement, exposition is the only part that isn’t natural. People don’t generally say, “As you know, I’m a butler here, and I’ve been working here for 22 years.” Disguising exposition was going to be the challenge. It turned out to just be fun for me.

John: That doesn’t feel like exposition at all. That feels like just a conflict. I like that they’re not shouting at each other. You’ve created a character, Mark Zuckerberg, who is so challenging to pin down that we’re there with him.

Aaron: Right. If you can create a moment where he is being challenged by people he believes are inferior to him, which is most people, then you can usually light something up.
I mentioned a little while ago that one of my trying-to-write-things is driving around in my car listening to music. It’s good for getting into arguments with myself. I would bet anything that this scene, that the end of this scene, the “do I have your full attention?” part of this scene, was the result of I owned myself there. I asked myself that question and shot back with the answer.

It was one time during The West Wing, a messenger delivered to me from the president of NBC at the time; it was Scott Sassa, a headset meant to be paired with the phone in my car with the note that said, “I was next to you at a red light earlier. Please wear this whenever you’re driving your car. You look crazy.” I get it. I’m sure that’s how that scene happened.

John: In those situations, do you have any way to capture that thing? Are you going to remember it or are you going to scribble that down someplace, leave a voice memo? What are you doing?

Aaron: I’m going to remember it unless it happens, as it frequently does, just as I’m falling asleep. For some reason, that couple of minutes as you’re falling asleep, I don’t know what it is, because you’re relaxed or something, you’ll get an idea. I have learned the hard way: I will not remember it that first thing in the morning. I have to write down a note for myself. Sometimes that note will turn into, “Okay, well, here’s the actual line that I want,” and suddenly, I’m writing the scene.

John: Which is true. I have a stack of note cards beside the bed, which is just for that purpose; just to get it out of my brain so I stop thinking about it, but also so I remember it in the morning. Christopher Nolan, when he was on the show, was talking about how, for Oppenheimer, he started to write a note, and it’s like, “Oh, no, I actually know more.” He actually goes out, walks across the garden, and goes to his office in the middle of the night to write the scene because it finally came clear.

Aaron: I would have asked; did you ask him by any chance? I want to go back and listen to your Chris Nolan show. How much about nuclear energy did he know before he started writing Oppenheimer?

John: He knew a lot. He read the Oppenheimer book twice. He really did know. He does a lot of research. The man has no email, so he has a lot of time to just read books about it.

Aaron: Still, I’ve a bunch of times written things that I don’t know anything about. With Steve Jobs, I had to tell Sony, “Listen, it takes me five minutes in the morning to find the power button on my computer. You’re going to have to bring in somebody who can teach me how a computer works.” They brought in Steve Wozniak. Steve Wozniak, who invented the home computer, basically, does not know how to talk to somebody as dumb as I am. He can only talk to Christopher Nolan.

John: True confession’s here. When the Steve Jobs book was being shopped around, they came to me. I said, I’m not even going to read this until Aaron Sorkin passes, because I got to make it clear that this is a movie about hyper-literate people discussing the futures of things. It’s an Aaron Sorkin movie.

Aaron: I appreciate that. I would have liked to have seen your version.

John: I was delighted to see your version. Sometimes, I won’t get a project, or a thing will happen, and I won’t get to do it. It’s like, “Wow, I don’t have to do that thing anymore because that thing exists in the world without me having to have done anything with it.”

Aaron: Oh, I love that.

John: I saw a movie just last week, which was very much an idea I’ve been kicking around for 10 years. It’s like, “Oh, well, now I don’t have to do that thing. That’s great.” I saw it as a liberation.

Aaron: Have you ever regretted passing on something?

John: The Hunger Games. I wasn’t officially offered it, but they came to me. It’s like, I don’t want to see a movie about children killing each other. I maybe could have done The Hunger Games, but Billy Ray did a great job. Regrets?

