My take on the Steve Jobs movie

Michael Fassbender is in the new Steve Jobs movie. Steve Jobs is not.

This weekend, The Danny Boyle, Aaron Sorkin movie, Steve Jobs opened in 60 theaters across the United States. Only 60. But that’s up from just four theatres last weekend. The studio is following a slow-build release pattern. The wide release comes this weekend (beginning Friday, October 23).

The movie is powerful. It shook me up. I was disturbed for hours after seeing it and I’m not sure why. I think it may be because it wasn’t Steve Jobs that I saw onscreen. It was Steve-ish, but not Steve. The film is the product of people who never met Steve trying to conjure his presence. To be sure, they are very skilled conjurers, at the top of their craft. And they made a terrific movie. Fassbender may well get an Oscar for his work. Danny Boyle’s direction is breathtaking.

But I knew Steve. I worked with Steve. And the guy in the movie just wasn’t Steve. He was uncanny-valley Steve.

The implausible — but fiendishly clever — premise of Sorkin’s structure is
that Steve Jobs spends the final thirty minutes before each one of three keynotes warding off a series random interruptions from people in his life who have unfinished emotional business with him — including and especially his former girlfriend and their daughter. In Sorkin’s conceit, the only way people ever get to unload on Steve is to ambush him backstage at a product introduction.

As you may have heard, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin took loads of liberties with timelines and events. His goal was to craft a drama, not a chronicle. He constructed an emotional and redemptive mythology for Steve. I don’t have a problem with that. Especially since the filmmakers have been very open about it. They never claim to depict history, but rather they offer what Sorkin calls a painting, not a photograph. There’s no attempt to make Michael Fassbender look like Steve Jobs, or Seth Rogan look like Woz, or Jeff Daniels look like John Sculley. At no point can you forget you’re watching movie stars.

Director Danny Boyle explains, “We wanted to send the signal very early on that it’s clearly not a photographic impersonation.”

They did, however, put Michael Stuhlbarg into a fat suit to play Andy Hertzfeld and Andy, understandably, says seeing that made him cringe. Even so, Andy liked the film.

I think Kate Winslet, of all the actors, is the only one who manages to
entirely disappear into her role. She plays Joanna Hoffman.

I remember thinking to myself as I watched — wait —isn’t Kate Winslet supposed to be in this movie? Where is she? Oh, she’s Joanna Hoffman

The crackling confrontations between Hoffman and Jobs are what drive the movie forward. She is his Jiminy Cricket. His Donna Noble.

Sorkin structures the film in three acts, each one taking place backstage before a key product introduction: Macintosh. Next. iMac. Each era gets its own look: 16mm, 35 mm, HD digital.

It’s a classic Romcom plot.
Boy meets girl.
Boy loses girl.
Boy gets girl.

Or in this case,
Boy starts company.
Boy loses company.
Boy gets company back.
FADE OUT.

The moral center of the film is Steve’s strained relationship with his daughter Lisa and her mother, Steve’s ex-girlfriend and high school sweetheart, Chrisann Brennan. Steve, at first, refuses to acknowledge that he is Lisa’s father. Although he does name a computer after her.

He offers Chrisann only minimal support despite his millions — and he does that only when ordered by the court.

It’s a part of Steve’s life that most business biographies touch on only lightly if at all. But Sorkin makes it the core of his story. He said in interviews that Lisa is the hero of the film. Sorkin sees Steve’s relationship with Lisa as the most problematic aspect of his life — although, as with everything else, he fictionalizes and fudges it for dramatic impact and to find a heart-tugging ending.

Some people who knew and worked with Steve are praising the movie — mainly the ones who are portrayed in the film. Others, including Apple’s current leadership and Steve’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs are not at all happy with it — although it doesn’t appear they’ve even seen the film.

I can’t help but wonder whether Andy, Woz, John, Chrisann, and Lisa agreed to consult and cooperate with Sorkin in hopes of having one last conversation with Steve — one final fight where their dialogue could be written by the great Aaron Sorkin and they could land a few good lines and set the record straight about how Steve hurt them. Think about the last fight you had with someone in your life: a lover, spouse, parent, boss, colleague: Don’t you wish you had Sorkin writing your repartée? Maybe that’s why they like the film.

There’s conflict in the picture. But there are no villains. There is Steve’s insistence on getting the product and the presentation right. Precisely right. No matter the human cost. But it’s not to serve his ego. He’s serving his vision and his drive to make a dent in the universe.

Sorkin’s choice to show Steve, not in a lab, or a boardroom, or an office
(except in brief flashbacks), but instead in a theatre underscores how much of Steve’s genius was about presentation and stagecraft. He had amazing instincts for both.

Danny Boyle is not only the brilliant film director who gave us Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and Slumdog Millionaire, but he’s also the master of spectacle and theatre who gave us the National Theatre production of Frankenstein and the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. Boyle has deep affinity for Steve the showman.

The boldest and smartest choice that Sorkin made was to leave things out. Completely outside of the frame of this movie: Steve marries and raises a family. Steve conquers Hollywood with Pixar. Steve transforms the music industry with iPod and iTunes. Steve changes how everyone does everything with iPhone. Steve rescues Disney Animation by selling them Pixar so that John Lasseter and Ed Catmull can put the studio back on track. Steve falls ill.

None of that happens in this movie. And Steve Jobs is a much better movie for it. There’s no question that narrowing the scope makes the story better. But there are two other omissions that are crucial to understanding Steve: how he led and how he grew as a manager and leader.

You’d think, watching this movie, that the entire method Steve used to motivate people was to browbeat them and embarrass them. OK, in truth, there was a good deal of that. Too much. He could be a jerk. He could make people feel awful for letting him down. Awful.

(Side note: My building at Apple was across the street from where Steve and the Mac team used to have their offices. One day I overheard a guy in our lobby, talking to a younger colleague. He pointed across the road at the former Mac Building and explained, “In the old days, that’s where you had to go so Steve Jobs could call you an asshole.”

But Steve’s products and Steve’s companies were not built on negative energy. They were built on his ability to inspire, to tell a story about the future and make you want to join him in bringing that future to life.

There’s no one I ever met who could make you feel better about getting it right. But that Steve is barely in the movie.

The movie fails to give us any real sense of how the Steve who returned to Apple in 1997 was different from the one who left in 1985. What made him a radically better manager and leader than the one who left Apple in turmoil in 1985. Where is the growth between Act I and Act III?

Steve Jobs is well-crafted drama, ingenious strategy, brilliant direction,and stunning performances. It’s a movie called Steve Jobs, But it’s not Steve Jobs.

Sorkin and Boyle, writer and director have been very open about the fact that they are telling a fictionalized version of Steve’s story…

I worry that, for most people, this film will become the historical record, the portrait of Steve Jobs that everyone remembers.

When the legend becomes fact, film the legend.

I was an Apple employee during Steve’s exile, but before joining Apple, I worked with Steve for seven years, beginning before Apple’s IPO. I did one brief project for him after his return.