Aaron Sorkin

At 62 years old, Aaron Sorkin has this physical status:

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and playwright.

His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men, The Farnsworth Invention and To Kill a Mockingbird; 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, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs.

For writing The Social Network, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, among other awards.

He made his feature directorial debut in 2017 with Molly's Game, which he also wrote. Sorkin's trademark rapid-fire dialogue and extended monologues are complemented, in television, by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's characteristic directing technique called the "walk and talk".

These sequences consist of single tracking shots of long duration involving multiple characters engaging in conversation as they move through the set; characters enter and exit the conversation as the shot continues without any cuts.

Early life

Sorkin was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the New York suburb of Scarsdale. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a copyright lawyer who had fought in WWII and put himself through college on the G.I. Bill; both his older sister and brother went on to become lawyers. His paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). Sorkin took an early interest in acting. During childhood, his parents took him to the theatre to see shows such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and That Championship Season.

Sorkin attended Scarsdale High School where he became involved in the drama and theatre club. In the eighth grade, he played General Bullmoose in the musical Li'l Abner. At Scarsdale High, he served as vice president of the drama club in his junior and senior years, and graduated in 1979.

In 1979, Sorkin attended Syracuse University. In his freshman year, he failed a class that was a core requirement, which caused a setback because he wanted to be an actor, and the drama department did not allow students to take the stage until they completed the core classes. Determined to do better, he returned for his sophomore year, and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre. Recalling the influence of theatre teacher Arthur Storch, Sorkin said: "Arthur's reputation as a director, and as a disciple of Lee Strasberg, was a big reason why a lot of us went to S.U. [Syracuse University]... 'You have the capacity to be so much better than you are', he started saying to me in September of my senior year. He was still saying it in May. On the last day of classes, he said it again, and I said, 'How?', and he answered, 'Dare to fail'. I've been coming through on his admonition ever since".

Personal life

Sorkin married Julia Bingham in 1996 and divorced in 2005, with his workaholic habits and drug abuse reported to be a partial cause. Sorkin and Bingham have one daughter, Roxy. He dated Kristin Chenoweth for several years, who played Annabeth Schott on The West Wing (after Sorkin had left the show). He has also reportedly dated columnist Maureen Dowd and actress Kristin Davis. In 2021, Sorkin and Paulina Porizkova dated for a few months.

A consistent supporter of the Democratic Party, Sorkin has made substantial political campaign contributions to candidates between 1999 and 2011, according to CampaignMoney.com. During the 2004 US presidential election campaign, the liberal advocacy group MoveOn's political action committee enlisted Sorkin and Rob Reiner to create one of their anti-Bush campaign advertisements. In August 2008, Sorkin was involved in a Generation Obama event at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills, California, participating in a panel discussion subsequent to a screening of Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. However, Sorkin does not consider himself a political activist: "I've met political activists, and they're for real. I've never marched anyplace or done anything that takes more effort than writing a check in terms of activism". In 2016, after President Donald Trump won the election, Sorkin wrote an open letter to his daughter Roxy and her mother Julia.

In 1987, Sorkin started using marijuana and cocaine. He said cocaine gave him relief from certain nervous tensions that occur on a regular basis. In 1995, he sought rehabilitation at the Hazelden Institute in Minnesota, on the advice of Bingham to combat his addiction. In early 2001, Sorkin and his colleagues John Spencer and Martin Sheen received the Phoenix Rising Award for overcoming their drug abuse. However, on April 15, 2001, Sorkin was arrested when security guards at Hollywood Burbank Airport found that he was in possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, crack cocaine, and a metal crack pipe. He was court-ordered to a drug diversion program, while still working on The West Wing. In a commencement speech for Syracuse University on May 13, 2012, Sorkin said he has not used cocaine for eleven years.

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Career

Sorkin's career took him to New York City, where he spent much of the 1980s as a struggling, sporadically employed actor who performed odd jobs, including singing telegrams, driving a limousine, touring Alabama with the children's theatre company Traveling Playhouse, giving out flyers promoting a hunting-and-fishing exhibit and bartending at Broadway's Palace Theatre. "I was astonish confidence and a kind of joy that [he] had never experienced before in [his] life."

