Golden boy Sorkin does it all for two shows at once

It is 1:30 a.m. and Aaron Sorkin is slouched in a director's chair, commiserating with Rob Lowe between scenes on the set of "The West Wing." The new NBC drama, which co-stars Lowe as a harried White House speech writer, is one of two shows, along with ABC's "Sports Night," created by Sorkin in his young career as TV's new golden boy.

Right now the golden boy is beleaguered and exhausted. Up at dawn, Sorkin has been going at a David E. Kelley-style pace, writing every episode of both shows. "It's like being with two lovers in the same week," he says. He pens "West Wing" scripts on weekdays, grabbing time between production meetings, casting sessions and visits to the set. Over the weekend he writes "Sports Night," which returned for its second season last week, finishing the scripts in time to be messengered Sunday night to

AP PHOTO Aaron Sorkin works with Brad Whitford and Martin Sheen on the "West Wing" set.

cast members for the show's Monday morning table read.

By the second week of September, the strain is showing. The new "West Wing" script, due days earlier, is stalled somewhere in the first act. When the director of the upcoming episode stops by, Sorkin bluntly informs him: "I owe you a script, but I have nothing." He walks the director out, handing him a "West Wing" cap. After he's departed, Sorkin turns to Lauren Carpenter, his assistant. "Mark this down on our calendar," he says glumly. "We'll never be on schedule again."

If anyone would thrive on the high-wire act of doing two TV shows simultaneously, it's Sorkin, a brainy, sometimes arrogant, always ambitious 38-year-old playwright and screenwriter. When he says that he loves "smart, quick, flawed characters," you can't help but think he's talking about himself.

He was still in his 20s when he wrote "A Few Good Men," the Broadway hit he later adapted for the screen, earning an Oscar nomination for best screenplay and best picture. In his early 30s, he spent two years holed up at the Four Seasons Hotel here, writing the script for "The American President." By the time the movie was finished, Sorkin's life was spiraling out of control - he'd become a cocaine addict and had to check into the Hazelden Institute in Minnesota to kick the habit.

So why would he want the stomach-churning pressure of writing two TV shows? "It's a good question," he says one night. "Possibly the sort of question best left for a therapist."

Late one Friday, bundled up in a hooded sweatshirt and sneakers, Sorkin looks like a bleary-eyed marathoner . He tells Lowe that when he drives home at night from Burbank he fantasizes about checking into one of the gnarly room-by-the-hour motels on Ventura Boulevard for a quick snooze. "I suppose no one actually uses those motels for sleeping," Sorkin says. "I'd have to bring my computer so I could tell the clerk I'm just a writer who needs to get some work done."

Sorkin can be forgiven for imagining he was somewhere else. He thought he'd scored a coup by hiring William H. Macy - on leave from prepping a David Mamet film - to play a hardball ratings consultant on "Sports Night." But arriving at the last minute earlier that day, Macy gives what Sorkin describes as a "chillingly terrible" rehearsal performance. Sorkin and his director stare forlornly at each other, wondering if this Bill Macy, who is married to "Sports Night" co-star Felicity Huffman, can possibly be the fabled theater actor who has worked for years with Mamet and was so drolly funny in "Fargo."

Once the cameras are running, Macy nails every take. "He was perfect," Sorkin says. "Maybe that's why Mamet let us have him - he just didn't want to see him rehearse."

Around midnight, director Thomas Schlamme, Sorkin's closest confidant and an executive producer on both shows, stops by to discuss the merits of a potential "West Wing" director. Afterward, Sorkin shakes his head. "I wanted to tell Tommy, 'Don't invite me to that meeting.' The way things are going on this script, I can't imagine us ever getting to Episode 15."

