Aaron Sorkin & the art of sounding smart

 



Charlie Rose, a sort of upmarket US Parkinson, is not a place where you expect to hear anything very interesting. If a tough interview is a grilling, then Charlie delivers the lightest of bakings—popping his guest's ego in the oven for 20-60 minutes, allowing it to gently rise and expand. A typical Charlie Rose question is “Your movie's great. Tell me about it.” That one of Rose's typical questions is not, in fact, a question, may be taken as indicative.

But, on 2nd October 2002, something interesting was said on Charlie Rose. Discussing The West Wing, and specifically answering Rose's question "How do you write all that smart dialogue for all those smart characters?" Aaron Sorkin declared that he himself is not all that clever, it's just that he had learned to mimic “the sound of intelligence” by listening to his smart friends. As incisive self-analysis by a creative artist goes, this is on a par with Balzac's comment: “I am not deep but I am very wide.”

The Social Network has been a critical and commercial smash but, like all of Sorkin’s work, the film sounds hyper-intelligent whilst serving up popcorn-friendly thrills no more intellectually engaging than other smart Hollywood fare like Up in the Air and Spiderman. That's not to say his scripts themselves aren't intelligent—it's just that their intelligence lies almost entirely in brilliant craftsmanship. We get clever-sounding 1000wpm whizzbang dialogue, we get superbly structured drama, but beneath all that there doesn’t seem to be any philosophical core to Sorkin’s work. Films like A Few Good Men and The Social Network touch upon all kinds of serious themes (What is honour? Who owns ideas? etc) but, as in The West Wing, ideas are elegant set dressing rather than a vital part of the drama.

Sorkin is at his best when he's doing the core Hollywood stuff—heroism, knotty conflicts, comedy, romance. He's at his worst when he takes it into his head that he's doing something deep. The final episode of series two of TheWest Wing offers a case in point, with Sorkin aiming to deliver a televisual King Lear. Pushed to breaking point by intense presidential pressures and the death of a loved-one, President Bartlet stands alone in a cathedral inveighing against God in Latin, as a tropical storm is blown Washington-wards in an immense gust of pathetic fallacy. The result is pompous and preposterous—a million miles away from quieter and more moving West Wing episodes like In Excelsis Deo.

At times Sorkin's talent for mimicking the sound of intelligence runs away with him. In The West Wing and even The Social Network, every character speaks fluent Intelligence, rattling off figures, acronyms, jokes and literary references at subtitle-worthy speed. One of the best lines from The Social Network is the declaration by pissed-off beefcake and identical twin, Tyler Winklevoss, “I'm 6'5", 220 pounds, and there are two of me.” But switch the first person to third person and you can imagine almost any of the characters in the movie delivering the same line. Tempted by his love of the sound of intelligence, Sorkin often risks turning his characters into interchangeable talking machines.

It's the same in the West Wing—CJ, Sam, Josh and even Donna often say things not because that character would say that thing, but because Sorkin has thought of a line that’s too good to cut. Sorkin’s characters, unlike, say, those of David Simon or Alan Ball, are often distinguished by what they say, not how they say it.

As a writer, Sorkin possesses unique talents. No one else could have written The Social Network or created The West Wing. Judging by his latest film, Sorkin is at the top of his game, and there's little doubt he'll be rewarded next February with an Oscar for best screenplay. But when you're watching his acceptance speech, spare a thought for other less-garlanded screenwriters whose work, unlike that of Sorkin, is truly thoughtful, elusive and challenging.