“That was a great and very interesting column today,” Sorkin wrote to Dowd on March 6. “I’d only take issue with one thing and that’s the idea that something like Bridesmaids is seen as a fluke and that’s why we don’t see more movies like Bridesmaids. There’s an implication that studio heads have a stack of Bridesmaids-quality scripts on their desk that they’re not making and it’s just not true. The scripts aren’t there.”
Then, Sorkin connects the lack of good scripts to his belief that “the degree of difficulty” in Blanchett’s performance in Blue Jasmine was “nothing close to the degree of difficulty” to any of the nominated male lead performances that year.
“That’s why year in and year out, the guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins Best Actress,” Sorkin wrote. “Cate gave a terrific performance in Blue Jasmine but nothing close to the degree of difficulty for any of the five Best Actor nominees. Daniel Day-Lewis had to give the performance he gave in Lincoln to win–Jennifer Lawrence won for Silver Linings Playbook, in which she did what a professional actress is supposed to be able to do. Colin Firth/Natalie Portman. Phil Hoffman had to transform himself into Truman Capote while Julia Roberts won for being brassy in Erin Brockovich. Sandra Bullock won for ‘The Blind Side’ and Al Pacino lost for both Godfather movies. Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren’t that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.”
***
What I want for Christmas.
What I want for Christmas is a man who wins the Oscar with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. I think it’s called a watch. (Wow, that’s great.) I think that everybody should have a man who wins the Oscar and a thing that tells time. They’re very good for Christmas. I don’t think that a woman would make a very good Oscar winner.
I don’t think it’s very fair that every year Sandra Bullock is allowed to take something from my house while I’m sleeping. I know she’s in here somewhere, and she was in Miss Congeniality, for Chrissakes. I CAN HEAR YOU BREATHING, SANDRA BULLOCK. Last week she took my favorite pen. The ghost of Ted Kennedy gave it to me during the last season of the West Wing, and it’s special to me because he wasn’t even dead yet.
We used to make skyscrapers. Now there’s Kardashians. Someone explain the value of a proportionate response to me, because DuPont Circle was absolute murder this afternoon. I don’t think anything’s very good, and a woman has my pen. Men have used pens for thousands of years to pass important laws, like World War II and honesty, and now women are in sororities and on the internet and winning Oscars but not making Bridesmaids. Maureen, I don’t mind you, because you write a column, but maybe there’s something you can do about it.
Presidents used to be taller. Presidents used to be a hundred feet tall and you could only vote with your heart. The president used to be a buffalo chasing an eagle that was reciting Keats from memory, and now it’s just a text that Sasha Obama sent her second-best friend Melissa M. during fourth period. I don’t think that should win an Oscar at all.
I’m a serious man, who needs a serious pen. Maureen, you write pretty good columns when you know what you’re talking about, but I can’t use this pen. It’s got feathers and pink hearts on it, Maureen. What if a woman fell down at work, Maureen? That would be comical, I think. It’s part of my new series, Women Falling Down Comically At Work, that I hope will win many Oscars, because all of the parts will be played by the ghost of Robert Kennedy, who was a man, as men so often are.
In conclusion, Sandra Bullock should get out of my house.
Image via Matt Lubchansky, who is first in my heart.
Tags: aaron sorkin, advice
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LIL AARON SORKIN
“Pass important laws, like World War II and honesty” OH MY GOD dying. Amazing. Just so amazing.
Remember when SNP took him down for calling her an Internet Girl? *fans self with good memories*
Also, rape stories – am I right? So hard to figure out. So many sides! Sex is a prism and rape accusations are a Rubik’s cube.I think we have a moral obligation to be suspicious of women accusing men of rape, because while women don’t make for good performers, they sure turn out the tour-de-force bravura Stanislavski action when it comes to accusing some poor schlub of rape. #newsroom
Thank you, Mallory, for existing. I’ll be sitting here contemplating the sentence “Colin Firth/Natalie Portman.” and wondering what leaps of Sorkin-logic we are supposed to perform about those two in order to reach the only possible Sorkin-conclusion.
