Happy Sad Confused - Aaron Sorkin

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Talk about man who needs no introduction. If you love plays, movies, or just flat out great writing, you know and love the work of Aaron Sorkin. Here, the Oscar winner joins Josh on the podcast for the first time to talk about his long in the making, "The Trial of the Chicago 7", the genesis of "The West Wing", and a potential sequel to "The Social Network"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or go to explorevolvo.com. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now. Today on Happy, Sad, Confused, Aaron Sorkin returns to the courtroom for The Trial of the Chicago 7. Hey guys, I'm Josh Harrow. It's welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Big one this week.

He's been on the list for a while. I am certainly a big time Aaron Sorkin fan. You either are or you aren't. You either respond to Aaron Sorkin's quick dialogue and pacing and intelligence or you feel it's insufferable, I guess. And I think that's a minority. I am of the camp that Aaron Sorkin is one of our greats, a great playwright, a great screenwriter, a great wordsmith. I am thoroughly entertained by all of his work. If his name is in the credits, I am there. I've probably seen Everything he's put his name to, because everything he's put his name to has turned out, you know, the great actors of our time, the great directors of our time, dating back to his first play, which was, in fact, a few good men, later turned into not so long later, I should add, into the amazing film starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson. But anyway, the movie we're talking about today is his latest, and it is his second directing effort, and it's a really special one.

called The Trial of the Chicago Seven. This one's been on my radar for many, many years. If you're a film nerd like myself, you've followed this one probably because it's gone through all these different permutations. It is, of course, the true life story of the seven, kind of eight defendants, you'll see when you see the movie, who were arrested during the 1968 conventions for protesting. It really is a timely film that sounds like a cliche, but my gosh, when you watch this movie, you will not be able to, you will not believe how vivid and important and immediate it feels

to the times we're living in now. But this film has been in development for probably 14 or 15 years, and Stephen Spielberg was going to direct it, Ben Stiller, Paul Greengrass, it's gone through, all these different permutations, and it landed back with Aaron Sorkin, who was always the screenwriter. And now he is a director, of course. A couple years back, he directed Molly's game. Count me as a big fan of that one as well. And if you've seen the reviews, I'm not alone in this, the trial of the Chicago 7 is a special one. And the good news is it's about to drop on Netflix, October 16th. It has an amazing cast. Eddie Redmayne, Sasha Byron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Mark Rylans,

Yeah, yeah, Abdul Matin the second. It's just Michael Keaton. It just goes on and on. And everybody, it's a true ensemble. Joseph Gordon Levitt, everybody gets their shot in this one. So can't recommend this one highly enough. And certainly, Aaron Sorkin, in addition to being a great writer is a great talker. And this is a great conversation.

You know, he, at times, you know, at times you just have to like let him loose. Give him a subject, give him a question. and he will pontificate. And sometimes that's not good, but with someone like Aaron Sorkin, you want to hear him talk. You want to hear him go on tangents and go into deep stories.

And certainly there are some in this conversation, talking about where the West Wing came from, talking about certainly the history of this project, talking about the social network, talking about a potential sequel to the social network. Make sure to check that out. That is very interesting.

So yes, we actually covered quite a bit ground in this conversation, and I'm so glad that Aaron shared his time with me for this podcast. He's, as I said, he's been on the list for quite some time, and the weight was worth it. Other things to mention, there's a lot of cool stuff going on that I've been a part of lately that I'm really excited to share with you guys. The latest edition of Stir Crazy on Comedy Central's YouTube and Facebook pages is up. It's with Haley Steinfeld.

She is a delight. She shoved a bunch of ice cubes in her mouth and pretended to, or didn't pretend, tried to. utter some iconic film phrases and nearly killed herself in the process. I thank her for that. You should enjoy that because that was a blast to shoot and it came out great. I'm really proud of that one. It sounds bizarre to say, I'm proud of the time I got Haley Steinfeld to act like an idiot. But you know what? Sometimes that's what the job calls for, guys. Two other events that I'm a part of that I'm really thrilled to share with you guys very soon. I've been talking a little bit about this in recent weeks. Metaverse, which is the kind of the New York Comic-Con

