Aaron Sorkin reaches out to Web surfers and sources to fill in the blanks of ‘The Social Network’ - The Boston Globe

Excerpt from a review

“What I see out there,’’ Sorkin says, “are a lot of people who are just angry. And instead of doing what Paddy Chayefsky told them to do, which is throw open their window and shout, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,’ they’re doing it from the anonymity . . . of a dark room. They’re either being angry or they’re reinventing themselves as someone else.’’

Facebook, he said, facilitates that reinvention. When he first dabbled on the site, he was stunned at the posts his friends put on their walls, snappy status updates that were artifice, not truth. “They would write, ‘Had a girls’ night last night, four different desserts, better hit the gym this morning!’ ’’ Sorkin says. “I’d think, ‘You’re writing yourself as Ally McBeal. Really. You’re writing yourself as a sitcom character.’ ’’

That’s what Facebook is, he says: A cynical illusion, a version of reality that’s more pointed, more scripted, more calculated than the real thing.

Aaron Sorkin reaches out to Web surfers and sources to fill in the blanks of ‘The Social Network’ - The Boston Globe