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You can probably count on one hand those Hollywood screenwriters whose style is so well defined that no matter which stiff is doing the talking, the dialogue seems to propel a film or TV show with an indisputable momentum. If cool, late-Seventies New York had Woody Allen as its clatteringly neurotic spokesperson, then the sharpest, fastest scripts being written in Hollywood today, about today - where conversation is flung as if inside a pinball machine - are being generated by GQ's Writer Of The Year, Aaron Sorkin. "What I care about are workplace families," he tells GQ of his new HBO series, The Newsroom, his suite engulfed by the fug of cigarette smoke as he leans back at his desk on the top floor of New York's Four Seasons hotel. "If you watch all my programmes [Sorkin created the near- unbeatable West Wing, among others], the theme is this: it's all right to be alone in a big city so long as you can find family at work. I like team sports more than single sportsmen, I like bands more than solo acts, and I like working with an ensemble that is playing an ensemble."
Although the writer of A Few Good Men, *Moneyball * and The Social Network (for which he won an Academy Award) will enthuse about collaboration, it's alone that his own work truly thrives: "Ultimately I have to go into a room and shut the door - whether my car or my office. I talk to myself. A lot." So does he care who utters his well-crafted lines? "Someone told me casting is 90 per cent of the battle. I think whoever said that was lowballing."
Next up is the unenviable task of adapting Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography: "Yes I'm worried! It's like the Beatles: someone will always know better. I can't judge [Jobs], I have to defend him. With a character like that you should be writing him as if he's making his case to God about why he should be allowed into heaven."
*****Originally published in the October 2012 issue of British GQ. *****