substitute this year. Obviously, there are no in-person conventions of this type. But my friends at the New York Comic-Con came to me and wanted me to host a couple of panels. I came to them with a couple ideas, and we put them together, and they're going to be really entertaining for you guys. One of them is a Lost anniversary fan Q&A. It's been 10 years since the end of Lost, one of my favorite TV shows of all time. This is with Carlton Kuse and Damon Lindeloff, the showrunners of the show, a whole bunch of crazy fan questions, and if you're a lost fan, you're going to enjoy this one. It's on October 10th at 7.25 p.m. Eastern Time. You can watch all of these on New York Comic-Con's YouTube page. So go to New York Comic-Con's YouTube page and look for this event,

the lost anniversary of fan Q&A, and you'll find it there. You can also find all their events on Find the Metaverse.com. The other big event I did, I'm doing, I'm about to share with you guys, and I know a lot of you guys listening are Outlander fans, or Sam Hewin fans, the Sam Hewen Graham McTavish trivia death match, October 11th at 1050 a.m. I don't want to say too much more about this. I don't want to ruin any anything about this. I will just say if you're a Sam Hewan fan, if you're a Graham McTavish fan, if you're a outlander fan, if you're a fan of mine, this will be worth your time. October 11th, 10.50 a.m., go to New York Comic-Con's YouTube page.

I'll also be sending out the links, et cetera. And don't worry, it's going to live there forever. It's totally free. Both of these events are totally free. So I hope you guys enjoy them. I think you will. That's enough preamble because I want to get right to it. This is, as I said, a really important one, a special one.

an Oscar-winning screenwriter, a guy who is now becoming one of our most interesting directors between his first two films. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation. And no huge spoilers. This is all true story stuff. I mean, I don't think you're going to have anything ruined for you here. But I think it will be entertaining to hear from one of the smartest, most fascinating filmmakers alive. This is me and Aaron Sorkin. Aaron Sorkin, sir, this is a distinct honor. Thank you so much for taking the time today. It's my pleasure, Josh.

It's great to see you. Obviously, these are weird times. I will take what I can get, even if you're in a box on my screen. We're going to get into this amazing movie of yours. Honestly, tell me if you need like a boost at any point in this conversation. I can start gushing if you need a compliment.

Well, you just made me a big boost. I really appreciate it. You know, because of COVID, We haven't been able to do any screenings of the film. We haven't been able to have previews. We haven't been able to do a friends and family or anything like that. So doing these first couple of interviews in the press for Chicago 7, it's the first time we've talked to anybody who's seen the film who didn't help make the film.

Truly, I mean, look, I've done a lot of these, and I think you know the code of these kind of interviews. Sometimes you can tell if people mean it or not. I've seen this movie twice It moved me It engaged me intellectually and emotionally And that's all you can hope for So What's great to hear

Especially with such a weak cast We were able to overcome that Yeah This Mark Rylands guy Where did you pull him out of? This guy, I mean, I don't know I can tell We pulled him out of Jupiter

It's where you find Mark Rylans He is a phenomenal actor I first saw him on stage in New York. He's a British actor. I saw him on stage in New York starring in a play called Boeing Boeing, and it was a performance that kind of captivated New York. And the next time I saw him was in Bridges Spies, for which he won an Oscar. And that we were able to get him to play Consler was just a fantastic thing. And he was such a pleasure to be with on the set and to watch him work. Honestly God, there would be times I'd be watching him on him while he'd

work and then there would be this long silence and suddenly I'd realize that there was a long silence and it was because and I go oh cut um I just my cue I have to direct again apparently no I'm I'm impressed on in so many fronts in this one we can get into more of the casting which is a feat of itself but you know like a lot of your films I feel like you're you are unique in that you are able to balance something that can be quite earnest and yet also quite sophisticated. And that is a tough, that is a tough line to toe. And it's something I've seen recurring your work.

