Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, producer and playwright. 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 TV 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 multiple-Emmy-award-winning political drama The West Wing, this time for the NBC network. He left The West Wing at the end of its fourth season in 2003, after which it continued three more seasons without him. He returned to television in 2006 with a dramedy called 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 has 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 the drug dependence. In television, Sorkin is known as a controlling writer, who rarely shares the job of penning the teleplays with other writers. His writing staff are more likely to do research and come up with stories for him to tell. His trademark is writing rapid-fire dialogue and extended soliloquies, and in television, this penchant is complemented by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's characteristic visual technique called the "Walk and Talk".
Sorkin was born in the borough of Manhattan in New York City to Jewish parents, and was raised in the wealthy suburb of Scarsdale, New York. Sorkin's mother was a school teacher and his father a lawyer; he had an older sister and brother who both went on to become lawyers. Sorkin took an early interest in acting. Before he reached his teenage years, his parents regularly took him to the theatre to see shows such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and That Championship Season. At that age, Sorkin did not always comprehend the plot of the plays; nevertheless he enjoyed the sound of the dialogue.
Sorkin attended Scarsdale High School where he became involved in his high school drama and theatre club. In eighth grade he played General Bullmoose in the musical Li'l Abner.
In 1979 Sorkin attended Syracuse University. In his freshman year he failed a class that was a core requirement. It was a devastating setback because he wanted to be an actor, and the Drama department did not allow students to take the stage until they completed all the core freshman classes. He returned in his sophomore year determined to do better, and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre.
After graduation, Sorkin moved to New York City where he worked odd jobs ranging from delivering singing telegrams, driving a limousine, touring Alabama with the children’s theatre company Traveling Playhouse, handing out fliers promoting a hunting-and-fishing show, to bartending on Broadway at theatres such as the Palace Theatre. One weekend, while house sitting at a friend's place he found an IBM Selectric typewriter, started typing, and "felt a phenomenal confidence and a kind of joy that had never experienced before in life."
He continued writing and eventually put together his first play Removing All Doubt which he sent to his old theatre teacher, Arthur Storch, who was impressed. In 1984, Removing All Doubt was staged for drama students at his alma mater, Syracuse University. After that, he wrote Hidden in this Picture which debuted off-off-Broadway at Steve Olsen's West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in New York City in 1988. The contents of his first two plays got him a theatrical agent. Producer John A. McQuiggan saw the production of Hidden in this Picture and commissioned Sorkin to turn the one-act into a full-length play called Making Movies. His reputation as a playwright was quickly gaining stature on the New York theatre scene.
Sorkin got the inspiration to write his next play, a courtroom drama called A Few Good Men, from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and signed up for a 3-year stint with the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. She was going to Guantanamo Bay to defend a group of marines who came close to killing a fellow marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre on Broadway.
In 1988 Sorkin sold the film rights for his play A Few Good Men to producer David Brown before it even premiered, for a deal possibly worth a sum well into six-figures. Brown had read an article in The New York Times about Sorkin's one-act play Hidden in this Picture and found out Sorkin also had a play called A Few Good Men that was having off-Broadway readings. Brown produced A Few Good Men on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. It starred Tom Hulce and was directed by Don Scardino. After opening in late 1989, it ran for 497 performances.
Sorkin continued writing Making Movies and in 1990 it debuted off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, produced by John A. McQuiggan and directed by Don Scardino. Meanwhile, David Brown was producing a few projects at TriStar Pictures and tried to interest them in making A Few Good Men into a film but his proposal was declined due to the lack of star actor involvement. Brown later got a call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment who was anxious to make the film. Rob Reiner, a producing partner at Castle Rock, opted to direct it.
Sorkin worked under contract for some years at Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. and had an office at their headquarters near Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California. These were formative years in which he wrote the scripts for A Few Good Men, Malice, and The American President. While writing for Castle Rock, between 1991 and 1995, he made friends with colleagues such as William Goldman and Rob Reiner and met his future wife, Julia Bingham, who was an in-house entertainment lawyer.
The screenplay for A Few Good Men was still in an unsatisfactory early draft when he started working under contract at Castle Rock. Sorkin had purchased a book about screenplay format and was learning the craft. William Goldman (who regularly worked under contract at Castle Rock) became his mentor and helped him adapt his stageplay into a screenplay.
