Written Interview: Aaron Sorkin
With The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin, opening soon (October 1) and David Hare’s recent praise for “Mad Men” and the quality of writing on American TV, I thought it would be nice to revisit another terrific television show from the last decade “The West Wing” with this interview with Sorkin from 10 years ago about that show.
Sorkin’s film writing credits include A Few Good Men, Malice, and The American President and his TV writing credits include “Sports Night” and “The West Wing.” Here are excerpts from an interview on the PBS show “News Hour” with correspondent Terence Smith:
TERENCE SMITH: What was the original concept for this show? What interested you about the White House or the West Wing to do a dramatic show about it?
AARON SORKIN: There’s a great tradition in storytelling that’s thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that’s really what I wanted to do.
TERENCE SMITH: Right. And it’s our king and it’s our palace.
AARON SORKIN: That’s right. So obviously it’s a fascinating world. There really isn’t a story that you can’t tell inside of it. It’s very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you’re not at all limited. It’s populated by people who, by and large, have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me, it was just a great area for storytelling.
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TERENCE SMITH: Let’s look at the politics of this show. This is a liberal Democratic president. How did you decide to make it that way?
AARON SORKIN: Well, that was easy. My father wouldn’t let me in the house if it wasn’t. I think what’s important is that the tendency probably in television would be, if you were going to do a show like this, you better have a White House that drives down the middle of the road, one designed to bother as few people as possible. This is a White House, particularly early on in the season, that bothered quite a few people, people on the right.
And I’d like to say a couple of things about that, if you don’t mind. One is that I don’t think that television shows or, for that matter, movies or plays or paintings or songs can be liberal or conservative. I think that they can only be good or bad. I think that if this is to be a credible White House, we are very familiar with the vocabulary of government now. We all read the newspapers, we all watch the news. There are going to be words like Democrat and Republican. People are going to take sides, and people are going to argue.
The characters on the show are capable of arguing all sides of an issue. Oftentimes, their position is not what you’d expect it to be. In the third episode last season, Bartlet took a position on a military response that was so hawkish it frightened the joint chiefs. But, finally, if you don’t mind a bit of a sales pitch, the show has, in some quarters on the right, has been attacked for being too liberal. And at a time when the FTC report has come out and Hollywood is being scolded, I think it’s a good idea to notice that “The West Wing” is a show that has no gratuitous violence, no gratuitous sex. It has featured the character of the president of the United States kneeling on the floor of the Oval Office and praying. This, I would think, would be exactly what conservative Republicans would want to see on television.
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