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Tag: Aaron Sorkin

  • Bartlett Sher On Theater as a Catalyst for Change

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    The Metropolitan Opera’s season opener brought Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-winning novel to the stage with an ambitious new adaptation exploring art, politics and survival. Photo: Evan Zimmerman

    In September, the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Based on the novel by Michael Chabon, with music by Mason Bates, production by Bartlett Sher and libretto by Gene Scheer. Weeks before the opening, Observer visited an early tech rehearsal to observe Bartlett Sher in his element.

    “Noise! Make noise!” Sher hollered at the stage as the cast of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay rehearsed a complex party scene with a huge cast of characters. Unusually for a long tech rehearsal, the energy on stage buzzed between run-throughs. Performers bounced from foot to foot, stretched and practiced stage fighting and falls. They waited for the show’s impressive but temperamental new “irising” system—a curtaining technology that opens and closes around a square “eye”—to figure itself out.

    Leaving his lunch uneaten at the director’s stand, Bartlett Sher was constantly in motion. He moved around the stage like a party host, wisecracking, laughing and answering questions. Chatting with Edward Nelson, who plays the opera’s Tracy Bacon, they practiced a balancing move, each showing a different way to hold his body.

    A portrait of a man with gray hair and glasses wearing a black turtleneck and jacket, looking directly at the camera against a plain background.A portrait of a man with gray hair and glasses wearing a black turtleneck and jacket, looking directly at the camera against a plain background.
    Bartlett Sher. Courtesy Bartlett Sher

    A native Californian who speaks with a slight uptalk—his voice rising at the ends of sentences like an invitation—Sher’s conversational mode comes across as a desire to connect with whoever he’s talking to. Describing himself as an “interpretive artist,” Sher told Observer that he sees his talent as being “good at marshalling, pulling together many points of view.” His approach to direction is exploratory rather than single-minded. “I’m leading the exploration, I’m guiding us, I’m helping make choices that bring out the best in everybody’s work—rather than thinking of my vision being fulfilled.”

    This penchant for weaving together diverse threads seems suited to bringing to the Met’s stage a story as soaringly epic as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon’s novel follows two Jewish cousins—a Czech artist and magician, Joe Kavalier and a Brooklyn-born writer, Sam Clay. Joe escapes Nazi-occupied Prague and arrives in Brooklyn a refugee after being torn away from his beloved younger brother (transformed into a sister, Sarah, in the opera). Together the cousins create The Escapist, a comic book about a superhero who fights fascism through Houdini-esque escape tricks. The book is loosely based on the life of Jack Kirby, the creator of Captain America. It covers a wide range of political themes that remain pertinent to our own times, including fascism, homophobia and antisemitism.

    The opera, he said, compresses Chabon’s story into the lives of its principal characters and their relationships, all set against the backdrop of World War II and the Holocaust. Incorporated into the work is the theme of art’s place during times of historical turmoil.

    A stage scene from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay shows two men at a drafting table examining a drawing, with a large illuminated comic-style projection of a superhero figure behind them.A stage scene from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay shows two men at a drafting table examining a drawing, with a large illuminated comic-style projection of a superhero figure behind them.
    Comic book imagery and cinematic set design merge onstage, reflecting the story’s fascination with escape, imagination and transformation. Photo: Evan Zimmerman

    “Layered in with essentially Chabon’s own obsession with how much art can help you make sense of or change life,” Sher explained. “Joe Kavalier goes to comic books as a way of handling his pain and maybe transforming his pain. Whether that works or not is a fascinating question. Whether art can actually help you with these things or not becomes a major obsession of the book.”

    The place of art in the political and the political in art has been woven throughout Sher’s career as a director. He’s often sought out politically charged material—from directing a dramatization of Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 book Nickeled and Dimed, about the inability to survive on minimum-wage work in America, to politically sensitive revivals of South Pacific, The King and I and My Fair Lady, to Aaron Sorkin’s 2018 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

    “I think theatre is a catalyst for change,” Sher said. “I don’t think you make theatre pieces to tell people how to change. We tell stories that express people’s ability to handle ambiguity, deal with problems, see conflicts and make decisions.”

