Sorkin’s defiant idealism
Aaron Sorkin has an idealistic imagination, said David Marchese in The New York Times Magazine. He’s famous for writing TV shows ( The West Wing, The Newsroom), movies (
Few Good Men, The American President), and now a play (the hit Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird) that seem to exist in a liberal fantasyland. Sorkin concedes that his work often reflects his politics, most of all the White House drama The West Wing, but he doesn’t think that diminishes the authenticity of his characters. “By and large,” he says, “in popular culture our elected leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts.” He cites Netflix’s House of Cards, in which the president is a conniving monster, and HBO’s Veep, in which the vice president is hilariously in over her head. Why, he asks, can’t people in politics be depicted as struggling human beings who want to make the world better? “I like writing heroes without capes,” says Sorkin, 58. “It makes us feel as though greatness is achievable. We’re not waiting for somebody to appear out of the sky and save the world.” Some TV critics speculate that The West Wing, which aired on NBC from 1999 to 2006, wouldn’t work in today’s climate of political cynicism. But Sorkin rejects the idea that people aren’t in the mood for idealism. “If anything,” he says, “I think that we’re thirsty for it.”
Britain’s rock-star artist
ADamien Hirst may be an artist, but he likes to live like a rock star, said Tom Hodgkinson in Idler Magazine (U.K.). Despite possibly being Britain’s wealthiest artist, he admits to having burned through a fortune, thanks to his drinking- and drug-fueled lifestyle. “I’d always made more money the next year than the year before,” says Hirst, 54. “I felt like the machines were just giving me cash for free. I’d fill my pockets with cash and go out for three days. Then I’d go and get more. More drugs, more cash.” Just before the financial crash in 2008, he auctioned a collection featuring a baby calf, a tiger shark, a zebra, and other animals preserved in formaldehyde. It netted him about $200 million. Feeling that money no longer had much meaning, Hirst let his expenses spiral out of control. “You start by thinking you’ll get one assistant, and before you know it you’ve got biographers, fire eaters, jugglers, minstrels, and lyre players wandering around,” Hirst says. “They’re all saying they aren’t being paid enough and need assistants. Then one night you ask the lyre player to play for you and they say: ‘My lyre is all scratched up and I did ask for a lyre technician, but you said not yet.’” He’s worked to rein in the spending, which going sober made easier. “It was unsustainable and it bites your arse,” he says.