Will Aaron Sorkin Avoid The Fatal Trap Of "The Politician"?

by Nate Freeman

Aaron Sorkin appears to be bold enough to take on the life of John Edwards, the philanderer with a $500 haircut. Sorkin has optioned The Politician, the tell-all written by aide Andrew Young, and plans to adapt it for the screen, producing and directing. The film will chronicle the former North Carolina senator’s fall from grace, which began when that very real and legitimate pillar of journalistic ethics the National Inquirer first started reporting on his affair with Jay McInerney muse Rielle Hunter in October 2007.

There are so many ways to fuck this one up, but there’s one potential pratfall that Sorkin would be particularly wont to avoid: the sanctimonious montage of the guilt-ridden man drowning his sorrows at a bar. It’s a well-worn cliché, and after Gabriel Sherman’s article in the New Republic shared Edwards’ social habits with the world, it seems like an unavoidable inclusion toward the end of this tale of politics and scandal. If Sorkin has any discretion, however, the film will cut the following scenes of Edwards’ bar crawls through Durham and Chapel Hill, as written in the article: Edwards shimmying up on Duke grad students palming a glass of white wine; Edwards talking awkwardly to women at saloons with names like The Wooden Nickel; and Edwards slamming back brews at dive bars.

But what filmmaker can resist that kind of drama? Oh, yes, it’s all there. The golden locks of the one-time presidential frontrunner become mussed as the sequence progresses, his eyes-glassed-over with guilt, the lids trembling oh so slightly-entreating the barmaid for another chilled Riesling. The shot will cut from one watering hole to the next, each as listless as the previous, each hitting you over the head with this crisis of the human condition. This is some serious problem-boozing, so it will get the most inevitable of soundtracks-the god-awful 90s dad-rock of Semisonic’s “Closing Time”.

Though if the film does stoop to that level, would it be much of a surprise? The subtlety-killing trailer for Sorkin’s The Social Network features a children’s choir rendition of “Creep.” Yes, we get it. Â So, Aaron, when you adapt The Politician, try and depict this modern American tragedy with some honesty and compassion-avoid the dead-end of the montage.