How Aaron Sorkin Came Up With the “Walk and Talk”

Sorkin tells Terry Gross:

“I’ll tell you exactly how. First of all, I don’t write a lot of action. My first movie was A Few Good Men, which was based on my first play. And there’s a scene in the movie where Tom Cruise is in his car, he pulls his car over to the side, to the curb because he wants to hop out and buy a copy of Sports Illustrated at a newsstand. He does. He hops out. He buys the copy of Sports Illustrated at the newsstand. He gets back in his car and he drives off. That is my action scene. That’s as close as I’ve come to writing an action scene.”

Is Aaron Sorkin an Objectivist?

Perhaps, at least with respect to his view of art.

Here's how the Ayn Rand Institute defines the Objectivist position on esthetics:

Ayn Rand described her own approach to art as “Romantic Realism”: “I am a Romantic in the sense that I present men as they ought to be. I am Realistic in the sense that I place them here and now and on this earth.” The goal of Ayn Rand’s novels is not didactic but artistic: the projection of an ideal man.

Notice any similarities between that and this?

I like writing about heroes [who] don’t wear capes or disguises. You feel like, “Gee, this looks like the real world and feels like the real world—why can’t that be the real world?”

That’s Aaron Sorkin describing his esthetics.