Obviously, it’s that stuttering is harder than ballet, because it keeps you from saying all the MAGIC SORKIN WORDS.
I know the implication is that women’s roles can’t ever be as demanding as men’s because men’s stories are serious and important and women’s are just silly little melodramas about feelings, but seriously, the fact that this dude is citing Natalie Portman in Black Swan as an example of a performance that wasn’t physically or mentally challenging makes me think he’s never actually seen that, or any other, film.
I’d also love to know what the exact context for this e-mail was. It honestly sounds like Sorkin just sends Maureen Dowd unsolicited feedback on her column. I’m sure she’s very grateful.
And even when men are in melodramas about feelings, they have to work way harder because their brains are naturally geared toward Serious Important things, like being gangsters.
And blowing things up while having sex on cars with beautiful ladies. Laugh if you will, but that requires some serious front-lobe executive action. (Reply to SarcasticFringehead)
Plus, Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln was good and all, but that performance was mostly yelling + beard.
Now you’re just supporting Sorkin’s point – if women took their acting craft seriously, they would be better at growing beards.
I’m a woman who can grow a serious beard- when do I get my Oscar?
It’s super easy for a woman to play any female character, because women don’t have individual traits and they’re all basically interchangeable. Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, and Natalie Portman all won for playing minor variations on the classic theatrical archetype of “some broad, I dunno, I wasn’t even listening while she was talking.” Men on the other hand are all extremely complex individuals, so when one is able to imitate another it’s a pretty important feat.
This comment = everything.
*wild applause*
This hurt to read but was also amazing.
Score!
Ow. This comment hurts me in my gut, which is the seat of truth and honesty.
Oh, man. Can I quote this on tumblr? With your username as attribution. (And a painstaking note that you are being satirical about Sorkin, with a link to the original.)
Yeah no problem. All this praise settles it– I’m never giving up commenting on the internet *cracks knuckles, prepares to neglect some work duties*
Lol, good life plan. We need you!
Can you link to your post, so I can reblog it?? <3
Here it is: http://mysweetetc.tumblr.com/post/105465692962/it…
Sorkinclusions, if you will.
Don’t you mean… Sorkinclusion?
*shades*
Oh man, I was racing through this reply thread to see if someone had made the pun ‘Sorkonclusion’ and I am so glad to see two people already did and I am amongst friends <3
Mallory, YOU are first in MY heart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy0UpRIncYM
Aaron Sorkin, you don’t have a PR problem. You have an ACTUAL problem. And Mallory, if the world could rage as well as you do, our globe would spin epic poems.
Ugh, I do share his frustration with autocorrect always getting “Dupont” wrong, although of course he’s the sort of wishy-washy pedant who would leave it in because it looks fancier.
WHY do people always insist on spelling it fucking “DuPont,” that’s not how it’s spelled ANYWHERE in this city, it drives me fucking crazy. It only has one capital letter, as God and George Washington intended.
…I recognize that I am being unnecessarily angry about this, I will see myself out and have some lunch.
May I suggest the Dupont Circle Sweetgreens? There is that really chipper guy working today and although his enthusiasm leaves me flustered, he’s very pleasant.
Although I think his definition of a medium level of Sriracha is in need of a revision.
I am at the Dupont Circle Sweetgreen (referred to in my head as “the bougie salad place”) all the time, it’s embarrassing. There’s a chipper guy at the cash register who always tells me to haveagooddaythankyouforcomingtosweetgreen very quickly and it’s overwhelming every time.
(also helllooooo fellow dupont toastie!)
Oh, I’ve been nearly living there these past few weeks as I struggle through finals. An overpriced salad seems to be the best way not to fall asleep at my desk as I write about Ghana or Ukraine or whatever the hell I’m doing. (I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE.)
