During today’s portion of the Newsweek/Daily Beast Hero Summit in Washington D.C., Aaron Sorkin provided a tantalizing preview of the script structure he is relying on to adapt Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography.

Per a report by the publication’s TV critic Jace Lacob, here’s what Sorkin told Tina Brown:

“I hope I don’t get killed by the studio for giving too much away,” Sorkin said, “but this entire movie is going to be three scenes, and three scenes only, that all take place in real time.”

Each of the three scenes will run 30 minutes in length and Sorkin said they will be “all set right before three major product launches.”

Read more

Yesterday at the TCA, The Newsroom writer-creator Aaron Sorkin hung a reporter out to dry. In a fashion so shocking it probably merits serious consideration as a Season Two subplot.

From Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes’ account of the Beverly Hilton HBO proceedings:

Sorkin took a moment to tell the critics that (a) the writing staff on the show had not been fired; and (b) he had not kept on staff an ex-girlfriend — two elements of a story that had been reported somewhere and picked up everywhere, maybe even by some of those in the room.

“Seeing that in print is scaring the hell out of the writing staff,” Sorkin said. “They’re acting very strange. They’re coming to work early, being polite to me, and I want the old gang back. I love the writing staff.”

Read more

The Daily is reporting that Aaron Sorkin has gotten rid of his entire Newsroom writing staff, with the exception of his ex-girlfriend Corinne Kinsbury.

“Every year each show reassesses the needs of its writing staffs. This process is nothing out of the ordinary,” an HBO rep told The Daily.

The Newsroom had 10 credited writers in its premiere season. HBO renewed the show for a second season after its second show aired.

Update – 08/01/12: During the TCA panel for The Newsroom, Sorkin denied both aspects of The Daily article, saying he had not fired the writing staff and Kinsbury never was his girlfriend:

“Seeing that in print is scaring the hell out of the writing staff,” Sorkin said. “They’re acting very strange. They’re coming to work early, being polite to me, and I want the old gang back. I love the writing staff.”

Media blogger Jim Romenesko tracked down Kevin Porter, the 22-year-old Los Angeles resident behind of the “Sorkinisms: A Supercut” video that went viral this week. Porter, a professional video producer, told Romenesko he’d been working on the video that highlights Aaron Sorkin’s penchant for recycled dialogue since 2010, but picked up the pace a few months ago to have it finished in time for the Newsroom premiere.

The video went viral shortly after being posted to YouTube on Monday morning, much to Porter’s surprise.

“I definitely underestimated people’s interest in it,” he told Romenesko. “I estimated it would get probably a couple of thousand view the first week. But the reaction has been larger than I ever imagined. Did I think the LA Times, Entertainment Weekly, Grantland and the Huffington Post would pick it up? I didn’t.”

Porter, a long time Sorkin fan, wrote on Twitter that he’s thinking about doing a follow-up video: “Maybe Part II premieres once The Newsroom season is over. There’ll be loads of material.”

Aaron Sorkin, it seems, has a tendency to repeat himself.

The video’s editor, Kevin Porter, calls the supercut a tribute to Sorkin. He says, “This is not intended as a critique but rather a playful excursion through Sorkin’s wonderful world of words.”

We’ll be listening for these “Sorkinisms” while watching future episodes of The Newsroom. Should make for an absolutely wretched drinking game.

Hat tip Buzzfeed.

A promising second trailer for Aaron Sorkin‘s new HBO drama The Newsroom premiered Sunday night prior to Game of Thrones. The show stars Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy, a network news anchor struggling to honor journalistic ethics in the face of soulless corporate demands, Emily Mortimer as his executive producer, and Jane Fonda as the scary media mogul who owns their asses.

The trailer for Aaron Sorkin‘s new HBO show The Newsroom is making its way across the Interwebz. Based on the two minutes above, The Atlantic calls it “Network with a Blackberry,” Gawker says Sorkin “loathes the Internet, youth” and Big Hollywood inexplicably defends the notion that gay marriage causes hurricanes.

Our cousins over at TVNewser dug up some interesting details today on Aaron Sorkin‘s new HBO show The Newsroom–about the cable news biz. Turns out a new name has been given to the fictional network at the heart of the show: Atlantis Cable News. Sorkin’s script originally called the channel UBS in honor of the great film Network.  But for branding reasons, the change was made.

HBO has commisioned a fake news website back the new name: www.atlantiscablenews.com. The page is blank now, but TVNewser has a mock-up of the site-to-be.

The Newsroom will make its debut sometime this summer, possibly on Sunday, June 24th after the season premiere of True Blood.

Australian House of Representatives leader Anthony Albanese was just busted lifting lines from the 1995 film The American President, written by Aaron Sorkin, in a speech to the National Press Club of Australia.

Here is the part of Albanese’s speech in question:

“In Australia we have serious challenges to solve and we need serious people to solve them. Unfortunately, Tony Abbott is not the least bit interested in fixing anything. He is only interested in two things: making Australians afraid of it and telling them who’s to blame for it.”

And here’s are Sorkin’s lines delivered by Michael Douglas in the film:

“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it.”

Read more

Our report last week about the record-breaking August numbers for LATimes.com included the rather remarkable stat of 3.5 million page views registered by the relatively new blog “Ministry of Gossip.” So we thought we’d check in with Christie D’Zurilla (pictured), the USC print journalism and chemistry major (!) who runs the site. She began her career at the Orange County Register before landing at the Times feature-entertainment copy desk in 2003.

“When we started the blog from scratch, the idea of hitting a million monthly page views seemed outrageous,” D’Zurilla tells FishbowlLA via email, “until we did it the first full month out of the gate (thanks, Tiger Woods and Adam Lambert). One of the coolest things about our August numbers and what they represent is that our readers came for a variety of stories across the board, rather than spiking on some huge scandal that broke on a holiday weekend.”

D’Zurilla, who shares the Ministry page with fellow blogger Matt Donnelly, references one of his recent items as an example of the fringe benefits that come with increased traffic. “I was the first person to hunt down and interview the Old Spice Guy, Isaiah Mustafa, in February 2010. Back then, it took eight days before anyone found the story and picked it up–even counting our LAT compadres.”

Read more