Aaron: Martin Brest sent me an Italian film called La Profumo di donna, The Scent of a Woman.

John: Oh my God.

Aaron: I didn’t see it. I couldn’t figure out what he wanted. Of course, Bo Goldman comes along, hits that in the park. Oh my God, did he write a beautiful screenplay. Pacino’s fantastic in that. I think people slightly resent the movie simply because Pacino should have won an Oscar five times already before that. Don’t take it out on Scent of a Woman. It’s a great movie.

John: We’ve gotten very far off of discussing an incredible clip from The Social Network. Also, I’m noticing that Jesse Eisenberg, of course, in that clip, he came on the show, and it’s fantastic in its own right. Rashida Jones, who’s great in that movie as well. A tremendous writer. Her movie The Invite was incredible. In that scene, again, you’re introducing an outside idea, like it’s raining, and that it’s not related to the thing. You’re doing timeline sliding where we’re cutting back to an earlier moment to get stuff through. It’s just such smart filmmaking. It’s telling itself cinematically. I just give this its praise.

Aaron: I’m glad to hear that. I really appreciate that. Every inch of that experience was great. I loved writing the first couple of scenes of the movie. I loved getting started there. What I had was, if you remember, it begins with Jesse and Rooney Mara having a bad date in a college bar. Then Jesse, Mark Zuckerberg, after a long walk across the Harvard campus, goes back to his dorm room, boots up his computer, and he starts live blogging. He’s talking about the date that he just had.

What I had, research-wise, was a transcript of his blog from that night. It was a Tuesday night in October in 2003. Except for changing the girl’s name, I used almost word for word what he had said, which goes from being very mad at this girl to this prankish thing where he’s going to hack into the different Facebooks of the different dorms and create a Hot or Not website called FaceMash. He’s drinking there. It was important that he was drunk. I’m introducing a new topic now.

John: Please.

Aaron: Because that seems to be the theme.

John: Absolutely. We’re throwing a ball from outside. We’ll keep juggling

Aaron: When I’m writing nonfiction, when I’m telling a true story, what am I willing to lie about? Here’s an example. He says, in the transcript of that live blog that he’s drunk. That he’s drinking to get drunk. What I wrote was that we’re on his computer screen as he comes into his dorm room. He walks in and out of the frame, booting up the computer, comes back into the frame, puts a glass down, ice in the glass, vodka in the glass, orange juice in the glass, all the while, in voiceover, we’re hearing this thing.

A couple of weeks before shooting started, we found out that he was drinking beer that night, Beck’s Beer to be exact. David said, “Okay, you got to change it to beer.” I begged David, no, no, no, keep it vodka and orange juice, not just because it’s more visually interesting making vodka and orange juice than opening a beer, but because drinking a beer doesn’t necessarily read as drinking to get drunk. It can just be a college kid thirsty on a Tuesday night. The important truth isn’t what he was drinking. It was that he was drinking to get drunk.
I wouldn’t have had him do a line of Coke. That’s an entirely different thing. I’m interested in the more important truth. Again, what I tell young screenwriters like yourself is–

John: Thank you.

Aaron: You’re welcome. It’s that it’s not journalism. It’s not a photograph. It’s a painting.

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John: Let’s talk about the new painting. This is The Social Reckoning. It is the second movie made about Facebook. Second one with a character named Mark Zuckerberg in it. A very different Mark Zuckerberg. In Social Network, the Mark Zuckerberg we meet is protagonist. He’s not only a protagonist, antihero.

Aaron: He’s an antihero.

John: We’re following the story from his perspective.

Aaron: An antihero, which is to say, not a villain.

John: Not a villain.

Aaron: His motives are good. What he wants is good: to connect people. What’s underneath that is bad.

John: No spoilers, but I would say Mark Zuckerberg is not the hero of the new movie.