It is the absolute bougiest. This whole area of the city is bizarre. Why is the only supermarket nearby Whole Foods? I walk in there and all I can think about is my crippling student debt and I try not to cry next to the display of perfectly stacked peppers.
There’s a Safeway on 17th!
Awesome! I need to explore more of this area, considering how much time I spend here. Thanks!
The Safeway is sort of hidden! By which I mean it’s not on Connecticut (17th and Corcoran), but definitely a better-priced choice. And agreed, Dupont is a weird, weird bougie place with beautiful houses and insane prices. :-/
Oh lord, that Safeway is so conveniently located and so, so weird to actually shop in.
Are you bougie/close enough to make it up to the 14th st Trader Joe’s?
It IS a weird store! And always freezing in there! What’s up with that?
The Trader Joe’s is far enough away to be not worth going to from work, and the Safeway is about a block from my office, so nope. Dangerous/amazing discovery: Bua Thai at P and 17th does take-out orders and it’s slightly less expensive than some of the bougie salads and it’s so goooooood, I recommend it, if you’re looking for lunch options. (OH GOD, I’M A BOUGIE NIGHTMARE.)
Warning: it is known as the Soviet Safeway for its flexible relationship with inventory.
Have you come across the Metro Supermarket on P Street? It’s kinda hidden, but they manage to cram an amazing amount of things into a tiny store. It doesn’t have the world’s best prices either, but it has more food that isn’t locally-sourced-organic and is therefore sometimes priced lower.
The Trader Joe’s on 25th and L St isn’t too bad a hike depending on where you’re coming from in Dupont, and is the best option I’ve found for affordable groceries. But, yeah. Dupont is kind of crazy in its demographic/available options.
I haven’t yet, but now I’ll know to look for it.
I live in the northeast (I go to grad school in Dupont) but I often walk to the TJ’s on 14th St, mostly as an excuse to walk past the house of the guy I’m in love with.
The paint company capitalizes it that way, and I guess it’s probably more accurate as the historical surname. But I do get frustrated with autocorrect, since obviously there’s far more reasons to text someone about meeting up at a convenient metro station than there are about meeting in a specific paint aisle at Home Depot.
I’m sure it’s more accurate! But when has that gotten in the way of AMERICA and CALLING THINGS WHATEVER and okay, wow, I’m still too agitated about this, I apologize. Interesting about the paint! I did not realize that. Not as frequent as the metro station, I would presume.
Ah, DuPont, corporate profiteer behind Vietnam.
I’m loving this DC-people thread so much. I also have extremely vivid memories of shopping at the Soviet Safeway on 17th and Corcoran when I first moved here and was living on a rich lady’s broken sofa bed, because the grocery prices there gave me SO MUCH ANXIETY.
Now I live in Brookland and I shop at Aldi’s and everything is delightful.
Forreal though let’s form a secret Chipper Sweetgreen Guy fan club and hold meetings every month.
…actually though, can we? To the sweetgreen suggestion?
We used to make skyscrapers. Now there’s Kardashians.
I think I’ve literally read this on my Facebook feed.
This is WONDERFUL.
Not for nothing, but I’m standing here telling you I needed this today. What did I need? This. This is what I needed. The thing I needed? This. This is the thing.
(I may have spent some time watching Sports Night episodes recently.)
<3 SportsNight, <3 Studio 60, god Sorkin why can’t I quit you
It’s comforting to know there is at least one other person who actually liked Studio 60!
It has been weird re-watching Sports Night lately and being so constantly aware of how overwritten and repetitive it is. My fiancee was in the room for about a minute of one episode and said that even though she doesn’t watch Aaron Sorkin shows, she could tell instantly how Sorkin the dialog was. But I’ll keep watching.
“Model of a Modern Network TV Show.” I mean… it’s perfect in every way.
Wait… did you just copy the rant from the first episode of Newsroom verbatim? Cuz this is exactly as coherent as I remember it being.
