Steve Jobs was 'flawed and damaged', screenwriter Aaron Sorkin says of his latest subject

After a particularly virtuosic stretch of dialogue during the Telluride Film Festival premiere of Steve Jobs in September, an audience member cried out, as if at a rock concert, “Sorkin!”

That a screenwriter, traditionally the most downtrodden, anonymous player in the film business, got catcalled like a pop star at the prestigious industry event speaks volumes about the singular career of Aaron Sorkin, the writer of the new film. Sorkin, who had been nervously pacing in the lobby outside the theatre moments before, heard the voice and was moved by it – screen dialogue is how he prefers to speak to other people.

“I’ve often felt like I would be best off if I were in a room by myself and I would write some pages and slip them under the door and somebody would slip back a tray of food,” Sorkin says. “If people could know me for what I write and not this – what we’re doing now – I would be better off.”

Steve Jobs, which Sorkin adapted loosely from Walter Isaacson’s biography of the Apple co-founder, reveals a man who soars in his profession and struggles in his relationships, a paradigm not unfamiliar to Sorkin. The movie has familiar Sorkinisms – rapid, brainy dialogue, a ticking clock, behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings – but is the writer’s most structurally daring film script.

Directed by Oscar winner Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs, the movie uses three key product launches in Jobs’ career as a structure on which to hang his messy human connections, including those with Apple marketing chief Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), company co-founder Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) and, most crucially, Jobs’ eldest daughter, Lisa, who is played at three ages by three different actresses.

Long before its release, the movie stirred up controversy and name-calling. Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, tried to block the film’s production, and Apple CEO Tim Cook recently described its makers as “opportunistic”. Sorkin says he feels he has made a movie that is empathetic to the technology groundbreaker, and he relates personally to some of Jobs’ failings.