Aaron: He’s not. Listen, first of all, I know some people are a little confused if is it a sequel and why isn’t Jesse playing the part. It’s not a sequel. What it is is the guy who wrote The Social Network has written another movie about Facebook in which Mark Zuckerberg is also a character. It’s as if Henry Hill showed up as a character in Casino.

John: I think that’s a fair assessment. Having seen the movie, I will say that if you’ve not made The Social Network and said, “Oh, Aaron Sorkin is making a movie about the Facebook files,” I’m like, “Yes, I want to see that.”

Aaron: Good, great. By the way, I do think that two minutes into the movie, people are going to stop thinking about what came before it. It did go to Jesse first. It seemed logical. Jesse, it turns out, no longer wants to be conflated with Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn’t like Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn’t like that he resembles Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn’t like, apparently, in airports at the baggage claim, young boys, teenage boys, are coming up to him wanting him to sign business cards that say, “I’m CEO, bitch.”

He feels that he maybe made a hero out of Mark Zuckerberg, which isn’t what he wanted to do. I got to replace Joe DiMaggio with Mickey Mantle. Jeremy Strong is phenomenal in the movie. It is the same person 17 years later.

John: That’s what my question is. Do you perceive this as the same character, or is this the character in a different movie? Do you see a continuity between the Mark Zuckerberg you wrote in The Social Network and the Mark Zuckerberg we see in Social Reckoning?

Aaron: I do. I absolutely do. If only because, again, I’m the first person to play the part. I’m still playing Mark Zuckerberg in this now. He’s older. He is more confident. To say he’s a multi-billionaire, you’re not giving his pile of money enough credit, even. We are seeing Mark Zuckerberg in a particular situation. In one particular situation. This will be hard to understand if you haven’t seen it, but the movie has a complicated structure in that there are two timelines in it. One of them is chronological, following Frances Haugen, Mikey Madison, who enlists a Wall Street Journal reporter, Jeremy Allen White.

Together, they uncover these highly guarded secrets that Facebook has. The other timeline is all taking place in one morning. We find that out toward the end.

John: Frances, she is the classic protagonist of this. She’s a character who comes in with one set of ideas, and those ideas have to change over the course of them. I would say, classically, Jeremy Allen White’s character is the one who is an antagonist who is nudging her towards changing. Does that feel correct to you?

Aaron: That does feel right. Jeremy Allen White’s character also serves another important purpose in a story like this. He’s someone who knows as little as the audience does.

John: Exactly. Is Aaron Stark with Steve Wozniak?

Aaron: Exactly.

John: That is one section of the movie and one way we’re following this. A thing I think you do so smartly in the movie is we have a timeline that slides across the bottom to remind us here we’re in 2018, and here we’re in 2020, just to know where we’re at because otherwise, we wouldn’t know what other characters know or what has changed.

Aaron: Yes. I have to tell you, 11 movies in, this is the first time that test screenings have been helpful.

John: Great.

Aaron: The movie didn’t used to have that sliding chyron at the bottom of the screen.

John: It feels true to Facebook. It fits the visual language of the movie.

Aaron: It does feel true. What we found out from test screenings is that the audiences were confused about the timeline. Bit by bit, I began to help them. Then I just said, “Why am I being coy with this? Just tell them what’s taking place.”

John: You started working on the idea that there would be another movie about Facebook. There’s news reports of that earlier on. When did you know that this was the way into it? When did you know it’s about Frances Haugen? When did you know and your fund that Frances and Jeff of it all versus the 19 other things that Facebook has done and choosing to end it at the time period you did versus the other weird things that Facebook has done since then, like the metaverse and all that stuff. It’s all pre-metaverse, is what we’re saying.

Aaron: I would say that since The Social Network came out in 2010, just about every year, either my agent, Ari Emanuel, or Tom Rothman, CEO, the chairman of Sony, would just call and say, come on, you got to go back to Facebook and write a story about whether it’s Cambridge Analytica or, as you said, any of the stuff that’s happened. First of all, I wasn’t dying to go back into the Facebook world. I didn’t want to be the writer of Jaws 2. I really hope I didn’t hurt the feelings of the person who wrote Jaws 2.