He continued writing and eventually put together Removing All Doubt, which he sent to his late theatre instructor, Arthur Storch, who was delighted. At his alma mater, Syracuse University, in 1984, Removing All Doubt was staged for drama students. He wrote Hidden in This Picture, the sequel to Steve Olsen's West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in New York City in 1988. His first two plays made him a theatre agent, thanks in large part to his talent. Producer John A. McQuiggan saw the film "Under This Picture" in this film and contracted Sorkin to make the one-act turn into a full-length play called Making Movies.

From a phone call with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and signed up for a three-year service with the United States Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, Sorkin was inspired to write his next play, A Few Good Men. Deborah Sorkin told Sorkin that she was headed to Guantanamo Bay to help a group of Marines who came close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing order levied by a superior officer. When bartending at the Palace Theatre, Sorkin took note and wrote a large portion of his story on cocktail napkins. When he returned home, he and his roommates had bought a Macintosh 512K; he would transcribe the tale and notes onto the computer, forming a basis from which he had written several drafts for A Few Good Men.

According to Sorkin, the film rights for A Few Good Men were sold to producer David Brown in 1988, well into six figures. Brown had read an article in The New York Times about Sorkin's one-act play Hidden in This Picture, and discovered that Sorkin produced A Few Good Men, which was off Broadway readings. At the Music Box Theatre in Broadway, Brown performed A Few Good Men. Tom Hulce was the star of the film and Don Scardino directed it. It debuted in late 1989 and attracted 497 performances. Sorkin continued writing Making Movies, and in 1990 it premiered Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, produced by John A. McQuiggan and then directed by Don Scardino. Brown, who was assisting them in converting A Few Good Men into a film, was turned down due to a lack of actor involvement. Brown, who was eager to make the film, received a phone call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment later that day. Rob Reiner, a Castle Rock production partner, chose to direct.

Sorkin was an entertainment consultant at Castle Rock Entertainment, where he befriended colleagues William Goldman and Rob Reiner, and met Julia Bingham, one of Castle Rock's corporate affairs attorneys, and was on board with them. Sorkin developed several drafts of A Few Good Men in his Manhattan apartment, picking up the art from a book about screenplay layout. He spent many months at Castle Rock's Los Angeles office, where he was filming with director Rob Reiner. William Goldman (who worked under contract at Castle Rock) became his mentor and assisted him in converting his stage play into a film script. Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, and Kevin Bacon were all in the film, directed by Reiner, and Brown produced it. A Few Good Men was born in 1992 and was a box office hit, grossing $243 million worldwide.

Sorkin was also approached with a story premise, which Sorkin turned into the story line for the thriller Malice. Goldman oversaw the project as a creative consultant, while Sorkin wrote the first two drafts. However, he had to leave the project to finish the script for A Few Good Men, so screenwriter Scott Frank stepped in and wrote two drafts of the Malice screenplay. Sorkin revived his involvement on Malice right through the final shooting script when it was complete. The 1993 drama starring Nicole Kidman and Alec Baldwin was directed by Harold Becker. Malice received mixed feedback, according to Vincent Canby of The New York Times, the film was "intendently amusing from start to finish." Roger Ebert, a critic, rated it as 2 out of four actors, and Peter Travers a 2000 Rolling Stone study characterized it as having "suspense but no retaining power."

The American President was Sorkin's last screenplay under Castle Rock; once more, he worked with William Goldman, who served as a creative consultant. Sorkin had to write the screenplay for The American President, which started at 385 pages, but it was eventually reduced to a basic shooting script of about 120 pages. The film, directed by Reiner, was critically acclaimed; Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described it as "genial and amusing if not particularly inspired" and that the "pipe dreams about the American political system and where it might eventually go." A Few Good Men, Malice, and The American President's Gross Margin is the product of a few good guys, Malice, and The American President's contribution total sales of $400 million.

Sorkin served as a script doctor in the second half of the 1990s. In 1996's The Rock, Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage wrote some quips for them. He appeared in Enemy of the State on Excess Baggage, a 1997 film about a woman who stages her own child to capture her father's interest, as well as rewrote some of Will Smith's scenes. Sorkin co-wrote several scripts with Warren Beatty, one of which was 1998's Bulworth. Beatty, who is known for sometimes financially financing his film projects through pre-production, also contracted Sorkin to rewrite a script titled Ocean of Storms, which never went into production. Sorkin suing Beatty for proper compensation for his contributions to the Ocean of Storms script at one point; once the case was settled, he restarted writing on the script.

When staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, Sorkin generated the desire to write about the behind-the-scenes events on a sports show. The American President was on the screenplay. He will finish late, with ESPN's television set to ESPN and continuous replays of SportsCenter. The show inspired him to write a film based on a sports theme, but he was unable to tell the story for film, so he turned it into a television comedy collection. Sports Night was produced by Disney and debuted on ABC in the fall of 1998.

During the first season, Sorkin fought with ABC over the use of a laugh track and a live studio audience. Critics generally condemned the comedy track as jarring, with Salon magazine's Joyce Millman calling it "the most unconvincing laugh track you've ever heard." "You have no choice but to use the chuckle track if you do shoot in front of a live audience," Sorkin said. Increasing the laughs is often the right thing to do. You may occasionally need a cymbal crash. "It's some days that alienates me." The comedic track was gradually dialed in and was eventually discarded by the time of the first season. In the second season, Sorkin was triumphant, releasing the crew of the impossible challenge of staging a scene for a live audience and leaving the cast with more time to rehearse. Although Sports Night was critically acclaimed, ABC pulled the show after two seasons due to poor ratings. Sorkin entertained bids to repeat the show on other television networks, but declined all the bids because they were dependent on his participation and he was already working on The West Wing.

When Sorkin was inebriated to a lunch with producer John Wells, he pitched a desperate plot to Wells, relying on senior White House staff and using old scripts from his script for The American President. When doing research for The American President, he told Wells about his visits to the White House, and the two found themselves discussing public service and the passions of those who serve. Wells took the idea and pitched it on NBC, but the Clinton-Lewinsky controversy brought it to a halt. There was a skepticism that television viewers would not be interested in a White House documentary. Other television stations began showing an interest in The West Wing a year ago. Despite reluctance, NBC decided to approve the bid. Warner Bros. Television produced the pilot, which premiered in 1999 in the fall of 1999.

For its debut season, the West Wing earned nine Primetime Emmy Awards, making the series the first Emmys to be won by a single season at any time. Following the awards ceremony, there was a rift over the acceptance speech for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. The West Wing episode "In Excelsis Deo" was named a winner, and Sorkin and Rick Cleveland were rewarded, but the New York Times announced Sorkin led Cleveland off the stage before he could say a few words. According to Cleveland's essay "I Was the Dumb Looking Guy with the Wire-Rimmed Glasses," based on Cleveland's father, a Korean War veteran who spent the last years of his life on the streets. Sorkin and Cleveland continued their conflict in a public web forum at Mighty Big TV in which Sorkin said that he gives his writers "story By" credit on a revolving basis "by way of a gratuity" and that he had written out Cleveland's script and started from scratch. Sorkin apologised to Cleveland after being suspended. The Writer Guild of America Awards for Television: Episodic Drama, Cleveland and Sorkin, was also given the Gold Medal of America by the 53rd Writer Guild of America for "In Excelsis Deo."

Sorkin had a heroin relapse and was arrested at Hollywood Burbank Airport in 2001 for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, and crack cocaine. He had been ordered by a court to attend a drug diversion course. There was a lot of media hype, but he did have a fruitful comeback. Sorkin compared NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's television special about a day in the life of a president to "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing," compared to the practice of delivering a valentine to President George W. Bush rather than real news reporting. The West Wing aired on the same network, and so did not on the order of NBC's Entertainment President Jeff Zucker, Sorkin apologized later, but "there should be a difference between what NBC News does and what the West Wing TV series does."

Sorkin wrote 87 screenplays for The West Wing, which is about every episode of the show's first four Emmy-winning seasons. Sorkin characterized his contribution to the creative process as "not so much [that of] a showrunner or a producer." I'm really a writer. "Out of 88 [West Wing] episodes that I did not have we were on time and on budget never once," he said. Sorkin and fellow executive producer Thomas Schlamme left the show after four seasons due to internal tensions at Warner Bros. Television, causing John Wells to serve as showrunner. Except for a minute of the fifth season's first episode, Sorkin never watched any episodes outside of his writing career, comparing the experience to "like watching someone make out with my girlfriend." In the series finale for a cameo appearance as a guest at Matthew Santos' inauguration, Sorkin appeared later as a guest.

