Speaker 1Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is episode 753 of Script Notes. It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig is off directing his show this week and man, he is bummed because today on the show we welcome a longtime fantasy guest. Aaron Sorkin is a writer, director, and showrunner whose credits include A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The American President, The Trial of the Chicago Seven, The Newsroom, Steve Jobs, and The Social Network. His newest film, The Social Reckoning, follows the saga of the whistleblower who revealed the Facebook files. Welcome to Script Notes, Aaron Sorkin. Thanks, it's great to be here. I'm so excited to be talking with you and obviously we could spend hours talking about the entirety of your career. You've written in so many great things. But with your blessing, I really want to focus in on craft because my thesis, which you can feel free to dissect and pull apart, is that when you're writing, you're not just writing about the story. You're also writing about the story. I think what makes your writing so singular is you are so good at choreographing conflict within a scene. You can set up situations in which characters get to wrestle with an idea and we get to enjoy them playing with an idea. And that's what I love to see in your scenes. Oh, that's
Speaker 2really nice of you to say. I cling like a life raft. I cling to intention and obstacle. Yes. Somebody wants something, something's standing in their way of getting it. I need that before I can write a scene.
Speaker 1Great. So I want to talk into your approach when you start writing a scene, when you have enough information about a scene or a project overall. We're also going to look at two of your scenes from previous films to talk about that sort of choreography that's happening within those scenes of ideas and intentions colliding to sort of make those scenes work. And of course, we need to talk about this new movie because it's the second movie you made about Facebook. So we're going to talk about why and what's new and sort of how different your approach was between the two versions of Facebook. Sure. Yeah. And the characters within it. And in our bonus segment for premium members, I'd love to talk about, you have such a giant resume. You've done so many things, but there's also things that you haven't, haven't shot. If we were novelists, if we were painters, we would see the entirety of our career, but there's stuff that we've done that's kind of frozen in 12 Point Courier. So I'd love to talk about what's on Aaron Sorkin's shelf.
Speaker 2This isn't going to win me any friends in the WGA, but I don't have anything. Nothing. In the drawer. Not a one. Just. So I can win back some friends in the WGA. It's just because I haven't written that much. I've written 11 screenplays and made 11 movies. Social Reckoning is my 11th. That's incredible. If I was more prolific, if I had written more, I'm sure that there'd be plenty that wouldn't be shot.
Speaker 1Great. So in the bonus segment, let's talk through why there's not more stuff up on the shelf and sort of the loss that we have for historians, that there's nothing else to sort of go and dig up. Okay. We will. But my sort of first question for Aaron Sorkin, do you enjoy writing? Or is writing a thing you have to do to get through to get to the next stage?
Speaker 2Yeah. I know that there are some people who, you know, they say they don't enjoy writing. What they enjoy is having written. Yes. I enjoy writing. What is agonizing is not writing. And if you were just to sort of take a section of time where we could say legitimately that I began here and I finished here. Yeah. Most of that would be time not writing. Most of that, would be climbing the walls, pacing around. I don't know how to start. I haven't found the intention or an obstacle. I'm Googling how to fake your own death. But when I am able to write, when I do have that intention or an obstacle, when I'm kind of loaded up and can write a scene with energy, it's not coming out like ketchup. It's really, I've got it now. That feels great.
Speaker 1Yeah. It does feel great when you're in that flow and it's like, it's all clicking. So I want to distinguish between. All the time you're pacing around, do you consider that writing or do you consider that the mind storm that's happening that is not the writing?
Speaker 2I consider that writing. At least that's what I try to convince my friends and family of, and certainly the people I'm working for, that this counts as writing too. Pacing around, I drive around a lot and listen to the music I listened to in high school. For some reason, that does something for me. So that not writing time is contributing toward a writing, the screenplay, the episode of television, whatever it is that I'm writing. But it's so many nights you go to bed without having accomplished anything.
Speaker 1Yeah. Those nights when you've not accomplished anything, is it that you didn't have the key to unlock how to start the thing or that you knew parts of the scene, but you didn't know the central core thing? Can you diagnose what was it that didn't get the work done that day?
Speaker 2I didn't know. Again, somebody wants something. I think something's standing in their way of getting it. Usually the conflict is a conflict of ideas. But I need to get two people in a room who disagree with each other. It can be about the correct time of day. But it's because I don't have that.
Speaker 1Has your process changed a lot over the course of your career? Like the Aaron Sorkin who's writing A Few Good Man versus the Aaron Sorkin who's doing The Social Reckoning, are they the same writer?
Speaker 2Yes. In that, I don't write an outline. And I hope no one hearing this is taking this as a recommendation. I hope no one hearing this is taking this as a recommendation. If you can write an outline, yeah, sure, go ahead. What I do is when I can get there, and this is after a long period of time of not doing anything, but when I can get there, index cards and a cork board. It's 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 you walk into the woods, the more you can see. So if I know what the first three scenes are going to be, I'll put those index cards up. I don't kind of dip my toe in. I really have to know what that first scene is, almost to the point where writing it is kind of an afterthought. It's almost secretarial because I've got the scene. When that happens, again, it's a joy. I'm very physical when I'm writing. I say everything out loud. I'm the first person to play all the parts. I'm up and down from my desk, that kind of thing. And you start adding a couple of index cards and a few more, and there are going to be points where you say, okay, I hardly ever at this point know how it's going to end. I'm not waiting until I have an ending. I don't have that kind of patience. The difference between being on page one and page nothing for me is life and death. So I want to write that first scene, not just because I want to get started, but because I want to show off a little bit. I've written that first scene. I really like it. And the only way anyone's ever going to see it is if I write the hundred scenes that come after that.
Speaker 1And that's how it goes. So you're writing that first scene with a few cards up on the corkboard. Have you written it? Is it the whole? No, no, no.
Speaker 2I'll start writing there a few cards up on the corkboard and then a few more and a few more. And suddenly, somewhere in the middle, the dam is going to break and I will be able to put up almost all the cards. All the cards. Somewhere in there, I'm going to be able to put up the last card. You know what it's like if you do a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of pieces and you're looking for the corners and the sides. And now this is going to be a part of the horse's head. You can start to see things and those index cards go up.
Speaker 1And that's a good feeling. So let's reverse your jigsaw puzzle metaphor, though, because the classic way to do a jigsaw puzzle is you find the corners and you do the full outline first. You do the edges first. And that doesn't seem to be your instinct. Instead, I find these pieces that fit together that form this part of this picture. And now I'm excited to see what the rest of it is.
Speaker 2Yes. What I can't do, if we're going to stick with the jigsaw puzzle metaphor, I can't skip around. I know what this scene is going to be in the middle.
Speaker 1So go ahead and write that and then fill it in. I will absolutely skip around. And so I tend to write very much like how we shoot movies. You don't shoot them in sequence. You write them. I write them with what appeals to me that day to write. And it's worked for me, but it's not.
