jon winona

Stephen Colbert's epic question to Aaron Sorkin, and Aaron Sorkin's pithy answer.

• STEPHEN:   You know, your characters -- the characters on your show -- you're often criticized for writing characters who speak in these huge, ponderous monologues.
• AARON:   Steve, I'm just often criticized, okay?
• STEPHEN:   Yes you are. But people say you don't write the way people talk. That people don't actually talk to other people in fusillades of arguments, in sort of a verbal Normandy that overtakes not just the person they're speaking to in the other chair, but the audience that's listening. And that the person who is saying it is actually just an expression of you, up on a mountain. But is it Moses on the mountaintop, or just Aaron Sorkin on his own pile of bullshit, and he doesn't have the golden tablet in his hands, he's just doin' a line off the tablet right there, and saying "LOOK AT ME, I'M THE FUCKING KING OF MEDIA!!!" People don't talk like that. You realize that that's not realistic.
• AARON:   People don't talk like that. And -- at least at my high school -- it wasn't like "Glee."