Bartlet4America News Archive

Sorkin Faces Up To a Sorry Spring

By DAVID ZURAWIK
The Baltimore Sun

LOS ANGELES — The Aaron Sorkin Public Apology Tour made two stops over the weekend at the Television Critics Summer Press Tour. With a publicist at his side, Sorkin was trying to do damage control — just like the Washington politicians he so skillfully depicts each week on NBC's The West Wing.

His first stop was Friday night at the NBC "All-Star Party" for new fall shows held in the swank Horseshoe Gardens of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pasadena where he was mobbed by reporters.

For those who haven't followed this year's most widely reported TV-Celebrity-Who-Got-in-Drug-Trouble-on-Hiatus story, Sorkin was arrested April 15 at the Burbank Airport for having cocaine, marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms in a carry-on bag. He's now in a court-ordered, 20-week counseling program that if completed will wipe the conviction off his record. He is also in Alcoholics Anonymous.

It has been a rough stretch for Sorkin personally and professionally. He and his wife of five years, Julia, are separated. He got involved in an online flap involving authorship of an episode of The West Wing that resulted in Sorkin looking foolishly egocentric and having to apologize to a former staff writer online.

And, earlier this month, it looked as if four of the show's co-stars might hold out for more money creating big production problems for one of the most expensive and difficult-to-produce shows on television with a price tag of $2.7 million an episode. The series started production July 16 with everyone back to work. The four — Allison Janney, John Spencer, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff — reportedly each got their salaries doubled to about $70,000 per episode.

Sorkin tried to quickly get the apology part out of the way Friday night, and make the troubles he's been seeing sound as if they were past history.

"I did something very foolish, and it was obviously very public and very embarrassing," he began in answer to a question about how he's feeling.

"There are obviously still some consequences to be lived through. But I am so grateful to be back at work. I'm so grateful to be able to go back to what feels like home to me, feels like a family to me — to work that doesn't just take my mind off all that, it takes my mind to a great place. It feels wonderful."

In response to a question about whether he thought the secret of his drug dependence last spring when he was writing the season finale affected the way he depicted President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) handling his secret of having multiple sclerosis, Sorkin said, "No, not then. Not at all. What happened to me in April happened after I wrote the last episode. In fact, right after I wrote it. I had delivered the script, we had our wrap party and I went to the Burbank airport."

But Sorkin said his troubles have colored what viewers will see in the season opener this fall, which picks the story up three months after the events of the finale with Bartlet in a re-election cycle and everyone at Bartlet's home in New Hampshire strategizing for the upcoming campaign.

"In coming back and writing the season opener, I found that a lot of what I feel about the chaos of the time [in his own life] is in there. You know, there's an invasion of privacy that happens that is pretty staggering when it happens to you.

"I'm trying to remember who said it, but they were talking about jealousy, and they said it's like seasickness: For the person it's happening to, they want to kill themselves. For everybody else, it's hysterical. That's what this was like, too. I know, it's Orson Wells who said it.

"So there's a little of that in the season opener. Everyone, including the press to a certain extent, feels a sense of betrayal and is reacting in a certain way. The press in Bartlet's world — which by and large has been very supportive and sympathetic because he's their kind of guy and they like him and a lot of them feel like they're responsible for getting him elected — have all of sudden come down on him like a brick bank. And so he's feeling that pressure," Sorkin said.

As to whether the pressure of writing the majority of scripts for the series had contributed to his drug problems last spring, Sorkin said, "I think it would be a mistake to think that the trouble I got into in April was the result of pressure at all. It was a result of stupidity and nothing else."

He does not plan to change the way he works, which involves writing up against a deadline 22 weeks a year, Sorkin said.

"There's really nothing to change. I don't have much of a work schedule. I get to work as early as I possibly can about 7 a.m., and I leave when I can't keep my eyes open any more, and I do that every day. And I want to make it clear I'm not the only one. There are 60 of us who do that.

"My schedule depends somewhat on what stage of the writing I am at. If I am at the start of the script-writing process, which means I have no ideas and nothing is going on, I won't stay late, because staying only reminds me that I'm not writing anything and nothing's going on. I'm not Charlie Brown in that regard thinking, 'You know what I need is a good night's sleep, and if I'm refreshed tomorrow I'll have good ideas.' A bad day could go 18 hours maybe even longer."

Sorkin was back at the hotel with the cast of The West Wing Saturday night to pick up the Television Critics Association Award for Outstanding Drama. It was the end of a better day than the ones he'd been having lately, he said.

"You've never seen a group of people so happy to be done with hiatus. In the doldrums of summer reruns and reality series, the TV critics need something to write about; no need to thank us," he said getting a big laugh.

But he ended on a more serious note, saying that in a meeting last week, co-executive-producer John Wells told him and the cast to just "keep your heads down, work hard, and better times will come."

"So, I want to thank you tonight," Sorkin said, "for giving us a night where we can pick our heads back up for a minute."