Can you talk to me a little bit about how you negotiate that line? Is that something you're aware of? It's something I'm very aware, hyper aware of, you might even say. And what I do now is something I didn't do earlier in my career, which I should have been doing. and it's this I'll tell the cast whether it's Mockingbird or Chicago 7 I'll remind them I'll make sure they understand

that just my the style in which I write throughout the course of a piece every once in a while it's going to start to flirt with melodrama okay it's going to sort of walk right up to it and ask it to dance, and it's in those moments, I am counting on the actors to not lean into it, okay,

to keep it from going into melodrama. If you look on the page and feel like something should be shouted, it shouldn't. That's your cue for don't do that. So it's a collaboration. I'm aware that I'm writing something that's not meant to be read. It's meant to be performed. and so it's going to be it's going to be the actors

and it's going to be the director who stop it from becoming melodrama and I think there's a power you can harness in writing something as you said that's earnest and if you can have an actor

who knows how to deliver that moment casually enough. That recipe will actually give you what Lily Tomlin called the goosebumps experience. It strikes me, you said as you're saying that,

I think about all your actors. To a man, they are, I think about, you know, I think about like an hour into the film, how like you're already hitting

it on all cylinders and then like off the bench you bring out Michael Keaton, who like kind of totally underplays without ruining anything is just, just kills it without seemingly moving his fingers.

Couldn't agree more. I was so happy when Michael began his second act with Birdman and he was sensational in that and got the Oscar nomination and everything because I think Michael is really one of the most talented

American actors we've seen in the last 20, 30 years. And when I got word that you'd love to play Ramsey Clark if I haven't cast it yet. Sure, Michael. Once come in an audition. We're seeing some other people for Ramsey Clay. Of course.

You can play Ramsey Clark. And yeah, he completely underplays it. You don't get the sense that he's feeling like Jay, I only have two scenes in this movie. I better really he just comes in and does his job

and so it's breathtaking. Yeah. Casting wise, obviously this is just your second directing effort in Molly's game you've obviously had a strong hand relatively speaking as a writer in Hollywood over the years have you had a say in casting

in your films prior to Molly's game and can you give me an instance of when you maybe your instincts weren't the directors but it proved that they had the right instinct something that maybe came to to prove that maybe your first instinct was wrong about an actor

I remember the day that I called someone very concerned because Jack Nicholson was going to play Colonel Jessup in a fugit man. And I just wasn't sure that he was right. And I went on like this in the phone call for a while. And then I heard the person I was talking to was William Goldman, he means the dean of American screenwriters. And with the play, he kind of took me under his wing and said, I think I can turn you into a playwright slash screening writer. I think I can turn you into a hyphenate. So he was the person I called with these things.

And I'm talking to him about how I think Nicholson might not be the right casting. What is wrong with you? Jack Nicholson is going to be in your movie with Tom Cruise. This is really good news. and as it turned out it was it turns out Nicholson was good in that movie yeah not bad so I'm not about that

was I've been by the way spectacularly wrong on any number of occasions about any number of things I Stephen Spielberg asked me to come in for two weeks and just do like a last minute dialogue

polish on Schindler's list first of all I have to tell you I'm I'm the only one in recorded history ever to hang up on Steven Spielberg in my defense here's what happened I was living in New York at the time I was living alone it was the middle of winter and I had a high fever one of those things where if you kind of try to stand up and get out of bed you get dizzy and fall back down and I just done a few good men. My agent called and said, listen, sit by your phone for 15 minutes. Stephen Spielberg is going to call you. He wants you to come in on Schendler's days. I don't care who you are and where you are in your career. That is a big phone call to get. A couple of things you have to know.

One is that my best friend's name is Stephen. And two is that I was the last person in New York City to get call waiting. I'm expecting an assistant to call and say, would you hold please for Mr. Spielberg. So the phone rings. I answer it. I hear, hey, Aaron, it's Stephen. And I say, Stephen, I'm expecting a really important call. I've got to call you back and hung up. And then just sat there for an hour before I retraced my steps and said, oh, I have made a terrible vocational mistake. Call my agent and told him what happened. Stephen and I got on the phone with each other. It is a seriously, the miracle is that in that hour, Stephen just didn't go to whoever was next on the list.

Yeah, not worth my trouble. What am I doing? Wait in an hour for me. All he was looking for was a nice Jewish kid to come in and write some scenes for things. Wait, were you saying there was a casting thing related to Schindler, though, that you disagreed with? No, it wasn't a casting thing. Okay.

