"Facebook: The Movie" by Aaron Sorkin

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"Facebook: The Movie" by Aaron Sorkin—Uh, what?

Written by Arya Ponto

Thursday, 28 August 2008

There is a Facebook movie in the works.

I don't know why it caught me as off-guard as it did. Surely this isn't that surprising, given the growing popularity, functionality and importance of these social networking sites to 21st century relationships. After all, we've already had a MySpace online movie and a Craigslist documentary. This is different, though, because the man behind it is The West Wing creator (and my personal messiah) Aaron Sorkin.

The announcement came from Sorkin himself, posted on a Facebook page that, ironically, he created to learn more about the site.

Welcome. I'm Aaron Sorkin. I understand there are a few other people using Facebook pages under my name--which I find more flattering than creepy--but this is me. I don't know how I can prove that but feel free to test me.

I've just agreed to write a movie for Sony and producer Scott Rudin about how Facebook was invented. I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she's been dead for 33 years.)

Some of you might be familiar with some things I've written. I'm the author of two Broadway plays--A Few Good Men and The Farnsworth Invention, five feature films--A Few Good Men, The American President, Malice, Charlie Wilson's War and The Trial of the Chicago 7 which is in pre-production, and three television series--Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and the first four seasons of The West Wing.

I honestly don't know how this works, which is why I'm here. If anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them as best I can. If anyone has any comments I'm glad to listen. And if anyone has any Facebook stories I think they might be helpful.

That's all. I'll try to get better at this as I get more practice.

Aaron

* I feel about this introduction the way I felt about Sophie's Choice--It could have been funnier.

On the Facebook group's page, people have been asking questions regarding Mr. Sorkin's body of work as well as this movie, but some are also sharing their Facebook stories and experiences as per his request. Sorkin has been graciously repling to almost every post and the group is turning out to be an interesting dialogue. If you haven't yet, come and join the action.

Sorkin says that he's still unsure as to how he will approach the screenplay. Will it just be a biopic of Mark Zuckerberg? An examination of how Facebook changed our generation's iea of socializing? Will it include the controversy that accused Zuckerberg of stealing his ideas from others? Seeing how Zuckerberg is being called as the next Bill Gates, maybe an Anti-Trust style smear-thriller won't be out of the question (I kid, this is Sorkin, after all). This should be an interesting project to follow.

Meanwhile, those of you who didn't tune in to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip while it was airing and contributed to its cancellation, pry yourself off that Zombie-Ninja app and stop trying to find out which Marvel character you are for just a day, and use the time to buy the DVD. Someone better make amends for robbing me of that show.