    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay approaches politics in a gently coaxing manner. Gene Scheer’s libretto tells a simple story about a handful of relationships in wartime New York and Europe. The epic breadth of Chabon’s novel is conveyed visually. Its density and richness are mirrored in the opera’s textured and complex set design. Layered screens iris in and out, with designs from 59 Studio projected onto them. Towering above the audience are images of midcentury New York in its gloomy noir glory. We see comic book superheroes gleaming in primary colors or animated as elegantly looping works in progress. Haunting the background like a nightmare are greyscale sketches of Nazi death camps, reminiscent of Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

    As a director, Sher uses the entire stage—with all its dimensions and angles—in a cinematic approach to theatre. The vast cast of characters appears on stage with fair frequency, in large groups at parties, battles and crowd scenes. A superhero even flies on a wire. But it’s all conveyed with a subdued elegance, never demanding, always inviting. Sher’s contribution in Kavalier and Clay is conversational: the production’s emotional texture is pliable. He doesn’t tell you how to feel or think.

    Sher’s ever-shifting, multi-perspectival approach feels ideal for our own overwhelming, anxious and information-dense moment. It dances away from ideological definition. “The themes of a kind of creeping fascism and the struggles against art, against the political mind, against who we’ve become, are really critical right now but also very elusive and very hard to figure out how to express themselves.”

    On opening night at the Met, the political charge of our new normal seeped into the opera house. Peter Gelb and Senator Chuck Schumer made speeches on the importance of freedom of expression—the former to cheers, the latter to boos and heckles from frustrated constituents. Even in this historic environment, operating at a political remove now seems impossible.

    “I try to believe that great stories come when you need them most,” Sher concluded. “And it feels to me like we’re lucky that Kavalier and Clay is coming around for us at this time.”

    More in performing arts

    Bartlett Sher On Theater as a Catalyst for Change

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    Annie Levin

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  • Jesse Eisenberg Says He Didn’t Return for ‘Social Network’ Sequel “for Reasons That Have Nothing to Do With” the Movie

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    Jesse Eisenberg is leaving his turn as Mark Zuckerberg in the past.

    Eisenberg, who played the Facebook CEO in the David Fincher-directed film The Social Network, surprised fans when it was reported in June that a sequel was in the works, but Eisenberg wasn’t coming back to play its lead.

    During a Thursday appearance on the Today show, the Now You See Me: Now You Don’t star was asked why he wouldn’t return for the second film, The Social Reckoning. “Listen, for reasons that have nothing to do with how amazing that movie will be, really, truthfully,” Eisenberg said. “But when you play a character, you feel, at some point, you’ve grown into something else.”

    When asked if he’s outgrown the character, the actor responded, “Yeah, something. But it’s a really wonderful movie. I’m friends with Aaron Sorkin who wrote and is directing this movie, and all of the reasons that I am not in it are completely unrelated to how brilliant it will be.”

    The 2010 film scored eight Oscar nominations and won three, including adapted screenplay for Sorkin. The film grossed $226 million globally. Its cast included Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield’s Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker and Armie Hammer as the Winklevoss twins.

    In the upcoming sequel — which has Aaron Sorkin, writer of the first film, directing and writing for Sony — Jeremy Strong will play Zuckerberg. “It’s one of the great scripts I’ve ever read. It speaks to our time, it touches the third rail of everything happening in our world,” Strong told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month. “It’s a great character — fascinating, complex — and I’m approaching it with great care and empathy and objectivity.”

    The Succession actor also noted that he hasn’t spoken to Eisenberg about taking over his role. “I think that has nothing to do with what I’m going to do,” Strong told THR.

    In addition to Strong, Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Bill Burr are among its cast. The film takes place 17 years after the original ended. It follows a young Facebook engineer, Frances Haugen (Madison), and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (White), who work together to spotlight the secrets of the social network.

    The Social Reckoning will release in theaters over Columbus Day weekend next year.

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    Lexi Carson

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  • Poker’s NBA-and-Mafia betting scandal echoes movie games, and cheats, from ‘Ocean’s’ to ‘Rounders’

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The stakes. The famous faces. The posh private rooms. The clever cheating schemes.

    The federal indictment of a big-money poker ring involving NBA figures on Thursday, in which unsuspecting rich players were allegedly enticed to join then cheated of their money, echoed decades of movies and television, and not just because of the alleged Mafia involvement.

    Fictional and actual poker have long been in sort of a pop-cultural feedback loop. When authorities described the supposed circumstances of the games, they might’ve evoked a run of screen moments from recent decades.

    Poker in ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ ‘Molly’s Game’ and ‘The Sopranos’

    A 2004 episode of “ The Sopranos ” showed a very similar mix of celebrities and mobsters in a New York game whose players included Van Halen singer David Lee Roth and football Hall-of-Famer Lawrence Taylor, both playing themselves.

    In 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven,” George Clooney finds his old heist buddy Brad Pitt running a poker game for “Teen Beat” cover boys including Topher Grace and Joshua Jackson, also playing themselves. Clooney spontaneously teams with Pitt to con them. And the plot of the 2007 sequel “Ocean’s Thirteen” centers on the high-tech rigging of casino games.

