Sticks Nix Jobs Pic

Thanks to Steven Levy for getting this interview. It’s helpful to hear Aaron Sorkin take us through his process. Most of what Sorkin says here, however, is pretty easy to infer from watching the film. He’s written three one-act plays that follow the Aristotelian unities of time and place. Sorkin’s strategy is ingenious: limit the story to three events to mark Steve’s first triumph (Macintosh), his exile from Apple (NeXT), and his return (iMac). As I said elsewhere it’s a twist on the classic boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. Only in this case, its boy starts Apple, boy loses Apple, boy gets Apple.

I’m not bothered by invented incidents, compressed time and other playwriting conventions. I’m not bothered that Fassbender, Daniels, and Rogen aren’t made up to look like Jobs, Sculley, and Woz or that they don’t try to mimic their vocal inflections. I’m not bothered that Steve’s marriage, Pixar, and iPhone don’t make the cut. (iPod is in there, preposterously, by implication.) I’m bothered a little that it’s simply preposterous that Steve spends the last forty-minutes before every major keynote dealing with random interruptions by people who have unfinished emotional business with him. But I’ll accept that premise for the sake of the drama. Here’s what bothered me a lot. Two things:

First, there’s no sense of how Act III Steve Jobs was able to be successful when the Act I Steve Jobs created (along with Macintosh) chaos, dissension and burnout. (The best testimony to Act I Steve on film is the interview with engineering head Bob Bobville in the Alex Gibney documentary.) Forget how. There wasn’t even a what. We don’t get any clue that Steve, in his exile, had transformed as a manager and leader. The only character arc Sorkin gives him is in coming to acknowledge and ultimately embrace his daughter, Lisa — and promise her an iPod.

Second, the movie plays like a Festivus celebration: it’s all the airing of grievances. It’s feels like it’s written to give Andy Hertzfeld, Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, and Crisann Brennan three last chances to have it out with Steve — only this time with Aaron Sorkin writing their lines.

The one bit of news I took from this interview — and I’m not quite sure what to make of it — is that despite the reported weak grosses since its wider release this past weekend (from 60 to 2,493 screens), the film is still doing well in the big cities. Made me think of the classic Variety headline, “Sticks Nix Hick Pics.”