film / tv / substack / social media / lists / web / celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / substack / web / celeb

aaron-sorkin-smith.jpg

Former 'Newsroom' Writer Alena Smith Calls Aaron Sorkin Out for Doxing, Misogyny

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | December 16, 2014 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | December 16, 2014 |


Recall last week that a former Newsroom writer (and at this point, they are all “former” writers because the show is no longer) called out Aaron Sorkin for his rape storyline in that episode, noting that she was booted from the writers room for objecting to it. Sorkin basically responded by ignoring the issue and lecturing Alena Smith on the writers’ room etiquette in the most condescending manner possible. Late last week, Olivia Munn even weighed in, suggesting that Alena Smith needed to keep quiet if she had nothing intelligent to say.

Cut to this week, and Aaron Sorkin is railing against the media for reporting on the Sony leak, a leak that has so far revealed several embarrassing details about Sorkin (among them, the notion that Sorkin is broke and sleeping with Molly’s Game author Molly Bloom. Sorkin denied both rumors, but did confirm that he lobbied for Tom Cruise to get the Jobs role).

In either respect, last night The Newsroom writer Alena Smith tweeted this:

I have no idea what doxing she is referring to, as I can’t find any blogs where Sorkin has outed personal details about Smith. But the misogynistic emails? That would be an email he sent to Maureen Dowd concerning her NYTimes piece on the treatment of women in Hollywood. Sorkin’s response? It’s harder out there for men.

After saying that female-led scripts like Bridesmaids simply do not exist, Sorkin went on to say that the “degree of difficulty” for men for awards performances is simply higher than women (via The Daily Beast)

That’s why year in and year out, the guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins Best Actress,” Sorkin wrote. “Cate gave a terrific performance in Blue Jasmine but nothing close to the degree of difficulty for any of the five Best Actor nominees. Daniel Day-Lewis had to give the performance he gave in Lincoln to win—Jennifer Lawrence won for Silver Linings Playbook, in which she did what a professional actress is supposed to be able to do. Colin Firth/Natalie Portman. Phil Hoffman had to transform himself into Truman Capote while Julia Roberts won for being brassy in Erin Brockovich. Sandra Bullock won for ‘The Blind Side’ and Al Pacino lost for both Godfather movies. Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren’t that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.”

Jesus, Sorkin. Just shut up, man. Just shut the f*ck up. (And as The Daily Beast notes, Sorkin is basically cherry picking here: Compare, for instance, Natalie Portman in Black Swan to Colin Firth in King’s Speech.