Thank God there weren't phones that could take video back then, or there might be a record of me saying to Stephen, are you sure you want to do it in black and white? Well, we can't be right all the time, Aaron. I mean, come on. But I'm wrong. I mean, it's huge. Yeah, at least, yeah, if you're going to go down in flames, you're making big flames. Yeah. That I take my best. But I do always love those roads, those alternate casting things. I mean, I think back to one of the first scripts I ever read. I was visiting my, my brother who went on to become a writer in LA, and he had a script for the American president. And I remember reading that script,

and this was a fabled script back then that as I recall was a Robert Redford, Emma Thompson film. That is correct. And I will say that the American president in its final form is one of my favorite films. Oh, that is so nice to hear. Listen, I don't think I've ever written anything

that whether a movie, a play, an episode of television that I don't wish I could have back and write again. The American president, a few good men, the very early films that I wrote, I was going to school on those screenplays. I was learning how to write. You know, I'm really envious of friends of mine

who got MFAs and playwriting from Iowa or from Yale. And I asked one of them one time, I have a BFA in theater. I asked one of them one time, tell me what, tell me about the MFA program, because I'm sure there were classes in there, there's stuff that you learned

that I shouldn't really know that would really help. And he said, you know what, the MFA program is just like your BFA program. The most valuable thing about the MFA program

and playwriting at Yale is that it gives you an opportunity to write the worst plays you're ever going to write. Secrecy. No one can see them. Yes. And I never had that opportunity.

My first play was a few good men. My first movie was a few good men. And so I've, like I said, a lot of people have been watching while I've been learning how to write. When you look at the films throughout your career, the produced screenplays, when you look back at something like, you know, American president, A Few Good Men, Malice, whatever it is, do you see where you were in your life? Does your personal life, the demons or not, or just, or triumphs that you're going through bleed onto the screen.

The biggest demarcation would be my daughter being born a little more than 19 years ago now, becoming a father, would be the biggest demarcation. And I can tell pre and post being a father. And, you know, I've never written autobiographically. So I know what demons you're talking about. those have that's never really made it on the screen or the stage and it's not to say that it won't

but mostly what I see is you know one of the nice things about being a writer is you do get better as you get older like being an orchestra conductor so I

do see myself getting better which I like this film back to Chicago 7, which, again, as someone that follows the industry and follows writers and filmmakers that I admire, I know this has been around for quite a while. 14 years. This began with a meeting, I guess, again, with Stephen Spielberg. That's right.

And I want to give the impression that I'm buddies with Steven Spielberg. I think I've now told you about every interaction that I've had with you. But, yes, Stephen asked me to sort of at the last minute, which now that I think, now that I about it. It hasn't occurred to me until this moment. It was on a Friday night that I was asked to come to his house the next morning on a Saturday morning. That's got to mean I was not the first choice, right? That just occurred to me. Don't, no, don't overanalyze this. No, don't go down that path. Too late, Josh. The important thing is not only did you write it, you ended up directing it, so all worked out in the end. One over to Steve's house, he said, I want to make a move.

about those terrible riots in Chicago in 68 and the crazy conspiracy trial that followed. And I said, I'm in. That's a great idea. That'll make a great movie. And I left his house and I called my father. And I said, Dad, do you know anything about riots in 1968 or a crazy conspiracy trial that followed?

I had no idea what Stephen was talking about. I was saying yes to Stephen. And I heard the word trial in there. And I like that too. So there was a lot of research to be done. the day after I turned in the first draft, the Writers Guild went on strike, which meant nobody was allowed to talk

or meet with each other to do anything if you were a writer. By the time the strike was settled, there were other commitments that people had. So next was Paul Greengrass. I flew to London, spent some time with Paul, then Ben Stiller. And what would happen really is

it's the riots themselves were a budget buster. Every time someone sat down to figure out how do we do this, you know, you have to come up with a budget that's somehow proportional to what the studio imagines the appetite of the film is going to be. And this isn't an Avengers movie. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that condescendingly toward Adventures, but I mean it's not as popular as an Avengers movie. And then a couple of things have.

It happened at once. Donald Trump was elected president, and things started changing quickly. He began waxing nostalgic at his rallies about the good old days when we used to carry that guy out of here on a stretcher and punch him in the face and beat the crap out of him.

