Aaron Sorkin and William Shakespeare Go Shooting

By Duke Harten

Aaron Sorkin took two shells from his pocket and loaded the shotgun and squinted at the sky.  It was the kind of bright overcast sky that still requires sunglasses but neither he nor William Shakespeare had thought to bring sunglasses.  “Pull,” said William Shakespeare, and the boy pulled and the clay pigeon went up.  Shakespeare fired, missed badly.  “Fuck,” he said.

“Not to be a jerk,” said Aaron Sorkin, “but I thought The Lion King did a better job with Hamlet than Hamlet did with Hamlet.”

William Shakespeare shrugged.  “That’s something I get a lot.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Does it bother you when people talk about the saccharine idealism of The Newsroom?”

Aaron Sorkin bent down to tie his shoe.  “Good point.  I admit The Newsroom’s ‘whip-smart’ dialogue wasn’t enough to disguise that it was, at its core, an overly romantic potshot at Fox News.”  He hefted his gun.  “Pull.”

William Shakespeare watched the pigeon’s trajectory and flinched at the sound of Sorkin’s gun.  The clay exploded in midair.  Shakespeare whistled.  “Nice shot, Aaron.”

“Thank you.”  Aaron Sorkin looked at his shoes.  The laces were possessed of a malign agenda today, it would seem.  He stooped to tie them again.  “Tell me: what do you think of Ten Things I Hate About You?”

William Shakespeare walked over to the cooler and got a Sunkist.  “It’s certainly a more feminist take on Shrew,” he said.  He opened the soda and drank hungrily, orange rivulets spilling down his beard.  “But I didn’t write Shrew.  It was a misattribution.”

“No kidding,” said Aaron Sorkin.  “Take ten,” he shouted to the boy, and joined William Shakespeare at the cooler.

The boy moved a few paces away from his station and sat in a patch of dead grass.  Aaron Sorkin and William Shakespeare watched him pick his nose.  “What’s with the lawn?” said Shakespeare. 

Sorkin shook his head.  “I don’t know.  Hey, boy, what’s with the lawn?”

The boy looked at the men, then turned to survey the rest of the range.  Dead grass happened in regular intervals here.  “The irrigation guys miscalculated,” the boy said. 

Aaron Sorkin nodded and fished a Pepsi out of the cooler.  “They look like the Steelers logo,” said William Shakespeare, gesturing at the yellow patches of grass.

“Yeah,” said Aaron Sorkin.  “They do.”

Shakespeare crushed his can underfoot and picked up the shotgun.  The boy hustled back to his post.  “Pull,” said Shakespeare.  The pigeon sailed untouched through the playwright’s spray of birdshot. 

“You’re as bad as Tarantino,” said Aaron Sorkin.