John: No. Jaws 2 was not Jaws, and that’s it.

Aaron: That’s what I’m saying. Then several years ago, I was asked to meet with Frances Haugen, who was shopping a book proposal. It was very difficult for me to understand the book proposal, because Frances has one of those Steve Wozniak brains.

John: One of the things which people can look forward to seeing when they actually see the movie is there’s rehearsal for testimony that Zuckerberg’s going to give. That is its own play, which is delightful.

Aaron: I’m really glad you put it that way. I mentioned the complicated structure of the movie. The way I thought of it was there’s this movie about Frances Haugen and Jeff Horwitz and her journey to become a whistleblower. Inside of that movie, there is a one-act play going on. Those two things crash into each other by the end of the movie. You asked me, when did I say, “Okay, this is a movie now,” and why did I stop where I did? I asked Jeff Horwitz a dramatist question, which was, “What for Frances was the inciting action?”

One day, she was a devoted Facebook employee who went to this company specifically because they had the civic integrity team that she wanted to work on. One day, she did that. One day, she was a whistleblower. I can’t figure out what the inciting action was. He said, “She had this friend who was a Bernie bro, basically. This liberal friend who got radicalized to the extreme right very quickly by Facebook. I imagined the opening scene. Suddenly, for the first time, I was imagining a movie. Why did I stop where I did?

Of all the strikes against Facebook, the one that this movie’s about is Facebook’s role in the rise of divisiveness and extremism and hyperpartisanship in the country, and there seemed like a logical ending point there.

John: It definitely is. It is a fantastic opening scene.

Aaron: Thank you.

John: People look forward to seeing that. What is so rewarding about a cold open is that we don’t have any information, and so we’re gathering along the way, and you can create these wonderful false expectations about who are these characters, what is really happening here, why are we supposed to be paying attention, and the payoff is so great. It’s a horror film almost.

Aaron: I’m really glad to hear you say that. Again, as I’m talking to you, very, very few people have seen this movie, so it’s nice to speak to someone who has. What I need to do because the conflicts that I write so often are about ideas, as opposed to a bank robbery. I have to create a sense of motion. I like to start things in the middle, going 60 miles an hour already. The audience shouldn’t just be a spectator; they need to be a participant in what’s going on. They are the magic ingredient.

If you can get them just sitting forward a little bit, having to think, needing to just constantly be running a little bit to catch up with you, that sense of energy is powerful.

John: Let’s talk about who are the real people in the movie. Obviously, Mark Zuckerberg exists. Frances, Jeff exists.

Aaron: Bill Burr is playing a character named Charlie Garrigan. He was an early investor in Facebook, had millions and millions of dollars from Facebook, but saw that Mark was starting to take Facebook in a bad direction. Just saw bad things happening. Could not persuade Mark or Sheryl Sandberg to–

John: Is he a character who would have existed in the social network? Could he have been a character who could have shown up in there?

Aaron: He became a constellary to Mark immediately following those social network years, right after the 2005 lawsuits. Wrote a book called Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. Obviously, he and Mark got a falling out over that. I made him a character in the movie.

John: Wunmi Mosaku?

Aaron: Wunmi Mosaku is playing a fictional crisis PR.

John: I believed every moment that she was in.

Aaron: Because she’s Wunmi Mosaku.

John: That’s a talented actor there.

Aaron: Yes, I’ll say. That whole room, by the way, you’re talking about the prep session. They’re preparing Mark for congressional testimony. Wunmi Mosaku is the PR person running the whole thing. Also in there are Joey Brooks and Patrick Fischler, who are just Mark lieutenants who are terrific in those scenes. I had a lot of fun shooting those scenes. Jeremy Strong, I think Jeremy might be the best American actor under 50 years old.