Every time Sorkin expresses his views on something it makes me hurt inside. And feel deeply ashamed of my lingering childhood fondness for The West Wing. Tried to go back and nostalgia watch some of it recently and got to the “these women” scene with Josh, Leo and Bartlett and just had to hide under my covers.
I have been thinking a lot about the “these women” scene lately (because of this article from the New Statesman last week: http://www.newstatesman.com/…/why-i-still-love-aaron-s... and I realized that I still like that scene. I think that scene is hilarious. Because for me, that scene is all about how ridiculously impoverished men’s vocabulary is for appreciating women in any other way than “dat ass”. It’s so cute to watch how pathetically bad they are at expressing how legitimately awesome the women in their lives really are. And it turns out I always thought Sorkin was critiquing the fact of the sad poverty of expression in masculine culture.
I think I’ll keep my interpretation. I like it better anyway.
(whispers) I feel the same way
My god, that’s exactly the lens I used to appreciate Frank Miller through. “This is obviously a parody or satire, right, showing how empty this fascistic mindset is?”
Hold on to that interpretation. It’s precious, like gold.
EDIT: “Previous, like gold.” Obviously meant to say precious, like gold. But now I can’t help but wonder how gold could be previous?
I feel you on The West Wing nostalgia. I’d say that his continued career has ruined it for me, but…it was there all along and I was just too young and infatuated with CJ Cregg to see it.
My rewatches have been basically okay as long as I either fastforward through any scene where Sam talks to/about women, or just assume everyone in the scene is as embarrassed by him as I am.
For me, any re-watching of any Sorkin property now is equal measures of enjoying certain parts of the show, and playing “I Spy” with Sorkin’s biases/grossness/idiosyncrasies.
I must admit, I both love and loathe him with Ainsley Hayes. I do a lot of rewatching while physically cringing or looking through my fingers.
Or else you can just mute it and look at Rob Lowe’s pretty, pretty face without all those pesky opinions.
Yeah, I feel like rewatching the West Wing as you get older is just realizing, with creeping horror, that, oh god, the patriarchy was calling from inside the house all along!
And I definitely still adore CJ, I just orient that feeling around a love of Allison Janney.
God though, I could rant for days about the indignities done to CJ by the West Wing’s writers. Like that episode where it turns out CJ doesn’t understand the census and Sam has sit down with her and explain it real slow? Guys, you needed like one sentence where someone says, ‘every ten years we count everybody to figure out representation and also we redistrict n’ shit.’ Instead you spend ten minutes of dialogue laying it out in terms a 9 year old could understand for a woman with like 27 years’ worth of education and one of the most elite high pressured jobs in the world? Arggh.
Okay, going to calm down now and be quiet and just mutter angrily at my desk for the rest of the day.
Yes, this is like how the (ludicrously-named) Mackenzie McHale has no idea how the economy works.
A woman who is supposed to be an expert on polling, no less! God, that episode.
I only watched West Wing for the first time last year! And I liked it despite Sorkin’s terrible terrible inability to write women or relationships.
I am watching the whole thing at the moment and I think he’s actually great at writing women when he just writes women – I totally believe in CJ and Abby and Donna, and it helps that they’re all awesome actors – but ohgod the cringiness of when he actually deliberately tries to write Women’s Issues.
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Sorkin, I shall fear no evil!
“The phallic malady is epidemic and systemic.
Each individual male in the patriarchy is aware of his relative power in the scheme of things…”
AMEN. Women with me, women before me, women behind me, women in me, women beneath me, women above me…
Aaron Sorkin only thinks its Acting if you’re pretending to be someone from The Past, and there just aren’t enough important women from Back Then to provide quality Acting opportunities now. How is that HIS fault??
In fairness, Sorkin is from The Past. Sorkin lives in The Past. What he remembers of it, after all the drugs, I mean.
What real woman could be as compelling as a Zuckerburg or even a single Winklevoss?
It would perhaps take 3, nay, even 4 women to match the compelling nature of a pair (dare I say, a brace?) of Winklevii.