He's talking about the Chicago 7. He's talking about the protesters in Chicago. He's talking about the civil rights movement. rights movement. He's talking about the 60s. That happened. And I had directed Molly's game and Stephen was sufficiently pleased with Molly's game that he thought I should direct Chicago 7. The problem of the budget and the riots, they just threw me into the pool and said swim. They said, you know what? Here's the money you're getting. Just figure it out. You can direct a movie now.

Just figure out how you're going to do it. And with the help of Fagin Papa Michael, our cinematographer, and Stuart Besser, Mark Platt, our producers, our production designer, Shane Valentino. We figured out a way how to do the riots. If we shot them in Grand Park where they took place, we were able to use the real location, that means that we would be able to combine

in-camera footage, original footage that we shoot there with stock footage, which we never pretend isn't stock footage. The news file footage, archival footage, is always in black and white. But we can get a cool effect. And in looking at footage and photographs of the real riot, you know, what you see everywhere is smoke.

What you see is tear gaps everywhere. And I knew that I could, if we were creative enough with that tear gap, we could create the impression of thousands of people being someplace with a very few people that somehow we were going to quilt together these elements. And you know, sometimes when you're doing this, because of necessity, in this case an economic necessity, it forces you to be creative and you end up doing something that you look at it and say, that's what I would have done with an unlimited budget. Right.

And that's always the goal when you're on a tight budget, that every choice we make has to appear as if that's what we would have been done, and that's what we would have done if we had all the money in the world. And I think that's what we ended up doing which in Pakistan. I mean, you mentioned coming back to this

in this Trump world. And, you know, I'm sure these are going to be all the conversations you're having. And rightfully so. I mean, you can't watch this movie without feeling the resonance and relevance of this material. I guess I guess I'm curious like how much did you want to I mean the facts are the facts and they and they speak to these times you don't need to underline them how much did the script change in these last couple years and how much did you want to reflect the specifics of what we're dealing with now or was it already there script didn't change to mirror the world the world changed to mirror the script yeah I did not make a single subject

solitary change in punctuation to underline anything that was happening contemporaneously. Any changes that I were making were writing changes. It's just that there's a new scene here I need. There's a better way to do this. But I thought the film was relevant when I was writing it. I thought the film was relevant last winter when we were shooting it. We didn't need it to get more relevant, but it did. Watching CNN's coverage of the protests in Kenosha in Minneapolis, in Madison, in Washington,

I would look at CNN's coverage and think, you know, if you just degraded the color a little bit on that, it would look exactly like the news footage from 1968. Yeah. One thing that struck me is this notion in the film that you return to about sort of forgetting what it's all about forgetting we're getting lost in kind of the machinations to forget what the real what we're actually fighting about what we're fighting for and you know again without ruining your beautiful ending it really comes back to the four um i'm curious if you apply that to screenwriting as well is that something where like i could imagine getting lost in in a genre in the trappings of a story do you always

return to a mission statement is that something is there a guiding principle that guides all your writing? No. There isn't. I mean, well, sure. Here's a guiding principle. I think that before a film or a play or an episode of television, I think that before a film can be anything else, it has to be good.

Okay? Before a film can be relevant, before it can be important, before it can be controversial, before it can be persuasive. It has to be a good film. That's to be a good story well told. And so I'm thinking about the audience's experience during that two hours. I'm thinking about Aristotle and tools of drama and parts of drama. And I'm sticking to that.

Oftentimes, very often times, what you set out to write most of the time, What you set out to write isn't what you end up writing. You start out saying, I'm heading due east, okay? But as you're writing, suddenly you're kind of going south, and now it's southeast, and it doesn't matter, as long as you traveled from one place to another place, that's what a story is, as long as there's an intention and an obstacle,

as long as there's a conflict. And so you'll get to the end of the first draft. you will have discovered, okay, this is a story about traveling southeast, not a story about traveling east. So let's get rid of everything that's about traveling east and hang lanterns on the southeast part. The first draft of the American president, Josh, was, and just so your listeners understand, a typical Hollywood screenplay is about 115 to 125 pages. Now the page count on my screenplays are longer because my screenplays are almost all dialogue and little action. Chicago 7 is an outlier because of the rife. But dialogue just simply because of the format takes up more room

on the page and less time on the screen than action which takes up less room on the page and more time on the screen. So a few good men was 142 pages. the social network was 181 pages. And the studio said to Fincher, well, listen, the first thing you gotta do is get this guy to make some cuts in the screenplay. And Fincher said, I don't think you're right. He came to my house with a stopwatch.

