Aaron Sorkin Still Believes in American Institutions, Even If No One Else Does

What It Covers

Aaron Sorkin speaks with Lulu Garcia-Navarro about his new film The Social Reckoning, a follow-up to The Social Network focusing on Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. He addresses his romantic view of American institutions, his decade-long cocaine addiction and recovery, his writing process, AI's threat to creative work, and the Broadway revival of A Few Good Men.

Key Questions Answered

• •Antihero vs. Villain Framework: Sorkin distinguishes antiheroes from villains by intention: antiheroes believe they are doing good and can be written as making their case to God for entry into heaven. Villains simply want power. He applies this to his portrayal of Zuckerberg in both Facebook films — not a malevolent actor, but someone genuinely convinced he is connecting humanity and advancing civilization through technology.
• •Fact-Checking Nonfiction Films: When producing content about powerful living subjects, studios face significant legal exposure. Sony hired an entirely separate outside law firm — beyond its standard legal department — solely to vet The Social Reckoning. Every claim presented as fact required verification. Sorkin notes the irony: a rigorous fact-check was applied to a film about a company that refused to fact-check political advertising on its own platform.
• •Facebook's Engagement Mechanism: Facebook's core algorithmic problem, as depicted in The Social Reckoning, is that content designed to provoke anger generates the most resharing, which maximizes scrolling and engagement. The platform knowingly amplified this material. Meta's 2024 settlement with states addressed addiction in teenagers but does nothing to address the adult-targeted divisiveness and extremism pipeline that the film centers on.
• •Sobriety and Creative Output: Sorkin used cocaine for roughly a decade, believing it was essential to his writing ability. After Carrie Fisher called him unprompted — at Warren Beatty's urging — and told him he would write better sober, he entered rehab. He rebuilt confidence by taking uncredited dialogue polish work on studio films, removing creative pressure, before writing the West Wing pilot, which became his first proof that sober writing was viable.
• •AI and Audience Emotional Connection: Sorkin argues AI-generated creative work will fail commercially because audiences unconsciously require human authorship to form emotional investment. He uses the example of viewing an AI-generated abstract painting: the aesthetic experience collapsed the moment he learned a machine made it. He predicts non-AI films will not retreat to arthouse venues — audiences will continue demanding work from named human directors and writers.
• •Institutions as User-Sensitive Systems: Sorkin frames American democratic institutions not as inherently reliable but as "user-sensitive" — their effectiveness depends entirely on who operates them. He maintains belief in the system not from naivety but because he sees no functional alternative to elections and civic participation. The A Few Good Men Broadway revival gains new relevance given public debate about military personnel's obligation to refuse illegal orders.