What's Character Got to Do with It? (Full Session)

so we're going to talk about character and hopefully mostly how Aaron develops character so I'm just going to do the first question is just walk me through pick a character do you do you write like a short story about them do you write prose about them before you do dialogue do they come from real people how does a character actually come about anyway I don't do those things that you just mentioned other people do and it's important to note that there is no one way to do it everybody does it differently for me uh rather than kind of tell the audience who a character is I like to show the audience what a character wants uh uh and it all boils down to intention and obstacles somebody wants something something standing in their way of getting it it they want the girl they want the money they want to get to Philadelphia it doesn't matter but they have to want it bad if they can need it that's even better something formidable is standing in their way and the tactics that that character uses to overcome the obstacle is going to define who the character is it's like having a Christmas tree and then hanging ornaments on so pick it I mean just pick a character we're probably familiar with most your characters and describe the desire that the desire comes before all the other demographic qualities or by desire you mean intention intention yeah absolutely it's when you say demographic qualities I think that what you're thinking of is characteristics uh and that's a little bit more like mr. Potato Head I mean where you have the thing I'll give it big arms and little ears and again ha or no moustache a moustache that kind of thing and that is absolutely comes last if it comes at all uh the what a character wants and how they go about getting and how they go about overcoming the obstacle is what's going to define that character I just point out Toy Story be okay with mr. potato they did they did but um if you look at the characters in uh in Toy Story by beginning with woody on down they had one big desire which was to be there for Andy and he was the name of the kid right to fulfill their essence as a toy which is to make a kid happy and you know the a ton of obstacles were or thrown at them and and their characters were defined by how they overcame them do you think I mean just as you look around the world do you think that kind of intensity of intention is normal in people you meet or is it something that you write dramatic stories about ah that's great question let me escape let me answer it this way and let me know if I didn't answer your question uh when I'm done the properties of people and the properties of character have almost nothing to do with each other they really don't I know it seems like they do because we look alike characters and people but people don't speak in dialogue their lives don't unfold in a series of seeing's that form a narrative arc the rules of drama are really very much as separate from from what we know from the likes of the properties of life is that true of Shakespeare it's a I would think especially true of Shakespeare you know people don't rhyme uh um they did in lower Manhattan man I like um listen I tend to write very romantically and idealistically so the characters that I write are going to be kind of quixotic and uh they're going to they're going to fail a lot and fall a lot but you know there's there's a romance in in trying for honorable things now so you mentioned that or do you consider you you have a moral purpose are you trying to improve the world or see the world I'm really glad you asked I really am because uh one out of seven I think because of the the the way I write and some of the subjects that I write about whether something is taking place at the White House or something is taking place in a newsroom I that it would be easy uh to look at that and feel like I'm I'm trying to give you a lecture on here's how things should be done if everybody just lived the way I wanted them to live live the way these characters are showing as an example and we'd all be better off that that isn't on my mind at all when I'm writing I I have no agenda I certainly don't have a political agenda here's the I do here's the only political agenda I've ever had when I was in eleven years old I had a crush on a girl in my sixth grade class named Jenny Lavin and she was volunteering after school at the local McGovern campaign headquarters and so I thought it would be a good idea if I did two and one Sunday they they put us all in a bunch of buses and vans and took us over to White Plains which is the county seat in Westchester where where I grew up because the Nixon campaign motorcade was driving through and we would hold up signs that said McGovern for president and that's what I was doing when a 143 year old woman came up from behind me grabbed the sign out of my hand whacking you over the head with it threw it on the ground and stomped on it my only political agenda has been the slim hope that that woman is still alive and that I'm driving her out of her mind have you stopped Jenny Levin on Facebook I believe in right on I'm not on Facebook oh really yeah I was for the for a brief period was writing the movie was writing the social network one and then why not uh I don't have a good reason not to be I just don't have a good reason to be I don't know why not I am I tried to any lab and crazy um listen you're right I wouldn't mind knowing what