Speaker 2I envy that.
Speaker 1I know that you can do that. I can't. Yeah, it's fine. We're all different and good. Craig Mazin sent a question. And so I'm going to read Craig Mazin's question for you. Okay. Do you ever get intimidated by yourself? Meaning when you start something new, you're thinking about all the great things you've done and feeling the burden of that. Because I, Craig Mazin, am intimidated by Aaron Sorkin and all the great things he's done. So is there any sense of competing with yourself? Well, first of all, my thanks to Craig.
Speaker 2That's a nice compliment. Um, no, I don't, I don't think so. Not, not, not the way he means. I've done things where there have been high expectations and those high expectations aren't an advantage. Uh, but I'm proud of them anyway.
Speaker 1Yeah. So your name has become associated with a style. Like people talk about a Sorkinism or like it feels Sorkin. Is that flattering or frustrating?
Speaker 2It's flattering. Uh, it's very flattering though. I haven't been able to figure out what they mean. I haven't been
Speaker 1able to figure out what the Sorkin style is. We'll figure that out in this podcast. We'll look at there. We're going to get there. One of the things I've noticed about your scenes is that you tend to in a, in the middle of a scene, you'll introduce an idea that is orthogonal to the main point of it. It's not, it doesn't seem to be related. And yet the characters will keep holding, grabbing onto that as a handle to recur. And sometimes that idea will also recur later on. It'll be a recall later on in the show or in the movie. That feels like a Sorkin-y kind of idea where like, where did that idea come from? And it did not feel germane to, necessarily the conversation we're having. And yet people are doing it. Is that a thing you recognize in yourself? It is. Yeah.
Speaker 2Um, I recognize doing that. And here's something that I don't do. From time to time, I get a chance to speak to students, screenwriting majors in college. They'll talk to me about theme. Theme isn't really something I think about until the end. It sort of presents itself. When I go in, I'm not thinking, well, the theme is, and how do I, I don't know how to write a theme. Again, I can only write intention and obstacle. But as I go, as you walk through the dark woods with the flashlight, and you can see more as you go, I will see that a theme or themes have presented themselves. And I'll decide that's, I like that theme. So I'm going to, when I go back now and write the second draft, I'm going to hang a lantern on that, cut away the stuff that didn't have anything to do with that. By the way, the other thing that I don't do is I won't start rewriting. Until I get to the end. Okay, great. Here is a recommendation. I really encourage young writers, get to the end, get to a fade out. Even as you're going, if you realize that wasn't good, that wasn't good. Get to the end. You're going to know a lot more about what you're writing when you get to the end, and then go back to the beginning and write it knowing what you know about the piece.
Speaker 1As you sit down to do a day's work, are you reading the scenes before this? Are you like running your fingers through the scenes before this? Or are you starting clean on a new?
Speaker 2I'm going through the couple of scenes that come before. I don't have to read them. I know them. So I really believe in writing with energy. It becomes physical energy. If you are mentally prepared to write the scene, which is to say, if you know what this person wants in the scene, if you're really prepared, then the energy that you write it with, it can make its way onto the screen. Yeah, absolutely. It really can. Mike Nichols. I wrote the last movie Mike Nichols directed before he died. And one didn't have anything to do with the other. He didn't die because of the screenplay.
Speaker 1But at least he got to direct one of your movies before he died.
Speaker 2Oh, I got to spend a couple of years with Mike Nichols, which was like, yeah, you're just getting paid to go to grad school. He says that every scene has to be one of four things. And I just want to remember what they are. A negotiation, a fight, a seduction, or a discovery. That every scene has to be one of those four. And a discovery, that's either a discovery for one of the characters. Or a discovery for the audience. Oh, my God, there's a bomb under the table.
Speaker 1Those seem like the right instincts behind a scene. So I introduced this idea of like, you know, within a scene, you'll throw in some new ideas. Like, wait, how does that tie into what we're actually doing? I'm going to try to do this in this interview and see if this actually works. You wrote the adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway. Congratulations. It was fantastic. Thank you. Tell me about Harper Lee. And what is your theory on Harper Lee and why Harper Lee wrote exactly one brilliant thing? Huh. Interesting. And
Speaker 2I see what you did. I don't know Harper Lee at all. I've never met her or spoke to her. She, again, it's not related, but she died shortly after approving me as the person who was going to write the stage play, To Kill a Mockingbird. Why? She wrote a classic American novel and nothing else except this other book, which probably she didn't want published, Ghosts Out of Watchmen.
Speaker 1And there's discussion of whether it might have actually. Did she pre-date it, To Kill a Mockingbird? It did pre-date.
Speaker 2She wrote that. A publisher read it and gave her notes. Yes. The notes resulted in To Kill a Mockingbird. There's some dispute over whether she ever wanted it published and whether it may have been published against her wishes. But I don't know any more about that than anyone who reads the newspaper.
Speaker 1Do you have a theory of what it's like to be a person who is capable of writing something so great? Mm-hmm. And never could do that again.
Speaker 2I have a couple of theories. One is that simply she was not happy with the fame and the noise that comes along with publishing a book that is that successful that gets turned the next year into a movie that's that successful. I think she wanted her small town life. I suppose it's possible she had one story to tell, but it doesn't seem like it because To Kill a Mockingbird is a series of stories. It is. It is. It is. Stories that she's telling that all add up to something.
Speaker 1So I don't know. It's fine. If anyone had a theory of the case, Aaron Sorkin might have a theory of the case behind it. You know what?
Speaker 2I've thought a lot about To Kill a Mockingbird, but not that. I haven't put a lot of thought into Harper Lee. I just put a lot of thought into the story.
Speaker 1Let's go back to writing the script. So you have done some cards on the corkboard. You've started writing. You're going to write all the way. You're going to write all the way through and finish first before you show it to somebody else. Who do you show it to first? Who now in 2026 do you like to show that first draft to?
Speaker 2It depends. In the case of The Social Reckoning, David Fincher was the first person who read it. He read it the day after I finished. Yeah. His response was fantastic, and David has been a great cheerleader, a great supporter. Often, it's been Scott Rudin is the first person to see it. And there are just a couple of people. My life close to me. I'll show the pages to you.
Speaker 1What are you looking for in that first read? Are you looking for validation? Are you looking for praise? Are you looking for point out the flaws? What helps in that first read? I want to know in that first
Speaker 2read, have I successfully completed the pass? If the story that I told, did you get it to just, I'm not talking about themes or I'm talking about the once upon a time, if at all, did you understand that story? I've run Scott in trouble. It was the newsroom. Oh, yeah. I made the pilot of the newsroom. We were doing press, and it was one of these speed dating press sessions where I sit in a room, and for five minutes apiece, reporters are brought in. Brutal. And at that point, very, very few people had seen the pilot outside of the people who made the pilot. And a reporter came in, and she said that she saw the pilot, she watched it twice. And I said, is that because you liked it or because you didn't understand it? And she thought I was calling her stupid. When I was honestly asking, did you have to watch it because you didn't understand it? And to this day, she's mad at me because she thought I called her stupid.
