So they're saying that "it's not important" that Fassbinder doesn't resemble Jobs AT ALL (and even the TV promos show him from BEHIND - THE BACK OF HIS HEAD - LOL), but if it's "not important" to have even a passing resemblance, then why did they get a spot-on, spittin' image Woz?
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'Steve Jobs' Debuts in Select Theaters as First Full Scene Debuts Online
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A hefty guy with a beard is spot on as much as a thinner tall guy would be for Jobs.
Maybe Jobs didn't say that last line, but he had to know what Woz says in this scene was true. The first iteration of the NeXT suffered horribly trying to run directly from that optical drive. How could Jobs not know that? I know because I owned one. I had to pony up the cash to buy the hard drive to make the thing useful.
At the time I was looking at Macs that would cost me somewhere in the range of $6000. Then I saw the NeXT at a local computer show in Huntsville, AL. I was floored by its interface. Even with only 4 shades of gray it looked like an interface that was miles ahead of the Mac, not to mention Windows 2.0. Perhaps it was the 1 Mpixel screen which was huge at the time and the DisplayPostscript, but it looked gorgeous. And then InterfaceBuilder made it seem like even I could program a GUI.
I ended up spending over $10,000 on the computer and laser printer. I went to the week-long programming class in Redwood City and was totally over my head with programmers from Adobe and Ashton Tate, but eventually I got the hang of OOP. I dumped even more money into NeXT with the '040 upgrade board and eventually a couple more of the color NeXTstations. Even had a job for a year writing technical apps exclusively in NeXTstep for military contracts. I took my own NeXTstation to work in a subsequent aerospace job to write my own custom analytical apps. I believed!
Then Jobs cut all us NeXT believers off at the knees when he finally gave up and closed the computer factory. NeXT failed. Jobs failed. The software (OS and NeXTstep API) lived on at a completely unrealistic price point. It ran on high end PCs and I used that for a while until Windows 95 came out along with tools like Borland Delphi/C++Builder which together did some of the things that the NeXT did so well at a much lower price point.
Then eventually Jobs sold Apple on NeXTstep as the way out of the OS upgrade mess that Apple was mired in at the time. MacOS X is really just an evolution of what Jobs started with that presentation of the original NeXTcube. While NeXT itself failed, what was created there still lives on in your MacBook.
At the time I was looking at Macs that would cost me somewhere in the range of $6000. Then I saw the NeXT at a local computer show in Huntsville, AL. I was floored by its interface. Even with only 4 shades of gray it looked like an interface that was miles ahead of the Mac, not to mention Windows 2.0. Perhaps it was the 1 Mpixel screen which was huge at the time and the DisplayPostscript, but it looked gorgeous. And then InterfaceBuilder made it seem like even I could program a GUI.
I ended up spending over $10,000 on the computer and laser printer. I went to the week-long programming class in Redwood City and was totally over my head with programmers from Adobe and Ashton Tate, but eventually I got the hang of OOP. I dumped even more money into NeXT with the '040 upgrade board and eventually a couple more of the color NeXTstations. Even had a job for a year writing technical apps exclusively in NeXTstep for military contracts. I took my own NeXTstation to work in a subsequent aerospace job to write my own custom analytical apps. I believed!
Then Jobs cut all us NeXT believers off at the knees when he finally gave up and closed the computer factory. NeXT failed. Jobs failed. The software (OS and NeXTstep API) lived on at a completely unrealistic price point. It ran on high end PCs and I used that for a while until Windows 95 came out along with tools like Borland Delphi/C++Builder which together did some of the things that the NeXT did so well at a much lower price point.
Then eventually Jobs sold Apple on NeXTstep as the way out of the OS upgrade mess that Apple was mired in at the time. MacOS X is really just an evolution of what Jobs started with that presentation of the original NeXTcube. While NeXT itself failed, what was created there still lives on in your MacBook.
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11 Things That Aren't True in the Movie. The article makes an interesting read. Some of the points just shock me. Why misrepresent reality in a way that damages individual character.
11 Things That Aren't True in the Movie
My opinion of Aaron Sorkin is much lower now. How can you rewrite the facts to create drama and in the process damage peoples reputations. Many attending the movie will see this as true. Danny Boyle and Walter Isaacson are guilty by association. If Laurene and Steve's friends saw this script I can now understand why they are upset. Making stuff up and peddling it as a movie about Steve Jobs is just mean.
I will still wait to pass final judgement. Actually I may just give it a miss. There seems to be a bit of an assassination of character going on.
