An ode to Aaron Sorkin
By Melodie Edwards
Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Film & Music
Working on a degree in English here at U of T, I've always been something of a snob when it comes to picking my heroes. Dickens, Trollope, Wilde...if they don't come before the turn of the century, I'm not buying it. Sure, there are plenty of excellent contemporary writers, but I've always been irrationally stubborn in insisting that no modern scribbler has excelled at attracting both academic and mass appeal as Dickens did, and that no writer has been quite so quick with the wit as Wilde once was.
But I'm breaking out of my comfort zone. This article is an ode to Aaron Sorkin: a modern writer known for his popular political TV drama The West Wing.
Aaron Sorkin is a writer who not only breaks my "best before" date policy, he also breaks all barriers between writing mediums. It seems that a lot of writers who find success working for television tend to stay there (unless of course your union goes on strike, as is the current case!) But Sorkin, though best known for his TV work, has left his mark on Broadway and Hollywood as well. His first big break came in 1989, at the age of 28, when Broadway hosted his play A Few Good Men, based on a legal trial his sister, a lieutenant in the Navy Judge Advocate General Corps, recounted to him. The play had 497 performances, and when Sorkin was drafted to write the screenplay adaptation for it, A Few Good Men become an Oscar-nominated Hollywood hit in 1992. After that came the screenplay for Malice with Nicole Kidman, a short-lived TV series called Sports Night, and then back to film with The American President in '95, an obvious precursor to his hit series The West Wing, which he left after the fourth season following a contract dispute. His latest series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip unfortunately died after only one season, but he's back with a new play, The Farnsworth Invention, hitting Broadway this month, and a new movie, Charlie Wilson's War, coming out in December, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.
The Farnsworth Invention seems to be heading up as the epitome of Sorkin's work. The prevalent themes that dog his creations, like idealism, an admiration of America, Western progress, and Gilbert and Sullivan references (Sorkin has a BFA in musical theatre) all seem to have a place in his new play, which documents the invention of the television. In the past, poets and writers would worship and write about their muse, which gifted them with their inspiration and success; it fitting that Sorkin, best known for The West Wing, should worship and write about the television.
TV is also what Sorkin's writing is most suited to. His new play, encompassing all his eloquence on patriotism and progress, probably needs the grandeur that comes from speeches that reverberate up to the mezzanine in an impressive theatre in New York. But it's not his opulent speeches on abstract concepts that make him an exceptional writer; as mentioned, that part of his talent is best left on the Broadway stage. In modern television, where clever writing is now marked by clever euphemisms for female anatomy and other Mc-Catchphrases (yes, I'm aware I'm attacking a well-beloved show here, but please bear with me), it's Sorkin's style of dialogue which makes his writing, like Dickens', both intelligent and accessible for its time.
Let's not kid ourselves; this man can really bring the banter. Characters striding briskly down the hallways of the Whitehouse, shooting lines at each other in rapid-fire succession, known as the "walk-and-talk" of the early West Wing seasons, became Sorkin's trademark. His patented patter involves complexities with the script that not all actors can master either, which is why so much of his work is populated with the same people. Joshua Malina and Bradley Whitford, for example, having perfectly captured the timing and speed behind the Sorkin spirit, both peppered the screen and stage shooting off Sorkin dialogue, in at least half of his projects. His wit is almost Wilde-ian in its form, and he seems aware of the likeness himself. One of Wilde's famous lines, "sausages and women - if you want to enjoy the experience, never observe the preparation," is unabashedly transformed and delivered by one of the West Wing characters: "there are two things in the world you never want people to see how you make them - laws and sausages." Without a doubt the rhythm in the effective delivery of such lines is dependent on the actor, but my hat is off to Aaron Sorkin for the finesse with which he writes those lines, in what I melodramatically view as a bleak post-Wilde world of witticisms.
So I shall end this ode by saying cheers to Sorkin and his continual conquests of TV, Hollywood, and Broadway. May his work continue to drag me from the graves of writers long dead, with its biting banter, grander themes, and of course those hilarious Gilbert and Sullivan references. Sure he was born in this century, and that's a strike against him, but I am not too snooty to say this: when it comes to writing, Aaron Sorkin is my hero.