In the meantime, William Goldman approached Sorkin with a premise, which would later become the screenplay for Malice. Goldman oversaw the project as creative consultant while Sorkin wrote the first two drafts of Malice. Subsequently, Sorkin left the project to finish up the screenplay for A Few Good Men. Rob Reiner directed A Few Good Men, which starred Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, and Kevin Bacon, and was produced by David Brown. The film was a box office success.
In Sorkin's absence, screenwriter Scott Frank was hired to write two drafts of the Malice screenplay. Sorkin returned after delivering on his commitments to A Few Good Men and wrote the final shooting script for Malice. Harold Becker directed Malice, a medical thriller, with actors Nicole Kidman and Alec Baldwin playing lead roles.
Sorkin's last produced screenplay for Castle Rock was The American President and once again he worked with William Goldman, who contributed as a consultant, and Rob Reiner, who served as director and one of the producers. It took Sorkin a few years to write the screenplay, due to an increasing consumption of freebase cocaine, which he started using in New York. He eventually turned in a massive 385-page screenplay for The American President, which ultimately was whittled down to a standard shooting script of around 120 pages. The film was made and shown in North American movie theaters in late 1995.
Worldwide, the three films grossed about $400 million for Castle Rock. By this time, Sorkin had developed a full-fledged addiction to freebase cocaine and was advised by his then-girlfriend Julia Bingham to enter rehab. Rob Reiner had spoken to Bingham about his own concerns for Sorkin. In late 1995 Sorkin entered rehab at the Hazelden Institute in Minnesota. Five months later, on April 13, 1996, Sorkin married Bingham; they divorced in 2005.
Sorkin did uncredited script work on several films in the 1990s. He did a polish of the script for Schindler's List at Steven Spielberg's invitation. He wrote some quips for Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in The Rock. He worked on Excess Baggage, a comedy about a girl who stages her own kidnapping to get her father's attention. He was hired by Warren Beatty to work on the script for Bulworth, as well as another of Beatty's projects called Oceans of Storms which was never made. He rewrote some of Will Smith's scenes in Enemy of the State.
Sorkin came up with the idea to write about the behind-the-scenes happenings on a sports show while he was living in a room in the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles writing the screenplay for The American President. He would work late, with the TV tuned into ESPN, watching continuous replays of SportsCenter. The show inspired him to try to write a feature film about a sports show but he was unable to structure the story for film, so instead he turned his idea into a TV comedy series. Sports Night was produced by Disney and debuted on the Disney-owned ABC network in the fall of 1998.
Sorkin fought with the ABC network during the first season over the use of a laugh track and a live studio audience. The laugh track was widely decried as jarring and the "most unconvincing laugh track you've ever heard." The use of the laugh track was gradually dialed down until it was eventually gone at the end of the first season. Sorkin was triumphant in the second season when ABC agreed to his demands, unburdening the crew of the difficulties of staging a scene for a live audience and leaving the cast with more time to rehearse.
Sorkin wrote 40 out of a total of 45 produced teleplays for Sports Night over two seasons. The show never found an audience, so ABC canceled it. Sorkin entertained offers to bring the show to another network which he eventually declined, as he also had The West Wing to work on at that point, and the deals were contingent on his involvement.
Sorkin is best known for his political TV drama, The West Wing, starring Martin Sheen as the President of the United States. Sorkin initially got The West Wing going with leftover dialogue from his bloated 385-page screenplay for The American President. The opportunity to do the TV series presented itself in 1997 when Sorkin, at the urging of his agent, got together with producer John Wells for lunch at the Pinot Bistro, a French restaurant on Ventura Boulevard. Sorkin came unprepared and, in a panic, pitched the idea of doing a show about the senior staff of the White House. He recounted to Wells his experiences visiting the White House while doing research for The American President and they talked about public service and the passion of the people who serve. Wells took the concept and pitched it to the NBC network, but was told to wait because the facts behind the Lewinsky scandal were breaking and there was concern that an audience would not be able to take a show about the White House seriously. A year later, a few other networks started showing an interest in The West Wing and so under mounting pressure NBC greenlit the series. The pilot debuted in the fall of 1999 produced by Warner Bros. TV.
The West Wing was honored with 9 Emmy Awards for its debut season, making the show a record holder for most Emmys won by a series in a single season. The Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series was awarded to each of the first four West Wing seasons. As a writer, Sorkin received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series (The West Wing). In addition, he received numerous nominations and awards at the Television Critics Association Awards, the Producers Guild of America Golden Laurel Awards, the Humanitas Prize Awards, and the Writers Guild of America Awards.