John: Oh, that’s high praise. I can see that. He’s incredibly gifted, and magnetic and compelling. You can see the thinking happening behind his eyes. He believed that thinking is happening as the character, not as the actor.

Aaron: There’s no doubt about it. Never once during the shoot did I hear Jeremy use his own voice. He only spoke as Mark. Never until I called to cut, check the gate on the last setup for Jeremy. He was a fierce defender of Mark, always. You want that. He made a beeline to me as soon as I said, “Cut, check the gate.” He came up to me and said, “If I’d been playing Jeff, I would have been defending Jeff.” In his own voice for the first time.

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John: As we should. Let’s get to our one cool thing. What do you have to recommend to us?

Aaron: First of all, let me just be clear. I’m not cool. I’ve tried a couple of times to be; it doesn’t work.

John: One thing you like.

Aaron: One thing I love. The new season of The Paper has arrived.

John: Great.

Aaron: The first season was fantastic. For anybody who doesn’t know, this is from Greg Daniels. It’s not a spin-off of The Office. It’s the same idea. It’s a documentary cruise in another office. It’s a small newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.

John: It has a tangential relationship because of Paper being sold.

Aaron: Because of Paper being sold, and one character, Oscar Nuñez, who plays Oscar Martinez, is there too. The show is very good. It’s very charming. The cast is fantastic. The writers’ room is fantastic. I waited a year for the new season; it has just dropped. That’s my one cool thing.

John: Fantastic.

Aaron: New season of The Paper.

John: The Paper. My one cool thing is a trope that I was not aware of until this last week. It’s a trope/a meme called Surf Dracula. Do you have any idea what Surf Dracula might be referring to?

Aaron: I do not. Wait, Surf Dracula? No, I can’t.

John: All right. It comes from a tweet from 2021 by a guy named Topher Florence. He says, “Back in the day, if you did a TV show called Surf Dracula, you’d see that fool surfing every week in new adventures. In the streaming era, the entire first season got to be one long-ass flashback to how he got the surfboard until you finally get to see him surf for five minutes in the finale.” It’s just such a wonderfully savage explanation of this moment that we’re at with a lot of our shows, which I just loved it.

Aaron: This is bookending my saying at the beginning that some of the best theater in America is being multi-part series. Yes, there’s bad stuff too.

John: Yes, it is. I just love it.

Aaron: That was good. The poor people at Surf Dracula. Maybe it’s great.

John: It’s going to be great. It’s so wonderfully specific. He picked the exact right name for the show. His language is specific. I just love that as a tweet. Just well done. Well done.

Aaron: It’s a great tweet.

John: Aaron Sorkin thinks that that was a great tweet. He approves the writing of that tweet.

Aaron: I do.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Meredith Stedman with help from Lauren Loesberg. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who also did our outro this week. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we often answer. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. Scriptnotes merch is available at Cotton Bureau. If you’d like to see us, not just listen to us, follow us on YouTube and Instagram.

If you’d like to read us, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. Most of all, thank you to our premium subscribers. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on The Projects That Never Shot. Maybe we’ll even talk about Houdini. Aaron Sorkin, thank you very much for coming on Scriptnotes.

Aaron: Thank you very much.

John: My pleasure.

Aaron: Great to be here. Thanks.

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[music]

John: Aaron Sorkin, we said as we were setting this up that we all have these projects that are just sitting on the shelves that are not shot. All of this except for you, apparently.

Aaron: I should have made up 10 things.

John: Any plays, anything that are half finished. No, everything is done.

Aaron: Yes. Again, I don’t have any ideas.

John: No ideas.

Aaron: No.

John: Again, you’re swinging at the right pitches, which is good. That’s why you don’t have the experience of spending a year on a draft, and it doesn’t happen. Then let me ask: I heard Rob Reiner talking on a podcast about how The American President, that your first draft was absurdly long. Let’s talk about this.

