William Goldman, the presumed gold standard of screenwriting during the 70s, and who, in the later part of his career, has had the unenviable task of turning tomes of Stephen King into workable scripts, said that writing a script is always about finding the spine of the story on and around which the rest of the pieces can be arranged. To reduce a 800 page novel into a couple of lines first to be clear in his own mind as to what it is all about, and later use those two lines as the guiding beacon to the process of adaptation of the book, is what screenwriting is all about, concludes Goldman. He should know as someone who could write a plot-less script about the (mis)adventures of two outlaws of the wild west evading a posse to eventually escape to Central America in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". or another plot-less investigative piece about two intrepid reporters in "All the President's Men".
The current hottest screenwriter in town, Aaron Sorkin, agrees with that precept that when turning biographies/previously published material into scripts the narrative should be more than a cradle to grave story of the person in question to follow a very predictable rise, fall and then rise again curve, because human beings are much more complex than that, where the rise part of one's career might be littered with the worst moments of his/her life and the fall, the best. When Sorkin tackled "The social network", he didn't go through the usual motivations route of Mark Zuckerberg to reveal his character, he instead revealed it through the conflicts, the points where all the characters are at loggerheads with each other for building the meat around the bone. This is a very interesting way of telling tales about real people, because character shades are rarely black and white over an entire lifetime, and the key decisions at the key moments are seldom reflective of what a person truly is.
Though these decisions do nudge the characters on paths of doom/glory (like Zuckerberg's career making moment meeting Sean Parker for the first time, which sets into motion all the ensuing legal battles where the script finds its spine in), it is tough on the real person (on whom the movie is based on) to be judged on a single decision that he made in his late teens. Same goes with the second biography in a row that Sorkin got his hands on, "steve jobs". Even with a colorful person as Jobs whose life would make for great television series than a single two hour movie, Sorkin refuses to play Jobs greatest hits only to have him wither away and die at the end. Instead, he picks the three epochal moments in Jobs life - the product launches of Macintosh, NeXT and iMac, each spaced about a few years apart to glimpse into the mind of a troubled genius when he is stressed out the most. Again, not a true mirror, but more a view through the keyhole. Though this sum of only a few parts does a little disservice to the actual person, it makes for an interesting watch as to which way the iron would bend when it is struck hot. This is what Goldman was referring to, the spine of the story, a character caught in crisis would reveal much more than when he/she is at his best/worst.
A few years ago there was a lengthy article in Vanity Fair about a woman out of nowhere running high stakes poker game all by herself that attracted the young and famous Hollywood talent who didn't mind dropping a few hundred thousand (or even a few million, for that matter) in a single sitting. That kind of money at play, not to mention the star power of the players at the table, soon attracted unwanted attention from professional athletes, Wall street honchos, Russian and Italian mob, and finally the FBI, which lay trap and finally arrested the woman for a horde of charges including money laundering and conspiring with the mafia. She was 26 when she got in, and 36, when she got out..... Before the daggers come out, she almost made it to the US Olympic Ski team and she passed out her class summa cum laude. Oh, her brothers were an Olympian gold medalist, and a Harvard Medical School graduated surgeon. Talk about surviving the pressure within her own family! With such a profile, the lure is too great to fill in the script with all the lurid details about the Hollywood glitterati whose playing patterns revealed about their real personas or the cat and mouse situation between her and the FBI or her and the mafia. Instead Sorkin chooses the woman's steely resolve (as the spine) breaking into, surviving and thriving in a marketplace that is risky, dangerous and yet highly rewarding. The script is always about staying one step ahead of the rest, the rich clientele who played fast and loose with their cash and so demanded constant credit (which as the sole runner of the game, she couldn't afford to accord), the thin line between perfectly legal and borderline illegal practices involved in high stakes poker that she had to tread very carefully (lest she is busted up by the state police), and the hawks and vultures that she had to constantly fend off, first to ward off any untoward advances towards herself, and second, protect her flock from being stolen away by competitors. The rapid fire trademark dialogue of Sorkin finds worthy speakers in Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba whose constantly volleying back and forth resembles an expert tennis game. The movie, though over a couple of hours long, moves at a very brisk pace, thanks in large parts to the dialogue, pacing (editing), and the impressive background score. This is a movie that throbs with manic energy, never settling down, never stopping to catch a breath, demanding the viewer to keep up with it. And for a movie about keeping up with an unforgiving world around, it is a fair ask.
Sorkin is slowly consolidating his position as the go to person for biopics, much like William Goldman for adpating Stephen King's works, in that neither considers absence of a traditional plot as an impediment to tell a story, and instead puts the character through the ringer for the story to reveal itself because stuff like this couldn't be made up.
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