And he said, you're gonna read every scene, all the parts and every scene for me at the pace at which you heard it in your head when you were writing it, which I did. And at the end of each scene, He'd write down what was at the stopwatch. He totals it up. It was an hour and 59 minutes.

He told the studio, this film was going to be in an hour and 59 minutes, which it was. And during the rehearsal, and this rest of the truth, the actor is crazy. But during the rehearsal, you know, he'd be rehearsing the opening scene with Jesse and Rooney Mare. And he gives some notes. It's great. This, this, this, this. and this scene needs to be seven minutes and 12 seconds long right now you guys are doing it at 728 okay and the actress had never heard anything like this in their life but Fincher's pretty

intimidating guy you're not going to say you know David I don't work like that I'm sorry the screenplay for the American president was 385 pages long and I hadn't written the ending yet I delivered it to Castle Rock in a shopping bed, okay? And it was because I was really starting to fall in low with the sound of my own voice at this point. And having my voice come out of a president. And I was just having a lot of fun writing a character who was a president.

We were like seeing his personal life, you know? Most stories are about an ordinary. person in an extraordinary situation. Here's a story about an extraordinary person in an ordinary situation. The president in the United States, there's no such thing as an extraordinary situation for him because every day is an extraordinary

situation when you're the guy you can launch nuclear weapons. Okay? However, if you're just trying to ask a woman out on a date or send her flowers the next day, things get kind of funny. And so I was really into that.

So it was 385 page. I don't think we met the Annette Betting character until page 90 or something. So Rob said, okay, good. I think what's really working in this is the romantic comedy between Shepard and Sydney. So let's just do that. Let's take away everything that isn't that. By the way, this is not an original story. what you and I know is Annie Hall

is not what Woody made okay like a murder mystery wasn't it yeah yeah um the title of the film I forgotten it but it's a word it's a it's a word in psychology that means someone who is not allowed not able to experience joy

if there's anyone in the world who is suffering I want to say it's an hedonia that's my Woody recollections of that yeah this film was not working at all. It was a mess. And Woody left it with, is it Rosenbaum, Rosenblum, his editor on any hall? I think he's not the name. There's a great article, I think in the New Yorker about

this from some years back. Left it with his editor. His editor plays with it for two weeks, comes back to Woody and says, listen, yeah, the movie doesn't work at all. But I'll tell you when it works. Every time you're on scene with, on screen with Diane, that's when the film works. And so I want to show you something. I've cut everything that isn't about the romance between you and this character Annie Hall. And like Michelangelo, cutting away everything that isn't David on the piece of Marvel, that's how we got Woody Allen's greatest film, one of the greatest romantic comedies all time. Well, and similarly, in your case, I take it that West Wing came out of American president's accesses. Because I'm a coward. My agent asked me if I would have

lunch with John Wells. This was in 1998. And I said, sure, because John Wells was producing some really great television shows, ER, China Beach. Now, I didn't know anything about television and had no plan to do a television series, but I was fine meeting John for lunch, lunch, I'll have lunch with anybody. And the night before that lunch, had a couple of friends over, one of whom was Akiva Goldsman who had not yet won the Oscar for writing a beautiful mic. And he and I snuck downstairs to, I had a little office in the basement to sneak a cigarette, and And I told him about this meeting I was having with John Wells. And he said, oh, you're going to do a TV series.

That's great. I said, no, I'm not going to do a TV series. I'm just having lunch with John Wells. And he pointed up at the wall. He looked at the poster for the American president. He said, you know, we would make a good series? That. If it wasn't about the romance between the president and lobbyists,

but if he just kind of focused on the senior staffers, like the Michael J. Fox character and the Anna DeVier Smith character and David Pamer and those guys, I said, Keating, I'm not writing a television series. You're right, that might make a good show, but I'm not writing a television series. I show up to the lunch the next day. I walk in, and I see I have clearly misjudged what this lunch is supposed to be, because John Wells is sitting there with two executives from Warner Bros.,

