Ep51 - Aaron Sorkin / "Molly’s Game"

an hour. Great, everybody settled? Is this what we're gonna have? Okay? Cool? Laura, hang on one sect. Sure. I would just like you to take my phone. It's on vibrate. I think. Okay. I had my phone ring in the middle of one of these. I was like, it never happens with me, because anybody it's the the you know, the talent. I think if the phone rings in the middle of the at least you could do is technical. I think you always had to add the flavor to it, all right.

My guest today is the Oscar winning screenwriter behind films like A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War and The Social Network, and the Emmy winning writer behind series like The West Wing and the newsroom. Now he's moving behind the camera for the first time as a director of Molly's Game, The Wild True life story of high Stakes Poker Maven Molly Bloom. His name is Aaron Sorkin, and we're pleased to have him on the show. Thanks for

coming on, sir. It's pleasure to be here. I kind of hate actually saying the high Stakes Poker Maven Molly Bloom, because she's so complex, she's so more, so, much more than even this one story in her life's exactly right, and that is was the genesis of the movie. I was asked to read the book that she wrote and to meet with her, and I read the book. The

book is a wild ride. It's a really fun read. Uh. Um. But I was expecting to meet the high stakes poker may Haven Molly Bloom, or the poker princesses they called her. I was expecting to me, frankly, someone I wasn't gonna like very much, someone or someone I wasn't gonna respect very much. I was expecting to meet someone who was just cashing in on their decade long brush with celebrity. Uh. My first meeting with Molly was one hour long and

within ten minutes she had completely turned me around. Uh. She is not that at all. She's remarkably bright woman, hyper competent woman. She has a rise sense of humor. Uh. But she's not at all interested in gossip or and she, it turns out, is built out of character and integrity. Uh. And far from cashing in on her Brushwood celebrity, she has paid a big price for not cashing in on her Brushwood celebrity. She would have been guaranteed her freedom.

She would have had all her money was taken from her by the FBI, she would have been given all of her money back plus interest. Uh. If only she would tell some of the stories that she had, which she was, by the way, perfectly willing to do if it meant putting bad guys in jail. Well, what I mean by that for people who are confused by now

is uh. When she moved the game from Hollywood to New York, things trouble found her because she had inadvertently seated at the game three members of the Russian mob as well as an FBI in format um. And the FBI was their intention to use Molly to prosecute Uh. These Russian mobsters and Molly doesn't like mobsters any more than anyone else. She got beaten up by one and a gun uh put in her mouth, but she didn't

know anything that could help the prosecutors at all. The prosecutors had her there so that the New York Post would cover the trial. Um. Back to the first meeting. Uh, she immediately struck me as uh real life and very unique movie hollen And who had only told the tip of the iceberg in the book, there was much more story, and she she wrote a very good story that left bread crumbs to a better story. That first meeting led to hundreds of others meetings with her over the course

of a seven in eight months. So when you were reading the book, did you get that sense that there was more outside what I was reading the book? Um? Every once in a while there seemed to be a contradiction or a question like Uh she mentions games that lasted two and three days, but she never mentions drugs uh in there. And I don't know how a game poker game came last two or three days. If there isn't that much red bull in the world, there are

aphetamines around someplace or coke? Um uh And uh So when I said that to her, she said, there were drugs and I'm two years clean. Uh. Now that very moment is in the movie. Uh. What what was developing in my head over time was that there are really two stories here that that are in bed with each other and should be. Uh. There is the story she tell in the book, which is the story of a young,

very promising, world class skier who's headed to Harvard Law School. Uh. And she's got a life mapped out and it's going to be a great life. And and and not just a successful one, but a good one. She or her intention was to begin a foundation that seeds entrepreneurial entrepreneurial women. Um. Uh. So the book is the story of how she goes from there too, uh, running the world's most exclusive high stakes poker game. When she finished the book, she hadn't

yet been arrested. Um. And as Charlie and Yourse, Elvis's character in the movie says, he finished your book before

the good part happened. Right. So there was that story, and then there was the story of today of what was going on at the time that I met her, which was the FBI trying to coerce her uh into testifying um all a lot of Hollywood players whose names we know, wanting to buy her life rights, but only on the condition that she would tell the stories that she was unwilling to tell the southern district of New

