In a N.Y. Times op-ed piece titled “The Sony Hack and the Yellow Press,” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has bitchslapped the editors and journalists who’ve published the Sony material stolen by the “Guardians of Peace” hackers in Thailand. These editors and journalists are slime, Sorkin is saying. That includes me, right? I’m a personification of slithery green ooze for joining in and riffing on the ramifications and so on? And what about my offering a clarification and defense of Amy Pascal? I thought that was okay.
“If you close your eyes you can imagine the hackers sitting in a room, combing through the documents to find the ones that will draw the most blood,” Sorkin writes. “And in a room next door are American journalists doing the same thing. As demented and criminal as it is, at least the hackers are doing it for a cause. The press is doing it for a nickel.”
The most interesting paragraph, for me, is the one in which Sorkin gives a new title to the much-described, much-gossiped-about Jobs project, for which he wrote the screenplay. That project is called Steve Jobs, Sorkin says. Seriously? Steve Jobs? What, like Michael Clayton and Dolores Claiborne? Sounds sucky, man. A whole different ring. Dump it and go back to Jobs. Or call it something else.
Sorkin acknowledges that “[his] name comes up from time to time” in the hacked emails. “The widely published documents that were stolen include an email to Ms. Pascal in which I advocated going to Tom Cruise for the lead role (I did), a second email from one executive to another speculating that I’m broke (I’m fine) and a third that suggested that I might be romantically involved with a woman whose book I’m using as source material for a new script (I wish).”