    Asked about the relevance of the films to the NBA scandal, which came soon after a story out of Paris that could’ve come straight out of “Ocean’s Twelve,” Clooney told The Associated Press with a laugh that “we get blamed for everything now.”

    “‘Cause we also got compared to the Louvre heist. Which, I think, you gotta CGI me into that basket coming out of the Louvre,” Clooney said Thursday night at the Los Angeles premiere of his new film, “Jay Kelly.” He was referring to thieves using a basket lift to steal priceless Napoleonic jewels from the museum.

    2017’s “Molly’s Game,” and the real-life memoir from Molly Bloom that it was based on, could almost serve as manuals for how to build a poker game’s allure for desirable “fish” in the same ways and with the same terminology that the organizers indicted Thursday allegedly used.

    The draw of Bloom’s games at hip Los Angeles club The Viper Room were not NBA players, but Hollywood players like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and “The Hangover” director Todd Phillips. (None of them were accused of any wrongdoing.)

    In the movie written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Bloom, played by Jessica Chastain, describes the way a famous actor acts as an attractor for other players, the same way officials said Thursday that NBA “face cards” did for the newly indicted organizers.

    The unnamed actor, played by Michael Cera, was at least partly based on the “Spider-Man” star Maguire.

    “People wanted to say they played with him,” Chastain says. “The same way they wanted to say they rode on Air Force One. My job security was gonna depend on bringing him his fish.”

    In her book, Bloom described the allure for the players she drew.

    “The formula of keeping pros out, inviting in celebrities and other interesting and important people, and even the mystique of playing in the private room of the Viper Room added up to one of the most coveted invitations in town,” she writes, later adding that “I just needed to continue feeding it new, rich blood; and to be strategic about how to fill those ten precious seats.”

    Bloom would get caught up in a broad 2013 nationwide crackdown on high-stakes private poker games, probably the highest profile poker bust in years before this week. She got a year’s probation, a $1,000 fine, and community service.

    There were no accusations of rigging at her game, but that didn’t make it legal.

    The legality of private-space poker games has been disputed for decades and widely varies among U.S. states. But in general, they tend to bring attention and prosecution when the host is profiting the way that a casino would.

    A brief history of movies making poker cool

    Poker — and cheating at it — has run through movies, especially Westerns, from their silent beginnings.

    Prominent poker scenes feature in 1944’s “Tall in the Saddle” with John Wayne and 1950’s “The Gunfighter” with Gregory Peck.

    “The Cincinnati Kid” in 1965 was dedicated entirely to poker — with Steve McQueen bringing his unmatched cool to the title character.

    A pair of movies co-starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman really raised the game’s profile, though.

    In the opening scene of 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ a hyper-cool Redford is playing poker and refuses to leave until another player takes back a cheating accusation.

    In 1973’s Best Picture Oscar winner “The Sting,” 1930s con-men Newman and Redford seek revenge against a big fish and run a series of increasingly bold gambling scams that could’ve come from Thursday’s indictments. Newman out-cheats the man at poker to set him up for the big con, a phony radio horse race.

    The 1980s saw a dip in screen poker, with the subject largely relegated to the TV “Gambler” movies, starring Kenny Rogers, based on his hit song.

    But the end of the decade brought a poker boomlet from the increased legalization of commercial games.

    Then, at possibly the perfect moment, came “Rounders.” The 1998 Matt Damon film did for Texas Hold ’em what “Sideways” did for pinot noir and “Pitch Perfect” did for a cappella: it took an old and popular phenomenon and made them widespread crazes.

    Soon after came explosive growth in online poker, whose players often sought out big face-to-face games. And the development of cameras that showed players’ cards — very similar to the tech allegedly used to cheat players, according to the new indictments — made poker a TV spectator sport.

    The “Ocean’s” films and the general mystique they brought piled on too.

    Clooney, talking about the broader set of busts Thursday that included alleged gambling on basketball itself, pointed out that his Cincinnati Reds were the beneficiaries of sport’s most infamous gambling scandal, the 1919 “Black Sox” and the fixing of the World Series, “so I have great guilt for that.”

    “But you know there — we’ve never had a moment in our history that we didn’t have some dumb scandal or something crazy,” he said. “I feel very bad for the gambling scandal ’cause this was on the night that, you know, we had some amazing basketball happen.”

    —-

    Associated Press writer Leslie Ambriz contributed to this report.

