Thanks, Sarah.

Just hearing from him makes me feel better about the TV business. I'm sure he's
already got an idea for a series and I might even add HBO to watch it.

Very interesting about the dinner of the writing/producing gang.

Kindest regards,
ljd


> To: AaronSorkin@yahoogroups.com
> From: LADreamr@...
> Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:57:18 +0000
> Subject: [AaronSorkin] Aaron GQ interview/possible new show for HBO
>
> http://men.style.com/gq/blogs/gqeditors/2008/08/why-does-aaron.html
>
> Why Does Aaron Sorkin Feel So Guilty?
>
> A GQ.com Q&A
>
> by mickey rapkin
>
> Aaron Sorkin is one of the most brilliant minds in Hollywood. He
> wrote A Few Good Men. Created The West Wing. Punched up more scripts
> than he can remember. And of course, saw it all threatened in 2001
> when he was arrested trying to sneak 'shrooms and a crack pipe
> through security at a Burbank, California, airport.
>
> When he returned to television in 2006 with Studio 60 on the Sunset
> Strip, expectations couldn't have been higher. Before a single
> episode had aired, The Wall Street Journal ran the headline: can
> studio 60 save nbc? It couldn't.
>
> On the tenth anniversary of his first series—the criminally short-
> lived Sports Night, rereleased on DVD in September—Sorkin, the
> onetime wunderkind, sat down to talk about a life in television.
>
> Sports Night ran for just two years. I gotta say, It always seemed
> like a weird fit for ABC.
>
> Yeah. Sports Night was on right between The Drew Carey Show and Spin
> City. ABC would tell me, "You're losing 20 percent of Drew Carey's
> audience." I would tell them, "I don't think so. I think I'm losing
> 100 percent of Drew Carey's audience."
>
> Sports Night ends with a classic line: "Anybody who can't make money
> off of Sports Night should get out of the moneymaking business." Zing!
>
> I'm not crazy about stepping outside the show and winking at the
> audience. But it felt good to write it. And the crew liked listening
> to it.
>
> So much of Sports Night was about fathers. I remember watching one
> scene in which a dad rejects his son's ringside seats to a boxing
> match because he thinks his kid is showing off, and thinking that had
> to have come from real life.
>
> Oh yeah. My father was an intellectual-property lawyer. He was born
> in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, fought in World War II on the GI Bill.
> The greasier side of this business turns him off. And ought to. My
> father is the reason why I tend to write as idealistically and
> romantically as I do. He is a guy who has one foot in the last
> century. He's out to civilize people—but with great wit and humor.
>
> How are you doing as a father?
>
> I have a 7-year-old daughter. I don't think I've screwed her up all
> that much.
>
> Let's talk politics, West Wing guy. Do you think Hillary got a raw
> deal?
>
> I never understood the polarizing nature of Hillary Clinton. She
> never knocked me out nor struck me as being the kind of horror show
> her enemies say she is. I had a long relationship with Maureen Dowd,
> who would jump up and down on her twice a week because of the color
> dress she wore at the State of the Union. I never understood why.
>
> Have you met Obama? What do you make of him?
>
> The first time I met Barack Obama—I should say the only time I've met
> Barack Obama—was a year ago, when he was doing fifty-person-cocktail-
> party fund-raisers. He flattered me by saying, "My intention is to
> steal a lot of your lines." My prediction is he's just going to blow
> the doors off the place in Denver. This is a man who—the Jeremiah
> Wright of it all aside—was clearly paying attention in church. I
> don't need to tell you that I'm a big fan of oratory. A big part of
> leadership is the goose-bump experience. We've been missing that.
>
> Why didn't Studio 60 work?
>
> I made too many mistakes. I would give anything to go back and get
> another bite of that apple. Basically, to use a sports analogy, you
> can have the best team in football playing the worst team in
> football. But if the best team in football throws four interceptions,
> they're not going to win.
>
> That sounds a little arrogant.
>
> I'm helped by a staff of people who have great ideas, but the scripts
> aren't written by committee. I was too angry when I wrote Studio 60.