Speaker 1So you're getting that first read on a thing. And it reminds me of when you're shooting a scene, an actor finishes a complicated thing. They look to the director, they look over, like, did that work? Did it land? Did it actually, did I successfully deliver this thing? And it's not just they want praise. They actually want to know, like, they cannot see themselves. They have no outside observation of all powers. Yeah, that happens.
Speaker 2I used to roll my eyes when someone would say to me, well, you're too close to it. Come on. I'm too close to it because I'm the world's leading expert in this thing that I just wrote. But now there have been times when, because exactly what you just said, where I feel like, holy cow, I don't know. I like this. And I simply don't know if anyone. I don't know if anyone else will, or even if they understand the story that I'm telling. Yeah. Which. I mean, I don't write terribly complicated stories. Yeah, you write fairly complicated stories, Aaron Sorkin.
Speaker 1It's not Inception. That's true. That's absolutely true. We had Christopher Nolan on here, and we were talking through Memento, and I was like, all right, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I want to talk about the difference between writing characters once for a movie, which is most of the movies you've written, versus writing. I mean, you can't write them again and again and again, like for the West Wing or for other TV series. It's a different thing. You have a different understanding of those characters. You have a different understanding of the strength of the character, but also the actors playing it. How does the writing change when you're writing for established characters week after week?
Speaker 2Yeah. Well, TV, series television is, except for the first episode and the last episode, it's all middle, which is a lot of fun. It's a great form to write in. I say it's fun, even though what isn't fun for me? This is the only part of television I don't like. Yeah. With a movie or a play, if it's not going well, if you're stuck, you can call the studio, call the producer, call whoever it is that's waiting for it, and say, I know I said I was going to get you a first draft in June. It'll probably be the end of the summer. And they may not like it, but they'll live with it, and they're used to it. With television, you have concrete, hard deadlines. You have air dates that you have to meet, which means you have to write anyway, if you're not. You have to write when you're not writing well, and then you have to put that on the table for the cast and crew for the read-through, and then you have to point a camera at it, and that's a tough pill to swallow. When you knew there was just a pebble in your shoe the whole time while you were writing. That's the part I don't like. The part I do like is what you're talking about, that you can take characters that the audience now is very familiar with, and you can stretch them just a little bit that way. In an episode, and a little bit that way in an episode, and you can put them into situations. The audience is already rooting for them. It's a different style of
Speaker 1storytelling, one that I like a lot. Limited series. Why has Aaron Sorkin not made six limited series? Because it feels like you have the best of both worlds, where you have the control and time that you would have in a feature, and you also have more cold opens, and all the benefits of TV without the crushing schedule.
Speaker 2Why indeed? Why indeed? Yeah, it's really appealing to me. I think that. that really some of the best theater in America right now is happening. on streamers with limited series. So, all I need is an idea. Great. And when I don't have an idea, it's impossible for me to imagine ever having an idea. Oh. Even though I have felt this way after every single thing that I've written, including in television. I wrote 88 episodes of The West Wing, the first four seasons. Yes. And 87 times after I finished, I've just turned to everyone and said, guys, I think that's it. I've used every word I know in every order I can think of to put it. I think that's it for the show. It happens every time. It happens after every movie. It happens after every play. And as you and I speak now, we're four weeks away from the premiere of The Social Reckoning, and I don't have an idea for anything.
Speaker 1Wow. Okay. All right. So, I'm open.
Speaker 2Write me suggestions. Yeah. Throw things your way.
Speaker 1A couple months ago, Curry Barker, who wrote and directed Obsession, was sitting in the chair you're sitting in right now. And he was saying that something that was incredibly important for him was watching the Aaron Sorkin masterclass that you taught. And it was really, really meaningful. So, his dad got him that. His dad also got him the script notes book. And so, a young filmmaker who was doing things. And tell us about the masterclass.
Speaker 2Well, first of all, I want to take the Curry Barker masterclass. Seriously, this man has got game.
Speaker 1Yes. He really does. I mean, he has got a breaking ball. He's going to be so excited. I'm going to clip this and send it to him. Oh, okay. Well, he's the real deal.
Speaker 2Yeah. So, the masterclass, I had a lot of fun doing that. It was one of the. You were one of the first ones. Yeah. I didn't know anything about it. These guys came to me, and I liked them. They are bright guys. Doing the masterclass, I think we shot it over two or three days. Yeah. Fantastic crew. I mean, their artistic vision was great. There were four or five students in the room. They were all really bright. Yeah. Every time I hear from somebody who said they took the masterclass and they really like it, I really wish I could go back and do it again. I'm sure I could do it better. Yeah. I didn't know that anybody would be watching.
Speaker 1Yes. So, I'd like to do it again. All right. Hear it here first. We had some listeners who wrote in after the Curry Barker episode who had taken the masterclass, and one of them wrote, one of the great quotes from there was that you should be waiting for the pitches you can hit. Do you remember saying that? Yeah, I do. I don't remember saying it. I believe that I said it.
Speaker 2Yes. It feels like an Aaron Sorkin thing. Here's what I mean. I found out doing Moneyball, writing Moneyball, that in the, I'm going to get the stats wrong now. I'll get the numbers wrong. But in the course of a nine-inning game, on average, a baseball player will see something like 20 pitches. And on average, one, just one of those 20 pitches will be what the player considers his pitch. It's low and away. It's high. It's high and inside. It's breaking ball that doesn't break. That kind of, it's their pitch that they love. Most of the time, a baseball player gets out. They only get out two-thirds of the time. They're going to the Hall of Fame. But most of the time, when a player gets out, that's it. They go back to the dugout. Every once in a while, you'll see a player get out and smash the Gatorade thing. It's because they blew it on their pitch. They were waiting for their pitch and they swung a moment too early, a moment too late, a moment too high, a moment too low. What I mean by the writer waiting for their pitch, when I'm asked, you know, what am I looking for for the next project? It's not, well, I'm looking for a romance. I'm looking for a comedy. I'm looking for a bank robbery, a period piece. I'm looking for my pitch to hit. I'm looking for an idea where I feel like I have a chance, a chance of doing well, writing this. Doing well or hitting a home run? Because that's the difference. Because like, you're not going to bunt. I'm not going to bunt. I want to hit a home run every time, everybody wants to hit a home run every time. If, however, we're going to stick with this baseball metaphor.
Speaker 1Well, sure. And Craig, again, Craig is so angry he's not here for the baseball metaphor. Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2If home run hitters, for a long, long time, the strikeout king in Major League Baseball was Babe Ruth. Yeah. Just because home run hitters are apt to strike out more than people who are just trying to hit a single, trying to hit a double. So, what am I doing? I'm trying to, I'm trying to write a good first scene and then trying to write the next scene. Another piece of Mike Nichols' advice, go from something that works to the next thing that works to the next thing that works.
