In July on the identical day President Joe Biden dropped out of the election, Aaron Sorkin launched a poorly-timed op-ed that mentioned Republican Mitt Romney needs to be nominated because the Democratic nominee on the celebration’s conference later this month.
Later that day, Biden then endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place. Whoops.
He rapidly retracted the assertion upon Harris wading into the race, but when anybody is nervous the acclaimed screenwriter behind “A Few Good Men” and “The Social Network” might have misplaced his sense of political consciousness, he’s now acknowledging how far afield Republicans have come since his beloved TV sequence “The West Wing” first got here out.
As reported on by The Hollywood Reporter at an occasion selling the upcoming e-book, “What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service,” Sorkin mentioned how he’s usually requested whether or not a model of “The West Wing” would work at this time.
“Honestly, I think it would for roughly the same reason it worked when it did, which is that, first of all, it was a good show, just good stories well told by a great group of people,” he mentioned to the group on the Skirball Cultural Middle. “But by and large, in popular culture, our leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts, right? It’s either a ‘House of Cards’ or ‘Veep.‘ The idea behind ‘The West Wing’ was what if they were as competent and as dedicated as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, the cops on the cop shows, the lawyers on a legal drama, that kind of thing. And the result was something that was idealistic and it was aspirational.”
However Sorkin admitted making “The West Wing” at this time would require sure realities be confronted, the principle one being that he feels Republicans haven’t any curiosity in truly doing their jobs correctly.
“I’m afraid to say that right now — and maybe things will be different a year from now or two years from now, but right now — it would be implausible that the opposition party, that the Republican Party, was reasonable,” Sorkin mentioned. “People would watch that and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country that they live in. On the show, while the Republicans were the opposition, they were reasonable, the Republicans that they dealt with.”
Although “aspirational” politics have been clearly a key ingredient to what made “The West Wing” so entertaining, he most loved writing a present folks would wish to watch.
“A big part of the motivation in writing a new script every nine days for this was being able to put something on the table that these actors would like,” he mentioned. “They were the first audience for the show.”
Sorkin on a current interview for “The West Wing Podcast” touched on the concept of a reunion or reboot, saying he was motivated to do it, however that he nonetheless must “have an idea.”
