Aaron Sorkin Goes Off Script

0:00This podcast is supported by TNT's new limited series, High Value Target, The Hunt for Saddam. Inspired by the memoir Debriefing the President, this political thriller stars Joel Kinnaman as John Nixon, the first CIA officer to interrogate Saddam Hussein after his capture in 2003. John Nixon's relentless pursuit of truth during the invasion of Iraq comes to the screen for the first time in High Value Target, The Hunt for Saddam. All new Sundays and Mondays at 9 on TNT. In my mind, I did the coke and wrote a few good men, you know, the next day. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and today I'm in Beverly Hills interviewing Aaron Sorkin.

0:47The walk and talk. Billion dollars here, billion dollars there. Sooner or later, it starts to add up to real money. The snappy dialogue. You're really going to let him loose in the White House where there's liquor and women? We can hide the women, but the man deserves a drink. The soaring monologues. We stood up for what was right. His work often dramatizes the institutions that shape American society, like the presidency in his hit TV show, The West Wing, or big tech in The Social Network about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.

1:22Now, 16 years later, Sorkin's back with a follow-up to The Social Network. It's called The Social Reckoning. Facebook isn't the ref. That's the point. That's the point, Charlie. He both wrote and directed the film, which focuses on real-life whistleblower Francis Haugen. So why revisit Facebook after all these years? Here's my conversation with writer and director Aaron Sorkin. But first, a quick message. If you're not a subscriber, and you should be, we have some news for you. You can explore the times for free without paywalls during your first month in the New York Times app. Just download the app and we hope you enjoy it.

2:01Now, on to the interview. Aaron Sorkin, thank you so much for coming on the interview. It's great to have you. It's my pleasure. I want to start with a big question before we dig into your latest work. Andrew Breitbart, the founder of the right-wing website, Breitbart News, would say often that politics is downstream from culture, right? And what he was saying essentially is that Hollywood is sometimes more influential. It has more sway over our politics than Washington does. You've written stories that use our politics and institutions as a backdrop so many times. The West Wing, the American president, Charlie Wilson's war, the newsroom, the trial of the Chicago 7.

2:44And some might add the social network and your new film, The Social Reckoning, to that. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. How do you view your role in that equation? It's not a political agenda. I think before a movie can be anything else, before it can be thought-provoking or relevant, it has to be good. It has to work as a movie. It has to work as something that you watch while you're eating popcorn. So that's what I'm thinking about while I'm writing. Beyond that, I write idealistically and romantically. You've said that a lot. And I find that these areas, government, the news, journalists, that's where the stories are.

3:32They're just stories there that really suit the way I like to write. Well, explain that, though, because in 2020, you told my colleague, David Marchese, that you like writing Heroes Without Capes because it makes us feel as though greatness is achievable. And again, you invoke these words, romantic, idealistic. You've used these words a lot. And I guess not to be trite, but do you write to make the world a better place? No. Let's be really clear. I write to in some way captivate you for the two hours that I've asked for your attention while you're in the theater. I take a lot of pride in the fact that there are people who tell me that they got into public service because they watched The West Wing.

4:17I really do. And in terms of Heroes Without Capes, from time to time, you'll be watching the news and someone will say something like, there's not going to be a West Wing moment here. Don't expect a West Wing moment when we can't agree on the debt ceiling, the government's going to shut down. There's not going to be a West Wing moment. Meaning that there's not going to be a resolution, bipartisan, where people come together to do the better thing. Yes. Meaning no one is going to step up and be a—set the West Wing aside, be a Frank Capra-esque character. And that the stuff that I write, when it's not, you know, Moneyball or Charlie Wilson or Steve Jobs, You know, I'm told a lot that it's an optimistic fantasy.

