Will requests more on the
Will requests more on the Q&A with Aaron Sorkinóand jefftidball.com always aims to please. I arrived at the session while it was about halfway over, but here's the gist of what I heard.
Sorkin didn't sound particularly bitter about being forced off The West Wing, which he cast as a purely economic choice by Warner Bros. He consistently turned scripts in late, and that cost the show more money. (Scripts must be finalized eight days before shooting for maximum economy of budget. Sorkin says he routinely turned them in only five or as little as three days before shooting began.) Now that The West Wing has established itself, they just didn't have to put up with it anymore. For my money, the show's been a little worse this season, but it's probably too early to make any long-term judgements.
It was gratifying to hear Sorkin talk about screenwriting fundamentals that matched my education and experience. He frequently mentioned that his overriding scene-writing stragegy is to make sure someone in the scene wants something, and that something is stopping them. That's almost word-for-word identical to the USC Film School mantra that drama occurs when "Someone wants something and is having trouble getting it."
Overall, he seemed like a nice enough guy. You can hardly make a personality judgement in an auditorium with a couple hundred people, but even so, it was nice to hear a famous writer who wasn't obviously an asshole actually get into elements of craft.
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