That's News to Him: Aaron Sorkin on 'The Newsroom' and His Steve Jobs Screenplay LOS ANGELES - When we last left Aaron Sorkin, he was discussing the creation of his coming HBO series, "The Newsroom." In these final excerpts from that conversation, in his office at the studio here, Mr. Sorkin (who is the subject of an article this week) talks about balancing the writing of the new show with film projects like "The Social Network," as well as future assignments like a musical about Houdini (written with Stephen Schwartz, the composer of "Wicked" and "Pippin") and a screenplay about Steve Jobs, adapted from Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography about that Apple co-founder. You've gotten in trouble in the past when you have pushed yourself too hard in your work, and you even walked away from "The West Wing" before its run ended. Do you worry about getting burned out on "The Newsroom"? When I say I live here, I'm not kidding around. There are plenty of nights that I sleep there [indicates couch]. Whether it's this show or a movie or a play, I'm really just an on-off switch. If writing is going well, I'm happy. If writing isn't going well, there is nothing that is going to make me happy. Except my 11-year-old daughter, who always makes me happy. The burning-out that I worry about is not writing well anymore. Just getting squishy, get boring, getting ponderous. As a writer in Hollywood, there's a well-worn myth that your enemy is the network or the studio or the producer or the director, that it's a "Barton Fink" experience. I haven't had the "Barton Fink" experience. A writer's enemy is fatigue. When you're tired, when you're burnt out, you're just not very interesting. And that's what you have to fight against. In the time that you were writing "The Social Network" and the pilot script for "The Newsroom," where did you find time to also work on "Moneyball"? "Moneyball" was very much an unexpected pregnancy. I had just turned in the screenplay for "The Social Network," and Sony was very excited. And after lunch, I went home instead of going to my office and I walked in the door and the phone was ringing, and it was Amy Pascal, the chairwoman of Sony, saying, "Please, will you come in on "Moneyball," just for three weeks." That three weeks turned into a year and a half. So I was writing "Moneyball" in Boston while we were shooting "The Social Network," and then for a little while after. But couldn't start this until I was done with "Moneyball." Are you watching enough current episodic TV these days that you still know how to write for that format? Right before you walked in here, I was frightening myself thinking that I don't. There are two shows that I'm evangelical about, and it's "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation." But for instance, I haven't seen a lot of what's on HBO right now. And so I don't know if what I'm writing has anything to do with what else is on TV. Maybe it's better that I don't. I'm very easily influenced by other things. If I'm in the middle of writing a movie, I won't go to the movies that much because I'll think, [sigh] That's what I'm supposed to be doing. That looks good. I'm about to write our season finale. And I don't know what the expectation is for season finales. Are you supposed to write a cliffhanger? Are you not supposed to write a cliffhanger? Is that a cliché? So the answer to your question is no. What other shows have you been watching? The shows that everybody's talking about, "The Good Wife," "Homeland," I've seen and loved "Modern Family," my daughter turned me on to that. I think that they're great and that there's 2 percent of me that's saying, Damn, I'm not doing that. I'm doing something else. And there's not a single thing about it that's hip. In fact, I just had a discussion with our music supervisor. There's a karaoke bar where the young staffers go after work because they have very cheap food and very cheap stuff to drink. And the songs that people were singing in this karaoke bar were too cool. They're too current. This show's taste in music has got to be as bad as my taste in music, which stopped maturing when I graduated from high school. So I gave him a list of "Uptown Girl," "Sugar Sugar," that's what I want to hear in this place. You've got to give me a break with the Radiohead. Will we see more of the classic Sorkin walk-and-talk as "The Newsroom" unfolds? If anyone is a huge fan of the walk-and-talk, they're going to be a little disappointed in this show. There's less pedi-conferencing on this show than there was on "The West Wing." And I'm liking that. I'm enjoying people standing still and talking a little bit more. But there was a little bit of it in the pilot. It's like when you pay to see Paul McCartney in concert - You want to hear "Yesterday," absolutely. We just reshot a scene - we felt like we're not getting enough of New York in the show, so we took a scene that had been seated in the executive dining room and shot it again, walking down the streets of New York. So that has become a walk-and-talk. Mr. Sorkin answered these additional questions by email, after it was announced that he would write a screenplay adapted from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. Besides the obvious impact that Steve Jobs had on the modern era, is there anything that drew you to him as a dramatic subject? I suppose a lot of people will make the comparison to "The Social Network," but are there thematic parallels as well? At the moment I'm at roughly the same place I was when I decided to write "The Social Network" - which is to say I don't know what the movie's about yet. I know it won't be a biography as it's very hard to shake the cradle-to-grave structure of a biopic. I know that Jobs was a very complicated and dynamic genius who fought a number of dramatic battles. I know that like Edison, Marconi (and Philo Farnsworth), he invented something we love. I think that has a lot to do with our love affair with him. We're told every day that America's future is basically in service but our history is in building things - railroads and cars and cities - but Steve Jobs, in building something that's taking us to our future, has also taken us to one of the best parts of our past. Now all I have to do is turn that into three acts with an intention, obstacle, exposition, inciting action, reversal, climax and denouement and make it funny and emotional and I'll be in business. In addition to your work on the Houdini musical and, potentially, further seasons of "The Newsroom," how will you find time for all of these assignments? How do you decide what takes priority? The priority is what's right in front of me. The writing and the shooting of the first season of "The Newsroom" is done and what's left is post-production. Work on Houdini has been underway for a while, with Stephen Schwartz and I meeting regularly - either in New York or L.A. - to map out the show we're doing (also not a biography), move index cards around a board, listen to first drafts of songs and read first drafts of scenes. That work will get more intense as we head for a June 25 stumble-through with Hugh [Jackman]. While that's happening I'll be writing a lot about Jobs and begin my tutoring with Steve Wozniak, who the studio has enlisted as my professor. In the meantime I'll keep my eye on the [John] Edwards trial in North Carolina so I can be ready to start on that movie (not a biopic either) and I'm very eager to go back to work on a new play about the trial of the Chicago 7 (helpfully titled "The Trial of the Chicago 7″). The National Theater in London is doing a workshop production of "The Farnsworth Invention" with an eye toward moving it to the West End. I'm not good enough to be able to give anything of these things less than my full intention and expect them to have a chance at being good so the answer is that 100 percent of my attention goes to whatever's right in front of me.