5:19And you just use those words, romantic, you know. Yes, and it is. However, it does not require supernatural powers to do those things. It's nice that we can kind of see what greatness looks like and aspire to that. Okay. I want to talk about how that view fits into your new movie, The Social Reckoning. It takes place from 2019 to 2021, and it follows a Facebook product manager named Frances Haugen, who became a whistleblower. Her story was the basis of the Facebook files, which was reported by Jeff Horowitz of the Wall Street Journal. In 2022, you told The Guardian, I very much doubt that I or anyone else is going to write a sequel to The Social Network.

6:04Famous last words. Right. Why didn't you think it was possible then, and what changed your mind? Okay, well, let me say first, I'm not really sure you can call this a sequel. You know, what this is, is another movie about Facebook, written by the same writer who wrote The Social Network. And one of the characters from the social network is in this as well, but played by a different actor. Mark Zuckerberg. Yes. It's as if the character of Henry Hill showed up in Casino. That's what this is. To answer your question, there were two reasons why in 2022 I said that. But one was, I had been, there had been a few people in my world asking me for a while, you should write something else about Facebook.

6:58There's another story here, you know, after Cambridge Analytica. There were a number of things along the way where people thought I should revisit it. And I just didn't want to be the writer of Jaws 2. You know, I was afraid of that. But also, mostly, I just couldn't find the story. I couldn't find the movie part of what they were talking about until I started learning about Francis Haugen and Jeff Horowitz and what it was they uncovered. You know, obviously, in preparation to this, I went back to watch The Social Network again. And it tells the story of the founding of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

7:45And I was really shocked by how skeptical you were of social media. And this came out in 2010. This was the height of tech optimism when we were still sort of happily connecting with our high school friends and former sweethearts. What did you see that the rest of us didn't? Well, do you tell me, what are you seeing in that movie where I was skeptical of social media? I think there's a sense in that that Mark Zuckerberg has created something that, yes, allows us to connect, but really, why are we connecting and with whom and for what reason? And perhaps that's a modern reading of that. But at the time, I look back at interviews and you did talk about how you weren't sure this was such a great technology.

8:39What I remember is this very successful social network is being built by an extraordinarily antisocial guy. That this person who was uncomfortable kind of in the social structure of college, the way many of us are, invented his own social structure that he couldn't be shut out of the way he was shut out of the final clubs in the social network. and he'd be the mayor of that social structure. That was, I mean, the social network was how Facebook was invented. Social reckoning is about what Facebook has become and in particular, the role that it has played and continues to play in the rise of extremism and divisiveness in this country.

9:32And we'll get to that, but one more question about the way you wrote that movie, which is that Facebook was born out of Zuckerberg's sort of desire for revenge. You've been asked before about your sort of responsibility to be fair to people when you're writing stories that involve actual characters in real life. And you've said you're making a painting and not a photograph. But, you know, looking back on that now, some of the details you changed are pretty big. That idea of this antisocial person creating this social network, I mean, he was dating his now wife Priscilla Chan at the time. And so it wasn't exactly true, but it's become the sort of origin story that everyone understands about Facebook now.

10:23Whether Mark was dating Priscilla Chan at the time or not, I honestly don't know. In all of the research, her name never came up. But I think, broadly speaking, your question is, what am I willing to fictionalize when I'm telling the story of a real person who's still living? Right. And because it's so important, because it's the way so many people understand things, what is fair? I would never defame someone. By the way, I could never defame someone. It's a really interesting area for me because I have, especially lately, done a lot of nonfiction and in some cases about people who are still alive.

11:07The Trial of the Chicago 7, for example. Chicago 7. It's like Molly's game. Molly's game being the Ricardo, Steve Jobs. Yeah, exactly. One critic once said, and they didn't mean it as an insult and I didn't take it that way. They once said that when I write nonfiction, I'm really just using the characters for parts. And they had a point. There's an idea that I'll get about a character's motivation, like Marx. I'll do my research. I'll learn everything that I can about the reality. I'll talk to as many people as I can, read as much as I can. But in the process of thinking about it and then the process of writing it, it becomes the same as a fictional character for me.

