Wednesday afternoon, Aaron Sorkin held a live one-hour Q&A on HBO.com to answer fan questions.
The creator of HBO's new show "The Newsroom" has received a lot of media flack over his portrayal of working journalists, so the opportunity gave viewers the chance to ask Sorkin anything.
For the most part, Sorkin played it safe, answering questions about how long it took him to come up with the pilot (nearly a year, not including the six weeks for writing), his biggest challenges while penning a television show, and his love for "His Girl Friday."
However, there were some great moments where Sorkin discussed his decision to cover past news, his knowledge of Pop-Tarts and his alleged "sorkinisms."
Don't plan on seeing any guest appearances by real reporters on "The Newsroom."
Q: Do you have any plans to guest-star any real reporters like Christiane Amanpour, Jake Tapper, or anyone else on the show?
Sorkin: "Real people will only play themselves in news footage. There are some shows where stunt casting is fun (in fact I've played myself on 30 Rock and Entourage) but I think on this show it would just seem out of place. These characters inhabit a heightened and idealized version of a newsroom."
Sorkin draws from old (recent) news because he didn't want to make up fake news.
Q: "You chose to tie storylines to prior current events. What was your reasoning behind this and how recent do you plan regarding current events?"
Sorkin: "The show's set in the recent past because I didn't want to make up fake news. I wanted to do "His Girl Friday" set against the backdrop of actual news events. I knew when the first season started and when it ended and it was a year ago this month that the staff and I began wallpapering the writers room with every single news event from that 18 month period."
Sorkin admits that "The Newsroom" may not have been his best work.
Q: "From working on Social Network to West Wing (both amazing works of art), what is the biggest difference between writing for film and TV?"
Sorkin: "When I'm writing a screenplay and it's not going well (which is most of the time) I can put it down for a few days. The only part about television I don't like is that because of the hard deadlines I have to write when I'm not writing well. I have to put a script on the table that I know is weak and we're going to shoot that script and you're going to see it. In a 10 episode season, one of the episodes is going to be your 10th best and I'm not goo [sic] enough to have my 10th best script seen by a couple of million people but that's what's going to happen. It's a tough pill to swallow.
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