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Aaron Sorkin compares daunting task of Steve Jobs biopic to ‘writing about The Beatles’

Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter behind the Sony-backed biopic based on Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, just sat down with Walt Mossberg at the D10 Conference to discuss everything from the late CEO and upcoming blockbuster to writing techniques and…The Beatles.

Sorkin is a Hollywood mogul thanks to his numerous successes, including “The Social Network,” “Moneyball,” and “The West Wing,” but the Big Shot warned that his silver-screen version of the best-selling biography is still in its early stages.

“I will be going through a long period that would not look to the casual observer like writing, it will look more like watching ESPN; to the untrained eye, it would look like watching college football. It’s a process of procrastination,” Sorkin told Mossberg.

He also noted feeling hesitant to take on the movie and compared it to “writing about the Beatles.” Sorkin apparently did not want to dissapoint the droves of people who adore and revere Jobs. AllThingsD posted a round-up of the interview:

What actor will play Jobs? Sorkin said he didn’t know, but it had to be someone smart, because that’s impossible to fake.

Sorkin said he’d describe his career as a pattern of writing about people who are smarter than he is, something he was inspired by from a young age growing up in a family of people smarter than he was.

“I really fell in love with the phonetic sound of intelligence and the sound of a really good argument,” Sorkin said.

Later in the conversation, Sorkin talked about how he writes outside of the current trend towards antihero characters, with the possible exception of his depiction of Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network.”

Mossberg asked Sorkin if he plans to portray Jobs as an anti[hero].

“With as little as I know about the Steve Jobs movie, I know this for sure: I can’t judge the character,” Sorkin said. “He has to be a hero, I have to find the parts of him that are like me, I have to defend this character. You want to write the character as if they are making the case to god why they should be allowed into heaven.”

(AllThingsD’s liveblog of the entire interview is here.)

9to5Mac will post a video of the interview when it becomes available.

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