York as and finally, her father. Uh. In the book Uh, she speaks about her father at the very beginning of the book, and she explains that you know, he's a he's a hard driving father and that uh success in academics and athletics were important to him, for her and for her two younger brothers, the youngest of whom, while she was ranked third in North America in women's mobiles, he was ranked first in the world in men's mobiles. So uh, she was it was hard for her to

sort of break into the rankings of her own Thanksgiving dinner. UM. But she told me, you know, about her strained and complicated, very nuanced relationship with her father. And I just started seeing a movie that was bigger than uh than the Poker Maithan than the Poker Princess, uh, and a movie that's unexpected uh, and and a movie hero UH that's unexpected and uh and that's I almost immediately knew that the thing I was supposed to right next. I wasn't

gonna write next. I was gonna write this next. I had a feeling about it. I had the hardest time pitching it, describing it to people. I knew what it was, but I couldn't articulate it. I can't. I can't remember the timeline. But did you come into it like you? I want to direct this. I wanted to be no, no, no no. I had no thought of directing. I came. I came into it the same way I can't come

to everything. It came have come into everything else. I finished the first draft, I turned it into There were producers now, Mark Gordon and any Pascal, and I turned it into them. A few nights later, we had dinner. There's a piece of paper in front of each of us with a list of about twenty names of directors. We went through each one, pros and cons. By the time we got to the end, Uh, they put the pieces of paper down, looked at me and said, but we think you should direct it. And I didn't really

take them seriously. I I kind of us shucks it. But they made it clear that they were very serious, and they made their pitch. Why I talked to directors I know and trust, and I got encouragement from them. But the reason ultimately I decided to direct it for better or for worse, was I knew that there was with this story a gravitational pull uh back toward the book, back towards the shiny objects, the decadence, the amor the money, the sex, uh and the bold faced Hollywood names um

and UH. I wanted to do a story set against the backdrop of that. Uh. You know, obviously there's gonna be poker in this movie, but it's not a poker movie. We're never gonna care who wins or loses a hand. This isn't the same as rounders, um. Uh. It's it's about, uh, how did she get from here to there? And now let's put the stuff that's not in the book in there, the Russians and her father, UM and I believe that it can be much just a deeper, more resonant, more emotional,

and best of all, more uplifting story. That this was a story about a real life movie hero uh who has the kind of her her qualities that I tend to uh write about that with romanticism and an idealism, I directed it for that reason, and I directed it because I wanted to ensure uh, the protection of those both faced Hollywood names, uh, that no one might have the idea of, you know, hey, I know how he can make this the buzziest movie of the year. Um.

So I did it for those reasons. That's that's my story. That's how I wrote the movie. What's more interesting is what happened next, because the most important decision I was gonna make is director was who was going to play Molly? Right one second, though, before you get to that, I do want to talk about that, but I'm curious, did you write it? Would you have written it differently if you knew you were going to direct it? You know,

It's funny. I did a paddel last night where someone asked that question, and as I told the person who asked a question, not only was that the first time I've ever been asked that question, it was the first time I've ever thought about that question. Right in that moment when I had to answer, was the first time I ever thought about it? And the answer is absolutely yes, I would have. I am so grateful that I didn't know, uh that I was directing it when I was writing it.

Because I would have been too scared, uh to to write some of the scenes that I wrote. The whole opening sequence, the first eight minutes has more action in it than every movie I've written combined. Right, I like, I write people talking in rooms, and it's like, the director will take care of this exactly right. The director is going to know how we do this ski crash. Um. The director is gonna know how to you know, do the getting beaten up scene? Um. Uh. The director is

gonna make these poker scenes look fantastic. Uh. You know Fincher came along and made computer hacking look like a bank robbery. Uh. That's what directors do. They take this thing that I write, which doesn't have a whole lot of visual interest and uh and they give it visual interests. I write the lyrics, they write the music. Um so uh so I am grateful that that I didn't know, uh that it wouldn't have been as good a screenplay

if I had known that I was directing him. Um So, what was the biggest learning curve just before we get into Jessica and everything? You know, you never even I don't think directed television anything. I've never directed anything before. I I'm not a complete production, Novice. I've I've been on the set every day of every movie that I've written. Uh. And as the show runner in television, you're involved in every aspect of production from prep to post, and obviously

ire at the script too. Uh. Still, the biggest learning curve was going to be that in the twenty five years I've been a professional writer, I had managed to absorb none of the science of filmmaking at all. I couldn't pick a long lens out of a police lineup. Uh. Enter Charlotta Christiansen, our cinematographer. Charlotta uh flew over from Denmark,

where she lives, to meet with me. She had just gotten done shooting two movies, A Girl on the Train, which looked beautiful and Fences, which also looked beautiful, but more importantly was directed by first time director Denzel Washington. Uh So she had plenty of experience as a DP, but experience working with the first time director, and told Charlotta we talked about um my vision for the look of the movie and two separate looks when we were in present day and when we were showing the story

of Molly going from skier to uh to poker princess. Uh. But I told her, you know, listen, I'm just scared that I don't have the vocabulary two that you that you need the director to have for you to be able to do your job. Uh. And she said, no, don't worry about it at all. Here, here's what's gonna happen. We're gonna we're gonna talk about the scene. Um, we're going to create a shot list of everything that you want to get and I'm I'm going to be very opinionated.