__________________________________________
It's like Ben Affleck and his Argo movie rescuing six Americans during the US hostage crisis in Iran. In the movie Ben decided to show the New Zealand Embassy refusing to help the Americans. That is just not true. It was artistic licence to make the story more dramatic. Thanks for nothing Ben. People see the movie and assume it's fact.
TV3 News Story New Zealand
The Guardian Story
The Telegraph Story
Seems Ben Affleck chose to misrepresent the facts and rewrite history solely because it fitted his story better. If you are making a movie based on historical events it should be true. My opinion of Ben Affleck went way down after this. I see he managed to upset the British, New Zealanders and Canadians.
This sort of rewriting is appalling and the movie studios should be held to account for their negligence.
11 Things That Aren't True in the Movie
My opinion of Aaron Sorkin is much lower now. How can you rewrite the facts to create drama and in the process damage peoples reputations. Many attending the movie will see this as true. Danny Boyle and Walter Isaacson are guilty by association. If Laurene and Steve's friends saw this script I can now understand why they are upset. Making stuff up and peddling it as a movie about Steve Jobs is just mean.
I will still wait to pass final judgement. Actually I may just give it a miss. There seems to be a bit of an assassination of character going on.
__________________________________________
It's like Ben Affleck and his Argo movie rescuing six Americans during the US hostage crisis in Iran. In the movie Ben decided to show the New Zealand Embassy refusing to help the Americans. That is just not true. It was artistic licence to make the story more dramatic. Thanks for nothing Ben. People see the movie and assume it's fact.
TV3 News Story New Zealand
The Guardian Story
The Telegraph Story
Seems Ben Affleck chose to misrepresent the facts and rewrite history solely because it fitted his story better. If you are making a movie based on historical events it should be true. My opinion of Ben Affleck went way down after this. I see he managed to upset the British, New Zealanders and Canadians.
This sort of rewriting is appalling and the movie studios should be held to account for their negligence.
1. "In what appears to be a sweeping victory for Apple, Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the Federal District Court in San Francisco threw out five of the six counts in Xerox's lawsuit, saying, in essence, that Xerox's complaints were inappropriate for a variety of legal reasons.
Xerox sued Apple in December, seeking more than $150 million in damages. ....the judge threw out all the counts seeking damages, attorneys involved in the case said." I haven't tracked down the verdict on the sixth count. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/business/most-of-xerox-s-suit-against-apple-barred.html
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3538913398421433687
2. Three days (if accurate) seems more than a demo to me:
“November: Steve Jobs and software engineer Bill Atkinson visit the Xerox PARC lab in Palo Alto, California. More Apple employees will visit a month later.” http://www.macworld.com/article/1050115/30timeline.html
Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares of Apple at the pre-IPO price of $10 a share.
This movie may be based on the Isaacson bio but every trailer I've seen seems well exaggerated. Jobs like all of us was flawed, and I think with his extreme genius came extreme conceit that, as the Isaacson and other bios have portrayed, made him unbearable at times. But this movie, at least the released clips, make him seem like an angry thieving misanthropic caricature. Maybe that distortion makes good movie, but not history. And Sorkin probably didn't intent for this movie to be historical or biographical, but that's how uninitiated viewers will digest it.
It also puzzles me why Woz would put his imprimatur on this movie. I can't get into his head to fish out his motivation, but I can think of a few reasons. It really diminishes my respect for him as I previously saw him as the happy-go-lucky-altruistic-don't need the spot light-but no business sense genius of the pair.
It also puzzles me why Woz would put his imprimatur on this movie. I can't get into his head to fish out his motivation, but I can think of a few reasons. It really diminishes my respect for him as I previously saw him as the happy-go-lucky-altruistic-don't need the spot light-but no business sense genius of the pair.
I have read the screenplay and I believe the point of view in the movie is that Jobs knew the product would fail but all he cared about was developing the OS so that he could get back into Apple via that route, if I am remembering it correctly.
SPOILERS BELOW, don't read on if you don't want to know anything about the movie.
A word to the wise, if they did not alter the screenplay in a major way I believe this movie will bore most people. He has Woz in the first two scenes whine about the same low stakes issue, he wants Steve to give credit to the Apple II team during his presentation, I believe he comes back in the third act and argues for it one more time. He has the ex girlfriend in all three acts trying to get Steve to accept that Lisa is his real daughter. Scully simply wants to cement his legacy and not be trashed upon in the press.
There were a few cool moments and of course Sorkin will deliver some flashy lines and witty retorts but too much of it reads like a glorified Lifetime movie of the month.