Speaker 1Continuing the metaphor, you can't hit anything if you're not connecting. And so, it's finding what the connection is, like that your bat will be able to hit that ball and send it flying. If I look back at my career and the frustrations I have is I was swinging on some things I shouldn't have swung on, where it's like, even the best version of my doing that project, it wasn't going to be worth it. It wasn't going to be worth my time. And those things happen. And so, it's recognizing, I wish I'd basically taken that piece of advice 20 years ago. Well, listen, a lot of writers,
Speaker 2especially early in their career, don't have the luxury of waiting for their pitch. They've got to eat. Oftentimes, writers, again, especially young writers at the beginning of their career, they're going to be writing things that are, you know, outside their wheelhouse, that aren't in their comfort zone, that it's very hard to get enthusiastic about.
Speaker 1Yeah. Over the course of your career, you ran, you've run so many movies, but some of them, I'm thinking about like A Few Good Men, which gets reduced down to a soundbite. Like, you can't handle the truth. and that movie is chock full of fantastic scenes, but that's the one thing people hold on to. Is it at all frustrating that you have a movie that is so good on every other level and like, that's the one moment?
Speaker 2Did that bother you? It is not in any way frustrating, you know, that Jack Nicholson was in that movie and delivered the line memorably. By the way, I should, I should mention the play. Yes. Oh yeah, you're doing the play again. Yeah. Well, it begins previews on October 8th at Lincoln Center the night before. The month of October has such potential for career implosion.
Speaker 1Yeah. I have a hunch that both will be successful. Thank you. I hope you're right. Let's take a look at a scene from The West Wing. And so, I want to get into this idea of conflict choreography. And so, obviously The West Wing is full of people wrestling with political ideas, but I'd love to look at a scene which is just a two-character relationship scene. And the conflicts that are involved in there. So, we're actually looking, listening to the back half of the scene. This is season two, episode 18. It's a two-hander between Josh and Donna. The first part of the scene is a walk and talk through the office. But the second part is the two of them sitting down in an office and having this conversation. Before we get into this, the first half is the walk and talk. You're so associated with walk and talks, but is that a Sorkin thing or is that a West Wing director thing that gets associated with you? It's a Tommy Shlomi thing. I know Tommy Shlomi.
Speaker 2Yeah. I'm happy to take credit for it, but it's a Tommy Shlomi thing. The executive producer of the show, the director of the pilot, the director of a number of episodes, but he created the look of the show. A few days before, maybe a week before the shooting started on the pilot, they were building the set. We shot it at Warner Brothers over on stage 17. And we were building the set and he came into my office and said, come with me to the set. I want to show you something. Yeah. And he had the pages, like the first 10 pages of the pilot, which, you know, we're going to be in this room and then this room and then this room. And he said, would it be okay with you if I just brought in a Steadicam operator and we took Leo from here to here to here? I said, sure. And that's how that started.
Speaker 1That's how it happened. Yeah. But also, it had to be a plan to some degree because you're building sets in ways that you can, everything does connect.
Speaker 2Yes. Everything connects. Also, we put more wind and windows, more glass on the set than we actually have in the West Wing just because we knew we needed a lot of throw. Tommy understood that the things that I write don't have a lot of visual interest. And so, we just, he wanted background moving.
Speaker 1Fun fact, Tommy Shalami was attached to my very first ever screenwriting project, How to Eat Fried Worms over at Imagine Pictures a zillion years ago. He talks about how to eat fried worms. Yeah. Yeah. What happens? We never shot. We should have shot, but never shot. It never got to the place. And I learned so much doing that. I got to work with Tommy on different drafts of it. So, great. So, it just never happened. But that was one of those cases where I had sold it as a pitch. I got, you know, my first draft, a rewrite, and two polishes all paid. And I just learned so much about screenwriting and studio screenwriting from that project. So, not a failure. No. Not at all. Let's get to this scene. This is, this two-hander between Josh and Donna. We'll play it here.
Speaker 3Okay. I'm going to give you a little gift right now which you don't deserve. Donna, if you've got your old Catholic school uniform on under there, don't get me wrong. I applaud the thought. Okay. What I need is for you to stop being like you for a second. Okay. When I came back, you remember I had a bandage on my ankle? Yeah. I told you I slipped on the ice on the front walk. Yeah. You know why? Because you didn't put down the kitty litter. I was actually in a car accident. You were in a car accident? It was. Seriously, you were in an accident? It was no big deal. You told me it was a late thaw. Yes, I did. Anyway, they took me to the hospital and I called him and he came down to get me and on the way, he stopped and met some friends of his for a beer. He stopped on the way to the hospital for a beer? Yes. And so I left him, which was the point of my telling you this. I left him. So stop remembering that. What I remember is that you took me back when you had absolutely no idea and you had no reason to trust me again and you didn't make fun of me or him and you had every reason to. You're gonna make fun of him now, aren't you? No. 'Cause that's why I didn't tell you in the first place. I'm not gonna make fun of him. Good. But just what kind of a dumb kiss were you-- He was supposed to meet some of his friends. He stopped on the way to tell them that he couldn't. And had a beer? Does this make you feel superior? Yes. You are better than my old boyfriend. I'm--I'm just saying, if you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for a beer. If you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for red lights.
Speaker 1I miss those two. As we get into this, I'll note that the reason we picked this scene is because one of Meredith's friends has these four pages printed out and up on her wall.
Speaker 2Aww. Really? It's true. She does. That's so nice. Tell us about that scene. First, let me tell you about the episode. It's 17 people, right? Yeah, that's the episode. I love that episode because, well, there are a number of reasons. But what would happen from time to time is we'd be over budget for the--for the-- year. We'd be over budget. So Tommy would come into my office and say, "I need you to write a bottle show." Yeah. Meaning no new sets, no guest cast. Yeah. No background. We're just gonna take this show down to its-- Trip it down to its studs, yeah. Bare bones, down to its studs. I always liked when he did that. First of all, it meant, "Okay, great. I can write a play. That's where I'm most comfortable." The page--it's not a blank page anymore. You already know some things about the episode. No background. It's gonna take place at night or on the weekend. It's all gonna be in rooms. Yeah. They say when you--when you bring home a new puppy that you should get a crate that's just big enough for the dog to be able to turn around in, but no bigger because that--those closed-in spaces give them a sense of comfort that they need when they're a puppy. And I am like that cute puppy. Yeah. Okay. Um, I--I--I--I like the puppy. Yeah. I--I like the four walls around me, which is what you get when you're writing a bottle
Speaker 1show. Okay. Talk to us about intention, because you were saying, like, you need to know the intention of a scene. So let's talk about the--the character's intention in there. What--what are they trying to do? Okay. What Donna
Speaker 2is trying to do--Josh has been making fun of this ex-boyfriend for a while because Josh is kind of hurt that she stopped working for him to go back to the ex-boyfriend, but then when the--he thinks when the ex-boyfriend leaves, Josh is gonna go back to the ex-boyfriend. He thinks when the ex-boyfriend broke up with her, she--that--that he was a consolation present. Yeah. That she came back there. She is there to finally set the record straight.