12:01It becomes my character that I'm creating. And it sounds like you're going to get to it in a moment. But the studio's legal department will make sure that, you know, I'm staying inside the lines. but it's this imaginary thing that's, and it has my voice and eventually it's going to be played by, you know, an actor and it's going to have that face. But I will tell you that in terms of Mark, in both cases, social network, social reckoning, or any anti-hero, which is what Mark is, not a villain. Describe the difference for people who might not understand in your mind what an anti-hero and a villain is.

12:51An anti-hero has good intentions. They think they're doing good. Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men, that was the first thing that I wrote. The whole speech about how he thinks that what he's doing is protecting America. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. The Penguin, the Joker, they just want to rule Gotham City. Those are villains. The others are antiheroes. And in the case of Mark, or again, any antihero, I, as the writer, I can't judge that character.

13:32I write that character as if they're making their case to God why they should get into heaven. You don't think Mark Zuckerberg is a villain? Are we talking about real Mark or my Mark? Well, tell me what the distinction. Okay. I don't want to pass a judgment on Real Mark. I'm not here for that. The Mark in The Social Reckoning is an antihero, not a villain. And I just want to add that the character and the person not only have me trying to defend them. Jeremy Strong, who plays, he blows the doors off the place playing this part, was constantly defending Mark to me, not just on the set. He'd write to me late at night.

14:27And as soon as his last shot was over on his last day of shooting, as soon as I called, cut, check the gate, Jeremy Strong marched up to me and this was the first time I heard him use his own voice on the set not Mark's voice, his own voice that if I'd been playing Jeff I'd have been defending Jeff What is Mark Zuckerberg's case to God now? I mean in That he's bringing people closer together That's been his mission from the beginning and I imagine that the advances that he's making with certain technology with AI and with the dumb glasses that, you know, he imagines those are steps forward for all of us.

15:14Just to stay with Jeremy Strong's portrayal, Jesse Eisenberg turned down the role. And, you know, part of the reason he said he didn't want to do it is because he felt like he had been so identified with that role and he was tired of people coming up to him and saying— It's the only reason he said he didn't want to do it. Yeah. He does not want to be conflated with this character anymore. he really doesn't like Mark Zuckerberg. He would talk about being in airports at the baggage claim and young kids, you know, 13, 14-year-old kids coming up to him, wanting him to sign a business card that said, I'm CEO, bitch, and things like that.

15:52He doesn't like that he kind of looks like the guy and just wouldn't do it. And, you know, he meant it too, because he was offered every incentive that usually works with actors. But so Jesse wasn't going to do it. Jeremy was the next call. And as it turned out, I mean, it was like replacing Joe DiMaggio with Mickey Mantle. In a recent interview, Strong said he reached out via email to Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg wrote back. Yeah, I read that. Did you know? No, and I had no idea. Did you know what they said to each other? Have you asked him? I, no. I read it as we taped this yesterday. That's interesting.

16:38He didn't tell you. Why do you think he didn't tell you? I don't know. I'm not shocked that he didn't. Jeremy does a lot of his own work. He does a tremendous amount of work before he shows up on your set. And he was, I meant it when he said he did not speak in his own voice on the set or walk the way Jeremy walks. He was completely immersed. That's Jeremy's process. I had told all the other actors in his scenes, you know, guys, he's not going to be hanging out with you at craft service. He's not going to be yucking it up with you between takes. He's probably not going to speak to you at all. He's going to treat you the way he imagines Mark treats the people around him.

17:34He is just going to be living with this for, I think it was eight or nine days of shooting they had. And that's what happened. And you cannot argue with the results. Was it hard to get the new movie made? Because we've seen other films about technology companies having trouble in Hollywood these days. I'm thinking of Artificial, the film about Sam Altman, which got dropped by Amazon Studios. And Lorene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, tried to kill your biopic of him. Has Meadow ever warned or threatened you over the social reckoning? Let me answer your question, was it hard to get the movie made?

