The weirdest thing about The Social Network is the fact that Aaron Sorkin wrote it. This is the man who famously wrote his disdain for Television Without Pity – and by extension, all internet message boards – into a season three episode of The West Wing. The film has been getting raves left and right, and I certainly plan to see it this weekend – but I keep getting left with the impression of a bunch of 19-year-olds who’ll profess their love of Gilbert and Sullivan before the first act is over.
The clip shown on The Colbert Report tonight didn’t do much to allay those fears. True, no one used the phrase “I am never, ever sick at sea,” or “I’m in the tall grass; I’m in the weeds,” and no one was pedeconferencing, but there was an awful lot of the patented Sorkin lather-rinse-repeat dialogue that sounds smart when you encounter it for the first time, and comes off as incredibly lazy when you realize every single thing he’s ever written sounds like this.
I give Colbert a lot of credit for the questions he asked. Aaron Sorkin has a sharp mind, but his verbal fencing skills don’t match those of his characters, and sometimes it felt like Colbert was just talking over him, which tends to be more Jon Stewart’s style. (Not that Stephen won’t run roughshod over guests sometimes, but they usually give way to him; this felt very much like a Stewart interview [except for the fact that Stephen was obviously more prepared than Jon usually is for his guests.])
But Stephen got to a couple of pertinent points, including the treatment of women in the film, which is often a weak point in Sorkin’s work, and he honed in on his guest’s dislike and distrust of the film’s subject. Sorkin actually said that internet relationships are to face-to-face relationships what reality television is to reality, which earned him a somewhat startled, even shocked, silence from the audience. Whether or not The Social Network‘s box office reflects its pre-release buzz remains to be seen, but I’m not sure the studio’s going to want Sorkin doing much more publicity for them.
Finally, c’mon, Aaron, you couldn’t have joined Stephen in his little Sondheim rendition? Way to be a stick-in-the-mud, dude.