Speaker 1Yeah. And so she comes in with the intention of like, "Okay, in this conversation, I'm gonna make this clear," and he does continuously things to undermine her ability to just sort of actually lay out a clear case of what's happening here. And you introduce other ideas, um, the kitty litter, the other little visual ideas that are sort of pulling us off the--the main thread. Mm-hmm. So that she has to pull us back onto it. And yet the story she's telling, we can summon a visual for what actually happened, which I think is also crucial because while the scene is happening in the present tense, her conversation--her dialogue is about this past moment and you're--she's doing a good job of creating this past moment for us. Yeah. And they have a shared experience 'cause Josh is doing a very important thing, which is echoing back what she just said. He's actively listening so that we are paying attention.
Speaker 2That's right. So there's a moment in the scene that Janelle has, Donna, that for the life of me, I can't remember if I wrote it as a stage direction, gave it to her as a note, the director gave it to her as a note, or she just did it. But I like it so much. And it's when he says, uh, "You told me there was a late thaw." Mm-hmm. Um, and she just laughs a little bit, remembering because of just how sweetly dumb he was to believe that that's-- Yes. Yeah. And it's moments like that, uh, really that make those scenes come alive.
Speaker 1'Cause the challenge is, the characters are fully present in the moment and yet they're also thinking back to other times and--and they're--they're both trying to predict where the conversation is going and trying to remember things that happened before. And that's how we are in real life. We are constantly in this sort of multi-temporal space and we're trying to be live and present in this moment, but everything is connected. There's another thing that they're doing,
Speaker 2and this is really important in the world of the West Wing. They're working. Yes. All right? They are there. They're at the office, which is the White House. They're at the office late at night and they're in street clothes, uh, and they're working. And most of the time, for the West Wing to work, we had to believe that these people were--were working for us. Yeah. If they were just goofing around, uh, if it was, uh, you know, working for the weekend, if it's "I can't wait to get home," um, we--we wouldn't be rooting for them the same way we'd be rooting for somebody in another job who was doing the same thing.
Speaker 1Or if it just totally was a comedy, then it's kind of fine that no one's actually really working. Sure, sure, sure. This is--this is--you can have jokes, but there has to be, like, a thing getting done as well. Yes. Yeah. Let's talk about--we had the conflict, but let's talk about the choreography and--which comes down to me, like, it's the punctuations, it's the stops, it's the starts. I'm--these are all in your script, and yet it's also coming out of the actors' mouths. Talk to us about the choreography and figuring out the--the tempos on the page so that actors have a thing to hold onto.
Speaker 2Well, you're using all the right words because, for me, dialogue is music. Mm-hmm. What a line sounds like is as important to me as--as what it means. Uh, I think that happened because I--I started to love plays before I knew what they were about. I grew up in a suburb just outside New York, and my parents took me to see plays a lot. Yeah. Including plays that I was too young to understand. You know, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" when I was nine years old. I loved the sound of dialogue. Didn't really know what was happening in the play. Yeah. But the dialogue sounded like music to me. Mm-hmm. And--and I wanted to imitate that sound.
Speaker 1I think a lot of people go to see Shakespeare now, and, like, we honestly can't fully understand what they're saying, but it's nice to hear the rhythms that are there.
Speaker 2It's--it's comforting. I would say half of Shakespeare's plays I do not-- No. --I know what's happening because I have read about what's happening. Yes. Yes. But--but if the play was my only, uh, yeah. When we go to see opera, we--and, like, whiz. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no, yeah. Yeah. It's--it's very nice music, but I-- Yeah. --could not tell you why that lady just killed herself. Yeah. So, uh, the actors will know, uh, when they've--they've kind of dropped a syllable, and they've dropped a beat. In a sense, they'll go to the script supervisor. Yeah. And say it's, uh, I'm saying something wrong. Yeah. Uh, I know I'm saying something wrong. Uh, which is great. Well, the dialogue--so,
Speaker 1I also want to stress, like, you're trying to connect the idea so that it falls--one continuous mode of thought, but it's also so that the rhythms, that the words can actually--they can get to the next thing, like, that--that the next word makes sense for them to have said in that moment, that it fits the mouth.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah. Sure. It needs to fit the mouth. It, uh, I--I want these words to be sayable by the actors. Mm-hmm. I never wanted to be the actor's job. I just wanted to be the actor's job to make something work. Yeah. And so often, uh, I'll--I'll work with an actor who I can tell, uh, it's almost like a beaten animal that, uh, they've spent so much of their career trying to--feeling like it's their job to--to make something work, uh, that someone has to say to them, you know, really, um, you--let the words do some of the work. Yeah, absolutely. The music, uh, is important to me. I've learned a new trick, and this is maybe a trick that, uh, that I should've learned a long time ago. But as an experiment, uh, when you write a scene, just see what happens if you cut the last line, uh, of the scene. Just see what happens. Uh, uh, half the time, I'll say, "Oh, that is a cooler ending," uh, to the scene.
Speaker 1I'm gonna try this--this afternoon. Yeah. Do you write in the afternoon? I mostly write in the morning. So--so it's an exception today. Me too. We're recording in--in this. I like to be at my desk at 9:00 a.m. I have 9:00 to 11:00 as, like, writing time. If I get-- Go to hell. If I did 9:00 to 11:00, I--I would be--I would be done. Just go to hell.
Speaker 2Uh, uh, it--you, Stephen King, you people drive me crazy. Sorry. The people who can command themselves to write. What do you mean you write from 9:00 to 11:00?
Speaker 1You--you, uh, currently--currently, I'm on a thing where I actually really know what I'm--I'm writing two things, and I really, really know what they are. And so it is just that joy where it's like, I do have to write. I do have--I don't have a cork board, but, like, I really know what the scenes are, and I wake up actually excited to write those scenes. And that's a luxury. That's not usual.
Speaker 2No, no. Those are great days. Those are great ways to wake up. Yeah. As knowing what you're gonna write. Oh, another recommendation. Please. If it's going well, end your writing session in the middle. Uh, uh, don't get to the end of the scene. And if you can, end before the plunge time to a joke. Mm-hmm. Um, so that when you wake up the next morning, you don't have any thinking to do. You know exactly what you're gonna do. You're excited about it. You know what it's gonna be.
Speaker 1As we get done, I'm very excited to write these next scenes, which is not always the case, so. Hardly ever the case. But I'm so excited to look at the next scene. This is from The Social Network. Oh, okay. And, uh, this is a different kind of music, a different kind of conflict. Again, a scene I just love.
