The good news is that the mighty Aaron Sorkin is hard at work on writing a Steve Jobs biopic.
The mixed news is that he thinks cocaine could possibly help the writing process – even if he’s joking about it.
Bloomberg’s Studio 1.0 with Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang, which aired at 8:30pm ET/5:30pm PT featured screenwriter Aaron Sorkin who discussed his writing process and bringing Steve Jobs to life. Sorkin also addressed whether it is easier to write Sober, “maybe it would be easier to write with coke, maybe I’d write better with coke,” and discussed his three conversations with Apple founder Steve Jobs including the third time, “the third time he called me was to ask me to help him write his commencement address at Stanford.”
There’s a lot of good stuff from the interview, including the following:
Sorkin on writing:
“I’ve got plenty of quirks. I go to an office early in the morning. And early in the morning is really good writing time. I take anywhere between six to eight showers a day. I’m not exaggerating. It’s all about a fresh start. Okay? I– I was writing– I was writing. It was not going well. I’m writing badly. Start again. Take a shower. Put on different clothes and you’ll feel refreshed and start again.”
On whether it is harder to write sober:
“You know, the real answer is: I don’t care if it’s harder– or better sober. I should be dead seven times by now. And I’m so glad I’m not. So, the truth of the matter is, yeah, maybe it would be easier to write with coke, maybe I’d write better with coke, but writing well is so important to me that there’s no advantage I wouldn’t give myself except that.”
On writing Steve Jobs, the character“I think that you can do ten more movies about Steve Jobs. And I think if you lined up ten writers and said, “Write a movie about Steve Jobs,” you’d get ten different movies, all of them worth going to see. This one is it’s just different. I spoke to [Jobs] on the phone three times. The first time he called me it was because I gave an interview in which I said, “Everything I’ve ever written I’ve written on a Mac.” And he called me to thank me for saying that and asked me if he could send me they were coming out with the new laptop with with the first of what pretty much everybody uses today. He said, “Let me send you this thing. And just play around with it and and tell me what you think.” The second time he called me it was to invite me up to the Bay Area to tour Pixar. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in writing a Pixar movie. And the third time he called me was to ask me to help him write his commencement address at Stanford…Honestly, I fixed a couple of typos in the speech– I don’t want to suggest for a moment that any of those thoughts were my thoughts. That is brain of Steve Jobs. And helped him put the music to it.”
On how much pressure there is to bring Jobs to life:
“Yeah. The same pressure that I feel when I’m writing anything. And maybe with a little bit of sauce on top of pressure, because he is a person that so many people have so many strong feelings about. But I’ve met every and and spent a lot of time with the other seven characters who are in the movie, like Joanna Hoffman who’s a fantastic character. She was the head of marketing for the Mac team. John Sculley who was the CEO of Apple and became famous, or infamous depending on how you look at it, for firing Steve Jobs from Apple. He’s a wonderful man and a great character. In in this movie Jobs has conflicts with all of them that get dramatized and worked out in a very compressed, very claustrophobic environment.”
Take a gander at the show, Sorkin’s as interesting as they come and if anyone can put together a good Steve Jobs movie, it’s him.