Here are some photos of Aaron Sorkin at CinemaCon on Tuesday. He was there with Jessica Chastain, the leading lady in his first directorial effort Molly’s Game (it’s based on the true story of the underground poker games for the rich & famous). Sorkin has been in the news this week because of his participation in a public discussion at the WGFestival over the weekend. I covered the original Variety reporting about Sorkin’s comments, and I wondered if Sorkin was merely employing a professorial-esque Socratic method to discuss the systemic inequalities faced by women and minorities in Hollywood. Variety kept insisting that Sorkin was “astonished” to learn that women and minorities don’t operate in his industry (or any industry) with the privilege of a white dude. Shocking, I know. Well, Sorkin has clarified the situation.

Aaron Sorkin has clarified his comments about the lack of diversity in writers’ rooms, made Saturday at the WGFestival. “Of course I am aware of the diversity problem in Hollywood,” he told Variety. “I was the one who brought the subject up Saturday morning and kept coming back to the subject.”

He explained that his comments were about trying to engage in a conversation about why there isn’t more diversity: “Is it because studio heads aren’t greenlighting the movies? Is it because studio executives aren’t bringing the projects to studio heads? Is that because agents are bringing the projects to studio executives? Is it because agents aren’t getting the material? I was asking questions to a group of people who understand this problem firsthand.”

He said his questions below were simply repeating what he’d been asked by the audience. “The fact that there’s a diversity problem isn’t news to me,” he said. “One of the questions I asked was, ‘What can I do? If you had a remote control over me, what would you have me do on Monday?’ I walked away from the session with more questions than answers but I absolutely know more when I left than I did when I walked in.”

[From Variety]

See, that’s how the first story read to me, that he was trying to stimulate the conversation and maybe even use his position as a white dude to shine a light on inequality, as opposed to Sorkin being a 55-year-old dude who never realized inequalities exist. Not that I’m defending him in general, because I think he was still approaching the subject from a place of extreme privilege. If he wants to know more about racism and sexism in the industry, maybe he could start by examining his own actions and what he writes, then examining how he operates in the industry, and then moving on to influencing the industry from within. Instead, it was like he was attempting some Performative Wokeness and even then, it fell flat and got misinterpreted.

Incidentally, as CinemaCon, Sorkin confirmed that he’s doing meetings with DC and Marvel. He’ll probably really enjoy those environments because they’re both majority-white sausage parties. I can’t wait for Thor & Captain Marvel’s walk-and-talk!

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.