I'm gonna tell you I also want to get this shot. Uh. And this shot I'm never gonna tell you. No, I'm not gonna do your shot, but I'm I'm gonna add a couple of my own. But in terms of lenses and lighting, I got this, have this handheld device and I'm gonna snap a lens on it, and you're gonna look through it, and you're gonna tell me if you like what you see, and if you do, I'm going to take the lens off the handheld device in pluted on the camera. Um. Uh. And that's how we do it.

And um, there was a lot less for me to be scared of than uh than I thought the truth of the matter is that for every area of film production, there's an expert uh in that position. So UM stand on their shoulders. Uh, it's exactly right, whether it's production design, lighting, camera department, uh, anything. Um, I'm I've written the script, I've prepped. Uh, you know, spent months with the department heads.

We know what it's gonna look like. We know what's going to happen every hour of every day of shooting. We know what's to be accomplished. And now I can just be with the actors uh and do And that happened quickly enough, early on and just instantly, and it needed to. We didn't have a choice. Uh. There was no ramp up time here. We had to. We were on a tight schedule. This is a movie that needed

a sixty day budget that we did in forty nine days. Uh. That that's you know, everybody, unless your name is Spielder, every everybody has that problem if you don't have enough shooting days. Um. But Uh, we began we with the scenes between Jessica and Address uh in his office. Those are seven eight nine page scenes of dance dialogue. Uh. And while they were shot fairly conventionally, I don't mean boringly, they look beautiful, They're lit beautifully, and uh, really, Charlotta

is a superstar. Um, she's very underrated. I feel that Far from the Medda Crowd was amazing. Yeah, I agreed, the Far from the Maddening Crowd was amazing. But I don't think she's underrated. I just think that she is not yet as known as she will be. I think this movie is gonna change that. Um. I think that people are gonna see it and say, WHOA who shot that? Because it deserves that that kind of reaction. Um. But Uh. Two, that there was insufficient rehearsal time for those scenes between

Jessica and Uh and indress. So I instituted about six weeks before photography started, virtual rehearsals, Skype, email phone calls. We would talk through every beat, every transition, and I would emphasize to them that you can't learn this in the makeup trailer on the morning. Uh, it's you're you're never gonna make it and you're gonna be very unhappy with your performance. That you can't just memorize the words. You've got to take ownership of this language. You have

to be able to casualize the language. You have to be able to toss it off like it's your phone number, UM, and that way, uh, because you won't have to think about the words anymore. You get the performances. You get what you hire Jessica and address for uh. And had the two of them not come as prepared as they did, had the two of them been a half inch less talented, uh than they are, less skilled than they are, than less committed than they are, the movie would have fallen

off the screen. But instead, Uh, I think that those scenes are explosive. You were talking briefly about just, you know, some of the ideas you had for the looks early in the movie, later in the movie. That brings me to a question I have, which were which is what were some of those visual ideas you had to tell the story visually. What kind of struck you early on? Even that carried all the way through. Well, the main idea was that they were going to be uh, two

different looks. That in present day, as I said, we're gonna shoot it fairly conventionally, or a better word would be literally. Uh, it was all going to be literal, but that in the past it was gonna look different. We were gonna poker. And I'm not a poker player, but I'm a sports fan, so my TV is on ESPN, and every once in a while, when there is absolutely no other sporting event happening in the world, they will show poker on ESPN. You can't imagine a worst spectator sport. Okay,

it's it's boring to watch, it's ugly to look at. Uh, there's there's nothing there. And I again, I never saw this as a poker movie. Um there. I didn't write a single scene in the script where we're ever asked to care who wins or loses a hand of poker. In fact, there's only one scene in which a full hand of poker is traumatized, scene in which Bill Camp playing Harlan Eustace goes on what's called full tilt, which means I know it will Okay, I'm sorry to hear that.