Speaker 4When we met in January, I expressed my doubts about the site, where it stood with graphics, how much programming was left that I had not anticipated. The lack of hardware we had to deal with, site use, the lack of promotion that would go on to successfully launch the website. This was the first time. You raised any of those concerns, right? I'd raised concerns before. Bullshit. Not to us. Gentlemen, I'm talking about at the meeting in January, to which this letter is referring. Yeah. Let me rephrase this. You sent my client 16 emails, and the first 15 you didn't raise any concerns. is that a question in the 16th email you raise concerns about the site's functionality were you leading them on for six weeks no then why didn't you raise any of these concerns before it's raining i'm sorry it just started raining mr zuckerberg do i have your full attention
Speaker 5no do you think
Speaker 4i deserve it what do you think i deserve your full attention
Speaker 5i had to swear an oath before we began this deposition and i don't want to perjure myself so i have a legal obligation to say
Speaker 4no okay no you don't think i deserve your attention i think if
Speaker 5your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall they have a right to give it a try but there's no requirement that i enjoy sitting here listening to people lie you have part of my attention you have the minimum amount the rest of my attention is back at the offices of facebook where my colleagues and i are doing things that no one in this room including and especially your clients are intellectually or creatively capable of doing did i adequately answer your condescending question
Speaker 2i have 12 45 why don't we say that's lunch back at 2 30.
Speaker 1oh i love that scene so much it's just it's just terrific as you watch that scene what do you see what do you remember
Speaker 2oh i i have great memories yeah of shooting it obviously i like the scene too and what i was thinking as i was watching this i knew at the outset that part of the structure was going to be these dueling uh depositions yes um he's being sued by the winklevoss twins here and eduardo savern uh there there's going to be these dueling depositions and the challenge was going to be that it just can't seem like we're constantly cutting to exposition yep um that'll be easy enough to just sort of have the lawyers do a recitation of you did this and and you did that disguising exposition is a skill that a writer needs to develop it's it's very important exposition being the only part of drama if if drama is exposition inciting action action reversal climax day in a month exposition is the only part that isn't natural okay uh people don't generally say you know as you know i'm a butler here and i've been working here for 22 years disguising exposition yeah uh was going to be the challenge and it turned out to just be fun
Speaker 1uh uh for me that doesn't feel like exposition at all that feels like just a conflict and it but but like i said it's they're they're they're not shouting at each other they're just it's you've created a character mark zuckerberg who is so challenging to pin down that it we're there
Speaker 2with him right um and if you can create a moment where he is being challenged by people he believes are inferior to him which is most people yes then you can usually light something up i mentioned a little while ago that one of my trying to write things is driving around my car uh listening to music it's good for getting into arguments with myself and i would bet anything that this scene at the end of this scene the you know uh do i have your full attention uh a part of this scene was the result of like i i owned myself there like i i asked myself that question and and shot back with the answer it was one time during the west wing a a messenger delivered to me from the president of nbc from at the time it was scott sasa uh a headset meant to be paired with the phone uh in my car with a note that said i was next to you at a red light earlier please wear this whenever you're driving your car you look crazy yes um uh and yeah i get it um uh but
Speaker 1that i'm sure that's how that scene happens in those situations do you have any way to capture that that thing are you gonna remember it or you're gonna scribble that down someplace leave a voice memo what are
Speaker 2you doing i'm gonna remember it uh unless it happens as it frequently does just as i'm falling asleep for some reason that oh yeah couple of minutes as as you're falling asleep i don't know what is because you're relaxed or something uh you'll get an idea i have learned the hard way i will not remember it that first thing in the morning so i have to write down a note for myself sometimes that note will turn into okay well here's the actual line that i want and then i'll do the line and suddenly i'm writing the scene yeah which
Speaker 1is which is true yeah i have a stack of note cards beside the bed which is just for that purpose just to get it out of my brain so i stopped thinking about it but also so i remember it in the morning yeah christopher nolan when he was on the show i was talking about how for oppenheimer he started to write a note and he's like oh no i actually know more i think goes out walks across the garden and it goes to his office the middle of the night to write the scene because it finally came clear
Speaker 2i would have asked did you ask him by any chance i want to go back and listen to your chris um nolan show how much about nuclear energy did he know before he started writing up in highland he
Speaker 1knew a lot he okay he read the oppenheimer book twice he really did know he does a lot of research i mean the man has no email so he could that's a lot of time to just read books
Speaker 2about it still i've a bunch of times written things that i don't know anything about with steve jobs um i i had to tell sony listen you're gonna i it takes me five minutes in the morning to find the power button on my computer you're gonna have to bring in somebody who can teach me you know yeah how a computer works uh so they brought in steve wozniak great um except and steve wozniak who invented the computer basically does not know how to talk to somebody as dumb as i am um i he he can only talk
Speaker 1to christopher nolan you know um true confessions here so when the steve jobs books was being shopped around they came to me and uh and i said i'm not even going to read this until aaron's working clear that they're like aaron sorkin said this is a a movie about hyper literary people discussing the futures of things it's an aaron sorkin movie that's uh i appreciate that i would have liked to seen uh uh your version but i i was delighted to see your version so i mean sometimes i won't get a project and or a thing will happen and i won't get to do it it's like wow i don't have to do that thing anymore because that thing exists in the world without me having to have done anything i love that i saw a movie this last week which is the best thing i've ever seen i've ever seen a movie i love that i saw a movie this last week which is the best thing i've ever seen i love that i saw a movie this last week which is the best thing i've ever seen i love that i saw a movie this last week which is the best thing i've ever seen i saw a movie this last week which was very much an idea i've been kicking around for 10 years and i was like oh well now i don't have to do that thing that's that's great i saw it as a liberation
Speaker 2have you uh ever regretted passing on something
Speaker 1the hunger games uh i wasn't officially offered it but they came to me it's like i don't want to see a movie about like children killing each other i maybe could have done the hunger games but billy ray did a great job yeah yeah yeah
Speaker 2regrets yeah um martin breast sent me an italian film called la profuma vedana the scent of a woman oh my god yeah and i didn't see it i i couldn't figure out what he wanted and of course beau goldman comes along hits out of the park oh my god did he write a beautiful screen yeah chino's fantastic and that i think people slightly resent the movie simply because pacino should have won an oscar you know five times already before that um but that's don't take it out on centable woman it's it's a great movie yeah
Speaker 1we've gotten very far off of discussing so the incredible clip from the social network so also i'm never saying that like jesse eisenberg of course in that clip he came on the show and it's fantastic in its own right and rashida jones who's great in that movie as well as a tremendous writer uh her movie the invite was incredible yes in that scene again you're introducing an outside idea like it's raining um and that's not related to the thing you're doing timeline sliding where we're cut we're cutting back to an earlier moment to get stuff through it's just such smart filmmaking it's just it's it's telling itself cinematically i'm glad i didn't just praise