But I'm breaking out of my comfort zone. This article is an ode to Aaron Sorkin: a modern writer known for his popular political TV drama The West Wing.
Aaron Sorkin is a writer who not only breaks my "best before" date policy, he also breaks all barriers between writing mediums. It seems that a lot of writers who find success working for television tend to stay there (unless of course your union goes on strike, as is the current case!) But Sorkin, though best known for his TV work, has left his mark on Broadway and Hollywood as well. His first big break came in 1989, at the age of 28, when Broadway hosted his play A Few Good Men, based on a legal trial his sister, a lieutenant in the Navy Judge Advocate General Corps, recounted to him. The play had 497 performances, and when Sorkin was drafted to write the screenplay adaptation for it, A Few Good Men become an Oscar-nominated Hollywood hit in 1992. After that came the screenplay for Malice with Nicole Kidman, a short-lived TV series called Sports Night, and then back to film with The American President in '95, an obvious precursor to his hit series The West Wing, which he left after the fourth season following a contract dispute. His latest series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip unfortunately died after only one season, but he's back with a new play, The Farnsworth Invention, hitting Broadway this month, and a new movie, Charlie Wilson's War, coming out in December, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.
The Farnsworth Invention seems to be heading up as the epitome of Sorkin's work. The prevalent themes that dog his creations, like idealism, an admiration of America, Western progress, and Gilbert and Sullivan references (Sorkin has a BFA in musical theatre) all seem to have a place in his new play, which documents the invention of the television. In the past, poets and writers would worship and write about their muse, which gifted them with their inspiration and success; it fitting that Sorkin, best known for The West Wing, should worship and write about the television.
TV is also what Sorkin's writing is most suited to. His new play, encompassing all his eloquence on patriotism and progress, probably needs the grandeur that comes from speeches that reverberate up to the mezzanine in an impressive theatre in New York. But it's not his opulent speeches on abstract concepts that make him an exceptional writer; as mentioned, that part of his talent is best left on the Broadway stage. In modern television, where clever writing is now marked by clever euphemisms for female anatomy and other Mc-Catchphrases (yes, I'm aware I'm attacking a well-beloved show here, but please bear with me), it's Sorkin's style of dialogue which makes his writing, like Dickens', both intelligent and accessible for its time.
Let's not kid ourselves; this man can really bring the banter. Characters striding briskly down the hallways of the Whitehouse, shooting lines at each other in rapid-fire succession, known as the "walk-and-talk" of the early West Wing seasons, became Sorkin's trademark. His patented patter involves complexities with the script that not all actors can master either, which is why so much of his work is populated with the same people. Joshua Malina and Bradley Whitford, for example, having perfectly captured the timing and speed behind the Sorkin spirit, both peppered the screen and stage shooting off Sorkin dialogue, in at least half of his projects. His wit is almost Wilde-ian in its form, and he seems aware of the likeness himself. One of Wilde's famous lines, "sausages and women - if you want to enjoy the experience, never observe the preparation," is unabashedly transformed and delivered by one of the West Wing characters: "there are two things in the world you never want people to see how you make them - laws and sausages." Without a doubt the rhythm in the effective delivery of such lines is dependent on the actor, but my hat is off to Aaron Sorkin for the finesse with which he writes those lines, in what I melodramatically view as a bleak post-Wilde world of witticisms.
So I shall end this ode by saying cheers to Sorkin and his continual conquests of TV, Hollywood, and Broadway. May his work continue to drag me from the graves of writers long dead, with its biting banter, grander themes, and of course those hilarious Gilbert and Sullivan references. Sure he was born in this century, and that's a strike against him, but I am not too snooty to say this: when it comes to writing, Aaron Sorkin is my hero.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
erin G
posted 11/16/07 @ 11:10 AM EST
i could be mistaken, but i'm pretty sure sports night overlapped with the west wing by a season, and came *after* the american president (if that movie was '95). (Continued…)
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