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  • The Social Network Follow Up Is App-ening

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    Yeah, brother.
    Photo: Merrick Morton/Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection

    It’s hard to quantify the success of The Social Network. It made $224 million at the box office against a $40 million budget; it was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three; it recently placed at No. 10 on both the New York Times’ industry poll and readers poll for the best movies of the 21st century. So … let’s make another one, right? That always goes well. The Social Network’s “follow-up” is in development at Sony with Aaron Sorkin returning to direct in addition to writing the script. Below, everything we know about the sequel that’s not exactly a sequel, including the latest cast members.

    The movie, which is not a direct sequel to the original film, is titled The Social Reckoning, per Variety.

    The film will be based on 2021 Wall Street Journal reports “The Facebook Files,” by Horwitz. Based on leaked internal documents from Facebook, the reports claim Facebook allowed celebrities and public figures (like Donald Trump) to post content that regular users (like activists) would not be allowed to post, then did not tell its Oversight Committee. They also allege that Facebook’s response to human and drug trafficking on the site was “weak” and that Facebook knew that Instagram is “toxic” for teen girls but downplayed the negative effects publicly. The documents that the reporting was based on were gathered and disclosed by Haugen, a product manager on Facebook’s civic integrity team.

    Jesse Eisenberg is not attached to return as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, Succession star Jeremy Strong is taking over the part, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Hard to imagine J. Strong in a curly wig, but based on the similar cringe-o-meter ratings between “L to the OG,” from Succession, and Zuckerberg serenading his wife with “Get Low,” the casting isn’t out of nowhere. Despite his role as Zuck, Strong will not be the lead of the film. That honor will be shared between Anora’s Oscar winner Mikey Madison, who will play Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and The Bear star Jeremy Allen White, who will play the journalist who wrote Haugen’s secrets up, Jeff Horwitz. They’ll all be joined by comedian Bill Burr in an unknown role. Maybe himself?

    Additional cast members include Sinners star Wunmi Mosaku as well as the recently announced Billy Magnussen, former Mary Lincoln Betty Gilpin, Gbenga Akinnagbe, and Anna Lambe of True Detective: North Country.

    The Social Reckoning will be released in a little over a year, on October 9, 2026. Get zucking ready.

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    Jason P. Frank

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  • The Social Network 2 is coming next fall and stars Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg

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    The long-awaited sequel to The Social Network will hit theaters next fall, according to a report by Deadline. The official release date is set for October 9, 2026, which is just about 16 years after the first film dropped.

    We also have plenty of other information, including the full cast and the actual name of the movie. The official name is The Social Reckoning, which makes sense as the movie follows recent events in which Facebook got into legal and political trouble when a whistleblower alleged that the company knew the platform was harming society but did nothing about it.

    The cast is being led by Jeremy Strong from Succession, who takes over Zuckerberg duties from actor Jesse Eisenberg. Mikey Madison is playing the aforementioned whistle blower Frances Haugen and The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White portrays Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horowitz.

    Bill Burr is also appearing in this flick, though we don’t know in what capacity. The Hollywood Reporter has suggested he will play a fictional character invented for the film that will be an amalgamation of several people. Aaron Sorkin is both writing and directing this one. He wrote the first movie, but David Fincher directed it.

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    Lawrence Bonk

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  • ‘The Social Network Part II’: Bill Burr in Talks to Join Jeremy Allen White, Mikey Madison (Exclusive)

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    Comedian Bill Burr is in talks to join the bold-faced cast of Aaron Sorkin and Sony Pictures’ The Social Network Part II.

    Sorkin, who won an Academy Award for penning the 2010 original movie, wrote the script and will direct the Sony drama that is inspired by a series of articles Jeff Horwitz wrote for The Wall Street Journal known as “The Facebook Files.”

    Sorkin has been assembling a riotous list of next generation talent, with the call sheet so far including Jeremy Allen White, Mikey Madison and Jeremy Strong, who are in the process of wrapping up their deals.

    While the acclaimed 2010 drama focused on the making of Facebook, now known as Meta, the story of the new feature will focus on how the company’s own reporting pointed to the negative effects the its social media was having on teens and kids, how it knew misinformation was proliferating and causing violence and how it contributed to the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.

    White, Madison and Strong are playing real-life personages: White will play Wall Street Journal reporter Horwitz, Madison will portray Frances Haugen, the data engineer turned whistleblower, and Strong is said to be playing CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

    Burr, however, is said to be playing a character that is fictional or an amalgamation, according to sources.

    Production is due to start later this year in Vancouver. Todd Black, Peter Rice, Sorkin and Stuart Besser are producing.

