The Social Network Wins Best Adapted Screenplay (2010)
When it comes to crafting two-person scenes among highly intelligent, articulate, arrogant personalities, few boast the crackerjack wit and wisdom of scribe Aaron Sorkin. Need proof? Check out any episode of Sports Night or The West Wing, his two finest television series, or many of the back-and-forth conversations in A Few Good Men and The American President. Who knew that the man best known for getting actors to speak faster on the West Wing walk-and-talks could shift from the Oval office to a Harvard dorm room, yet sustain his prowess for punchy dialogue?
Despite three Golden Globe nominations for screenplay before winning for The Social Network, Sorkin had never been up for an Academy Award until this victory. The competition was fierce, though. Toy Story 3 brought down the curtain on animation’s finest trilogy with style and Debra Granik and Anne Rosselini’s script for Winter’s Bone was piercing and moving. However, for capturing the voice of the zeitgeist and condensing a complicated legal battle into two sharp, searing hours of entertainment, Sorkin was an instant frontrunner.
The beloved screenwriter even had a bit further to go with this adapted screenplay. Since Mark Zuckerberg, the film’s subject, refused to be interviewed for the Ben Mezrich book, Sorkin had to figure out a way to tell a story from a protagonist who would not give many answers. Some could complain (as many of the film’s subjects did) that much of the final product was fiction, but Sorkin used what he had to mine for something deeper. He crafted a film that felt distinctly modern, yet relied on inherently classical themes.