Interview (Written): Aaron Sorkin

I’ve read, seen, and heard hundreds of interviews with screenwriters. This interview in which Stephen Galloway talks with Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, Malice, The American President, The Social Network, Moneyball, Steve Jobs) is one of the best around. It is part of the Hollywood Reporter’s ongoing Hollywood Masters interview series and took place at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film & TV.

In this excerpt, Sorkin talks about guidance he’s been given over the years by arguably the dean of contemporary American screenwriting — William Goldman:

GALLOWAY: What advice did Goldman give you?

SORKIN: He gave me a lot of great advice, and oftentimes it would be in the form of this. I would come over to his house. He lives at the Carlyle Hotel in New York. I’d come over to his apartment, and we would wrestle with something for a few hours. And when I would kind of get in the zone, if you will, which is to say feeling very strongly that I was right about something, about a certain story point. I would forget that I was talking to someone with two Academy Awards, who was decades ahead of me in terms of experience, who has served as a mentor to great people, someone who even well before I met him was a hero of mine. And I would argue with him, toe to toe, and he would say, “Well, it really sounds like you know what you want, so go do it.”

GALLOWAY: But did he give you any guiding principles?

SORKIN: Yes. Too many really to boil down to anything. But one of them was, and we alluded to this at the beginning, the moment when someone has to read your screenplay, the moment in between writing it and it being a movie. He said, “Screenplays don’t have to read like an instruction manual for a refrigerator. You can write them as a pleasurable read.” That screenplay format book that you’ve got at home, throw it out. Just write it, and let it be a good read. Try to give the reader a sense of the excitement of the movie.

Here is a video clip from the event:

For the rest of the interview, go here.