Aaron Sorkin

“The first thing I’m seeing is Tanner ’88. Way before The Sopranos, way before Larry Sanders, even, there was Tanner ’88 from Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau. Truly my inspiration for The West Wing, actually, it was… it was one of the first pieces of original programming on HBO. It followed a fictional campaign around New Hampshire, around the country, during the primaries, the primary that our fictional guy would ultimately lose to Michael Dukakis. But great show. Largely improvised. Very much in the Robert Altman style of long Steadicam shots, and it is terrific.”

“And here is Broadcast News. This was really the movie that reminded me that people write movies. I was a young playwright sitting in a movie theater watching this movie and saying, “Jeez, I wish I had written that. That must have been a lot of fun to write. I want to write things like that.” The whole cast is great.”

“Well, The Graduate is on my top five. I wrote the last movie Mike Nichols directed before he died. Just let me be clear: one didn’t have anything to do with the other. He didn’t die because I wrote the movie. But we would have these work sessions at his apartment on Fifth Avenue, and it would always take twice as long as it needed to because I couldn’t stop asking him questions about The Graduate. I asked him how he landed on that score, the Simon & Garfunkel score that’s so memorable. He said the two of them, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, came in to play him some songs that they had written and nothing was really clicking. So Mike said, “Okay, it was a good try, but thanks a lot, guys.” And Art whispered something to Paul Simon and said, “Let me just play something else.” And they played him a couple of verses of a song they had written called “Mrs. Roosevelt.” Only right there on the spot, they changed the lyrics to “Mrs. Robinson” and history was made. This movie is so phenomenally well done.”

“Network, Paddy Chayefsky. You should watch this movie, you’ll feel like it was written last week. And I’d give anything if Paddy was alive today to write a movie called The Internet. If there’s one moment in it that’s worth the whole movie, it’s not “I’m mad as hell, I’m not going to take it anymore.” It’s the woman who’s the head of the domestic terrorist outfit shouting, “Don’t fuck with my residuals!” Network.”

“The Princess Bride. The Princess Bride gives me a chance to talk about two people who were important to me coming up: William Goldman and Rob Reiner. William Goldman, who, in addition to writing The Princess Bride, both the novel and the movie, won an Oscar for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, won an Oscar for All the President’s Men. When I was in my early 20s, I had written my first play, A Few Good Men, and it was a couple of months away from going into rehearsal, we were just casting, so people were reading the script, and I got a phone call from him one day that he had read the script and he wanted to meet me, and he took me under his wing, and he made me a screenwriter and, right up until the day he died, just a few years ago, he was always the first person I sent pages to, and he was incredibly helpful, a great mentor. And Rob, Rob gave me my first job. Rob directed A Few Good Men, produced it, and then my next movie, The American President, so I spent a lot of time with Rob, who was a wonderful, very friendly big bear of a man. He told some great, funny stories about The Princess Bride. André the Giant liked to drink. He liked wine. But to get a little buzz, he would have to drink, like, six bottles of wine. Also, there’s a scene, if you’ve seen the movie, remember the scene at the end, where they all ride up on white horses and they take Buttercup away, and that’s how the movie ends. They couldn’t have André the Giant sitting on a horse, there isn’t a horse alive that could handle André the Giant, so they had to come up with a kind of harness thing that had André the Giant just sitting about an inch above the saddle, being held by this harness. One night on the studio lot, in Culver City, they were testing out that harness, and Rob was asked to come on over to stage two, “We’re working the harness now,” and what Rob didn’t know was that on that particular day, the new Beaujolais or something had just come out and André the Giant had had a couple of cases of this wine. And so Rob walked onto the stage and just sees André the Giant swinging from this thing, “Hey, Boss, how you doin’?” That sounds like that shoot was a lot of fun. By the way, if you’ve only seen the movie and haven’t read William Goldman’s novel of The Princess Bride, immediately read the novel. You’re in for a real treat. It’s everything you love about The Princess Bride, there’s just… there’s more of it. The Princess Bride.”