Sunlight on a broken column

The Newsroom. Fucking A.

I believe I'm an Aaron Sorkin fan. Loved Sports Night, hated The West Wing, sneakily attached to Studio 60 (disclosure: dolphin girl), openly admired The Social Network -- greatly; kinda liked Moneyball... Liked The Newsroom. A lot.

Smart move (i): setting it in a newsroom. We expect bored media-savvy types to talk in a media-savvy, bored way about the media. Smart move (ii): setting it all just a little bit in the past. Unlike The West Wing (AKA The Waltons), The Newsroom invites us to examine its narrative churn with the benefit of hindsight. Not a lot of hindsight, because that would be history and require us to work: The Newsroom skates on mid-term memory, perfectly. For example the Gulf oil spill was about BP and Halliburton but, yes, long term, we would all better remember the new iPhone. We are the hollow men, and so forth. You know the drill.

Our dried voices when we whisper together

So I finally got to see The Ides of March and Moneyball. Clooney is not as smart as he thinks he is and Brad Pitt is not as charismatic as he thinks he is. Which is no crime. Clooney is a good director: he knows when to hang back and he really lets the actors speak for themselves. His style reminds me very much of Robert Redford's in Quiz Show: he shuts up and lets the story get on with it, and the drama is character-driven. The weakness is in the script (three credited writers, based on a play) which turns on Ryan Gosling's moral character making an immoral choice. Why he does so isn't set up or explained. Basically the character acts out of character.

The Moneyball screenplay is credited to Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin: a sort of screenwriting supergroup. Liked it a lot, again because the director lets things hang a little, but Sorkin's dialogue tennis is best served fast and Pitt plays it slow. I don't think I've truly enjoyed Pitt in anything: like Alfred Molina, he is likeable, talented and nearly always miscast. He's tremendously physical -- in one scene, tossing a bat aside with the fluidity of a dancer -- but every role he takes involves doing annoying things with his mouth (sucking a spoon, chewing on a sandwich or, in this case, spitting gum into a coffee cup). But when he looks rundown or downcast or subdued, he ages ten years and becomes terrific. Edward James Olmos' line to the DOP was "don't make me look pretty." Pitt could use that.

Both films are about money and the lack of it. I enjoy this as a subject. It's becoming more current.

Neither are as good as The Ghost, which I finally got to see as well. Polanski knows how to build tension. He deploys clichés like a sail, adjusting them gradually. In The Ghost an exiled politician lives by the sea: one shot has his groundsman sweeping the sand off the steps only to have the approaching wind blow it back. At which point I decided: I fucking love this movie. The Ghost is as melodramatic as Ides of March; as esoteric as Moneyball, yet recognisable, spooky, obsessive, human. Square inside a genre, buckling down on character and above all witty. I guess this is what it was like watching Rosemary's Baby when it first came out.

I'm obsessed with 'drama', now. People walking in and out of rooms, talking. It's amazing how much you can do with that.

Aaron Sorkin Q&A at the BFI

Tonight (Jan 20) I went to see Aaron Sorkin speaking at the BFI about his screenplay for The Social Network. The film screened before Sorkin came on stage to be interviewed by Francine Stock and take questions from the audience. I scribbled some very rough notes from the 45 minute presentation, which went something like this:

The screenplay was based on 14pp book proposal. Random House wanted to release the movie and book and the same time so producer Scott Rudin hired Sorkin to write the script before the book had been finished – 'simultaneous development' was the term. Sorkin based his screenplay on three sources: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's original blogs (the 'Erica Albright' character is a real person but with the name changed); legal documents from the lawsuits which Sorkin went through with two lawyers; and interviews conducted on the basis of strict anonymity. Sorkin noted that the fact that they knew that Zuckerberg was drinking beer and which brand on the night he coded Facemash – there were were only four other people present at the time – indicates the accuracy of their sources.

Sorkin enjoyed the contradictions of two lawsuits and three conflicting versions of the truth because he likes courtroom drama and Rashomon. He researched facts and invented the characters' motivations. He was interested in the world of clever, angry young men who view women as either prizes or enemies, describing the protagonists' psyche as 'middle school.'

Talked a lot about the first scene of the movie. Sorkin loved that it's a scene you have to 'lean in to listen to... If you don't land the audience with the first scene there's no point in writing the scenes that follow.' Sorkin wanted to treat the audience as being as intelligent as the filmmakers, and not talk down to them. His pairing with director David Fincher was 'counter-intuitive' as Fincher is visual and Sorkin writes 'people talking in rooms' but Fincher understood that this film was a 'story told through language' and the multiple takes of scenes were so the actors could talk faster and 'casualise' the dialogue. Sorkin credited Sony and Fincher with understanding this dense first scene. Fincher filmed Sorkin's 'scenes of typing as if they were bank robberies.'