Jenny Lavin was up to no no I didn't Walter I honest to god I'm not looking to hit on you we all have our Jenny laughs um she's a big producer in Hollywood she's got it stoplight on your next project so talk to us you know you're famous for dialogue mm at what point does the dialogue come in well it's the last thing I what I'm asked for instance um uh how long does it take you to write a movie the answer is actually a couple of years but most of that doesn't look like what a passerby would say was writing it looks a lot like me lying on my couch or watching ESPN but what I'm doing is again I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle uh uh and I'm I'm trying to I'm just loading up on what those things are of what is the intention in oskol and that's the that's the driveshaft of the car and once you've built that then you can start to do the fun things that you like to do for me that's dialogue I really enjoy dialogue because um my parents took me to see plays starting from when I was very little like I said I grew up first in Manhattan and then a suburb of New York called Scott it was called Scarsdale and my parents took me to see plays starting from when I was very little and oftentimes they took me to see plays that I was way too young to possibly understand what Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf when I was 9 and I did not understand what was happening on stage but I loved the sound of dialogue it sounded like music to me and I wanted to imitate that sound so now a story from a plot is a real weakness I I consider plot could be kind of a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do which is write dialogue but I can't write dialogue unless unless there's a plot so I will kind of get myself as loaded up as I can on you know who wants what and what's standing in their way just two people in a room who disagree they can disagree on the correct time of day but but they have to disagree and then once I have that go ahead and write and for instance with the social network I had like the first third in my head and I frequently in fact always start without before I know how it's going to end really I wish I knew how it was gonna have but I just can't wait that long I have to get started and I hope it comes to me along the way so I had about the first third and I definitely had the first scene which it's a very simple scene it takes place in a bar on a college campus and and two students one of whom was Mark Zuckerberg are who have dated a couple of times they're breaking up and that's the scene and when I finally sat down to write it it it occurred to me for the first time and it had been about a year leading up to that of thinking and going and visiting the final clubs at Harvard and talking to the spend a lot of time with the Winklevoss twins and that kind of thing when I finally sat down to write that first scene it occurred to me that these two characters were much were at least a little bit younger than they were younger than any characters I had ever written before and that suddenly I had to make sound young and uh and and like they're young today in the 21st century and I think I maybe wrote six lines before I said this is just god-awful they're going to have to talk the same way everybody talks in everything that that I ever do uh and and they did my the characters I write don't really distinguish themselves by the by the way they talk yeah so when you write that seems famous he gives that Boston University speech which is a I I do I apologize to and I spent the last four years apologizing to anyone who went to bu my sister went to bu it's a fine school it was the right line to write in I didn't know your sister went to me Wow yeah it should've chosen BC it out but so when you write a great line you know you want me on the wall you need me on the wall do you know right there this is a really good line uh I know when I write a line that I like uh you know when it musically uh it feels right and again you know what the word sound like are as important to me as what they mean uh so you know I I know if I've you know kind of got it going on if I'm in a groove I don't know you know that you know we're going to be said you can't handle the truth however many years now when you do you think this is you know you've been doing this now for I don't know a couple decades do you think it's changed the way you see the world when you're in conversation with people are you are you at work are you more observant than you had if you'd been doing something else yeah definitely um definitely I am less I am more it's more observant as a nice way of saying it I am less in the actual moment than I am trying to use whatever this moment is to help myself at work and again it's because of that that year that year and a half you know spent on the couch or watching ESPN I first of all I'm always terrified that I I have written every word I know you know and in every order that you can put it I am haunted seriously by the fact that you know that's like everybody I have you know I have a dictionary at home we all in a dictionary and I'm haunted by the fact that in that dictionary on myself is the best play ever written if I can just pick the right words and put them in the right order it's already there and I just need to crack the code and so basically I'm I'm it it's hard to get me a hundred percent present in a moment I'm usually thinking about this this thing that I'm having trouble writing