In 2001, after wrapping up the second season of The West Wing, Sorkin had a drug relapse, only two months after receiving a Phoenix Rising Award for drug recovery; this became public knowledge when he was arrested at the Burbank Airport for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, and crack cocaine. He was ordered by a judge to a drug diversion program. His drug addiction was highly publicized, most notably when Saturday Night Live did a parody called "The West Wing" (see Personal life). Sorkin recovered and continued writing The West Wing's scripts with the same devotion.
Sorkin wrote 87 teleplays in all, which amounts to nearly every episode during the show's first four Emmy-winning seasons. Sorkin describes his role in the creative process as "not so much a showrunner or a producer. I'm really a writer." He admits that this approach can have its drawbacks, saying "Out of 88 episodes that I did we were on time and on budget never, not once." In 2003, at the end of the fourth season, Sorkin and fellow executive producer Thomas Schlamme left the show due to internal conflicts at Warner Bros. TV not involving the NBC network, thrusting producer John Wells into an expanded role as showrunner.
In 2003 Sorkin divulged to the American television interviewer Charlie Rose on The Charlie Rose Show that he was developing a TV series based on a late night sketch comedy show like Saturday Night Live. In early October 2005 a pilot script dubbed Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip written by Aaron Sorkin for a new TV series from him and producer Thomas Schlamme started circulating around Hollywood and generating interest on the web. A week later, NBC bought from Warner Bros. TV the right to show the TV series on their network for a near record license fee in a bidding war with CBS. The show's name was later changed to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sorkin described the show as having "autobiographical elements" to it and "characters that are based on actual people" but said that it departs from those beginnings to look at the backstage maneuverings at a late night sketch comedy show. The sets for the show and the show-within-the-show "Studio 60: Live on the Sunset Strip" are located on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California.
In September 2006, the pilot for Studio 60 aired on NBC, directed by Thomas Schlamme. The pilot was critically acclaimed and had high ratings, but Studio 60 experienced a significant drop in audience by midseason. The seething anticipation that preceded the debut was followed up by a large amount of thoughtful and scrupulous criticism in the press, as well as largely negative and feverish analysis in the blogosphere. In January 2007 Sorkin spoke out against the press for focusing too heavily on the ratings slide and for criticism that sources blogs and unemployed comedy writers. After many months on hiatus, Studio 60 resumed but only to air the last episodes of season one. The show was officially cancelled on May 14. The final air date in North America was June 28, 2007.
In 2003, Sorkin was writing the screenplay The Farnsworth Invention on spec, with the hopes of a later sale to a producer or studio. In 2004 it was announced that Thomas Schlamme would direct the completed screenplay about the story of Philo Farnsworth and that New Line Cinema was buying. The story follows Farnsworth's battles with David Sarnoff for the patent for the invention of the television. The film production of The Farnsworth Invention was eventually canceled without explanation.
In 2004, after having just completed the screenplay for The Farnsworth Invention Universal Pictures made a seven-figure deal with Sorkin to adapt "60 Minutes" producer George Crile's nonfiction book Charlie Wilson's War for Tom Hanks' production company Playtone. Charlie Wilson's War is about the colorful Texas congressman Charlie Wilson who funded the CIA's secret war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Sorkin completed the screenplay and the film was released in 2007 starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Mike Nichols.
On July 12, 2007, Variety reported Sorkin had signed a deal with Dreamworks to write three films. The first is to be called The Trial of the Chicago 7 and will be directed by Steven Spielberg.
A Few Good Men at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2005.
In 2005, Sorkin revised his play A Few Good Men for a revival at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket. It had been over 15 years since he had originally written it. The West End revival opened in the fall of the same year and was directed by David Esbjornson, with Rob Lowe of The West Wing in the lead role.
In 2005 Sorkin rewrote his screenplay The Farnsworth Invention as a play. The Abbey Theatre in Dublin signed on to stage a production of the play, and the La Jolla Playhouse in California quickly followed up with plans to stage a production of its own in conjunction with The Abbey. In 2006 The Abbey's new management pulled out of the joint effort. The La Jolla Playhouse pushed on with Steven Spielberg lending his talents as producer and the production opened under La Jolla's signature Page To Stage New Play Development Program which allows Sorkin and director Des McAnuff to develop the play from show to show according to audience reactions and feedback. The play started its run at La Jolla Playhouse on February 20, 2007. Playbill reported in June 2007 that The Farnsworth Invention would open on in the fall of 2007. The play showed in previews at the Music Box Theatre and was scheduled to open on November 14. The opening was delayed by the 2007 Broadway Stagehand Strike, but opened at the Music Box Theatre on December 3, 2007 following the end of the strike.