Ugh, now I know why that movie made my skin crawl. I didn’t realize it was his. OF COURSE IT WAS.
“A Brace of Winklevii” is definitely the worst George RR Martin book.
Its tough to be A Man in this Society
Maybe Aaron Sorkin is showing us that our idealized version of Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter, was only a liberal fantasy that could never exist in the real world. Just like Jed Bartlett. Maybe Aaron Sorkin is a meta-commentary on the work of Aaron Sorkin.
Mind. BLOWN.
I’m from New Hampshire and thus have decided that the only president that came from NH is Jed Bartlett and that Franklin Pierce is the worst and didn’t exist.
I need this idea of Jed Bartlett. I’m not letting it go, even if he mispronounced Concord.
So Aaron Sorkin is Drunk Uncle from Weekend Update, basically. “All these kids care about, ‘is this WiFi organic?’ Teeeext me! Teeeeext me!”
“You wanna know what’s in my tumblr? …Regret.”
Man, I love that sketch!
Aaron Sorkin referring to Phillip Seymour Hoffman as “Phil Hoffman” is, in my heart, almost as amazing as Gwyneth Paltrow describing Billy Joel as “Katie Lee’s husband William.”
I’m not defending him, but I do remember that after Hoffman’s death, Sorkin gave an interview about how he and Hoffman did Narcotics Anonymous (or maybe Alcoholics Anonymous, I don’t remember) together and relayed a quote from Hoffman about how if one of them died of an overdose, one good thing that might come out of it is that it might prevent ten other people from doing the same.
Anyway, just saying they might have actually known each other.
Aww man, I grudgingly retract this specific mockery of Sorkin.
Don’t worry, you won’t run out of material that is fair game. 🙂
Enh, I dunno. They obviously knew each other, but using a nickname for a well-known celebrity when talking about them in a professional context and not to their face is still kind of dick-ish. You wouldn’t do it in real life: when I talk about my coworkers in a professional context I use their actual names, not whatever nickname or pet name I call them in a friend context.
“Phil Hoffman” isn’t exactly an outlandish nickname, though, is it? It’s just shortening it a bit.
Everything was better before, when there were more wars!
What if women were in charge of handing out the Oscars? I don’t think I’d give one to Maureen Dowd.
Well, at least he and I agree on that last point.
to be fair, acting is super-easy if you have a bad script. It’s good scripts that really make actors groan.
Hellen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys
Wow, I’m sure they are so grateful to you, Aaron Sorkin, for your allowance of this “playing with the boys” of which you speak. Jesus fucking Christ, this guy.
Helen Mirren plays with the boys. She unspools them like yo-yos, or flips them like pogs, and when she is done she casually tosses them aside and gets back to work.
Helen Mirren does not “play with the boys.” Helen Mirren brings it, and the boys are left floundering in her wake, desperately trying to remember what they were pretending to be doing before.
Helen Mirren plays with the boys. She bakes them by light bulb, in tiny ovens, and then devours them whole.
I mean, I’d be troubled too. They’ve been unfairly dominating the awards shows ever since that teleporter accident.
Splinched
What else Sorkin wants for Christmas: Kardashians and TMZ and their ilk to keep existing so he has things rail against righteously. What good is a soapbox if you can’t be morally superior from it?
Plus, okay, Jennifer Lawrence won for doing “what a professional actress is supposed to be able to do,” which is…a bad thing? Because when men succeed it’s because they’re brilliant artists and when women succeed it’s because they’re good at their jobs just like everybody else, what do you want, a cookie?
Doesn’t Daniel Day-Lewis pretty much always do what a professional Daniel Day-Lewis is supposed to do? He is what my partner calls A Monument To Himself.
As is Meryl Streep, actually. I guess that’s what Sorkin considers Grate Acting.
He was on the Today show this morning being an asshole and I was so enraged, without any outlet to funnel my rage, so this was just such a wonderful thing to read.