Sorkin revived to theatre in 2005, rewriting his script A Few Good Men for a West End production. The production opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the fall of the same year and was directed by David Esbjornson, with Rob Lowe of The West Wing in the lead role. Sorkin appeared on The Charlie Rose Show that he was creating a late-night sketch comedy show based on a late-night sketch comedy program similar to Saturday Night Live. A pilot script dubbed Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip, written by him and Schlamme as producer, began to circulate in Hollywood and online in October 2005. After a bidding war with CBS, NBC purchased the rights from Warner Bros. Television to air the series on their network for a near-record license fee. On the Sunset Strip, the show's name was later changed to Studio 60. The show has been described as having "autobiographical characteristics" to it and "people based on real people," Sorkin said, but that it shifts from those beginnings to exploring backstage maneuvers at a late night sketch comedy festival.

The pilot for Studio 60, directed by Schlamme, aired on NBC on September 18, 2006. The pilot was critically praised and watched by a audience of over 12 million viewers, but mid-season, the show saw a dramatic decrease in viewership. A substantial amount of thoughtful and scrupulous criticism in the media, as well as negative commentary from bloggers, existed long before the first episode aired. Sorkin sluggishly condemned the media for covering the poor ratings in the media in January 2007, and even suggested that bloggers and unemployed comedy writers be used as sources. Studio 60 revived airing the last episodes of season one, which would be the first season for the first time.

Sorkin was directing a spec script about inventor Philo Farnsworth in the 1990s; producer Fred Zollo approached him in the 1990s about adapting Elma Farnsworth's memoir into a biographical film; as early as 2003, Sorkin was directing a spec script about him. He completed the Farnsworth Invention film screenplay, which was acquired by New Line Cinema with Schlamme as producer in the following year. The tale is about Farnsworth and RCA tycoon David Sarnoff's patent battle for the first television broadcastings in the United States. No additional information about the film had been posted. Sorkin was contacted by Jocelyn Clarke of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, asking that he write a play for them, a request which he accepted. Sorkin wanted to rewrite The Farnsworth Invention as a play. In early 2005, he produced his first draft of the play at the Abbey Theatre, and La Jolla Playhouse in 2007 planned a workshop performance of the play in collaboration with the Abbey Theatre. In 2006, Abbey Theatre's new artistic team left The Farnsworth Invention. Despite this, La Jolla Playhouse continued as a producer, with Steven Spielberg as a producer. The performance debuted on stage in La Jolla's unique Page to Stage program, which encouraged Sorkin and director Des McAnuff to advance the play from show to show based on audience reactions and feedback; the production lasted from February 20, 2007 to March 25, 2007. A Broadway production followed shortly after, beginning in previews and launching on November 14, 2007, but the play was postponed by the 2007 Broadway stagehand strike. The Farnsworth Invention opened on December 3, 2007, and closed on March 2, 2008.

Universal Pictures had Sorkin adapt George Crile's non-fiction book Charlie Wilson's War for Tom Hanks' production company Playtone in 2007. Charlie Wilson's War, a biographical drama, is about Texas congressman Charlie Wilson, who financed the CIA's covert war in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union. The film, directed by Mike Nichols and written by Sorkin, was released in 2007 and starred Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film received five Golden Globe Awards, including Best Screenplay for Sorkin.

Sorkin revealed in August 2008 that he had promised to write a script for Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin about Facebook's inception. The Social Network, based on Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires, was published on October 1, 2010. It was a critical and commercial success; Sorkin received an Academy Award, BAFTA, and a Golden Globe for the screenplay.

Sorkin has been nominated for co-writing Moneyball a year later. It is based on Michael Lewis' 2003 non-fiction book of the same name, an account of the Oakland Athletics baseball team's 2002 season and general manager Billy Beane's efforts to form a competitive team. Bennett Miller produced the film, which starred Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers termed the script "dynamite," in which Sorkin's "sharply witty touch is everywhere."

