{"id":896160,"date":"2026-10-27T08:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T08:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/896160\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T08:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T08:12:12","slug":"aaron-sorkin-on-directing-doubts-the-west-wing-and-a-few-good-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/896160\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Sorkin on Directing Doubts, ‘The West Wing’ and ‘A Few Good Men’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cI was my second-choice to direct it,\u201d Aaron Sorkin<\/a> candidly admitted as we sat down last week at the the Newport Beach Film Festival<\/a> to record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Awards Chatter podcast and began discussing the film for which he was receiving the fest\u2019s Maverick Director Award: The Social Reckoning<\/a>, which he also wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis film about Facebook<\/a> \u2014 specifically, about the social media company\u2019s knowledge and cover-up of its harmful effects on society, and the whistleblower (Mikey Madison) who brought them to the attention of a journalist (Jeremy Allen White), creating problems for Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> (Jeremy Strong) \u2014 comes 16 years after another that Sorkin wrote, the massively acclaimed The Social Network<\/a>, which David Fincher directed.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf The Social Reckoning, Sorkin explained, \u201cI would have rather David Fincher directed it \u2014 I would rather David Fincher direct everything \u2014 but David has an exclusive deal at Netflix, and this was owned by Sony.\u201d And so it was that Sorkin himself ended up helming the $40 million film that Sony released nationwide on Oct. 9, which, to his disappointment, was greeted with considerably fewer enthusiastic reviews (it\u2019s at 54 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and ticket sales (it has grossed just $15 million worldwide) than the earlier film. <\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin has been writing movies for 35 years \u2014 among them 1992\u2019s A Few Good Men<\/a>, 1995\u2019s The American President, 2007\u2019s Charlie Wilson\u2019s War, the aforementioned The Social Network (for which he won screenplay Oscar and Golden Globe awards), 2011\u2019s Moneyball (screenplay Oscar nom), 2015\u2019s Steve Jobs (for which he won a screenplay Golden Globe), 2017\u2019s Molly\u2019s Game (screenplay Oscar nom), 2020\u2019s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (screenplay Oscar nom) and 2021\u2019s Being the Ricardos \u2014 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest screenwriters of all time, in a league with his heroes Paddy Chayefsky and William Goldman. (He also wrote some of the most admired and provocative TV series of all times, most notably every episode of the first four seasons of NBC\u2019s The West Wing<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBut over the past decade, as Sorkin stepped behind the camera to helm Molly\u2019s Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Being the Ricardos and The Social Reckoning,\u00a0he has taken more than a few knocks for his directing. And in Newport Beach, he was candid about how it has made him feel: \u201cThere\u2019s a big part of me that feels like I just got into the movie business a few minutes ago, and that there\u2019s so much I don\u2019t know. From time to time, I get to speak with screenwriting students, and I\u2019ll be asked, \u2018Is screenwriting something that can be taught?\u2019 And the answer is, \u2018There are parts of screenwriting \u2014 important parts \u2014 that can be taught and can be learned, but there are parts that can\u2019t be. And those parts that can\u2019t be? That\u2019s usually what we mean when we use the word \u2018talent.\u2019 I\u2019m very worried that the parts of directing that I\u2019m not good at are those parts that you can\u2019t learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin, whose pre-Molly\u2019s Game films were directed by Rob Reiner, David Fincher, Bennett Miller, Mike Nichols and Danny Boyle, emphasizes, \u201cI\u2019m not done wanting to work with great directors, but when you work with the lineup of directors that you just read, you\u2019d really have to not be paying attention to not learn anything.\u201d Still, he admits, the learning curve has been greater than he anticipated \u2014\u00a0not in terms of working with actors, but in terms of knowing how to artfully use a camera. \u201cI was surprised by how little of the science of filmmaking I\u2019d managed to absorb.\u201d He adds, \u201cI have no visual sensibility, it turns out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 65-year-old says that he relates to football coaches he has seen being interviewed after a losing game who insist that the elements for a win were all there, but just didn\u2019t come together: \u201cThat\u2019s how I feel about directing. There are things that I\u2019ve been doing right along the way. Just give me one more chance, and one of these days I\u2019ll be able to put it all together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin also weighed in on a number of other topics, as you can hear from yourself via the audio player above, or read select excerpts of below\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tOn potentially reviving The West Wing\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI always want to rekindle the show. I love the show, I love those people and I miss it, especially nowadays. The problem is, you\u2019ve got to have a story. They won\u2019t let me just write dialogue. Also, the cast has gotten older; I didn\u2019t know that was going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the demise of the mid-range-budget movie\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis [The Social Reckoning] is my 11th movie, and except for A Few Good Men, I\u2019m not sure if any of them would be feature films today; I think they would all have to be streaming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the new Lincoln Center revival<\/a> of A Few Good Men\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis production is very different than the original Broadway production\u2026 I made my Broadway debut and became addicted to cocaine at roughly the same time\u2026 When I was 25, I was trying to write my first play, and I was having a hard time, and someone just kind of put a joint in my face, and I smoked a little of that, and then they laid out a couple of lines of coke, and I would end up losing a decade of my life to drugs, just gone. So I\u2019m happy, this time around, to be working on it clean and sober. I\u2019ve also been rewriting it, because I was very young when I wrote it \u2014 it was my first play \u2014 so in some ways, it\u2019s a new play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI was my second-choice to direct it,\u201d Aaron Sorkin candidly admitted as we sat down last week at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":896161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[138137,38131,303979,126312,236,88,10414,12424,375766,38379,108209,31583],"class_list":["post-896160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-a-few-good-men","tag-aaron-sorkin","tag-awards-chatter-live-newport-beach","tag-awards-chatter-podcast","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-facebook","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-newport-beach-film-festival","tag-the-social-network","tag-the-social-reckoning","tag-the-west-wing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}