The score by Daniel Pemberton is one of the best movie scores I have ever listened to. Somebody mentioned Sorkin repeating himself, one thing I picked up upon was that Scully keeps referencing Jobs use of actual skinheads for the 1984 commercial, if you have seen The Social Network this becomes a running in movie reference in the same way the chickens was used in that movie. Scully also comes up with some psycho babble nonsense about Jobs being an adopted child etc. etc.
Oh and there is a truly lame sequence in which Woz and Jobs argue about who is Ringo and who is John as they compare themselves to the Beatles.
You probably have fished out the same reasons that I have by now. Neither of us can read his mind or speak for him but we can speculate.
This is from the article linked by Mystic 386 earlier, 11 Things That Aren't True in the Movie:
"Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and Jobs have a dramatic public shouting match before the iMac launch. Pure invention. By this time, Woz had already withdrawn from active work at Apple and the real blowup was long behind them. Talk about a one-dimensional character: Woz shows up in every act, begging for the same thing—he wants Jobs to publicly acknowledge the Apple II team, the one Woz led and that Jobs slighted. It's a thankless role. In this strange way, the movie is as unfair to Woz as it is to Jobs—which is ironic, given that Woz was a paid consultant."
Yesterday I spent a little downtime watching several interviews with Steve Wozniak. They were conducted at different times of his life and some are fairly recent and all were on You Tube for anyone who cares to look.
I was really quite struck with how "hung up" he is on Apple II. It's understandable and even beautiful to see his passion for this machine that he created even after all these years. But interwoven with that passion is considerable amounts of his ego, and it appears that it's a wounded ego. Wounded by Steve Jobs. Steve Wozniak apparently can't state often enough and at any opportunity how slighted he and the other engineers and developers from those earlier days have been. Slighted by Jobs, slighted by the media engine that created the Steve Jobs legend.
He becomes very animated and impassioned on the subject. He also becomes so emotional in one interview recounting how he shared his stock with the employees that Steve Jobs cut out, that the interviewer actually rudely and brusquely cuts him off with a "Yes, yes, everybody already knows about that!" It was like a slap across his face when the snippy little talking head does that to him. But he became quiet and answered her next question.
I think either he never got to say how he felt about all of this to Steve Jobs while Jobs was still alive. Or he never got to say it in a way that ever was acknowledged in a way meaningful to Wozniak. It appears to be an unresolved issue he's going to be struggling with for a long time. Some ways he does this will be fitting and appropriate. Others, not so very honorable.
It's why I made my rather harsh post earlier that I don't want to pay to see a movie that's basically Wozniak's therapy. This is something he needs to question for himself and decide to work through in a more constructive way. A way that isn't going to involve tarnishing the reputation of a man who already has acknowledged faults that he doesn't need embellished or outright lied about. And by a man who still goes about in public pushing a reputation as one of Jobs' best friends and something of an authority on Jobs. That's just disingenuous at this point. Woz for a long time has hardly acted like a friend and more "someone that Jobs used to know." A friend doesn't endorse a movie that the deceased friend's widow finds upsetting enough to actively campaign against.
Woz tries to maintain that Jobs' character and personality were permanently set for life when he became rich and got a taste of power. That is unfair and a lie when later he admits that something in Steve must have changed since he was able to maintain a healthy marriage.
The thing is, he wasn't closely involved with Jobs later in life. He can only give half the story. He knows it. He tries to sidestep this in a couple of statements in a couple of different interviews. Once by saying that it's the early part of Jobs' life that people are interested in, in these movies. No Woz, it's you who are fixated on that part of Jobs' life. Jobs himself moved on. Now Woz needs to, too.
I find Woz to be an interesting person in his own right and flawed in his own ways as much as Jobs was. His flaws just aren't the kind that drive some people to be successful in business. They're the ordinary kind we all have.
Woz is very much like the person who would buy a NeXTcube, spend a lot of time programming it without caring if it will be a commercial success. Woz simply doesn't care. The fact that in this scene Woz go to Jobs to tell him it will fail (commercially) is completely out of character for Woz.
LOL Right... as big as Steve's ego was... Woz's is that much bigger. I couldn't even get through iWoz, was so turned off by him telling me how smart he was and how he was the first to do this, that, etc. Yuck.
Online ads say it is a triumph. Just getting actors and a director is the triumph, so that is what the ads must mean.
Hiring the talentless and ugly Seth Rogen is an insult to Woz.
Hiring the talentless and ugly Seth Rogen is an insult to Woz.
Thanks. I also couldn't find out what happen with the sixth count. But this:
What a terrible reason to essentially not get your day in court.
Source.