two agents from CAA, and I sat down and John said, so, Aaron, tell us what you'd like to do. And instead of, I'm telling you, instead of saying, guys, I'm so, sorry. There's been a misunderstanding. I don't have anything to pitch. I really just came here to say hello. I said I want to do a series about senior staffers to the White House because I remember what he had said to be the night before. It was the only thing I'd think of John Wells reaches across the table and says deal. Well, remember, you were probably remembering, wait, I have 250 extra pages like in my way. I'm halfway there. Those 250 extra pages boiled down

to the first two and a half pages of the entire series. That's what I got out of those. There's no justice in the world. That's not even fair. I was grateful for it. It's the difference being on page two and page nothing. It's all the difference in the world. But even at that, I felt like, oh, God, I'm going to have to write a pilot script about senior staffers to the White House.

I wasn't thinking there was going to be a TV series. I wasn't thinking that a camera was ever going to be turned on. Because nobody's going to famously shows about Washington, shows about politics, don't work. And I knew myself, it wasn't, and it wasn't because I wanted to be political at all. It's because I wanted to, I knew to write as romantically and idealistically as I do, you have to ground it in a reality. Okay? So this place was going to need to feel real. So you were going to have to hear words like Democratic.

Republican. The stuff that we're used to hearing on the news scene in the newspaper, they weren't going to put this on TV. There wasn't a chance. Television shows, because you're not in business with the audience, you're in business with the advertiser. And this is before, even in 1999, it was still pretty much three and a half networks that we were talking about. HBO was just in its earliest sentencing, okay? The Sopranos had just started on HBO. So what network television is about is alienating as few people as possible. That's why in the infancy of sitcoms and the 50s and 60s, nobody lived anywhere. Everybody lived in Springfield, right? That's the Simpsons joke. That's why it takes place in Springfield.

The man, you never knew what his job was. He was a businessman, okay? Sometimes he was in advertising. No religion was ever named. No black people were anywhere. Nobody but straight, white. They didn't have to say Christian because they didn't have to say Christian. It was a normal family unit. And I'll tell you, even later than that, when we got, hipper than that, when we got smarter than that. You can see remnants of it. You can see remnants of it what we all consider one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Seinfeld, right? Here is Jerry Seinfeld playing Jerry Seinfeld, the stand-up comedian who does the Tonight Show and goes on tour, but that guy is living in a $1,400 a month apartment, okay? Because if he lived the way Jerry

Seinfeld really lived, we wouldn't be able to relate. These stories wouldn't be as funny. You know, buying sinus medicine wouldn't be as funny. Too many people would feel alienated. Anyway, that was a long way of saying. I think there was any chance this show was going to get on the air. The way it got on the air was, you know, they focused grouped it on the way they focus group everything. It did not break the dial in the focus group. Everybody liked Martin, who was not supposed to be a serious regular.

by the way at first I thought we can't see the president ever because any scene that a character who's the president in is just going to take up all the oxygen in the room

no other characters would be relevant that obviously that would change then I thought maybe maybe it'll remember on home improvement

the neighbor who you only saw like the eyes up maybe we'll always have just missed the president we'll see rounding the corner or something we'll see the back of the name but that's hokey

then I thought okay he'll be like a recurring guest character we'll see him one at a time sure enough Martin's original contract I think was four out of 13 he was going to do four to the first 13 episodes after he did the pilot episode he said this is really fun can I be in all of them so sure anyway they focused it it didn't test through the roof it was very much on the fence and some very smart person at Warner Brothers put together a new focus group where they tested a whole different demographic than they tested focus groups. And it turned out that the show did test off the roof in the following four categories. It tested off the roof with college graduates, households earning more than 75,000. a year, households with home subscriptions to the New York Times, and the fourth, and most

important, because this is 1998, 1999, people with home internet access, okay, which not everybody had. Why? Because this was the height of the dot-com bubble, and dot-coms needed places to advertise. And high-end companies, BMW, needed a place to advertise. So not only did Warner Bros. could put the show on the air, but NBC. see in our first season we were we weren't a top 10 show until our second season our first season we were like around 20th but they were able to charge top 10 prices for the show

because it was getting this very attractive audience for them that's how we got on TV I know that there was some scuttlebutt in the last year about social network I'm curious it sounded like Scott Rudin wants a continuation of that story how much time have you spent thinking about what that next story would be do you want to see it? Does David Fincher want to see it? What do you think? I do want to see it and Scott wants to see it. It's funny. I just spoke to David yesterday because I'm going to plug his movie because it's so freaking good. Mank, I can't wait. Oh my God. Written by his dad, right? Written by his dad, who is a brilliant screenwriter. But David has directed this.

