Aaron Sorkin Is a Fan of Sex — But Not of Writing Sex Scenes
Nicole Kidman in ‘Malice’
Sex scenes can be as awkward for screenwriters as they are for actors. In a new interview with Vulture, Oscar-winning Steve Jobs writer Aaron Sorkin offers up a vividly awkward anecdote about his early work on the twisty 1993 psychological thriller, Malice, starring Alec Baldwin and Nicole Kidman.
Sorkin, who shared writing credit on the project with another future star, Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Minority Report), said that during preproduction, he was asked by director Harold Becker to add a sex scene between the two stars in the second act. If you’ll recall, Baldwin plays a surgeon with a God complex — no, sorry, he is God — while Kidman is the married landlord he’ll both operate on and seduce.
Sorkin delivered a “four-page scene of sexy banter that ended with, 'And they fall into bed, as we cut to the next morning, the quad on campus,’” but as Sorkin recalls, Becker wanted the juicy bits spelled out. Sorkin felt uncomfortable, having never written a sex scene before. “Harold said, 'Just look at Nicole. Just write what you’d like to see her do.’ And I said, 'I’m not going to write that down!’” Sorkin’s discomfort with the situation was compounded by the fact that he had just done a film with Kidman’s then-husband Tom Cruise — 1992’s A Few Good Men, which also marked his screenwriting debut.
(Vulture reached out to Becker for comment, and he replied, “I don’t recollect asking Aaron to amend the love scene between Nicole and Alec as it was integral to the plot of the film.”)
Related: Steve Jobs’s Widow Tried to Stop Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Steve Jobs’ Movie
Ultimately, according to Sorkin, Becker and his team gathered in a trailer to choreograph the steamy sequence, leaving the screenwriter none-too-pleased with the results. “Alec says, 'I’m going to take you upstairs and f— you now.’ And I was mortified — not necessarily because it was the wrong line in the scene. I was just mortified that anyone in the audience would think that was something that I think is cool to say.”
Just don’t call Sorkin a prude. “I can’t emphasize this enough — huge fan of sex, in any combination you want,” he said. “But for some reason it’s difficult for me to write.”
As you could probably guess, there are no sex scenes in Steve Jobs. But Sorkin did acknowledge the memory helped him understand the real Jobs better: “For me, that’s a way to identify with Steve — somebody messing with one of his products.”
Read the full interview over at Vulture.