or if I'm if I'm in the middle of doing serious television that's the worst because you always have a term paper due so us so the answer is what I'm having a conversation with somebody I'm I'm hoping they're going to help me out somehow frequently if I'm really stuck I'll go out into a public place a diner a bus stop any place where you might overhear a conversation and hope that I can land in the middle of a conversation that will get me thinking how in the world did this what in the world was the beginning of this conversation and I'll try to write that I and so I was I was in a diner once um and just overheard somebody I mean they were really frustrated saying I mean honestly how many people can you think of named Gordon we got a decrease what we're gonna ride for rest of the city I'm gonna write the beginning of this scene I was in Jackson Mississippi and passed by a park bench and uh two men were sitting there and one of them said who that they're going to get the jump on Jesus and again I thought that's that's what I'm talking about on one eye he wrote the best line of the scene now let me just write the rest yeah now do you think you're more empathetic I mean you're sort of mining but I like to understand intention and obstacle you've got to actually get into the minds of people I'm not sure if this is what you mean by empathetic or not but I've written to anti-heroes in I mean in the midst of all the romanticism and idealism I've written to anti-heroes one was Mark Zuckerberg and the other one let me make this sound is little like a plug as I can is in Steve Jobs which opens October 9th based on the book by Walter ONGs as well through your auntie here Walter is my absolute hero uh and in those cases when you're writing an antihero you can't you have to have empathy you can't judge the character those characters I write anti-heroes or even outright antagonists like Nicholson's character in a few good men you really want to write them like they're making their case to God why they should be allowed into heaven my favorite movie present company excepted of course is movie called The Searchers of John Ford yeah where John Wayne is a biggie throughout that movie and it's an incredibly complicated but very moving role because he's trapped by circumstance he's a he's a primitive man trapped in a semi civilized civil society sure listen you can in drama get people to empathize with bigots we saw it with all in the family right we loved Archie Bunker uh we loved him and the reason why was that Norman Lear in that team and Carroll O'Connor uh did a great job making us feel sort of life of this guy who you know was you know had a father who was hard on him and he's just making ends meet he's living in Queens that he to understand that life uh and he also showed us a very nice father and uh you know it's a tough needle to thread but but you can do it in uh in twelve Angry Men but by the very end of twelve Angry Men you kind of want to give Li Jacob a pack you know yeah now I have a weird question I was at a conference of one a cocktail party a very bad cocktail party where I happened to run into a fascinating guy who's a novelist mm-hmm and we got to chatting and you know I write little nonfiction newspaper he writes novels and he said to me I don't know why I thought this of me said do you drink while writing maybe that's only my columns made sense to him but but I said no do you drink while writing you're not well he said no and I then he said to me do you drink after writing and I said often yeah and I said you trick after writing he said yes often and I said to him why do you drink after writing he said because the writing process to me is so emotional then I needed to calm down and I said to me the writing process is so disciplined I needed to loosen up that's really interesting which are you okay I feel like I'm at Boston University girl right yeah uh I don't drink so I can't be helpful there but I as as far as the rest of the question goes yes I I am emotional when I write I'm actually very physical when I write - I'm especially when it's going well I start acting out other parts I I stop typing um I and it it and I start walking around I can find myself you know two streets away from my office uh or my house because things are going really well not like kind of rush back and type it it's a it's a little enervating if I've written well if I'm writing badly it's the worst feeling in the world after so I'm a parent too so after something bad happening to my daughter this is the worst feeling world worst feeling in the world but you do it for those tiny moments of yet you know you put the bat on the ball are you really connected with it I once broke my nose while I was writing I was writing an early episode of the newsroom and kind of got up in the middle of the night because I realized he is there's a great gag it's sort of as old as comedy itself but it will work right here and I just went from my bedroom to keep a little office at home um just to write a note to myself to do this and then those notes turned in became a little longer then I started writing dialogue I just the hell with it and open the script and started writing and what it was was a moment where Jeff Daniels having just experienced the last straw was going to lunging at a staffer doing one of these with somebody holding him back and I was at the moment that I was kind of doing that I had moved from the office into the bathroom and lunged