It means you're on a losing streak, you've lost your mind. Uh uh, you should get up and walk away from the table. But there's no turning back here. You're going. You're like Chevy Chase in Vegas vacation, going back to the uh the a T M machine to play the guy and I forgot who played the black jack. I can't reference Vegas vacations with the expertise that that you can. Um, but it's uh more like uh a coke addict at four in the morning looking for anyone who's got more

cob Okay. Um, that's the only scene uh where we're watching your hand, And again we're not caring who wins or loses. We're listening to Molly demonstrate. Here's how someone goes on full tilt. Okay, here's how it happens. Here's the origin of it. But in all other cases, it's just the the energy of playing poker. And we're watching Molly learn it. She she's a spun she's a computer.

Uh that way here learns incredibly fast and then extrapolates and uh so the shooting style there would be we're gonna get We're gonna spend days around these poker tables, getting what I would call micro shots, uh, shards of things, of chips being slapped down, cards being turned over, a shuffled, a new deck being cut open, ice going into a glass of cigarette being lit, more cash, more buying, somebody pulling in uh chips, cards, cards, cards, poker, poker poker.

We're gonna get hundreds and hundreds of these shots. And in post, the editors and I are gonna build these poker scenes, um, and they'll they'll be very exciting. Uh. Same with skiing. We're never gonna see somebody's ski from the top of the slope to the bottom of the slope. That doesn't matter. Uh, We're gonna get in there tight. I want to see ice coming off of of the edges of skis. I want to see a hand gripping the polls, that kind of thing. Sound is crucial with

all of this too. Then in post, I'm really glad you brought that up because sound I've been singing this him for years of how crucial sound is. I cannot, unfortunately, go to every movie theater in America UM and test their sound system, uh, and decide whether or not it's fit to uh you know, to to play movies. So you're a little bit at the mercy of of the delivery system for the movie. However, the sound design on this um, just as you know in in every Scorsese movie, UM,

he kind of makes the decision early on. We know with the help of his sound guys. Uh, what a gun is gonna sound like in that particular movie. Um, And what it's gonna sound like when a bullet pierces a body. It's different in every movie. If you remember, in The Departed, it was a very distinct sound that the bullet had. Everyone who gets shot in that movie gets shot in the head. Um uh, and there's a blast flat whether. Yeah, by the way, these are all

It's one of my all time favorite movies. But there is a different sound to a gun and every assessing movie. Well in this movie. Uh, what was important to me is what a chip sound like when they're slacked down? Um, or when someone shuffling them? What are cards are sound like? What does that ice sound like when it's spreading off the edge of a ski? Uh? All all those sounds, how heightened can they be? How heightened can the clinking

of ice and a glass be? Um? Uh? You know what does it sound like when a judge drops a stack of documents on a desk in a big echoque courtroom? That kind of thing. Our whole sound team, from the sound engineers UH engineer in Toronto recording the production track to the sound designers here at home. The mixers UH are the editors we're so into this, uh, and worked

so hard from before sunrise after sunset. Um though exact things um uh, particularly when I would give them a note like, uh, you know the blade of the ice, skate on the ice. This it's just a better sound available. That's there's there's a really great sound, and I just want to find it. Uh. They would take that as a personal challenge um uh, and they wouldn't go home until,

you know, they had built that that sound. I since we're talking about post production, I have to mention that our editors Alan baum Garden, Josh Shaffer and and Elliot Graham, along with Charlotta r DP, I consider those people to be co authors of of this movie. Um. That listen, the structure, the the you know, the the cutting that we do in the movie was something written in the script that's all built in. They found something else to uh.

They they found something new that I hadn't thought of, and you know, that's the best thing that there is. You don't want uh Earliest. I don't want people who will expertly follow by instructions. UM. I want people who have better ideas than than my instructions. Look, of course, sometimes you want what you want. Yeah, you want you what you want, um, and they'll show you their better idea and you will disagree that that it was a better idea. So you want what you want. Um. But uh,

you want what they have and you don't. Okay. Um, you want the ears that the sound designers have. You want the sense of rhythm and the understanding of what can be done and an avid uh that the editors have. You want Charlotta's I and what she understands about lenses and lighting. Um. And it's about time I got around to this. You want what Jessica Chastain and Address Elva and uh and Kevin Costner have. UM. Uh. Yes, you

are going to give them adjustments. Uh. You're hotter, colder, faster, slower, louder software. Uh. You're giving them reasons for those things too. You're not just controlling knobs on a console. But what you want to do, UH is you want what makes Jessica Jessica uh to be in the room. You don't just want her following your instructions. She's not just a delivery system uh for the script that you wrote. Same

thing with the interests, same thing with Kevin. And by the way, the whole supporting cast from Bill Camp to Bristo Dowd, Jeremy's Strong Michael Sarah, I'm sure I'm leaving some people out. Um uh so as it happened, Uh, luckily enough, and my my biggest fear other than not understanding the science of filmmaking. When I on January three said yes I'll direct, this was what quality of person am I going to be able to get? Who's willing to work with a first time director? Can I cast?

