Aaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American screenwriter, producer and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Sports Night and The Farnsworth Invention.After graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre in 1983, Sorkin spent much of the 1980s in New York as a struggling, largely unemployed actor. He found his passion in writing plays, and quickly established himself as a young promising playwright. His stageplay A Few Good Men caught the attention of Hollywood producer David Brown, who bought the film rights before the play even premiered.Castle Rock Entertainment hired Sorkin to adapt A Few Good Men for the big screen. The movie, directed by Rob Reiner, became a box office success. Sorkin spent the early 1990s writing two other screenplays at Castle Rock for the films Malice and The American President. In the mid-1990s he worked as a script doctor on films such as Schindler's List and Bulworth. In 1998 his television career began when he created the comedy series Sports Night for the ABC network. Sports Night's second season was its last, and in 1999 overlapped with the debut of Sorkin's next TV series, the political drama The West Wing, this time for the NBC network. The West Wing won multiple Emmy Awards, and continued for three more seasons after he left the show at the end of its fourth season in 2003. He returned to television in 2006 with the dramedy Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, about the backstage drama at a late night sketch comedy show, once again for the NBC network. While Sorkin's return was met with high expectations and a lot of early online buzz before Studio 60's premiere, NBC did not renew it after its first season in which it suffered from low ratings and mixed reception in the press and on the Internet. His most recent feature film screenplay is Charlie Wilson's War.After more than a decade away from the theatre, Sorkin returned to adapt for the stage his screenplay The Farnsworth Invention, which started a workshop run at La Jolla Playhouse in February 2007 and which opened on Broadway in December 2007.He battled with a cocaine addiction for many years, but after a highly publicized arrest he received treatment in a drug diversion program and rid himself of drug dependence. In television, Sorkin is known as a controlling writer, who rarely shares the job of penning teleplays with other writers. His writing staff are more likely to do research and come up with stories for him to tell. His trademark rapid-fire dialogue and extended monologues are complemented, in television, by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's characteristic visual technique called the "Walk and Talk".
In July 2000, he signed a four-year deal with Warner Bros. TV for approximately $15 million. The deal marks the first time that he has signed an exclusive long-term production deal.
In 19 June 2001, a judge sentenced him to a drug-diversion program as a result of his arrest at a California airport for carrying marijuana, rock cocaine and hallucinogenic mushrooms.
His daughter, Roxy, was born November 17, 2000.
Graduated from Syracuse University with a BFA in Musical Theatre.
Wrote a 1988 Rolling Stone Magazine article about the top acting schools in the U.S. One of the featured schools was the State University of New York at Purchase (S.U.N.Y. Purchase) where Janel Moloney ("Donna" on "The West Wing" ) happened to be attending at the time.
Many of his works contain references to the operas of Gilbert & Sullivan. In Malice , the doctor played by Alec Baldwin boasts that he is "never, ever sick at sea", lyrics from "The HMS Pinafore". In "The West Wing" , Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe ) says that he was recording secretary of the Princeton Gilbert & Sullivan society, and many of the regular characters welcome Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter ) to her new office by decorating it with G&S posters and singing "He is an Englishman", also from "Pinafore", to her. The second episode of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" closes with the cast of the show-within-the-show singing a parody of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" from "The Pirates of Penzance". In Charlie Wilsons War , he gives Gust a throwaway line of "...and Im never, never sick at sea", which is a line from "HMS Pinafore".
He is considered one of Scarsdale High Schools "Distinguished Alumni." His picture hangs among the other alumni near the schools cafeteria.
His sister, Deborah Sorkin, is a Navy Judge Advocate General, who worked with David Iglesias. She told Aaron about a real-life case she had worked on with David, which became the basis of A Few Good Men . The character played by Demi Moore was based on his sister. David Iglesias was a Republican, who would later gain fame as one of the U.S. Attorneys fired by the George W. Bush administration.
All of his four television shows feature a season finale episode entitled "What kind of day has it been?".
His play "The Farnsworth Invention" at the TimeLine Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, was awarded the 2010 Joseph Jefferson Award for Production of a Play (Midsize).
After he wrote the screenplay for A Few Good Men , Sorkin rewrote the Broadway play for the National Touring Company, since there were elements added to the film that werent originally in the play.
Sorkin seems to have an affinity for Nobel prize-winning economists. His fictional President in The American President , "Andrew Shepherd", studied under a Nobel prize-winning economist. His President on "The West Wing" , "Jed Bartlet", actually was a Nobel prize-winning economist.
Staunch supporter of the U.S. Democratic party.
He originally wanted to be an actor and did not discover writing until he was in his early twenties.
Worked odd jobs including limousine driver and singing telegram worker while struggling as an actor.
(June 2006) Working on a new show, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" , set to premiere on NBC in the fall.
Was paid $700,000 to rewrite Warren Beattys astronaut love story "Ocean of Storms" in 1996. He worked on several drafts of the script through 1997, which was originally written by Ben Young Mason & Tony Bill, who sold it in 1989.
Describes his creative process as long brainstorming sessions, followed by short writing periods.
As of 2014, has written three films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: A Few Good Men , The Social Network and Moneyball .
Sorkin has the habit of chain smoking while he works on scripts for hours.
He did an uncredited polish on the script for Excess Baggage .
Sorkin was brought on by Steven Spielberg to polish the script for Schindlers List . It was the first time Sorkin acted as an uncredited script doctor.
He did an uncredited polish on the Jerry Bruckheimer produced action thriller Enemy of the State .
He did an uncredited polish on the Jerry Bruckheimer produced action thriller script for The Rock .
He did an uncredited polish on the script for the Warren Beatty political comedy Bulworth .
Describes his writing process as very active; he often stands and acts out every part. As a result of this process, he once accidentally broke his nose by lunging into the mirror while writing a fight scene.
His favorite line of any movie is Chief Brodys "Youre gonna need a bigger boat," line from Jaws.
[speaking about freebased cocaine] I had found a drug I absolutely love,and that gave me a real break from a certain nervous tension that I,kind of carry with me moment to moment.
I think socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is,to reality.
I became a writer, because I wanted to be Donald Hollinger, because he,got a girl like Ann Marie.
If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.
You are like seven of the strangest women I have ever met.
Oratory should raise your heart rate. Oratory should blow the doors off the place.
Government should be a place where people can come together, and no one gets left behind. No one…gets left behind. An instrument of good.
Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?It’s not the greatest country in the world. That’s my answer… [turns to a panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck, but he gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn’t cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always? [turns to another panelist] And with a straight face, you’re gonna tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom! So, 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom. [turns to the student who asked the question] And yeah, you… sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there’s some things you should know. One of them is: there’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now, none of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are, without a doubt, a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! Yosemite?![Silence]It sure used to be… We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.
There (is) order and even great beauty in what looks like total chaos. If we look closely enough at the randomness around us, patterns will start to emerge.
We live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns.
I was sitting on a bench having a bagel, but from where I was both jogging and scullng looks good to me. -- Sam,PRESIDENT BARTLETT: "See how benevolent I can be when everybody just does what I tell them.
I find television, and particularly live television, very romantic: the idea that there is this small group of people, way up high, in a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan, beaming this signal out into the night.