into the mirror with nobody to stop me from doing it if it had been a Scorsese movie he would have said let's go again this time a little less blood it my nose was was plainly broken I mean it it my face was smashed in so I called called a friend of mine it was about midnight uh and she came over and said oh my god we've gotta get you to the emergency room oh oh I said no no help me if this is funny and Wow I think I'm right that when Proust was dying he was rewriting because they thought death scene and remembrance he was that yeah this is know anything about preusse dying and what was happening then okay New York Times oh when Lady Gaga was dying haha okay uh we're gonna open it up in about ten minutes but I've got to humiliate myself a little more let's go back to let's go back to politics do you think liberals and conservatives enjoyed West Wing equally I mean I have statistics that suggest they do not but let's I'm glad uh we've gone back to politics and I'm glad in addition to Walter Arianna Huffington is sitting here in the first row and yeah again um I do not have a I don't know I don't have a political agenda and nor am I particularly politically sophisticated uh what I have her great tutors on the west wing on the newsroom I hired people who had experience in Washington experience working in the White House who were able to combine that with they kind of got a kick out of the stories that that they were able to tell so just you know someone who is able to say uh you know listen on Halloween the White House press corps is allowed to bring their kids to the White House to trick-or-treat uh someone say I gotta tell you something the presidential motorcade moves as soon as the president gets into their car and oftentimes especially on the campaign trail if an incumbent is campaigning a junior staffer will run into a store to get a postcard to get a t-shirt or something come out and find that they're in the middle of nowhere with the motorcade is gone and they have been note left behind um in Oklahoma and so just something like that that's both of those were west wings and and they would teach me uh if if only phonetically sort of the sound of two intelligent people are disagreeing but there's a lot of your movies especially the political or other work the there's an idealistic version of how it should be yes and again that's not me saying come on you dummies what what why can't you be as clever as I am uh that's just me being romantic and and idealistic and you know trying to be as good as I like Frank Capra is at it are you compared to capital a lot I mean aside from Proust are you know I I mean Capra has this idealism too I let the night would be a yes I would never be on let me have let me say did he inspire you like of the of the filmmakers who were who you grew up with her it was a matter of fact um uh I like his moves I really do I like mr. Smith goes to Washington and it's a wonderful life and um but they don't like me up uh Don Quixote lights me up you know good no yes yes so your castigating me for proofs than you're getting servantes that's exactly right I don't tell you why because Don Quixote was turned into a Broadway musical and so now now I can understand well do Proust now so would you say like what's the best moment is that is the best moment in your career is at the moment when you write it is that the moment when it's on the screen or on the stage or when the actors read it at what point is the craft fulfilled there are a lot of good moments along the way again they're going to be wait you're gonna have way way more bad days than good days and you know you remind yourself that a baseball player professional baseball player who only fails two out of three times is going to the Hall of Fame you keep telling yourself that the good moments uh you've you've written a scene well and and you have if there are any pool players in here again what I mean by giving yourself a leave which is to say you've written a scene well and you you and you've left off at a place where you can go to bed knowing what you're doing when you're going to get up when you get up tomorrow morning that you're not going to get up tomorrow morning climbing the walls because you don't have an idea that you know just what you're going to do you're giving yourself a leave that's a great moment somebody else reading it somebody with fresh eyes coming to it I'll tell you when Walter read the Steve Jobs screenplay and liked it that was a really big deal to me sitting at a table read and I remember my first movie table read it was a few good men was my first movie and Nicholson makes that character Colonel jessep makes his entrance page 23 of that screenplay and we're having a table readings about 80 people on a soundstage Nicholson had his first line and there was just kind of an audible gasp in the room because it wasn't somebody doing a Nicholson impersonation it was Nicholson and there have been a number of actors that that I felt that way about but the biggest big deal moment is when somehow you know that you've written something and it's not just about writing it because remember there's there's a big difference between what you and I do you write things that are meant to be read and I write things that are meant to be performed so it would be like a composer just writing notes and and handing out the sheet music to the audience it wouldn't have nearly the same emotional impact once everybody comes together the actors