18:13Incredibly, no, it was not. And the reason why is Tom Rothman, who's the head of Sony. Which is who made the first film, obviously, as well with you. They did.

18:27There's, you know, it's not like it was a no-brainer to greenlight this. And aside from everything else, you also have this phenomenally powerful company with limitless resources who can see you at the drop of a hat. I'm pretty sure that, it's my understanding that Sony did get letters from Meta. And I do not think those letters said, we're wishing you all the luck in the world. Send us some tickets for opening night. Under ordinary circumstances, with a piece of nonfiction, the studio's legal department would do a thorough vet. With this movie, they hired an outside law firm just to handle the legal vet on this movie to make sure that every single thing that is presented as a fact is a fact.

19:24Nerve-wracking? No, it's agonizing. and the things that I wasn't able to say or do. Oh, really? Are agonizing, but I will say, and the irony wasn't lost on anybody, that we were doing a thorough fact check of a movie about a company unwilling to do the same thing. In 2019, you had this very public back and forth with Mark Zuckerberg. You wrote an open letter to him in the New York Times opinion pages, where you said that Facebook was, quote, assaulting truth by allowing lies to be pumped into the ecosystem. And then in what seemed like a response, Zuckerberg posted a quote from your America is an easy speech from the American president, which talks about the value of free speech and the importance of free speech.

20:16Is this new film a continuation of that argument that you two seem to be engaged in over time? Yeah, it is, as a matter of fact. because, and this was, I think I wrote that in 2019. 2019, yeah, okay. It was, and I wrote it as a response to Facebook announcing that they were no longer fact-checking political ads, which is an argument that happens in this film. I saw the response that you're talking about where they quote Shepard's speech from the American president about how, about free speech and about how, you know, the American citizenship is hard. You're going to want it. You want free speech?

21:01Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. I found it a little aggravating because there's no chance that Mark, who's a very smart guy and the people around him who are very smart people, don't know the difference between an unpopular opinion and a lie. The First Amendment doesn't protect lies. If it did, nobody would ever win a libel suit. So, in some ways, this is your response. I found a story to tell. I found a good story to tell where you can eat popcorn and milk, does.

21:48You know, this is a classic underdog story, and there is something really hopeful about a regular person taking on a behemoth like Facebook. And the way you've told it is this hero's journey through Frances Haugen's tale. But, you know, I was just reading an interview that she gave this summer, and she said, we are worse off today than when I leaked the documents. and Jeff Horowitz, the watchdog reporter that is also sort of lionized in the film, he was effectively downsized out of his job at the Wall Street Journal. He's now working at Reuters. And Congress doesn't seem to be anywhere close to regulating online safety.

22:30I mean, I hate to just categorize. So you're saying it hasn't been fixed? I thought it was fixed. I mean, I guess, aren't things bleaker than perhaps you're portraying in the film? Yes. But let me just expand a little bit on what she just said. Frances Haugen is someone who, an incredibly employable person. A young woman could have gotten a job anywhere, wanted to come work at Facebook because Facebook had at the time something called a civic integrity team. Okay. The civic integrity team was supposed to be the one team at Facebook. They take an oath and everything. Supposed to be the one team at Facebook that does not care about growth.

23:18Okay. That their only thing is safety. It was the civic integrity team that came to Mark and said, we have found a way to reduce misinformation by 34%. The civic integrity team was dissolved. And that's part of what sent Frances on her way to being a whistleblower. She, as she says in the movie, she did this because she wanted to help Facebook and not hurt it. She wanted it to be better. Yeah. Yeah. She really believed in its mission, believed in what it could be, and believed that people like her could help her get there. This movie, I want to say this without giving away the end or really anything in the third act, but it ends on an optimistic note.

24:15It does. Because of who wrote it. Okay. I'm glad to hear you acknowledge that. It ends on an optimistic note, but not a rose-colored—I mean, it's up front about what's still wrong. It's just that David threw a rock at Goliath and connected. I mean, it starts with that question that I first asked you about making the world a better place. I mean, why do you keep on being attracted to those particular types of characters? I think that you are asking me a very interesting question, and I don't know the answer. I think it has to have something to do with my father. I always felt like he kind of had one foot in another century.