Sorkin is still in the honeymoon period with NBC, which has been heavily promoting "West Wing," smelling a potential hit. But with ABC, relations have been rocky from the beginning, even though "Sports Night" was easily the third-place network's most acclaimed new show last season. Driving back to the Disney lot, Sorkin passes the half-completed ABC-TV building across the street that will replace the network's Century City headquarters. Having the top brass right next door is clearly too close for comfort. "When it's finished," he says, "I guess we'll have to move the show to New York."

"Sports Night" was network TV's most pleasant surprise - a brash half-hour comedy with the heft of an hourlong drama. Sorkin, who wrote all 23 episodes, created a gallery of witty, absorbing characters who labor for an underdog, "ESPN SportsCenter"-style highlight program.

Huffman plays Dana Whitaker, the show's tightly wrapped producer, whose suppressed attraction to co-anchor Casey McCall (Peter Krause) provides much of the show's sexual electricity. Two of the show's other regulars, associate producers played by Sabrina Lloyd and Josh Malina, provide the overt office romance, while co-anchor Dan Rydell (Josh Charles) gallantly survived several first-season humiliations by the opposite sex. The show's father figure is Isaac Jaffe, a gruff, Lou Grant-style boss played by Robert Guillaume who returns this season, recovering from a real-life stroke that Sorkin has incorporated into Isaac's character.

Even though the show has been lathered with critical praise, both for Sorkin's razor-sharp dialogue and for Schlamme's innovative direction - which won him an Emmy last month - it struggled all season, ending up a lowly No. 66 in the year-end ratings. The mediocre ratings are a particular problem for "Sports Night," which costs about $1.2 million per episode, significantly more than the average sitcom.

Sorkin spent much of last season noisily battling with the ABC brass over everything from the show's promo ads to its laugh track. To make matters worse, Sorkin aired his complaints last fall in a New Yorker piece that cast him as a defiant dilettante.

This season, Sorkin has channeled his beefs with ABC into his scripts. The show's third episode focuses on a trio of network suits who try to install the new ratings consultant in Isaac's job, using Isaac's laborious stroke recovery as an excuse to put him out to pasture. Watching the cast run through the episode, it's impossible not to draw parallels between Sorkin's script and his own run-ins with ABC.

In one scene, Isaac tells the suits: "Just because we didn't execute all the network's suggestions doesn't mean we weren't listening, it just means we didn't agree. You didn't expect me to substitute your judgment for mine, did you?"

It's unclear how ABC Entertainment co-chairman Stu Bloomberg feels about the network being portrayed as a corporate bully - he didn't respond to requests for an interview. Sorkin says Bloomberg wasn't thrilled. "I expect that Stu, being human, feels like somebody just took a cheap shot at him. But everybody fires spitballs at network heads and politicians. When he sees the show I really believe that he'll say, 'Hey, this is great television.'"

Barely an hour after the run-through, a call comes in from Bloomberg. Sorkin assures the network chief that he's building up the relationship between Dana and Casey - an obvious ABC priority - and downplays the episode's acerbic shots at network executives. "Stu, you're not the devil," he says cheerfully. "This is fiction."

TV is not a medium for manic perfectionists. But as a former playwright, Sorkin values the word - and the sound of a word - so if he thinks a line of dialogue sounds off, he will unapologetically hit the brakes and stop the train to fix a loose coupling.

And once Sorkin bonds with someone, the bond remains tight. "Sports Night's" Malina, who first met Sorkin in high school, has been in every Sorkin play and film. Ron Ostrow and Tim Davis-Reid, who play "Sports Night" control-room technicians, are elementary school and college buddies, respectively. "Sports Night's" Krause first met Sorkin when they were Broadway theater bartenders. "West Wing's" Whitford was in "A Few Good Men" on Broadway.

Sorkin and the actors spend so much time together that it's often hard to tell when art is imitating life or the other way around. When Sorkin is too busy to attend a party Huffman and Macy have one night, he sends Huffman a card with a bottle of wine and a can of Spackle - exactly what Dan gives Dana as a gesture of apology after a spat in an upcoming "Sports Night" episode.

10-15-99