the director designers technicians and the audience which is a major collaborator in and what we're going to do tonight if it lands yeah and you can tell if it does that's a really big deal it feels fantastic unfortunately the feeling is fleeting and you have to do it again you cannot dine off yesterday's really good feeling it really doesn't last that long now I've asked this question of a lot of people have done really first-class work and I say do you feel complete do you feel whatever ambition drove you is it satisfied and can you rest I don't know a single writer who would answer yes to that question I'm not if not a single one my hero and my mentor uh coming up to writer named William Goldman uh who he has two Academy Awards for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and all the President's Men he wrote The Princess Bride he he wrote magic he on and on he is a fantastic novelist a fantastic screenwriter he's also a fantastic writer of nonfiction I would recommend to anybody not to be in the movie business I would recommend to anybody a book that he wrote called adventures in the screen trade uh which is it's it's a wonderful wonderful read also a book of his called uh by the way I don't how to make any money when he sells books me a book of his called hype and glory which was about there was one year in which he was a judge at the camp Film Festival and the Miss America pageant in the same year and he uses that thread to actually to write about his marriage falling apart and uh it's a fantastic book anyway bill Goldman um found me early and and took me under his wing he's still very much a sort of a godfather a figure for me and when I saw that he is was unsatisfied and restless and hadn't fed but didn't feel like he'd yet accomplished what he'd always wanted to accomplish Butch Cassidy the Sundance Kid right the Princess Bride I thought there's no hope for me uh you know this is this is what drugs are for okay one final line of questions then we'll throw it open and I should say my right now my visibility is limited so somebody could be when somehow we'll have to fix that the you talk I'm going to get back to the moral issues yeah you talk about intentionality a lot of its striking a lot of your work takes place in the workplace hmm yeah and but do you have different ambitions are all ambitions just dramatically interesting or there are certain characters who've had ambitions that you thought were amazingly noble that of the rocket or famous characters you've done yeah I try to first of all to address the first thing that you said yes I love writing things that take place in workplaces they're sort of a common theme I in the stuff that I've written which is it's okay to be alone in a big city if you can find family at work uh so I I like workplaces I like people were really good at their job know no matter what that job is and I kind of like watching them do it to answer the second part of your question we just have to distinguish between the fiction and the nonfiction that I've written because the social network wasn't really about I mean we could have a discussion about the nobility of what Zuckerberg intention was it just wasn't really about that on the other hand Charlie Wilson and Charlie Wilson's War his intentions were extremely noble his tactics were you know loony and it worked but when I'm writing fiction I'm really mostly interested in honorable intentions I'm really mostly interested in the difference between not good and bad but good and great okay now let's go this is much talked about I'm sure you've talked about this a thousand times in a Zuckerberg case he has a long-term girlfriend in the movie doesn't have a girlfriend it's he's driven by unrequited love or romantic longing let's say I let me figure out a way of answering this without relitigated of this because I I do not that the opening of that movie here's okay here it's very efficient it's a it's a more philosophical question yeah yes no I understand um but rich let me tell you how I got there which is this what I had was Mark Zuckerberg actual blog post from that night which you hear in voiceover we do the first scene with rooney mara he on the credits roll while he walks from that bar called the thirsty scholar back to his dorm room I and then we hear in voiceover he starts blogging and we hear in voiceover his blogging which we start to mix with this party at a final Club this world that he wanted to be in that voice over that blog post was almost verbatim his blog post stuff I changed Orkut would not affect that your takeaway at all and in that blog post T which begins I changed the name of the girl uh it begins this girl is a uh he tells us about the thing that I well I wanted to write the the hour that came before of that blog post whether he had a girlfriend at the moment or not I can tell you that he had a very bad date with uh with his girl and I decided that it was a motivation for me okay let us now right here we'll start here we'll start with also said nobody knows anything yeah famously so when you started on west wing which is a tremendous success would you talk about the difference between that and newsroom in dealing with executives well the differences are enormous and the west wing is a good nobody knows anything example because at the time you couldn't do a show about Washington you couldn't do a show about politics they tried a couple of times it just television wasn't going to come near it