This is Jessica Chastain who works with Terrence Malick and really Scott and uh, Katherine Bigelow and Chris Nolan? Is she gonna be willing to do this? Is interests? Um? Uh? Is? What? What kind to the DP am I gonna have? What kind of crew am I gonna have? Um? Well, as it turned out, African All Star Team, you sounds super grateful, frankly like you sound like it's an unrepayable debt. I uh, it's an unrepayable debt. Yeah, I'm getting the rapid up

symbol signal. I know that's okay, But I'm just gonna slip in one personal curiosity question before we duck out. Uh few good men? Is twenty five years old this year the film Anyway. Uh. And it struck me when I was preparing for this that a big part of your life appears to have been the law. Your father was a lawyer after fighting in World War Two. Believe you're siblings. Two of your siblings lawyers, and you married a lawyer eventually, So you're you're working on your own

adaptation of to Kill a mockingbird? So what's that all about? Let me just PLoP you on the couch at the end here. Sure, well, part of it is growing up with lawyers, part of his growing up loving courtroom dramas, uh and um. And part of it is just an old fashioned romantic sense of you know what the laws mean, and what having the country a nation of laws mean. Uh and uh. It's it's really a marvel But our system of justices, in terms of writing those kinds of

things like A Few Good Men. Courtroom dramas for me are are so great because the stakes are immediately clear, the intention and obstacle is immediately clear, the battlefield is clear, the jury is a stand in for the audience. You've got twelve people who know as little as the audience does. Uh and they're going to have to be informed. So you you you're not gonna have clumsy exposition. Exposition makes

sense there, it's just a clear score board. Uh. And um, I'm most comfortable as a writer when I'm inside four walls. I'm I'm very uncomfortable out on a battlefield, um, in a desert, in the jungle, uh, that kind of thing, in a car chase. I just I need those four walls to uh to feel comfortable. How how's that upcoming live rendition of that? How are you feeling about that? Well,

I'm feeling great about it. You know, we're probably going to we're gonna do it this May, but we're probably going to postpone it a little bit, uh until next season. I don't want to say for sure, Uh because of of scheduling. You there are great actors uh who who want to do it. Um, it's just hard getting them all to be available at the same time, getting those uh stars literally to line up. Uh. So we may push it to the next season. Okay, Well, I'm looking

forward to that. I appreciate Chris. The movie Is Molly's Game comes out December twenty two. Go see it. I loved it. By the way. I never got a chance to ry on that. And Aaron Sorkin, thanks for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks. I'm Molly Blue. Do you know about me? This is a true story. You ranning games in l A for roughly eight years. Yeah, you ran games in New York for us. I ever run a game in over two years.

Not to spoil the ending, because that's when the government rated my game and took all of my money, assuming all of it was made illegally, which it wasn't. In this room, you couldn't buy your win, Tom, you couldn't buy me, and you couldn't buy a seat at the table. We saw an athlete. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Personally, the pod keep it that way because you don't want to break below. When you're breaking the law? Am I breaking the law? We're able to find out for sure,

aren't we. Flaws are written down whatever yea means in l A. About your book in Life, right, I did you spend eight years spinning the world's most exclusive, glamorous and decadent man cave from the office Barren's even publishers. Certain elements that I can get to a million and a half. What kind of elements I passed? I'm just curious as to why you passed on what would appear to be the only way out you have. You have to use real names, creative differences for a while that

I'm choose to breaking the plans. Gambling is bidding on games of chance, Yes, Booker isn't a game of chance, Bokers a game of skill? Why does your young woman, who at twenty two has a goal planard resume? Why do you run four games? Your risk is nuts, you're gonna get You get two point eight billion on street right now? That money should be in your hands. Just how deep into the Russian mob where you be? There's

a new offer on a table? Can completely really hand over the hard drave You've seen what's on this hard drives? Family lives, careers will be ruling. Why are you in this alone? When are the people you're protected by not telling the whole story. It's not their names I'm protecting, Charlie. It's it's all I have left because it's my thing