movie just magnificently. It's breathtaking even by David Fincher standards. By the way, Gary Oldman gives an amazing performance. So does Willie Collins, and so does Amanda Seifred as

Marjorie Davies. Sorry, Marion Davies. But the movie is gorgeous. Anyway, it's just talking to David. But as far as a follow-up to the social network, it would be so much a steep, I guess it would be. people had been talking to me about it and I it because of um what we've discovered is the the sort of you know the dark side of of Facebook um and I met with a man named Roger McNamee who had a book come out about a year ago called Zuck C-U-C-E-D Roger McNamey was a big early investor in Facebook

He's a Silicon Valley, VC, big early investor in Facebook, very interesting guy, plays in a band, and he's a serious musician, and became a kind of consulgieri to Zuckerberg right after the social network ends, in those years right after the social network ends. And it was Maximus sitting on his boat, going through his Facebook feed, that realized there's something strange going on here. there's something weird that he's noticing with sort of the politics that was Facebook sheet and he took his concerns to Mark and he took his concerns to terrible with names come on lean in lean in the Facebook what is her name it's okay we're both brought what is it Charles Samberg thank you of course I thought you were literally asking me to lean in, Aaron. No, I'm saying she wrote the book, Lean In. No, I was tell you to lean in, man.

It's like, do you want to see my eyes? Go ahead. Yeah. McNamee meets with Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg and points out, there's something going on here. There's a problem here. And Sandberg and Zuckerberg either seem, they seem uninterested in doing anything about it. Anyway, this all ends up with McNamee in a Senate basement, secure conference room, briefing Senate intelligence subcommittee members on how Facebook is bringing down democracy. We have a huge problem here. Something has to be done about it. So, yeah, do I want to write that movie?

Last question for you, sir. Yeah, but I can tell you right now. I'm this is this is by way of applying public pressure on him I will only write it if David directs it love it I'm sold let's make it happen I only write it if David directs it I am telling you that Billy Wilder could come back from the grave and say I won't direct it no it's got to be what's the greatest unproduced screenplay in your in your files what's the one that that you'd love to see whether it made today or 10 years ago what's the one that sticks in your craw that's the best thing you've written.

I only had one unproduced screenplay. It was the trial of the Chicago 7. Are you kidding? Amazing. Yeah, my drawer is empty. I'm very lucky, and I'm probably going to get hated because of that. I've been lucky. I've written something, and it's gotten made. Chicago 7 is my ninth movie, and I've written my 10th,

and it looks like we'll start shooting it back to Thanksgiving. Is that something I've heard about already? Or do we... I don't think it is and I realize I'm being coined now but we haven't made the announcement. No worries. I just can't.

I shouldn't have mentioned. No worries. It's Iron Man 5. Finally, you join the Marvel Fold as we've all been predicting. I would love to. Okay? I would love to.

I just don't know how to. Are you kidding? Would I like to write a superhero movie? First of all, I really like watching them. Second of all, I don't think we'd have budget concerns the kind of Chicago 7 they usually give you the money you need

to make those but yes I love listen I like watching the kind I like writing the kinds of movies that made me want to write movies I like writing the kinds of movies I liked growing up I like superhero movies

when they're done well they're good superhero movies they're bad superhero movies like anything else but I don't know how to do them Well, you're a genre unto yourself, sir. The Aaron Sorkin genre is one of my favorites, and you've delivered another one here

with the trial of the Chicago 7. You have my thanks. We just hit the tip of the iceberg. I hope we'll have more conversations like this in the future. Any time you'd like, I'm sorry we just hit the tip of the iceberg. I know you're taking your life in your hands when you ask me a question.

I'm going to take down a ride when you do. I'm amazed you got to a second question. But Josh, thanks very much. It was great talking to you. And so ends another edition of happy, sad, confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person.

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