because uh broadcast television the idea is to alienate as few people as possible that's why you know if you look at the early days of broadcast television sort of the father knows best era into I Dream of Jeannie and and those kinds of shows that the the big hit shows nobody nobody live lived anywhere they all lived in Springfield um the husband had a job though we didn't know what it was he was a businessman sometimes he was in advertising I didn't have religion they didn't have a salary because um they had to seem just like you okay television has a much different relationship with its audience than movies or plays do it much more intimate relationship because television comes into your home and it's something that you do frequently while you're flipping through a magazine talking on the phone putting the kids to bed making dinner that kind of thing uh so the West Wing wasn't supposed to be a hit or even get on the air it was a fluke that it got on the air and here's how it did not test well they let us make the pilot the pilot didn't test well didn't test horrendously but it didn't test through the roof then Warner Brothers our studio in order to convince NBC to put it on their schedule to order 13 episodes of the show they came up with a new testing sample that no one had tried before they tried it tested extremely well with four groups households earning more than $75,000 a year household where there was someone who had four years of college households were they subscribed to new york times okay and the fourth and this was a huge deal remember the Western one on the air in 1999 households were they had home internet access and the reason why that fourth one was big now everybody has home internet access but not in 1999 the reason why that fourth one was such a big deal was because it was right in the middle of the dot-com boom I and Warner Brothers was able through at NBC were able to show these people where they could advertise and if you were to go back and look at not on DVD but act the actual broadcast episodes of The West Wing you would see that well more than half of our spots were for comms it was dot-coms and BMW was was why that show was on the air and the New York Times well that's a demographic of like 16 people yeah it's a demographic of like 16 people which they were able to sell like it was the number one show on television because there was nowhere else to go for these advertisers are you conscious of those commercial considerations when you're writing or is that far away i it's it's not even far away it's it's nowhere on my mind um I I'm apt actually always I'm seeing for the first time when it's on the air who the buys are and I remember with studio 60 which was a show that wasn't successful there was watching it one Monday night and there was a 60-second spot for a super-duper lubricant for I just thought who the hell is watching the show I did it is our demographic I'm on shows a lot of hospices yes but I want it at me I want to finish the newsroom on HBO it is an entirely different business model HBO does not care how many people are watching Game of Thrones or the newsroom or girls or anything like that they don't care they care how much the New York Times is writing about it or how much public acclaim it gets because that's what gets people to buy subscriptions to HBO you would be surprised actually at how few people are watching some of the most talked about shows on television and so I'm sure that that this they didn't get in a room and say gee how can we make things great for writers the unintended consequence of this was that it's great for writers or our artists of all kinds because you no longer need to attract a giant audience to stay on the air you just need to be good and I'll I'll take those odds I will fail or succeed with with that metric okay other questions right here yeah you were were so successful and had such a unique voice in a medium that didn't necessarily lend itself to that when you right now do you find yourself consciously playing into that voice or even consciously trying to avoid that boys if when it comes to the voice I think you're talking about dialogue again probably if I'm consciously doing anything I'm doing something wrong probably there needs to come a time again when you're when you've got it when you're loaded up when you know what this scene is about when you know what has to happen in the scene and what the problem is there does need to come a time when you just have to let it fly it you're lucky to get to that point I and though I will admit to this I'll become conscious of I'll be listen I'll be conscious of if I just wrote a bat if I just wrote badly not like a parity of you know that we'll see from time to time I may be genuinely badly I'll know it I'll stop I'll be upset with myself but if I'm writing the way I write I'm okay with that okay somewhere over here right over there oh okay you mentioned earlier that you build plot from giving your characters obstacles they struggle and then it ends by them ultimately reaching their goal was there an experience in your life that influenced you to write this way or did you adopt this writing process from your favorite writers and authors let me be clear they don't have to succeed in their goal they can fail um but they have to have tried as hard as they can possibly try the intention has to be clear the obstacle has to be formidable they can fail you won't have a happy ending but that's okay where