Aaron Sorkin’s next act: To Kill A Mockingbird turns page on his career

Aaron Sorkin is returning to Broadway with To Kill A Mockingbird, which adds to the award-winning writer’s legacy. Find out why in the latest Deeper Cut.

When To Kill A Mockingbird officially opens on Broadway tomorrow night, it will be another line on Aaron Sorkin’s already lengthy resume. It will also be another reminder that he’s one of the best, if not the best, writers of our generation.

The stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s 1960 novel was certainly no easy task; the source material is still one of the most well-known books in American history. And times have changed immensely since; society now looks at Atticus Finch and his legendary court case differently than it did when racism and prejudice were part of the cultural institution.

On top of that, Sorkin has taken the project on with his usual ability to think just a little bit left of center—instead of casting children to play the young characters, he’s enlisted adults in the roles, who are veterans of the Broadway stage. It’s a bold move, questionable to some, but it will make this version undeniably different.

And that’s been the hallmark of Aaron Sorkin’s career: to be undeniably different.

It’s fitting that Sorkin is headed back to theater, because that’s where his career started. He was a playwright first, then a television screenwriter, then a big name on the big screen. And now, after traversing almost every incarnation of the written word, he’s back where he began. Back where it will be easiest to understand why so many people have been captivated by his words.

First and foremost, he is an incredible writer. It’s not just that he’s good at his craft; there is no one else on the planet who can write like Aaron Sorkin does. The way he handles words like notes in a symphony that only he can hear, the cultural literacy he sneaks into every other line, it’s a way of creating that stands completely on its own.

But the other aspect about him that is different, and equally important, is the way that he thinks. Sorkin isn’t afraid to take on a project that may be a challenge, like adapting To Kill A Mockingbird more than a half-century later in a very different social climate. He’s not afraid to ask for more, as so many of his film and TV characters have done, pushing for better and believing in greater. Like this speech he wrote 16 years ago:

He’s made his career on defying expectations in every format. Sorkin’s breakthrough work was A Few Good Men, the play that challenged the military institution and the way theatergoers heard dialogue. It was his third play but the one that changed his career forever; there were almost 500 performances on Broadway before it became an Academy Award-nominated film in 1992.

Three years later, Sorkin penned the romantic comedy-drama The American President, which earned five Golden Globe Award nominations including Best Screenplay and Best Comedy. The American Film Institute later named it one of America’s Greatest Love Stories. While one was a legal drama and the other a relationship story, both were about pushing back against what was expected and discovering someone’s personal truth.

While his screen projects were critically acclaimed, where Aaron Sorkin truly came into his own was in the work he did for television. Audiences looking at his history often forget about Sports Night, his first TV series created while he was still finishing the screenplay for The American President.

Sports Night was the series that changed the rules for sitcoms, proving once and for all that a laugh track is a useless concept. It was the first show since MASH that told us TV comedy could not, should not be looked at within a formulaic box scored by canned laughter. But beyond that, it was also something Aaron Sorkin has proven to be brilliant at: personal explorations of humanity by going inside their professional worlds.

The very first episode of Sports Night involves Casey McCall (Peter Krause way before 9-1-1) and his colleague Dan Rydell (future The Good Wife star Josh Charles) getting into a fight because, as a sports anchor, Casey believes he’s giving a platform to the bad behavior of athletes. That episode aired 20 years ago and that’s still an argument worth having, because the issue still exists.

Casey isn’t wrong for wanting his son Charlie to have good role models, and for being concerned as he reports about athletes getting arrested and ending up in bar fights. Dan isn’t wrong either when he says quitting isn’t going to solve anything. Neither is the show, which winds up ending the discussion for them when a South African distance runner sets a world record and reminds them that there are also heroes in sports, too.

Sports Night was Aaron Sorkin’s platform to explore a number of complex topics, from that to workplace assault (“Mary Pat Shelby”) to racism (“The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee”) and more. He asked tough questions, explored both highs and lows, and was able to more fully realize those arguments and his characters because he was writing them on a weekly basis. To this day, Sports Night is still one of the best shows that’s never gotten its due.

While that series couched its thoughtful discussions within the sports world, Sorkin went fully into the breach with his other two, more well-known series: The West Wing and The Newsroom. Their settings in the White House and in cable news made it clear exactly what type of shows they were going to be. He took these two often insular institutions, of politics and the media, and showed us what was inside them—whether people liked it or not.

Both series presented an idealized view of their respective forums. The former went on to win a ton of awards and be hailed as one of TV’s great dramas, while the latter did pick up some trophies but was also equally scorned by the media. It’s fascinating to look at the difference in reception, because they were trying to say the same thing.

The West Wing focused on a White House full of staffers that were trying to do the right thing for the country and again, pushing back against the existing institution. The Newsroom had a staff of media members who were trying to do the right thing on the air every night, in the face of media pitfalls and the big business that signed their paychecks. Both demanded more of their respective lines of work. Both aspired to more. Sorkin was constantly asking the question, why not? Why not try to be more than we are?

His only misstep in TV was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which didn’t have the same intellectual engine as his other three series and thus, never quite came together. In 2007, after that series had gotten the axe, he turned his attention back to the big screen. More Aaron Sorkin movies followed delving into more complicated personalities.

Sorkin has penned five movies over the last decade: Charlie Wilson’s War, Moneyball, The Social Network, Steve Jobs, and Molly’s Game. All of them had one primary aspect in common: they were all biopics, centered around one person who has broken the rules (usually metaphorically but also possibly literally). These characters weren’t working within the institution like Josh Lyman or Casey McCall; these were Sorkin’s anarchists.

The second chapter of Aaron Sorkin’s film career was this exploration of a sort of bold anarchy. His protagonists, as written on the page, did what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted and most times weren’t ashamed of it. Sometimes they faced consequences, like Molly Bloom in Molly’s Game when she was finally arrested by the FBI. Others weren’t so black and white; Sorkin showed a very thorny man in Steve Jobs, but Jobs is still hailed as a technological visionary.

It was a surprising shift in the writer’s modus operandi: to go from telling stories about fictional heroes working within the system to better it, to writing pieces about actual people who had built their careers and oftentimes their lives by rebellion. What prompted it? Fans may never know, but it was still Aaron Sorkin, determined to be different.

To Kill A Mockingbird is now the fourth phase of Aaron Sorkin, in a sense. It’s combining aspects of everything he’s done up to this point. He has his anarchist; in the 1960’s South, Atticus Finch was as close to an anarchist as one could get. His star is Jeff Daniels, who starred in The Newsroom as the hotshot newsman who was convinced America was no longer the greatest country in the world.

And he’s going back to the familiar rhythms of the theater—the place where it all began, where there’s nothing between the message and the audience, no place to hide, no second takes, no studio or network spin. When the curtain rises on opening night, Aaron Sorkin will be back to the start and looking toward his future simultaneously. One thing, however, will stay the same: He’s going to be brilliant.

To Kill A Mockingbird opens at Broadway’s Sam S. Shubert Theatre on Dec. 13. Tickets are on sale now.