Academy Award winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin made a rare public appearance at the 10th annual All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, in part to promote his upcoming HBO show on cable news Newsroom, but mostly to speak about his current writing project, the Steve Jobs biopic based off of Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Apple CEO.

Sorkin described the film as a “painting, not a photograph” saying it is impossible to make everyone happy when working on a project of this magnitude.

It’s very difficult to shake the cradle-to-grave structure of a biography, so I’m probably not going to write one, [I'll] identify the point of friction that appeals to [him] and dramatize that.

Sorkin also spoke about the complexity of men like Jobs and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg who was the focus of his last film The Social Network, saying he can’t judge the character while writing. Sorkin said he writes thte characters as if they’re making their case before God to get into heaven.

I suppose that’s not a bad way of putting it.