Speaker 2um and i really appreciate that every inch of that experience was was great but i loved uh writing the first couple of scenes of the movie i loved getting started there what i had was if you remember it it begins with uh jesse and marie mara yes um having a bad day with jesse and mara yes um having a bad date uh in a college bar and then jesse mark zuckerberg uh after a long walk uh across the harvard campus goes back to his dorm room boots up his computer and he starts live blogging um i'll say he's talking about the date that he just had uh what i had research-wise was a transcript of his blog from that night from that it was a tuesday night in october in 2000. three and i i use except for changing the girl's name uh i used almost word for word uh what he had said which goes from being very mad at this girl to uh this prankish thing uh uh where he's gonna hack into the different facebooks of the different dorms and create a hot or not website called uh facemash he's drinking uh there and it was important that he was drunk and this goes to uh i i'm introducing a new topic now please please because that seems to be the theme yeah absolutely okay we'll
Speaker 1keep juggling of uh what
Speaker 2when i'm writing non-fiction when i'm telling a true story what am i willing to lie about yeah and here's an example he says in his uh in the In the transcript of that live blog, That he's drunk, that he's drinking to get drunk. So what I wrote was that we're on his computer screen as he comes into his dorm room. He walks in and out of the frame, booting up the computer, comes back into the frame, puts a glass down, ice in the glass, vodka in the glass, orange juice in the glass, all the while in voiceover, we're hearing this thing. A couple of weeks before shooting started, we found out that he was drinking beer that night, Beck's beer to be exact. And so David said, okay, you got to change it to beer. And I begged David, no, no, no, keep it vodka and orange juice. Not just because it's more visually interesting making vodka and orange juice than opening a beer, but because drinking a beer doesn't necessarily read as drinking to get drunk. It can just be a college kid thirsty on a Tuesday night. And the important truth isn't what he was drinking. It was that he was drinking to get drunk. I wouldn't have had him do a line of Coke. I wouldn't have shooting. That's an entirely different thing. But I'm interested in the more important truth. What I tell, again, what I tell young screenwriters is, like yourself, is. Thank you. You're welcome. Is that it's not journalism. It's not a photograph. It's a painting. It's a painting.
Speaker 1Let's talk about the new painting. So this is The Social Reckoning. It is the second movie you've made about Facebook. Second one with a character. You're named Mark Zuckerberg in it. A very different Mark Zuckerberg. And in Social Network, the Mark Zuckerberg we meet is protagonist. He's not only a protagonist, antihero. He's an antihero. Yeah. We're following the story from his perspective. An antihero, which is to say not a villain. Not a villain.
Speaker 2His motives are good. What he wants is good, to connect people. Yeah. What's underneath that is bad.
Speaker 1No spoilers, but I would say Mark Zuckerberg is not the hero of the new movie.
Speaker 2He's not. Listen. First of all. I know some people are a little confused. Is it a sequel? And why isn't Jesse playing the part? It's not a sequel. What it is, is the guy who wrote The Social Network has written another movie about Facebook in which Mark Zuckerberg is also a character. It's as if Henry Hill showed up as a character in Casino.
Speaker 1Yes. I think that's a fair assessment. And having seen the movie, I will say that if you've not made The Social Network and say like, oh, Aaron Sorkin is making a movie about the Facebook files. I'm like, yeah, I want to see that.
Speaker 2Good. Great. And by the way, I do think that two minutes into the movie, people are going to stop thinking about what came before it. It did go to Jesse first. It seemed logical. Jesse, it turns out, no longer wants to be conflated with Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn't like Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn't like that he kind of resembles Mark Zuckerberg. And he doesn't like, apparently, in airports at the baggage claim, young boys, teenage boys are coming up to him with wanting him to sign. Business cards that say, I'm CEO, bitch. And he just doesn't, he feels that he kind of maybe made a hero out of Mark Zuckerberg, which isn't what he wanted to do. So, I got to replace Joe DiMaggio with Mickey Mantle. Yeah. Jeremy Strong is phenomenal in the movie. It is the same person 17 years later.
Speaker 1That's what my question is. Do you perceive this as the same character or is this the character in a different movie? Do you see a continuity between the Mark Zuckerberg you wrote in The Social Network and the Mark Zuckerberg we see in Social Marketing? I do. I absolutely do.
Speaker 2If only because, again, I'm the first person to play the part. So, I'm still playing Mark Zuckerberg in this now. He's older. He is more confident. He is a, to say he's a multi-billionaire is kind of, you're not giving his pile of money enough credit even. And we are seeing Mark Zuckerberg in a particular. In a particular situation. Yeah. In one particular situation. The movie, this will be hard to understand if you haven't seen it, but the movie has a kind of complicated structure in that there are two timelines in it. One of them is chronological following Francis Hogan, Mikey Madison, who enlists a Wall Street Journal reporter, Jeremy Allen White, and together they uncover these highly guarded secrets that. That Facebook has. The other timeline is all taking place in one morning. Yeah. And we find out. Yeah. We find that out toward the end.
Speaker 1Yeah. So, Francis is your. She is the classic protagonist of this. She's a character who comes in with one set of ideas and those ideas have to change over the course of them. I would say classically, Jeremy Allen White's character is the one who is an antagonist who's like nudging her towards changing. Does that feel correct to you?
Speaker 2That does feel right. But Jeremy Allen White's character also serves another. Another important purpose in a story like this. He's someone who knows as little as the audience does.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly. He's the Aaron Sorkin with the Steve Wozniak. Uh-huh. Exactly. So, that is one section of the movie and one way we're following this. And I think you do so smartly in the movie is we have a timeline that slides across the bottom of the true mind. It's like, here we're in 2018 and here we're in 2020 just to notice where we're at because otherwise we wouldn't know what other characters know or what has changed.
Speaker 2Yeah. This is, I have to tell you, this is the first time, 11 movies in, this is the first time that test screenings have been helpful. Okay, great. Because the movie didn't used to have those, that sliding chyron at the bottom of the screen. But it feels true to Facebook. It feels true. It fits the visual language of the movie. It does feel true. Yeah. And what we found out from test screenings is that the audiences were confused about the timeline. So, sort of bit by bit, I began to help them. And then I just said, I said, why am I being coy with this? Just tell them when it's taking place.
Speaker 1You started working on the idea that there would be another movie about Facebook. There's news reports of that earlier on. And so, when did you know that this was the way into it? When did you know it's about Francis Hogan? When did you know, and you're following the Francis and Jeff of it all versus the 19 other things that Facebook has done and choosing to end it where at the time period you did versus, you know. The other weird things that Facebook has done since then, like the metaverse and all that stuff. It's all pre-metaverse, what we're saying.
Speaker 2I would say that since the social network came out in 2010, just about every year, either my agent, Ari Emanuel, or Tom Rothman, CEO, the chairman of Sony, would just call and say, come on, you got to write, you got to go back to Facebook and write a story about what this Cambridge Analytica. Or, as you said, any of the stuff that's happened. And, well, first of all, I wasn't, you know, dying to go back into the Facebook world. I didn't want to be the writer of Jaws 2. Yes. I really hope I didn't hurt the feelings of the person who wrote Jaws 2.
