The Social Network’s Aaron Sorkin [Interview]

In anticipation of the opening of The Social Network it was truly a pleasure to interview one of the most talented writers in Hollywood… Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin not only wrote The Social Network but executive produced the film as well.

To say the man is a legend would be a grim understatement on my part, a man with such films as A Few Good Men and the television series The West Wing to his credit. I learned quite a bit about the film that I didn’t know from Sorkin and I hope you do too.

Please note, the interview does contain spoilers about the film’s ending.

At what point did David Fincher become involved with your script for The Social Network?

I delivered the script to Sony on a Thursday, there was only one director they wanted to take it to and they green lit it right away, and it was David. It was given to him on Friday morning the next day and Friday afternoon I got an email from him saying, “Hey Aaron, it’s David I am directing The Social Network can I come over?”

Some would say you took quite a few liberties with the original subject matter, the book The Accidental Billionaires. While remaining true to the story you told an even more compelling narrative. What was your inspiration behind some of your stylistic choices while adapting the book and changing the story structure?

Let me be clear, when I began writing this film there was no book. Ben and I both wrote these at the same time, what I got was a 14-page book proposal. Ben’s publisher was shopping it around for a film sale and that is how it ended up in my hands. I was on page three of the book proposal when I called and said I want to do this, it was the fastest I ever said yes to anything.

I just assumed Sony would want me to wait a year or so, so there was a book to adapt but they didn’t, they wanted me to start right away. So Ben and I were working at the same time and we would speak or meet every four or five months and share some information, but I knew we were going to be attacking the story from two different angles.

In Hollywood more often than not the screenwriter writes the script and then isn’t further involved, obviously with you were much more involved almost every day of shooting; was that important for you?

It’s important to me because I love it. My roots and my background and what I really still think of myself as is not a screenwriter or a television writer but a playwright. Which is all I ever wanted to be.

I don’t write plays nearly as often as I would like to, but when you are the playwright you don’t write the play and then go away. You write the play, and then you cast the play and you are there everyday during rehearsal making changes during previews and your pacing around in the back of the theater. I don’t see my role any different when it is a film, or a TV show.

I need to be part of the process all the way through. You know even it it’s just standing there being nervous and scratching my head. Like I said I write films not screenplays.

The character of Erica that bookends the film doesn’t appear in the book at all, where did she come from?

I have and you can have it too, its pretty easily available Mark’s blog post that was dramatized at the beginning of the film. The one that begins with Erica Albright is a bitch, I have that blog post the name of the girl is not Erica.

There are a couple of instances maybe two or three, where I changed someone’s name because it simply didn’t add one centimeter of anything to the film to use their real names, these are people with families; why drag them into this?

Clearly Mark had just gotten his heart broken, he was angry at a girl and my generation when you get your heart broken by a girl you go to your friends, you go to a bar, you drive around in your car. Mark would laser focus and goes to his computer and begins blogging and hacking.

And then the ending bringing Erica back for the end?

I knew, I wanted to end very quietly with him trying to friend her on Facebook.

If you know the beginning and you know the end, boy its not like your job is done for you and the rest is just going to write itself but you feel a lot better then when you don’t know anything, when its just a blank piece of paper.

Finally, how do you feel about Mark Zuckerberg un-favoriting The West Wing upon discovering you were writing the film?

He just put it back up. Yesterday. (Laughs)

Listen, I was delighted to hear whenever anyone is a fan of The West Wing and I was very happy to hear that Mark was.

I understand Mark’s displeasure with the film. I think that if a film was being made about me, I would only want it told from my point of view and Facebook would prefer that it only be told from Mark’s point of view, but as I said it is being told from several points of view.  I also don’t thing there are any of us who would want a film made about the things we did when we were 19 years old.

I understand how Mark feels, but this is not an assassination attempt by any means. I think he goes through the first hour and fifty-five minutes of the film being an ant-hero but the final five being a tragic hero and there is a big difference.

The tragic hero has to have paid a price, the tragic hero has to feel remorse and we get both of those things from Mark by the end of the film.

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