He is currently in talks with psychedelic rock outfit The Flaming Lips to create a musical adaptation of their hit 2002 record Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
Between the years 1999 and 2007 Sorkin made substantial political campaign contributions to Democratic candidates. His TV series The West Wing has been called The Left Wing because of its alleged liberal bias. In 2002, Sorkin assailed NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw's TV special about a day in the life of a president, "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing," comparing it to the act of sending a valentine to President George W. Bush instead of real news reporting. Sorkin's TV series The West Wing aired on the same network, and so at the request of NBC's Entertainment President Jeff Zucker he apologized, but would later say "there should be a difference between what NBC News does and what The West Wing TV series does." The liberal advocacy group MoveOn's political action committee enlisted Sorkin and Rob Reiner to create one of their anti-Bush campaign advertisements for the 2004 US presidential election.
In 2000, Aaron Sorkin and Rick Cleveland both won an Emmy for writing The West Wing episode "In Excelsis Deo". Cleveland had informed Sorkin in an e-mail message that if they won he wanted to say a few words in honor of his father's memory. At the awards ceremony Rick Cleveland was ushered off the stage by Sorkin and was not given a chance to make any remarks. The story was based on Cleveland's father, a Korean war veteran who spent the last years of his life on the street. When The New York Times revealed the slight, Sorkin attacked Cleveland in a public web forum at Mighty Big TV saying that he gives his writers "Story By" credit on a rotating basis "by way of a gratuity" and that he had thrown out Cleveland's script and started from scratch. Cleveland responded on the web site in the same thread and a war of words briefly carried on. Sorkin later apologized saying he was "dead wrong" and had "reacted too quickly to what felt was an egregiously unfair characterization of the way writers are treated on The West Wing."
Screenwriters Kyle Morris and William Richert wrote a film treatment as well as a screenplay called The President Elopes which Castle Rock Entertainment bought but never produced. The writers claimed that Sorkin's script The American President plagiarized their work. Their case was argued before a WGA arbitration panel and it was determined that Sorkin had sole writing credit on The American President. Morris and Reichert were not satisfied with the judgment. They went before a New York Court claiming Sorkin and others had conspired to defraud the WGA arbitration panel. The judge threw out all the charges.
In 1987, Sorkin started experimenting with marijuana and cocaine. He has said that in freebase cocaine he found a drug that gave him relief from certain nervous tensions he deals with on a regular basis. In 1995, he checked into rehab at the Hazelden Institute in Minnesota, on the advice of his then girlfriend and soon to be wife Julia Bingham, to try and beat his addiction to cocaine.
In 2001, Sorkin along with colleagues John Spencer and Martin Sheen received the Phoenix Rising Award for their personal victories over substance abuse. Two months later Sorkin relapsed. On April 15, 2001 Sorkin was arrested when guards at a security checkpoint at the Burbank Airport found hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, and crack cocaine in his carry-on bag when a metal crack pipe set off the gate’s metal detector. He was ordered to a drug diversion program. Saturday Night Live parodied the highly publicized event in a comedy sketch called "The West Wing" where the U.S. President played by Darrell Hammond does a "Walk and Talk" through the corridors of the White House while tripping on shrooms, accompanied by host Pierce Brosnan.
Sorkin recovered and continued working on The West Wing. Sorkin's wife filed for divorce soon after. There have been no reports of any further relapses.
Sorkin is known for writing memorable lines and fast-paced dialogue, as well as extended monologues for prominent characters, such as the "I am God" piece from Malice, the "You can't handle the truth!" piece from A Few Good Men, and the partly Latin tirade against God in The West Wing episode "Two Cathedrals". In television Sorkin's stylemark is the repartee that his characters engage in as they small talk and banter about whimsical events taking place within an episode, and interject obscure popular culture references into conversation. His storytelling strengths lie in exploring the behind-the-scenes situations of workplace settings, such as the JAG Corps., a sports show, the White House, and most recently, a sketch comedy show.