I got that was two places one yeah trying to emulate my favorite writers but the other is Aristotle I in the poetics by Aristotle which is barely even a book it's a we're like a pamphlet it's like 64 pages long right there are the instructions for this is what drama is this is what a play is it also applies to movies and television Aristotle couldn't envision such thing but he tells you exactly what is required of a protagonist hero tragic hero an antagonist he tells you exactly what is required of a play and except when it comes to bad dialogue when you are are in trouble when you're writing it will almost always be because you have broken one of those rules of Aristotle's and you've got to become a diagnostician you've got to figure out what you did wrong what what rule did I break here so it's that but are you a writer okay um because my suggestion was just going to be I read people that you like and try to figure out why you like them and when you see something or read something that you don't like try to figure out why you don't like that be a diagnostician could I just ask something on the craft do you have a schedule like I like like I'm like seventies and came and wake up to the go to hell Wow it's gotten ugly we have a microphone I have a question okay why here am i sorry here all right there straight down though um so you talk about the writers that you like and the writers that you sort of envision um how much of yourself do you think is sort of or maybe perhaps your super-ego has been injected into some of the characters that you've created um I would say probably first of all more of my father has been injected into the characters then than me it's I think that I get mistaken for my characters of my characters get mistaken for me from time to time that if if this character said something that I'm using them simply as a delivery system for for what I want to say which I don't do but you know I told you about jumping up and down and dancing around my office playing all the characters so there would be as much of me in you know CJ Cregg on the West Wing is there would be in Sam Seaborn so I hand rid of it we're gonna go over there okay this question is actually for David awesome um what if anything I do have a schedule now my question helper those who don't know know um so my question is what if anything have you learned about character from the characters that Aaron Sorkin his room hmm that's a good question great question nothing I didn't already know now I am I'm actually I had never occurred to me that the power of the ambition and drive in all of your characters and that that I would wonder where that would come from me I mean we know it for all of us a lot of people in this room were recently successful and there is some lack there that you are grown up with and your your striving to confine that completion which you say in screenwriting in a certainly true journalism is never actually fulfilled and so that I I do think the characters are so dynamic because of that that void they're trying to fill forever is that green true uh it does I would say especially so in Steve Jobs which opens October 9th yeah and people after that will feel fulfilled won't they after after they've seen it twice yeah so that I wish I had a better answer but that is a very excellent question which I would have to think more about a really good answer is going to come to me in two hours there was a question over here never mind okay we've got a whole wing over here what well we want to join and then we'll come to it I don't think you answered the question who do you identify personally with is it Jack Nicholson or Tom Cruise is it Farnsworth or Sarnoff is it in the porns Worth play is it Steve Jobs or who is it that you personally want to be if you had your choice there's an extent to which identify with with all of them like I said because I I wrote them and I wrote them well I'll use the phrase again as if they were making their case to God why they should be allowed into heaven so I I feel very sort of close to all of them but you know you mentioned Farnsworth and and Sarnoff and probably not a lot of people here are familiar with that it's I had to play on Broadway called the Farnsworth invention which was the true story of a kind of epic battle that took place between a young man named Philo Farnsworth who invented television at a very young age and David Sarnoff who also at a young age was the president of RCA and the founder of NBC and sort of along with William Paley the founder of the idea of a broadcast network really the inventor of mass communication but this play is a duel between Philo Farnsworth and David Sarnoff and Scott Rudin who is the producer of the social network as well as Steve October 9 said that the reason he knew I was the guy to write the social network was that he came to an early preview of the Farnsworth invention and in the furnace birth invention Sarnoff is the is the antagonist he's he stole television from Philo Farnsworth as Scott Rudin said that because it was so clear that my sympathies were with Sarnoff during this that I was just trying to convince the audience that Sarnoff wasn't such a bad guy that I was the person to write the social network this is for Aaron Sorkin so I'm big fan of your work in general but as a Silicon Valley tech guy I've got a question for you you seem to have a love-hate relationship with technology and you like some of your work Farnsworth jobs Zuckerberg