Inside the Career of Aaron Sorkin

Beginning his career in the late 80s and still working to this day, Aaron Sorkin has already had a great deal of success in his career, but he’s not finished yet. We’re going to take a look back at some of the highlights of his career so far and what route he took to get to the stage he is at now. If you’re an aspiring writer or director, it’s always hugely helpful to look at the routes that successful writers and directors took to make it in the industry. Sorkin has achieved numerous awards over his career, including a BAFTA, multiple Emmys and no less than three Golden Globes. So, if you’re going to learn from anyone, he seems like a pretty good place to start.

Early Life
Born on the 9th of June 1961, Sorkin had a fairly unremarkable childhood. His parents had a middle income and took him to see several plays during his early years that certainly helped to spark his interest in a career on the stage or screen. He engaged with drama lessons at school and when it came time to choose the qualifications he would study for, he didn’t hesitate to choose drama. He became the president of the drama club and went on to study at Syracuse University.

On his first try he failed to graduate, but took one more year to have a stab at it and finally achieved it. With his Bachelor’s degree in Musical Theater he moved to New York City where he worked a selection of jobs to keep a roof over his head. As anyone who’s tried to make an acting career work will know, being a waiter is part and parcel of the job. Alongside this, Sorkin also delivered singing telegrams, toured with a children’s theater company and house sat.

It was during one of these house-sitting jobs that he began typing away at a typewriter and found such a peace and stillness in the writing that it was almost as though he couldn’t stop. He wrote a play during that stay and it would be fair to say, he hasn’t looked back since.

The First Plays
The script that he wrote on that typewriter was called Removing All Doubt and it would go on to be played by students at his previous University, Syracuse. This spurred him on to write several more plays including Hidden in This Picture and A Few Good Men. By this time he had an agent who immediately saw the promise of A Few Good Men and encouraged him to sell it. He did for well into the 6 figures in 1988 and it went on to be a runaway success both on the stage and later on the screen. Castle Rock Entertainment were the company that ended up taking A Few Good Men from the stage to the screen and they were keen to get Sorkin on board for good.

A Breakthrough Contract
For seven years, Sorkin worked for Castle Rock Entertainment where he initially polished the script for A Few Good Men. It was an enormous box office success raking in $243 million worldwide. Following this, Sorkin developed the script for Malice and later The American President. These films wouldn’t set the world on fire, but gave Sorkin a great grounding in what it takes to work on a film script, versus a script for the stage. For the remaining couple of years he had at Castle Rock, he worked mainly on editing scripts, adding a little drama to a scene here and cutting out some lengthy dialogue there. It would be in 1998 that he made his break into the world of television, the media in which he would until 2016, when he went back to the world of film once more.

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Back to Films
Sorkin’s directorial debut came in the form of Molly’s Game. Although he’d had such a long career on the screen, this was his first shot at directing and was released in 2017. It followed the true story of Molly Bloom, an ex-Olympian skier and talented poker player. Whilst many of us feel that the most important part of learning about poker is to know our hand rankings and perhaps play a little online, Molly wasn’t satisfied with just that. She began an underground poker ring and pretty soon got caught up with the FBI. The fast-paced thrill of this film was to become a staple in Sorkin’s later work.

The Trial of the Chicago Seven would be his next film and after a long time getting things underway, filming began. After a limited release, news traveled and the film got nominated for a whole host of awards. In the end, he won Best Screenplay with it, which must have felt a true triumph for someone with so much love for the stage.

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Thanks for spending some time with us! But, like most things in life, it’s not what you have (i.e. grip truck) that counts… it’s what you do with it that really matters. P.S. Big thanks to indieactivity.com for the opportunity to share our experience with you!

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