    Burr has been nominated for Emmy and Grammy Awards for his stand-up comedy work and specials as well as a leading podcaster. While he has popped up in movies and TV shows such as The King of Staten Island, Breaking Bad and The Mandalorian, he made his directorial debut and starred in a lead role with Old Dads, a 2023 comedy that premiered as the most watched film worldwide on Netflix in its first and second week on the platform with 29.6 million views in the first 10 days. 

    Burr earned strong reviews for his Broadway debut earlier this year, starring alongside Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk in Glengarry Glen Ross. And he has lined up his next directorial effort, Born Losers, which he co-wrote and will produce and star in.

    Burr is repped by WME, 3 Arts Entertainment and Schreck Rose.

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    Borys Kit

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  • Rob Lowe Compares His Stint on ‘The West Wing’ to an Abusive Relationship

    Rob Lowe Compares His Stint on ‘The West Wing’ to an Abusive Relationship

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    Walking away from The West Wing at the height of its success was “the best thing” Rob Lowe ever did, the actor has often declared in the years since his 2002 exit. He left the hit NBC drama before the end of season four, saying in a statement at the time that “it has been increasingly clear, for quite a while, that there was no longer a place for Sam Seaborn,” the White House deputy communications director he played, “on The West Wing.”

    Lowe has become increasingly candid about his departure since, even comparing the experience to an “abusive” relationship on a recent episode of Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast. “I could see them having first girlfriends or friends and being in a relationship that was abusive and taking it,” he said of his sons. “‘She’s the popular girl, everybody likes her, she’s beautiful, it must be great’—all the things that people would say about making The West Wing to me. ‘It’s so popular, it’s so amazing, it must be amazing.’ But I know what it’s like, and if I couldn’t walk away from it, then how could I empower my kids to walk away from it?”

    He added, “I walked away from the most popular girl at school, but I also knew that it was a super unhealthy relationship, and it was the best thing I ever did.”

    Lowe has addressed why he parted ways with the Emmy-winning show on numerous occasions. In his 2012 memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Lowe recalls meeting with series creator Aaron Sorkin to air grievances about his pay and storylines. “I tell him: ‘I know that Sam Seaborn is the part of a lifetime. I love this part unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. But I think it’s bullshit that I’m the only actor on the show who hasn’t been given even a penny raise,” he writes. Lowe says he went on to suggest that if more money was not possible, meatier material might be. “But I want to stay if we can grow this part creatively. If there is no financial future, let’s make a creative future,’” he writes, adding, “When our meeting ends without any plan, I know it is time to move on.” An official statement from John Wells Productions and Warner Brothers Television at the time said Lowe’s leave was done “amicably.”

    In 2015, Lowe told GQ: “I never had any issues with Aaron. To his credit, Aaron writes what he wants to write, and he’s not telling anybody, ‘I’m going to guarantee you two great [storylines].’ And I loved The West Wing. But man, it was grueling.” He went on to note that the show was filmed near the Friends stage: “We would roll in at, like, 6 in the morning, and the ‘friends’ would come in, in their Ferraris and Lamborghinis, like, at 11:30 a.m., and by midnight they would have shot their show. They’d be gone and we’d be there until 6 in the morning. The sun would rise. That would never happen in TV today. Never. They’d never pay for the overtime. It was a moment in time, both in terms of the economics of the business and how successful the show was.”

    Lowe told Empire in 2014 that he has “even less regret now” about leaving when he did because Sorkin would depart the series not long after his own exit. “The universe works in mysterious ways and for me it worked out perfectly. With all respect to everybody else, Aaron is and was The West Wing, full stop,” Lowe told the outlet. “There’s no West Wing without him.”

    Alas, the idealistic political drama would air for another three seasons without Sorkin’s involvement. Lowe went on to reprise his role for two episodes during The West Wing’s final season in 2006 and once again for 2020’s HBO reunion special to benefit “When We All Vote.”

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    Savannah Walsh

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  • “Camelot”: King Arthur, in myth and music

    “Camelot”: King Arthur, in myth and music

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    “Camelot”: King Arthur, in myth and music – CBS News


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    Nominated for five Tony Awards including best musical revival, Lerner & Loewe’s “Camelot” is a romantic telling of King Arthur, Queen Guenevere and the Knights of the Round Table. But did Arthur really exist? Correspondent Mo Rocca talks with professor Dorsey Armstrong about the history and legend of the British king; and with writer Aaron Sorkin and Michael Lerner (son of lyricist Alan Jay Lerner) about how the 1960 musical became a legend itself, when the tale of an enchanted kingdom was viewed through the prism of a contemporary Camelot, the Kennedy administration.

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