Aaron Sorkin and dobbing

I listened to an interview with Barry Diller the other day who defended Scott Rudin over the “bashing up assistants” thing which led me to think about how Rudin is Sorkin’s main producer (Mockingbird, Jobs, etc) and how Sorkin has been so quiet on Rudin which then reminded me that one of Sorkin’s tropes that isn’t much discussed is the “don’t dob” storyline - he really loves it

A big arc of the final series of Newsroom was Dev Patel/Neil not “giving up a source” and indeed going on the run (and indeed disappearing from the show, to turn up and mock the social media team who were coming up with listicle click bait articles).. and there was another arc for Jeff Daniels not revealing a source and going to prison and then being let out because... I think just because

And on West Wing there was that plot where Martin Sheen decides to hire Lily Tomlin because she didn’t dob on her boss...

And from memory Richard Schiff who plays Toby hasn’t stopped complaining about his series 7 plot line where Toby did dob.

And in Molly’s Game the big... B plot, I guess, or A minus plot, is Molly not dobbing on her clients... apart from a few... I think... I got a little confused but I think she was meant to be admirable for not dobbing, but dobbing on Toby McGuire was okay, or something, and the lawyer’s daughter was studying The Crucible, which is all about not dobbing on yourself for doing something you didn’t do...

And there was that episode in Studio 60 on Sunset where they met the crazy writer Eli Wallach who it turned out was blacklisted and at the end of the episode one of the leads forced everyone to sit down and listen to Wallach’s blacklist stories...

And a great part of A Few Good Men hinges on the accused soldiers not dobbing, and the soldier who died was killed (basically) for dobbing

Then there was that time IRL when that female writer who worked on Newsroom took to twitter to complain about the rape storyline, and decry responsibility, and Aaron Sorkin responded he was upset that writer dobbed, eg betrayed the sanctity of the writer’s room

So anyway Aaron Sorkin and dobbing... lots of connections!