I think that there are any number of people for whom I am not their cup of tea – and that’s okay,” says Aaron Sorkin, with a faint clip to his voice that suggests some small part of him might disagree. “I’ll try to win them over.”
As big-name screenwriters go, there are few more immediately recognisable than Sorkin, who, over the course of four decades, has carried his inimitable style from project to project. Whether we’re in the corridors of the government in The West Wing, or in a Harvard dorm at the genesis of Facebook in The Social Network, characters all speak fluent Sorkinese. That is to say, they speak fast, in erudite Gatling-gun repartee. Often – though not in The Social Network’s case – Sorkin’s scripts have a Capraesque sentimental streak; it’s this, mostly, that seems a sticking point for fans and detractors.