Sorkin appeared on "Plan B," a Sorkin-led series in 2011, where he did a "walk and talk" with Liz Lemon starring Tina Fey. Sorkin, who was still working on the screenplay for The Social Network, was considering a television series about the behind-the-scenes of a cable news show. Sorkin and HBO had been in contact since 2010. Sorkin researched the news industry and interviewed Parker Spitzer's employees on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Chris Matthews spent time shadowing Hardball with him, as well as other Fox News and CNN programs. Sorkin said in a television interview that he planned to have a less cynical view of the media: "They're going to be trying to do well in a situation where it's really difficult to do well when there are commercial, political, and corporate concerns." Sorkin decided that rather than having his characters react to fictional news events as on his earlier books, it would be set in the recent past and track real-world events largely as they progressed, giving a greater sense of realism.

As This Story Develops, HBO ordered a pilot episode in January 2011 with the working title More as This Story Develops, with Scott Rudin as an executive producer. In September, HBO premiered The Newsroom, a 10-episode version. HBO renewed the series for a second season a day after the second episode aired. Sorkin said in The Newsroom "is supposed to be an idealistic, romantic, swashbuckling, and in some cases comedic, upward-looking glance at a group of individuals who are often considered cynically." The same goes for The West Wing, where our leaders are often stereotyped as Machiavellian or dumb; I wanted to do something different and present a highly educated group of individuals." After its third season, the series came to an end.

Danny Boyle's biographical drama Steve Jobs was published in 2015. Sorkin's film was based on Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, and it starred Michael Fassbender as Jobs, Kate Winslet as John Sculley, Jeff Daniels as Seth Rogen, and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak. Sorkin expressed reservations about watching the movie, saying "it was a little like writing about the Beatles" because there are so many people out there who know so much about him [Jobs] and who adore him that I just saw a minefield of disappointment." [...] I'm hoping that when I'm done with my study, I'll be in the same ball park of Steve Jobs' knowledge. He received a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, but some journalists were surprised that he didn't receive an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

Sorkin will perform Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird on stage in February 2016 and perform alongside Bartlett Sher. The Shubert Theatre's revival opened on December 13, 2018, to rave reviews.

Sorkin made his directorial debut with Molly's Game, an adaptation of entrepreneur Molly Bloom's memoir. Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba appeared in it, as well as the script. Sorkin's third Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay began in 2016 and the film was released in December 2017, receiving mostly favorable feedback; Sorkin received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Molly's Game received an approval rating of 81% based on 297 reviews, with an average rating of 7.07/10.

Steven Spielberg hired him in 2006 for a film about the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and the subsequent trial, according to Sorkin. "I left not knowing what the hell he was talking about after meeting at Spielberg's house," Sorkin said. Sorkin had signed a DreamWorks contract to write three scripts in 2007, according to Variety magazine on July 12, 2007. The first was The Trial of the Chicago 7, which Sorkin was also designing with Spielberg, Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. Ari Emanuel, Sorkin's agent, had said it was "tough to get together" in March 2010. It was announced in late July 2013 that Paul Greengrass would be directing, but Sorkin eventually wrote and directed the film. The film, which is primarily focusing on the Chicago Seven (and Bobby Seale), debuted on September 25, 2020 before being available on Netflix. Sorkin received Best Screenplay at the 78th Golden Globes and was nominated for Best Director.

Sorkin was writing a biopic about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's twenty-year marriage and their appearance on a comedy film, I Love Lucy, in September 2015. Cate Blanchett was born to be Ballo. Amazon Studios acquired the rights to the film in 2017. Blanchett had been recalled by Nicole Kidman in January 2021, and Javier Bardem had been portrayed as Desi Arnaz. It was directed by Sorkin and received a limited release on December 10, 2021, followed by a broad release on Prime Video on December 21, 2021. The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Byrnes praised the film's dialogue, while The Irish Times' critic expressed his disappointment that the film lacks "spark or insight."

Sorkin would reunite with director Bartlett Sher to revive Camelot on Broadway, according to the report. The musical was supposed to premiere at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center on November 3, 2022, but it was postponed to April 13, 2023.

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