Aaron Sorkin on America's misguided tendency to course correct

There are over 20,000 pages of court transcript from the actual trial of the Chicago 7, all of which Aaron Sorkin used as source material for his new movie, The Trial Of The Chicago 7. He also used countless books—both by participants and by historians—contemporaneous accounts, and interviews he did with Tom Hayden before his death. All of that is to say that The Trial is rich with historical detail and language, which sounds about right for Sorkin.

The A.V. Club asked Sorkin about synergizing all that material, as well as what he makes of the United States’ occasional tendency to perform reactionary course corrections at the ballot box, i.e. Johnson to Nixon, Obama to Trump, and so on. He had, as one might expect, a lot of thoughts about the latter point, all of which are featured in the video above.

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 is in select theaters now, and will hit Netflix on October 16.