{"id":912617,"date":"2026-10-01T20:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T20:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/912617\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T20:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T20:10:11","slug":"aaron-sorkin-on-the-social-reckoning-and-a-few-good-men-on-broadway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/912617\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Sorkin on The Social Reckoning and A Few Good Men on Broadway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNext week, Aaron Sorkin<\/a> will see the theatrical release of The Social Reckoning, his long-awaited follow-up to The Social Network, as well as the start of the Broadway revival of A Few Good Men.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe leadup is stressful, not just because of the workload, the film premieres, the press frenzy, or, as Sorkin jokes to The Hollywood Reporter, \u201cthe potential for career immolation.\u201d But also because Sorkin is returning to two topics that have been benchmarks in his career.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m very proud of the film. I\u2019m excited for people to see it, and I\u2019m proud of the play. Probably, if I could choose, I wouldn\u2019t have them happening at the same time. But it\u2019s a pretty glamorous problem to have,\u201d Sorkin says.<\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin is revisiting and refining A Few Good Men more than three decades after its Broadway premiere, which came after he penned the military court drama on cocktail napkins while working as a theater bartender. The play led to a feature film and helped launch the rest of his career. This production brings back Bradley Whitford (who made his debut in the original stage show), alongside Tom Blyth, and Krysta Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith The Social Reckoning, which is scheduled for release Oct. 9, the anticipation comes, in part, as Sorkin said it has not had the traditional test screenings and few people have seen it due to the level of security Sony required around the film due to the subject matter. The film dramatizes the true story of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy White). He adds that he himself has not spoken with Meta or CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the film, but that Sony had received a letter.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAaron Sorkin and Mikey Madison on the set of The Social Reckoning.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEverett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think it was just making the studio aware that Meta has lawyers,\u201d Sorkin said.<\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin had been reluctant to write a follow-up to The Social Network, in part because he says he \u201cdidn\u2019t want to be the writer of Jaws 2,\u201d but also because he couldn\u2019t initially see where the next story should be. Even now, Sorkin does not see the film as a sequel but sees it as more of a story set in the same universe.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe idea began germinating after he spent several years speaking with Haugen and Horwitz, who published the expos\u00e9 on how Meta had allegedly been aware of the negative impacts on its platforms on teens and in spreading misinformation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe breakthrough for Sorkin came when he asked Horwitz what the \u201cinciting action\u201d was for Haugen to turn from devoted Facebook employee to whistleblower and was told that she had a friend who had been radicalized by the social media platform and she wanted to find out how. This led Sorkin to be able to see the first scene of the film, which is always a necessary step for him to start a new project.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was eager to write it, and I hadn\u2019t written anything in about a year-and-a-half, and it was just an epic period of writer\u2019s block, and I really wanted to write this scene,\u201d Sorkin said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s 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 in you walk, the further you can see,\u201d Sorkin added of his writing process.<\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin had also been approached a few times about reviving A Few Good Men, which ran on Broadway from 1989 to early 1991 and was developed into the 1992 film, starring Tom Cruise as the indefatigable military lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee defending two soldiers charged with killing another soldier in a hazing that turned fatal. (Cruise took on the role after Nicole Kidman saw the play and suggested it would be a good part for him, Sorkin said.)<\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin said yes to the Broadway revival this time, because he was asked by The Lincoln Center and Tony Award-winning director Michael Arden, and also because he had the opportunity to \u201cdo a little polish\u201d on the play.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObviously I have very fond memories of it. But I look back on it kind of the way I look at my high school yearbook picture,\u201d Sorkin said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe timing with the current political environment also felt particularly apt.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSuddenly, we are talking about illegal orders and what to do when you get one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin initially wrote the play while bartending at the Palace Theater during the Broadway run of La Cage Aux Folles (\u201cThere\u2019s not much to do during the first act. So I was writing \u2018A Few Good Men\u2019 on cocktail napkins,\u201d he said.) The plot was inspired by a conversation with his sister, a lawyer who had just joined the Navy Judge Advocate General\u2019s Corps and was visiting Guantanamo Bay to deal with a \u201ccode red,\u201d or the off-the-books punishment enacted by fellow soldiers against one of their own. While Sorkin did further research on the case in preparation, he largely fictionalized the rest of the story.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBradley Whitford first starred in A Few Good Men on Broadway in 1989.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAmy Sussman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tThe original play also gave Bradley Whitford his first big break, as he later took over the lead role of Kaffee during the run, and then, notably went on to more roles within the Sorkin universe, including Josh Lyman on The West Wing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI do remember standing backstage for the first night when I was going on as Kaffee, and being so terrified, and just thinking, \u2018You could sentence people to this, and crime would go down. Why did I volunteer for this?\u2019\u201d Whitford said.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the upcoming production, Whitford takes on the role of the antagonist, Col. Jessup, the explosive commanding officer questioned about his role in the hazing, opposite Blyth, who is taking on the role of Kaffee. While Jessup was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the film (who memorably delivers the line \u201cYou can\u2019t handle the truth!\u201d while being questioned on the stand), Whitford has stayed away from clips of Nicholson, and has developed his own idea of the character, after playing opposite several Jessups in the original production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI would often see it as a person who seemed like a Democrat, who I knew was going to trash the classroom, as opposed to a Republican who jogs,\u201d Whitford quipped.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is also the latest in a string of antagonist roles for the Handmaid\u2019s Tale and Get Out actor, but Whitford said that\u2019s not entirely intentional. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m at all like that in real life. I find it, you know, difficult to send a steak back, but I can play a monstrous asshole. I don\u2019t know why I have that skill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, he notes that he was always drawn to Jessup, because while he may seem explosive and unpredictable, he makes some compelling points about the need for a strong leader in Guantanamo amid the play\u2019s argument about \u201cIs the way to survival dominance or cooperation?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAhead of the first preview, Oct. 8, Sorkin said he cleaned up some dialogue and made a few plot points clearer, and then left Arden and the cast alone for a few weeks of rehearsal. He told the cast and crew to \u201ctreat this as a new play,\u201d meaning that if something isn\u2019t working during previews, he\u2019s open to rewriting more. During the first read-through Whitford also provided some advice to his fellow cast members gleaned from years of working with Sorkin.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNow he\u2019s this sort of institution, and I kept going around to all the actors going, \u2018You can ask him questions. You don\u2019t have to treat him with reverence. You don\u2019t have to be scared.\u2019 He\u2019s actually a writer who adores actors,\u201d Whitford.<\/p>\n

\n\tThroughout his career, Sorkin has been drawn to writing about other institutions, in the form of the military or the government, or even something like a newsroom in The Social Reckoning. While he struggles to pinpoint exactly why that is, Sorkin acknowledges that he does have a \u201cromantic\u201d idea about how these institutions should function in American democracy, even while recognizing that they\u2019re \u201cuser sensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it comes to this production of A Few Good Men, which opens Oct. 29, Sorkin said he largely hopes it\u2019s a great night at the theater. But given its timing, he also hopes audiences listen to the message of the play.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe people who take orders in the military, they\u2019re going to follow orders. They\u2019re not going to say, \u201cAre you sure? And they\u2019re not going to look in a law book to see if they\u2019re allowed to do it. So we need to pay attention to who\u2019s giving the orders,\u201d Sorkin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next week, Aaron Sorkin will see the theatrical release of The Social Reckoning, his long-awaited follow-up to The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":912618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[111597,64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-912617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-aaron-sorkin","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}