Speaker 1No, I mean, it wasn't, Jaws 2 was not Jaws.
Speaker 2That's what I'm saying. But then I was asked to meet with, several years ago, I was asked to meet with Francis Hogan, who was shopping. It was very difficult for me to understand the book proposal because Francis has one of those Steve Wozniak brains.
Speaker 1One of the things which people can look forward to seeing when they actually see the movie is there's rehearsal for testimony that Zuckerberg's going to give, and that is its own play, which is delightful. I'm really glad you put it that way.
Speaker 2Yes, I mentioned the complicated structure of the movie. Yeah. And the way I thought of it was, there's this movie about Francis Hogan and Jeff Horowitz and her journey to become a whistleblower. And inside of that movie, there is a one-act play going on. Those two things crash into each other by the end of the movie. You asked me, you know, when did I say, okay, this is a movie now, and why did I stop where I did? I asked Jeff Horowitz a dramatist question, which was, what for Francis was the inciting action? Right? You know, one day she was a devoted Facebook employee who went to this company specifically because they had the civic integrity team that she wanted to work on. One day she did that, and one day she was a whistleblower. I can't figure out what the inciting action was. And he said, well, she had this friend who was a Bernie bro, basically, this liberal friend who got radicalized to the extreme right. Right. Right. Right. And he said, well, she had this friend who got radicalized to the extreme right. an. And again, as I'm talking to you, very, very few people have seen this movie. So it's nice to speak to someone who has. What I need to do, because the conflicts that I write so often are about ideas. as opposed to a bank robbery. I have to create a sense of motion. I like to start things in the middle, going 60 miles an hour already. If you can get the audience, the audience shouldn't just be a spectator. They need to be a participant in what's going on. They are the magic ingredient. If you can get them just sitting forward a little bit, having to think, needing to just constantly be running a little bit to catch up with you, that sense of energy is powerful.
Speaker 1Let's talk about who are the real people in the movie. So obviously Mark Zuckerberg exists. Francis, Jeff exist.
Speaker 2Bill Burr is playing a character named Charlie Garrigan. He was an early investor in Facebook, millions and millions of dollars from Facebook, but saw that it was, Mark was starting to take Facebook in a bad direction. I just saw bad things happening, could not persuade Mark or Sheryl Sandberg.
Speaker 1Is he a character? Who would have existed in the social network? Like could he have been a character?
Speaker 2He became a kind of a constantly area to Mark immediately following those social network years. Like right after the 2005 lawsuits and wrote a book called Zucked, waking up to the Facebook catastrophe. And so obviously he had Mark out of falling out over that. And I made him a character in the movie. When we Masako is,
Speaker 1when we Masako is playing a fictional crisis PR. I believed every moment that she was in. Yeah. Cause she's one of me Masako. Yeah. That's a, that's a talented actor there.
Speaker 2Yeah. I'll say that whole room, by the way, that you're talking about the prep session, they're preparing Mark to, for congressional testimony. When we Masako is the PR person running the whole thing. Also in there are Joey Brooks and Patrick Fishler, who are just, you know, Mark lieutenants who are terrific. But in those scenes, I had a lot of fun shooting those scenes. And, you know, Jeremy Strong, I think Jeremy might be the best American actor under 50 years old.
Speaker 1Oh, that's, that's, that's high praise. I can see that he's incredibly gifted and, and, and magnetic and compelling. And you can see the thinking happening behind his eyes. And he believed that that thinking is happening as the character, not as the actor. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2Yeah. Um, and, uh, never once during the shoot, did I, I hear Jeremy use his own voice. He only spoke as Mark never until I called cut, check the gate on the last setup for Jeremy after he would also, um, he was a fierce defender of Mark, um, uh, always. And, and, and you want that. He made a beeline to me. As soon as I said, cut, check the gate, uh, it came up to me. He said, if I'd been playing Jeff, I would have been defending Jeff in his own voice for the first time.
Speaker 1Uh, as we should, let's get to our one cool things. Yeah. So what do you have to recommend for to us? Okay. First of all, let me just be clear.
Speaker 2I'm not cool. Um, uh, I've tried a couple of times to be, I, it doesn't work. One thing you like. One thing I love the new season of the paper has arrived. Great. Okay. The first season was fantastic. For anybody who doesn't know, this is from Greg Daniels. It's, it's not a spinoff of the office. It's the same idea. It's a documentary cruise. It's in another office. It's a, uh, small newspaper in Toledo.
Speaker 1It has a potential relationship because of paper being sold.
Speaker 2Because the paper being sold and one character, Oscar Nunez, who plays Oscar Martinez, um, uh, is there too. But the, the show is, it's very good. It's very charming. The cast is fantastic. The writer's room is fantastic. And the new season, I waited a year for the new season. It has just dropped. So that's my one cool thing. Fantastic. New season of the paper.
Speaker 1The paper. My one cool thing is a trope that I was not aware of until this last week. Um, it's a trope slash a meme called surf Dracula. Do you have any idea what surf Dracula might be referring to?
Speaker 2I do not wait surf Dracula.
Speaker 1No, I can't. All right. So it comes from, I have a tweet from 2021 by a guy named Topher Florence. And he says back in the day, if you did a TV show called surf Dracula, you'd see that fool surfing every week in new adventures. But in the streaming era, the entire first season got to be one long ass flashback to how he got the show. He got the surfboard until you finally get to see him surf for five minutes in the finale. And it's just such a wonderfully savage explanation of sort of this moment that we're at with a lot of our shows, uh, which I, I just loved it.
Speaker 2Okay. So this is like, this is bookending my saying at the beginning that some of the best theater in America is, is being multi-part series. Yeah. There's some bad stuff. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I just, I just love it. And that was good.
Speaker 1The poor people at surf Dracula, uh, maybe it's great. It's going to be great. I mean, it's so wonderfully specific. He picked the exact right name for the show. His language is specific. I just love that as a, as a tweet. Just it's well done. Well done. Great tweet. Aaron Sorkin thinks that that was a great tweet. He approves the writing of the, of the story. And that is our show for this week. Script Notes is produced by Meredith Steadman with help from Lauren Loseberg. It is edited by Matthew Cialelli, who also did our outro this week. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That's also the place where you can send questions like the ones we offer. You'll find transcripts at johnaugust.com. The Script Notes book is available wherever you buy books. Script Notes merch is available at Cotton Bureau. If you'd like to see us, not just listen to us, follow us on YouTube and Instagram. If you'd like to read us, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. Most of all, thank you to our premium subscribers. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on the projects that never shot. But maybe we'll even talk about Houdini. Aaron Sorkin, thank you very much for coming on. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2My pleasure. Great to be here. Thanks.
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