very you seem drawn to it and then a lot of your characters on the other side in other works are sort of anti technology or a technology and you've made some comments yourself so for Aaron Sorkin technology frenemy would you say okay let's have this out what's up okay I'm not a Luddite I I get as much out of technology as as anybody as you pointed out I do not think there are five members of the Writers Guild who have spent more screen time romanticizing the binary system than I have okay uh but I I mostly by my problem isn't with technology it's not with the apparatus I am completely concerned about social media is is where my problems so it's that and I've said so you know personally in forums like this and I've dramatized it a little bit mostly on on the newsroom and you know people who work in digital media really responded positively to that they didn't uh they did not like it I think it felt to them like I was saying new media is silly and old old media isn't hey we have time for one or two more right then ma'am there's a microphone coming behind you most of the characters you've talked about with the exception of CJ Cregg have been males and when it comes to talking about intentionality and obstacles and this being the driving force do you think this is different when it comes to males and female characters and if you think about female characters in your in your I mean I think of Mackenzie McHale and probably the most memorable one that I remember but how do you think about those characters and do you think about gender is influencing what they want in how you write those unless the scene has to do with gender somehow for instance a romantic scene between a man and one I'm not thinking about gender at all um I'm I'm not thinking I you know this is how a woman would do this this is how a woman would talk I just think that's a generalization that's impossible so I'm I'm again I'm just concerned with intention and obstacle what does this person want what are they going to do to overcome the obstacle on I and honestly it's a it with a few exceptions it's mostly the casting of an actress in the part that is defining the gender of the character hey last one the just in the same neighborhood so I'm kind of picking up on your casting reference you create these characters you act you live these characters with I mean literally you you their dialogue you've got total control at that point in the creative process yeah but then comes casting and then comes acting and so how do you handle letting go or do you let go or what is the dynamic in the casting process and I don't let go um uh but like I said I I signed up for this III don't know if I'd be a good novelist or not I suspect not um because I don't my powers of description just aren't terrific but I eagerly I you know went toward a method of storytelling that is collaborative uh because I just think that fantastic things can happen in uh in that kind of environment so I'm ready for the fact that things are going to change a little bit the you know that I that for a year I've been playing Steve Jobs and and now it's Michael Fassbender and that kind of thing also that a director in this case Danny Boyle has a vision in his head which is very much informed by what I put on the piece of paper but he's not there to just to carry out my instructions just to point the camera where I've told them to so I get excited about that kind of collaboration I really do I'm struck by the deep american-ness of this hour you know it's a country of energy and ambition and I mean even Walters as in step biography of Franklin has this discussion of how ambivalent we are about ambition and there's the ambition of him there's a mission of Lincoln but then I think through your characters whether Zuckerberg Billy Beane jobs Charlie Wilson they're people with outlandish ambitions out of proportion to what might be expected of them yeah again I've just find that very romantic yeah and it all goes back to Don Quixote there's this guy who felt like he was living in a world that was just a little had gone over the edge of incivility and and crudeness and he was a scrawny old man who was experiencing dementia and he decided that you can be a knight if he just behave like one and so it strikes me even in the way you've talked about your own craft is the idealism inherent in that and also those moments of of transcendence when you're actually lost in your craft but the the actual perfection of the craft in those rare fleeting moments sort of justifies the ambition and completes it yeah the moments are rare the moments are fleeting but the moments are worth it look and it's working everybody

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 402,567

Rating: 4.9358993 out of 5

Keywords: Aaron Sorkin (TV Writer), david brooks, love, character, The West Wing (TV Program), The Newsroom (Award-Winning Work), harvard, Social Network (Industry), aspen ideas festival, aspen institute, Industry (Organization Sector)

Id: eucVNYQNGAs

Length: 57min 42sec (3462 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/dtothelee]

Especially poignant is how Aaron Sorkin shuns heavy character bios and just goes back to what he seems to think is most important: intention and obstacle. A character really has to WANT something, and I think it's true in making a story so much more interesting. If the protagonist doesn't want something badly, then why should the audience care?

[u/Buttonsafe]

Good shit.