Aaron Sorkin recycles dialogue. "You think?" I suppose this is something that happens with writers. You get a good line, it's likely to stick in your head and find its way to the page of another script, right? Apparently, this is a frequent occurrence for Aaron Sorkin, a writer with proven ability to come up with great lines, and now a semi-tribute video that demonstrates his re-usage of many of them.
People seem to be divided on whether they like Sorkin's latest TV endeavor, the new HBO drama series The Newsroom, which premiered on Sunday night. Like the series or not, the topic of Sorkin seems to be a hot one this week, so it's no surprise that a video like this should make its way around the internet. The video (via Deadline) credits Kevin Porter for taking the time to put together seven minutes of Sorkin dialogue from a number of Sorkin's films and TV shows, including Sports Night, The West Wing, An American President, The Social Network and A Few Good Men.
Some of them are really just commonly used figures of speech, like "And you know it," "You think?" and "Not for nothing," but some of the lines are much more specific and noticeable, like "I'm not other people!" and "Fire me or shut the hell up!" or the line that closes the video, spoken by Sorkin himself, "It seems to me that more and more, we've come to expect less and less of each other, and that's got to change." Is it plagiarism if the writer takes it from himself?
Maybe I'm just a Sorkin fan, but I find it amusing, and hey, no sense wasting a great line once you find one. Other people might disagree, but "I'm not other people."
If you didn't catch The Newsroom's premiere, HBO posted it online. Watch it in its entirety here!