First draft was the shooting script. Fincher came on board on the condition that the script wasn't 'noted to death.' The real-life Eduardo Saverin went to ground during production and could not be contacted by anyone because his legal settlement was on condition of non-disclosure. Sorkin guessed that Saverin was paid hundreds of millions plus stock and would have lost it all if he broke the agreement. Eduardo did see the finished film at a specially arranged private screening at Sony's NY preview theater. Sorkin joked that when Eduardo emerged from the screening you probably could have performed surgery on him without anaesthetic.

The Winklevoss twins have seen the movie many times. (Laughter from the audience.) Zuckerberg closed the Facebook office for the day and bought out a theater so all the staff could see the movie; Sorkin credited Zuckerberg with being 'a good sport' about it.

Sorkin's research assistant is a UCLA computer researcher and helped him with the tech speak. Sorkin said hacking scenes and intern-off are two scenes he doesn't understand it all: he wrote it based on notes and many other people checked it. 'I had no idea what I was writing.'

In the early stages of development producer Scott Rudin made 'an aggressive attempt' to get Zuckerberg to participate but Zuckerberg declined. Sorkin was relieved when Zuckerberg passed because he didn't want the movie to be 'a Facebook production' or 'an infomercial.' 'Once you meet a person it's difficult to be anything but nice to them.' Sorkin was not out to 'get' Zuckerberg; he portrayed him as an antihero and identified with the fictionalised character as an outsider.

Sorkin said that although nothing ever goes right in showbiz, this project did. Scott Rudin is a great producer because he's nice to people. He gave Sorkin no instructions except to 'write the movie you want to write.' Sorkin did months of research, thinking. He drives around when he doesn't have an idea. Finally hooked on the idea of Zuckerberg's blog post as the start of the movie, flicking back and forth between the character's desire for revenge and the glamorous party to which he would never gain admittance. Wrote first 18-20pp scene in a day or two and sent the pages to Rudin; Rudin said you've got it. Finished the screenplay on a Wednesday (160pp odd, he and Fincher timed it with a stopwatch to reassure Sony that it would come in at two hours); sent it to Sony on a Thursday who then forwarded it to the only director they wanted, which was Fincher.

Sorkin said writing is always a compromise between the author's personal view and fidelity to the characters. He also said he was very aware that he was writing about young people who were already suing each other. Joked that 'if your moral compass is broken there's always Sony's legal department,' which went over every inch of the screenplay. Sorkin said that had he written anything that was both untrue and defamatory 'then Zuckerberg would own Sony by now.'

*

Sorkin has already spoken about writing the film. Earlier I wrote about the movie and about Sorkin's early TV series Sports Night.

The Sweet Smell of Success

The Social Network benefits from a second viewing. Aaron Sorkin's script is so upfront you get all the main points the first time but re-examination turns up all kinds of gems: Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) putting out a fire while he's putting out an actual fire; the champion rowers beginning to lose from the moment they're interrupted in the practice tank; the very Citizen Kane arc of Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) breaking into the frat party virtually, attracting and being surrounded by more and more people until he ends up being crowded out and as isolated as he was in the beginning; the Facebook blue that creeps into the edges of the sky until it's filled.

Sunrise and sunset are as one in this movie - it's on Fincher time - but the tone is very noir, The Social Network is really this generation's The Sweet Smell of Success, filled with talk and sleek urban treachery. Male bonds are more prized than male-female relationships and while there's much mention of money there's little evidence of it. The most direct expressions of wealth are crass and excessive; Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake, a convincing shit) fusses over vintage whiskies in a droning nightclub and drives a humorous mom-mobile. Sex is likewise superfluous - the most fun women (girls) have in the film is with a bong. The real glitter is the chatter of keyboards.

Much has been made of how much Sorkin's Zuckerberg is like the real one. Jesse Eisenburg's performance certainly satisfies the stereotype of today's Asperger Kid (how time flies - it seems like only yesterday that all movie teens were bipolar) but it's more likely that the character has been reverse-engineered from the modern Zuckerberg as he appears in press statements and leaked online gloats. The audience is meant to to be appalled by his lack of empathy but an early scene in which he speedily constructs a site to insult every female on campus is undeniably cool: to object would be like criticising Robert de Niro for stealing in Heat. To be online is to be understanding of, if not actively engaged in, narcissistic stupidity. The character's actions are more of a caution: therebutforthegraceofgod-dot-com.