I legitimately love Sports Night, but every time I rewatch it I get about one episode into Season 2 and think, “Oh, fuck, the dating plan is about to start/come up.”
Legitimately the stupidest plot of any prime time show ever. Especially when Dan (the best character) rubs Dana’s nose in how moronic the plan was when Casey starts dating Pixley.
*shakes fist* SORKIN!!!!!!!
Is there no end on this earth to bloated overweening male egos bloviating away regarding the facts as they have dreamed them up…
I love how he thinks Phillip Seymour Hoffman portraying another person well is a “Transformation” but when Julia Roberts portrays another person well it’s just “being brassy.”
Didn’t the Oscar category get split from a general “Best Acting Person” one to the best actor/actress arrangement precisely because the Academy was afraid the likes of Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn would just sweep it every year, and the poor li’l mens would never ever win? Isn’t that a thing?
Written by Drunk Uncle?
Yeah, would you tell Lupito Noyongo to get off my Netflix list?! And Rosamund Pike, Tilda Swinton, Reese Witherspoon and oh please, Jennifer Lawrence! Who wants to watch Judy Dench or Helen Mirren? And Meryl Streep?! how did she get on the list, anyway?
Now I want another piece where all the living Best Actress winners show up outside Sorkin’s house one night
They don’t even have to do anything to him. They’ll just wait, their impassive stares serving as the raven’s “Nevermore,” and witness his descent into madness and self-destruction.
The Fall of the House of Sorkin.
OH MY GOD SAM IS THE LITERAL WORST. Josh is assy a lot and the Danny/CJ thing is…complicated, but sam is PURE AWFUL.
Every time an Important Man says shit like this, I return once again to my theory that the patriarchy is some sort of performance art piece. Because seriously, what? Why would you do that? Did you do it on purpose?
THERE’S A SAFEWAY ON 17TH?? praises be. whole foods is breaking my spirit and bank acct.
toastie meetup at the soviet safeway sometime?
YUUUUUP, I’m in!
“Julia Roberts won for being brassy in Erin Brockovich” while the same year Russell Crowe won for being brassy in GLADIATOR, granted is a lot more difficult to be brassy wearing a Roman skirt.
Ehhhh, but was his skirt longer than hers? I feel like we need to do research to make sure. Because obviously whichever actor had to do their brassy acting in a shorter skirt really earned it MORE.
“Presidents used to be taller. Presidents used to be a hundred feet tall and you could only vote with your heart. The president used to be a buffalo chasing an eagle that was reciting Keats from memory…”
Hilarious and spot-on.
That. Was. Amazing.
OK, so: 1. I feel everybody’s pain. 2. Loving the art and hating/being disgusted by the artist is an issue that’s been much discussed. See, e.g. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/picass… http://itscomplicatedproject.tumblr.com/, http://www.trionaguidry.com/blog/2013/07/discover… and most specifically http://www.bustle.com/articles/10371-how-to-handl….
Good art can come from some strange places, and to my mind it’s OK to like the art (which of necessity does mean supporting it in some way or other, if only by experiencing it) and not be thrilled with the artist. Wagner’s music – good; Wagner – ick. I guess each of us has to decide for herself where to draw the line. For me, Sorkin’s work is great (I probably rewatch “The American President” every year (Annette Bening -cute as a button!)), while the man himself is a big-headed jerk. I can live with that.
hi mom! please google “problematic faves” for the 21st century youth-culture version of this idea 🙂
also, yeah, it’s good, but how many jokes do we need about mac’s louboutins? how many times does she need to start screaming in a meeting? how many times do the women literally have to fall over?
I'm loving this DC-people thread so much. I also have extremely vivid memories of shopping at the Soviet Safeway on 17th and Corcoran when I first moved here and was living on a rich lady's broken sofa bed, because the grocery prices there gave me SO MUCH ANXIETY.
Now I live in Brookland and I shop at Aldi's and everything is delightful.
Forreal though let's form a secret Chipper Sweetgreen Guy fan club and hold meetings every month.