Sorkin & “The Social Network”: Screenplay By or Written By?
In today’s Video Interview post featuring Aaron Sorkin, I said this:
It’s a lock that Sorkin will get nominated for Best Adapted screenplay, both by the Academy and the WGA.
GITS reader FADEDGLAMOUR posted this comment:
Perhaps this is cleared up in the video (Vimeo doesn’t work so well on my computer) but is it “a lock that Sorkin will get nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay”? I think an Oscar nomination is highly likely but will it be for Adapted or Original Screenplay? Sorkin and Mezrich wrote their material separately.
This article sums up the quandary quite nicely — http://incontention.com/2010/09/17/could-sorkins-social-network-be-considered-original/
An excerpt from that article:
I’ve been hearing for a while now that Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for “The Social Network,” credited in the film as an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires” (covered by Guy in Page to Screen here), could conceivably be considered an original work by the Academy.
The first clue was the fact that Sorkin and Mezrich were writing their material separately. My understanding was Mezrich would send Sorkin pages and they would compare ideas and notes, but Sorkin was not working from a published work and was not “adapting” it into a screenplay. It kind of recalls the manner in which Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke worked on “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
I’ve got a few calls out to some folks to firm this up, but I’m thinking more and more that the case may be perfectly made for an original screenplay classification. Meanwhile there’s a big, fat (as always, amazing) Mark Harris piece in New York Magazine that deals in some detail with all of this. But, well, it’s still just a little unclear.
Consider this passage:
Though Sorkin met with Mezrich in a Boston hotel and the two men later compared notes as they did independent research, each was writing his own version of the story. Mezrich says he handed Sorkin chapters; Sorkin recalls “Ben reading some notes off his computer,” but adds, “I don’t remember getting written material and didn’t get a look at any of the book until the screenplay was almost finished.”
This echoes what Sorkin stated in the Written Interview I posted yesterday:
Was he [Mezrich] sending you pages as he went?
No. Two or three times we’d get together. I’d go to Boston, or we’d meet in New York and kind of compare notes and share information, but I didn’t see the book until he was done with it. By the time I saw the book, I was probably 80 percent done with the screenplay.
There’s a lot of available research, and I also did a lot of first person research with a number of the people that were involved in the story. I can’t go too deeply into that because most of the people did it on the condition of anonymity, but what I found was that two lawsuits were brought against Facebook at the roughly same time, that the defendant, plaintiffs, witnesses all came into a deposition room and swore under oath, and three different versions of the story were told. Instead of choosing one and deciding that’s the truest one or choosing one and deciding that’s the juiciest one, I decided to dramatize the idea that there were three different versions of the story being told. That’s how I came up with the structure of the deposition room [which Sorkin uses as a narrative frame from which to tell the story in chronological sequence].
Of course, if the powers that be decide that it is an original story, not an adaptation of previously published source material, that contradicts the actual credits for The Social Network which per IMDB are:
Writers: Aaron Sorkin (screenplay), Ben Mezrich (book)
You may think, “Well, what’s the big deal anyhow?” For one thing, assuming The Social Network gets a best screenplay nomination, depending upon if it’s in the original or adaptation category determines the competition Sorkin would be up against. One or the other could increase or decrease the odds of winning, depending upon what other screenplays get nominated.
Beyond that, a writer deserves credit for the creative inspiration they bring to a project. For example, it’s clear from the WGA.org interview that Sorkin feels proud — justifiably so — for coming up with the idea “that there were three different versions of the story being told.” That is a terrific concept and the story’s central narrative device. If a script is considered an adaptation, only those people who are intimate with the project or take the time to do a close scrutiny of the primary source material and following screenplays will know with any degree of certainty which writer contributed what ideas to the final product. On the other hand, if the script is considered to be an original screenplay, the wider audience will assume that most if not all of what appears on screen derives from the credited screenwriter.
So the issue is, in fact, more than just some arcane bit of WGA business. It would be interesting to hear what Mr. Sorkin has to say on the subject.
BTW, the New York Magazine article referenced above is a fascinating one. Go here to read the rest.
Thanks FADEDGLAMOUR for sourcing the links!
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