Aaron Sorkin: ‘Screenwriters write about people who are cooler than we are’

The American writer known for The West Wing, Moneyball and The Social Network on adapting To Kill a Mockingbird for the stage in the 21st century

Aaron Sorkin, 60, is that rare screenwriter who qualifies as a household name. Starting out in theatre in the 1980s, the former actor broke into movies with the hit 1992 adaptation of his play A Few Good Men. His subsequent credits include Moneyball, Steve Jobs and The Social Network, for which he won an Academy Award. He has also written four television shows, most notably the Emmy-hoovering The West Wing, and directed three movies, including, last year, Being the Ricardos. He has returned to the theatre with a new version of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which ran on Broadway in 2018 and, after a Covid-enforced two-year delay, is about to open in London.

You adapted To Kill a Mockingbird before the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests. Were you tempted to tinker with it afterwards?
I didn’t, because I feel it’s exactly as relevant as it was when the play opened. It is already addressing those things. I changed one word. In the book, Tom Robinson is shot by prison guards 17 times. I found that hard to believe, so I had him shot five times. Now, after everything that’s happened, I don’t feel like 17 is too high a number any more and I changed it back.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Z3lbpBi