Aaron: There’s 200 pages of The American President’s screenplay that weren’t shot.

John: Is it true that those 200 pages became The West Wing?

Aaron: Yes. 3 pages of those 200 pages became the first couple of minutes of The West Wing. With The American President, boy, I really fell in love with the sound of my own voice. I got this one piece of research, writing that movie, this one piece of research that just, it would light me up for the rest of my life. It’s called The President’s Daily Diary, which isn’t, “Dear Diary, today she talked to me in the Lunchroom.” It’s simply a minute-by-minute, here’s what the president did today. I got it going back to Herbert Hoover. I just see these things.
For five minutes, he met with the treasury secretary. Then for 10 minutes, he had this security briefing. Then for five minutes, he called a friend to brush his teeth. There was just this odd dynamic of being the most powerful person in the world, but being a person, not being a king, just being this guy with a temp job. I really liked that. With The American President, if most stories are about an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation, I thought, well, every day is an extraordinary situation for the president.

Will it work the same if you take an extraordinary person and put them in an ordinary situation? Will it work the same if the president of the United States is just trying to ask a woman out on a date or just trying to buy flowers for her after the date? I just had a lot of fun playing house inside the White House as I was writing, doing this. Yes, the first draft of The American President was 385 pages long, but it moved really quickly.

John: Absolutely. I can’t even imagine, because this was the age where you weren’t sending a PDF. This was a physical document you were handing to somebody.

Aaron: I delivered it to Rob in in a shopping bag. Instead of him throwing his hands up and saying, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He said, “This is really good. I think the parts that work the best are the ones with the president and this lobbyist that he has a crush on. The rest of it, we probably don’t need to do.” It was pretty easy to whittle that down to 140 pages. Then there were little things that went into The West Wing pilot

John: That’s nice. There’s something, that Bag of Scraps became a wonderful series that people love.

Aaron: I’m wrong; there’s other stuff of mine. Stephen Schwartz and I were writing a musical about Houdini that Hugh Jackman was going to star in. I felt like I had a good idea for it. Obviously, Stephen knows how to write songs.

John: Absolutely.

Aaron: I couldn’t, because it wasn’t a biography of Houdini. Houdini, you’ll be surprised to find out, had just led a remarkably boring life. Incredibly boring life. However, there was this woman; I think her name was Margery Crandon. I may be getting that a little wrong. She called herself a spiritualist. Lived at the same time as Houdini. She’s a very beautiful woman. She and a couple of other beautiful women would put on these shows in diaphanous gowns. They’d have séances, and then they’d say, “We’re contacting the dead.”

Houdini hated these women because what he was doing, the audience understood he wasn’t really sawing a lady in half. With them, they really believed that she was contacting dead people. He would delight in his act, taking 20 minutes out and showing the audience how she was doing the tricks that she was doing. There’s always been a rumor that she killed him. I wanted the musical to be about that.

John: I remember the book I read in third grade about Houdini was that some person punched him really hard-

Aaron: Punch him in the heart.

John: -when he wasn’t expecting it.

Aaron: In Buffalo, I think, after a show. He wasn’t expecting it. On the train, my musical took place on the train ride from Buffalo to Chicago, which was his next stop on Halloween night. He would die in the middle of that show in Chicago. He passed out in the middle of that show, died on the way to the hospital.

John: How many songs were written?

Aaron: I think Stephen wrote three or four songs. We had Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. We did not even a workshop.

John: Not even a 29-hour reading, but even looser than that.

Aaron: It was a couple of days in a rehearsal studio in New York. Now that I’m talking about it, I feel like–

John: I’ve done a Broadway show, and I’m like, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it, Aaron.”

Aaron: I can’t get enough of doing it. Look, Larry Gelbart said, “If Hitler’s alive, I hope he’s out of town with the new musical.” I get it, but I can’t stay away.

John: Aaron Sorkin, thank you very much for coming on.