Although his scripts are lauded for being literate, Sorkin has been criticized for often turning in scripts that are overwrought. His mentor William Goldman has commented that normally in visual media speeches are avoided, but that Sorkin has a talent for dialogue and gets away with breaking this rule. Others complain that his use of dialogue is excessive and is cover for weak story arcs in his scripts. Sorkin has admitted that in television he doesn't plan out a season because he thinks that method is ineffectual. He prefers to make it up as he goes along which can lead to bizarre twists and ill-advised plot developments. In television he will have a hand in the writing of every episode, rarely letting another writer earn full credit on a script. He has said that because he writes every episode deadlines for scripts are never met.
Sorkin first started writing stories on an IBM Selectric typewriter which belonged to a friend of his. He then developed a habit of writing scenes and dialogue on cocktail napkins while working as a bartender on Broadway and was trying his hand at writing plays. He and his roommates had purchased a Macintosh 512K and when he returned home he would empty his pockets of cocktail napkins and type them into the computer, forming a basis from which he wrote many drafts for A Few Good Men. In the 90s he used Apple's notebook computers. In a 2003 introduction video for the 12 and 17-inch (430 mm) PowerBook computers, he praised the features of Apple's notebooks saying he "wrote The American President on what was the first portable Apple computer, wrote the series Sports Night on a G3, and now The West Wing on a G4." Sorkin has a habit of chainsmoking while he spends countless hours cooped up in his office plotting out his next scripts. He describes his writing process as physical because he will often stand up and speak the dialogue he is developing.
He has made rare non-speaking cameo appearances in some of his works, appearing as a nondescript man at a bar in an episode of Sports Night and the exact same cameo part in the films A Few Good Men and The American President. He also made a cameo appearance as a witness of the swearing-in of the new president in the final episode of The West Wing, though by then he had nothing to do with the show.
In early 1998, Aaron Sorkin began a collaboration with Thomas Schlamme when they found they shared common creative ground on the soon to be produced Sports Night. Their successful partnership has endured for nearly a decade so far with Aaron Sorkin writing the scripts and Thomas Schlamme exec producing and occasionally directing. They have developed a reputation for producing quality stories with mainstream appeal in a variety of media though they have only worked together in Television. They each contribute an equal amount of effort to the projects they've collaborated on: Sports Night, The West Wing, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Schlamme creates the look of the shows, works with the other directors who come in when he is not directing, discusses the scripts with Sorkin as soon as they are turned in, makes design and casting decisions, and attends the budget meetings. Sorkin tends to stick strictly to writing the scripts of which he writes almost all of them in their entirety with other writers frequently appearing in the "Story by" credit and occasionally the "Written by" credit.
One of Schlamme's trademarks is The West Wing's style of continuously tracking in front of characters as they walk side by side while talking at the same time, usually while on their way to a meeting or conference directly related to the substance of the discussion, a visual technique called the "Walk and Talk". Schlamme did not want to have scene cuts that relocated characters without any explanation of how they got there so he developed the "Walk and Talk" device to work with Sorkin's dialogue.
In 2004, it was announced that Thomas Schlamme would direct Sorkin's script The Farnsworth Invention for New Line Cinema. Schlamme was set to produce the project through his company Shoe Money Productions located on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank but the film production was eventually canceled. The Sorkin-Schlamme collaboration continued on the NBC TV series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip which was produced by Shoe Money Productions.
In 1989 Sorkin won an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding American Playwright for his stageplay A Few Good Men. Three years later the feature film A Few Good Men earned Sorkin a nomination for a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay. The feature film Malice earned him a nomination for an Edgar award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay from the Mystery Writers of America. In 1996 Sorkin was nominated for another Golden Globe award for Best Screenplay for The American President.
Sorkin won three Humanitas Prizes for episodes of Sports Night (1999) and The West Wing (2000, 2002). He was nominated for 6 Emmy Awards for writing on Sports Night and The West Wing and shared an Emmy with writer Rick Cleveland for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series in 2000 for The West Wing episode "In Excelsis Deo". He has also been nominated for WGA awards, TCA awards, and PGA Golden Laurel awards for his writing on Sports Night and The West Wing winning three PGA Golden Laurel awards and one WGA award.
In 2001, Sorkin was named Writer of the Year by the Caucus for TV Producers, Writers and Directors. The same year, he received from his alma mater Syracuse University the George Arents Pioneer Medal.
From 1996 - 2005, he was married to Julia Bingham. They have one daughter, Roxy, born in 2000.
