The two movies Aaron Sorkin called “masterpieces”
Playwright and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has been responsible for some of the finest movies of the last thirty years or so. Amongst his enviable writing credits include masterpieces such as A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson’s War and The Social Network, the latter of which earned Sorkin the Academy Award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’.
In a feature with the Academy Award website A-Frame, Sorkin once noted the five films that taught him how to write a movie, two of which he seems to hold in the highest of regard. The first is the 1969 western classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, directed by George Roy Hill, in which Paul Newman played the outlaw Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, and Robert Redford played his partner Harry ‘Sundance Kid’ Longabaugh.
Discussing the film and his amazement of its writer, William Goldman, Sorkin said, “Before Bill and I met, he was teaching me with his screenplay about two bank robbers who have to deal with the old west turning into the new west, for which he won his first Oscar. The structure is perfect.”
He continued, “And even though there are long sequences that are silent, what we remember is the dialogue. ‘The fall’ll probably kill you,’ ‘You think you used enough dynamite?,’ ‘The next time I say let’s go someplace like Bolivia, let’s go someplace like Bolivia.’ There have been many imitations, but only the original is a masterpiece and a masterclass on screenwriting.”
Hill’s film is not the only one on Sorkin’s list that he calls a “masterpiece”, though, as he also reserves the word for Mike Nichol’s 1967 film The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman as a 21-year-old recent college graduate who is captivated by the allure of an older married woman, Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft.
“I said I wouldn’t include The Graduate, but come on,” Sorkin said. “Buck Henry and Calder Willingham adapted the novel by Charles Webb (and Mike Nichols announced himself as a force to be reckoned with) and the result was an unforgettable movie that will be passed down by generations.”
He continued, “The dialogue is minimalist. I doubt any character has a line with more than ten words in it. It’s nice to get an assist from Simon and Garfunkel, but this screenplay is a masterpiece.” So there are two of the films that helped Sorkin become the writer he is today and are two – in his eyes – “masterpieces.”