We live in a larger world now, something which Fincher telegraphs by shrinking the rest of it down to size. The Henley Royal Regatta is miniaturised in digital (i.e. faux) tilt-shift so it looks quaint, even petty; Harvard is a series of Roman-looking facades, like faded theater flats; a final decadent Los Angeles party is as squalid and domestic as the fraternity binges at the start of the movie. If TV, as someone once said, is about people walking in and out of rooms, the internet is about them being locked inside. Zuckerberg only physically exits locations a handful of times: trapped in a Last Year at Marienbad loop of opprobrium, he can't even leave his lawyer's office. His fate should be consolation for real people - Fincher compares them all to a caged chicken - but it's not. From the stupid girls to the repulsive boys, the stale arguments to the unsexy sex, The Social Network is a groovy place, and you want to be part of it.

Joy

White tea is the new thing. Secondhand books finally arrived from Amazon: one for research (France) and one for fun (old crime thing) . Time has a great cover story on the Tea Party. I want to see The American, The Town and The Social Network very much but who knows when they'll open here? Aaron Sorkin talked to New York magazine about his writing style:

"I'm really weak when it comes to plot," he says bluntly—a startling self-assessment from the creator of three television series. "With nothing to stop me, I'll write pages and pages of snappy dialogue that don't add up to anything. So I need big things to help my characters—a really strong intention and a really strong obstacle. Once I have those, I feel I can write."

So yeah, want to see it. I liked Studio 60 a lot - anyone who can use Final Draft formatting as a plot point gets my vote. And also there was Dolphin Girl. Scored a ticket to Bertolucci's BFI appearance in October. And Mad Men is on, even if Burn Notice is ending soon. So no wonder the new draft is clicking. And everything's good, right? How could it not be? Everything is fine.

People who need people

From The New Yorker article on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and the Aaron Sorkin (w.) / David Fincher (d.) movie The Social Network:

Sorkin said that creating Zuckerberg's character was a challenge. He added that the college students were "the youngest people I've ever written about." Sorkin, who is forty-nine, says that he knew very little about social networking, and he professes extreme dislike of the blogosphere and social media. "I've heard of Facebook, in the same way I've heard of a carburetor," he told me. "But if I opened the hood of my car I wouldn't know how to find it." He called the film "The Social Network" ironically. Referring to Facebook's creators, Sorkin said, "It's a group of, in one way or another, socially dysfunctional people who created the world's great social-networking site."

I'm interested in Sorkin's comments about his unfamiliarity with the people or the material because the early reviews are raving about the movie and how natural and authentic it feels. Good writing is good writing. I wrote about Sorkin here, and I'm still not on Facebook.

A non-musical

Sports Night is fast, intelligent and it only takes 30 minutes, which must pretty much nail it for the male viewing demographic. It's a show within a show about an ESPN-like cable sports network at the bottom of the ratings where everyone is smart and confident and very, very tense. It has recently co-starred William H Macy. It makes jokes about rifles and boxing. How cool is that?

Oh, and in real life it was at the bottom of the ratings and really did get cancelled. While critic's darlings like ER limp into their Vegas years Sports Night burned out in a blaze of not enough people watching it.

In retrospect, this was appropriate. Glory and acclaim wouldn't suit the series. It runs on smarts and fine shades of meaning. The characters are oblique and complex, chanting the same lines of dialogue over and over to each other like mantras. They even change a little week to week, not unlike the Sopranos. Junior staffers walk through the door, say something cool, leave and are never heard from again. The chopped-up tone is like watching the play highlights from a larger drama, as if something bigger is happening but everyone's too busy to acknowledge it.

It's a mystery, for instance, how Casey and Dana came to first get involved. What happened to Dan's alluring psychologist girlfriend - did they split up or did he just, you know, never go back? It's like a kinder, gentler David Mamet, or maybe Harold Pinter, if you go back that far.

Sports Night's creator Aaron Sorkin almost goes back that far. Although he's now best known for creating The West Wing Sorkin began writing for theater, winning an award for his play 'A Few Good Men' before it was subsequently adapted as a movie starring Tom Cruise and Demi Moore.

More (or less) prosaically Sorkin is also a sports fan and an admirer of half-hour sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and, in particular, Larry Gelbart's work on the television series of MASH.

When Sorkin approached ABC with his idea for Sports Night it was just that: an idea, with no character "bible" or over-arching storyline. He made it up as he went along, writing all the first season's 23 episodes and battling with network executives who couldn't decide if it was a drama or a comedy.

He had never written for television before. In the theater tradition of classifying plays as musicals and non-musicals, he described Sports Night as a non-musical. When executives imposed a laugh track, Sorkin turned it down a little each week until it faded to titters and then eventually disappeared.

The series ran for two years, overlapping with the first season of The West Wing, an hour-long non-musical that is so far up itself you need a torch to find Martin Sheen. Sports Night, however, is still with us and running like the clappers. I'd call it a late-night gem except it screens at 8pm.

(2005)