> The show became like the cover of Abbey Road. Everybody was trying to
> figure out who this character was in real life or what that incident
> was trying to be. But the anger—it was a post-9/11 anger. We were
> going through a time when the television networks were so sensitive
> toward appearing patriotic. And patriotism was just being questioned
> all over the place. It just seemed like the wheels had come off our
> national culture.
>
> The Janet Jackson–FCC incident could easily be lumped in with that.
>
> There was hysteria everywhere. Exactly. And the Internet [doesn't
> help]—it's a bronchial infection on the First Amendment. Nothing has
> done more to make us dumber or meaner than the anonymity of the
> Internet.
>
> Do you feel guilty about Studio 60's failure?
>
> I felt like I had let so many people down—from Warner Bros. and NBC
> to the cast and crew. You live and die with these things. It is a
> feeling that you can't look these people in the eye anymore. Someone
> like Matt Perry.
>
> It's tough to feel bad for Matthew Perry.
>
> Exactly. Yet you do.
>
> Does it bother you that Tina Fey is still taking shots at you on 30
> Rock?
>
> I shook hands with her once. I know she's had some fun at my expense,
> and that's what she does for a living. If I'm going to take shots at
> whoever I want on my show, she gets to take shots at whoever she
> wants on her show. I have nothing but admiration for Tina Fey.
>
> What did you do during the Hollywood writers' strike? Guilt-free
> vacation?
>
> I had a play in previews on Broadway.
>
> Right, The Farnsworth Invention.
>
> For three and a half weeks I was in the unique position of being on
> strike and being struck against at the same time.
>
> Yes, the Broadway stagehands went on strike.
>
> This was about three weeks before Charlie Wilson's War was opening. I
> thought, If the projectionists go on strike, that'll fill out my
> bingo card. I'll have to ask my parents for my allowance again.
> Anyway, I spent most of the time during the writers' strike in New
> York with the play. Once that was over and I'd come back to L.A., I
> did participate in something that should have happened months
> earlier. Paul Attanasio—
>
> The guy who produces House?
>
> Yes—invited about seven or eight or nine of us over to his house for
> dinner. All screenwriters you would know. We all agreed that we had
> been irresponsible and that, in an effort not to seem elitist, we had
> remained quiet during this strike. We hadn't voiced our objections.
> We hadn't put pressure on Patric Verrone and the other heads of the
> union to end this thing. It wasn't a strike we were passionate about.
> The fact of the matter is that people we all work with every day—and
> I'm talking about the 120 or so people on a movie set or a TV set,
> who are all the principal wage earners for their families—don't have
> the kind of bank accounts that can weather a strike like this. We'd
> been wrong.
>
> What was the dinner like?
>
> The Directors Guild had reached an agreement the day before. We, that
> night, called the leadership of the Writers Guild. I know it sounds
> like a bunch of revolutionaries getting together to do the right
> thing, but you should know the dinner was catered. It's not like the
> old days. This isn't a Clifford Odets Waiting for Lefty thing, okay?
> Everybody showed up in a German car. And this is exactly why we
> didn't want to voice our objections to the strike. We thought, We're
> going to get killed. However, here's what we told our leadership at
> the Guild: that we feel strongly that the DGA deal is fair, That we
> should accept from the studios and networks what they've given to the
> DGA. We named who we were in the room and said that if we didn't see
> fast action over the next forty-eight hours, that we would have to
> make our feelings public.
>
> And?
>
> I have no idea if it worked or not. I know that the strike ended. It
> could have been for entirely different reasons.
>
> You've been writing movies lately. Does that mean you're done with TV?
>
> I just sat down and had a great meeting with Sue Naegle, who's the
> head of HBO. So if you have an idea for a series, let me know.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
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