25:09You know, he was just a very sweet, very bright man for whom decency was just the measure of a man. I wanted to talk a little bit actually about the way you grew up. Part of your family fled the Russian ghettos to come to the U.S., right? Yeah. My father's parents were chased out of Russia by the czar's police. They've always been moved by the fact— Because they were Jewish. Yeah, because they were Jewish, and they came here with$3 in their pocket as teenagers, my grandparents did. They had my father, who on his 18th birthday signed up for the Army in the middle of World War II. When he got out, when he was done, when the war was over, on the GI Bill, he went to college and then law school.

26:05And in the course of one generation, the Sorkins went from lower middle class to upper middle class. And that's what the right kind of government assistance can do. When I'm hearing you talk about your dad, and I guess I've heard you also speak about your mom, did they understand about patriotism and duty and what we owe our country and what our country owes us? Yeah, well, what they understood about patriotism wasn't the kind of bumper sticker patriotism that we try to get sold so often. I was very little at the time when the Watergate hearings were happening, but I do remember watching them that summer, the Sam Irvin's committee.

26:50And I didn't feel like my parents thought this was a national shame. I thought my parents felt like, look at this, look at these guys railing against the most powerful person in the world. And on that day in August, when Nixon resigned, it was nothing but pride that the most powerful person in the world is giving up power and there isn't a tank in the street. And so January 6th becomes a lot more heartbreaking. Hmm. And again, without giving too much away, obviously that January 6th plays a role in your new film. It comes up. It comes up. But I believe in all of us, even now. I believe in this country.

27:35I really do. Yeah. When I say that again, I'm just reminded of my parents' aversion to what they would call bumper sticker, patriotism. It's a different kind of belief than I think other people who call themselves patriots have. What is the distinction for you? One is cheerleading.

28:02And the other is a belief in these institutions. I'm laughing because I'm thinking of – I was reading just a couple of years ago. I was reading an interview with Adam McKay, who is one of my very favorites. He really is. And the interviewer asked him, who is you in Hollywood who's a Republican? Who's the Republican Adam McKay? And Adam said, hmm, I guess it's Aaron Sorkin. Out of your mind?

28:41And it was because of this romantic idea I have about our institutions, which I do have. They're just – they are user-sensitive is the thing. User-sensitive, meaning whoever's in charge of them will determine how useful they are or are not. Yeah. I'm going to come back to this, but I want to just talk a little bit about your writing. I saw you say you once broke your nose writing. What happened? Here's what happened. I'm very physical when I'm writing. I'm saying it all out loud. and this is on those occasions when it's going well. For me, I love writing. I hate not writing and that's what most of writing is for me.

29:37Most of writing is climbing the walls, pacing around. I don't have anything. I always think that I'm never going to have another idea. I wrote 88 episodes of The West Wing, 87 times, I said to the people around me, guys, that was it. I've just used every word I know in every order I can think of to put them. I don't know any more stories. We're in real trouble. Same thing with movies, same thing with plays. But on those days when it's going well, I'm up and down from the desk. I'm walking around. Sometimes I've even forgotten to type it. I'm just talking. We're doing the scene and I realize I haven't written any of this down.

30:24During the newsroom, one night, and often it's kind of drifting off to sleep, that'll get an idea. And I don't keep a notepad next to the night table the way I should. I got an idea for just a funny moment in the show where Jeff Daniels' character would lunge forward at someone and he'd be held back by two staffers. Just one of those, we've seen this, it's a comedy staple. You know, I'm going to get you that kind of thing. And I just wanted to write it down because when I get one of those drifting off ideas, I never remember it in the morning. So I have a little home office. I ran in there. I started to make a note and then I wrote the next line and I was writing and I was getting really happy about what I was doing.