Dealers of Lightning
By Michael A. Hiltzik
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dealers-of-lightning-michael-a-hiltzik/1100616282
Chapter 23. Steve Jobs Gets His Show and Tell.
It was an invitation to PARC, not a bill of sale for the GUI. Nor was it a licensing agreement for the GUI.
Still sounds like just a demo to me.
Nope, still a demonstration. No agreement for the GUI.
Agreed. But not just a quick demo to Steve and a couple others as referenced all to often in movies and articles. A multi-day demo to Apple engineers.
One should wonder, why would Xerox buy 1-million+ dollars worth of a company, and agree to three days of showing their hard work to engineers from that company, and expect those engineers wouldn't be inspired? Then Xerox waits 5-years till the competitor sues others for copyright infringement before taking them to court.
Pop culture portrays Xerox as naive and Apple as thieves. Yet Xerox agreed to several days of demo, and at the time must have known exactly what they were doing, with cash (and liability insurance?) deals cemented between the companies, followed by 5-years of complacency, to all but prove it.
Jobs movies are now boring, will love to see this one instead:
I have no interest in seeing a fictional movie based on a real person. It's one thing to embellish certain things for the sake of making a compelling film that people will want to see, but just making things up and inventing dialogue that never happened? What is compelling about that. I find it quite sad that Woz and Andy Hertzfeld are perfectly OK with this. Bit it seems like the only people the media are interested in hearing from (aside from Tim Cook and Jony Ive) are Woz and Hertzfeld.
I'd like to get more opinions from people who actually worked with Steve over the years. People like Chris Espinosa and George Crow. Chris was employee #8 and still works at Apple. Crow was a member of the original Mac team. He left Apple to co-found NeXT with Steve and came back to Apple after it acquired NeXT. He retired from Apple in 2006. Or how about Jerry Manock or Larry Tesler? Or Dan Kottke, Rod Holt, Susan Kare. Or perhaps Jon Rubinstein or Avie Tevanian. Both of them worked at NeXT and Apple. Did Sorkin consult anyone besides Woz and Hertzfeld?
I'd like to get more opinions from people who actually worked with Steve over the years. People like Chris Espinosa and George Crow. Chris was employee #8 and still works at Apple. Crow was a member of the original Mac team. He left Apple to co-found NeXT with Steve and came back to Apple after it acquired NeXT. He retired from Apple in 2006. Or how about Jerry Manock or Larry Tesler? Or Dan Kottke, Rod Holt, Susan Kare. Or perhaps Jon Rubinstein or Avie Tevanian. Both of them worked at NeXT and Apple. Did Sorkin consult anyone besides Woz and Hertzfeld?
I saw the "Steve Jobs" movie last night at Lincoln Center in NYC. Many of the showings were completely sold out. If you watch the movie from a strictly a Hollywood perspective that takes creative license with the facts and distorts them to create "Hollywood" drama, the movie is a resounding success. As you watch the movie you are drawn into the behind the scenes perspective of the introduction of the Macintosh, NeXT and iMac.
However, the movie strays from reality, but I would not put this all on the director Sorkin. Lisa Brennan Jobs and Steve Wozniak contributed to these "facts". Apple, Laurene Powell Jobs, Tim Cook and other Apple confidants refused to provide the insight from their perspective of Steve.
Steve obviously was not the greatest Dad, but he supposedly became closer to his daughter because of an an "abstract" painting she created in MacPaint is purely fictitious. Jobs, "I play the Orchestra" while Wozniak is simply considered a musician? The ongoing requests by Wozniak to recognize the Apple II team at every intro. Chrisann Brennan and John Sculley behind the scenes at every event? Wozniak having a public shouting match and keeping a reporter on stage to hear everything? The stretch of the truth plays out throughout the film.
Many of the people in the audience were from the iGeneration in their teens or twenties who barely remember the introduction of the iPod and know Steve Jobs for the iPhone. While the facts many not be accurate, I did feel it was a personal time capsule for myself reliving the (albeit semi-accurate) moments of the past 30 years of Apple and Jobs.
I was an original 128k Mac owner which still sits in my attic today, I saw Steve Jobs at the 1997 keynote at Boston MacWorld announcing the Microsoft partnership. Attended various San Francisco and Boston MacWorld Expos and after parties on both coasts, I was able to use the early successful Mac products getting keyed into early vendors such as Macromedia and Adobe who owe their livelihoods to Apple, I used MacWrite and MacPaint before spellcheckers existed or a PC had Windows, I was involved in purchasing and developing on the first NexT at $12,000 into the company The New York and New Jersey Macintosh User Groups were in my blood. Just being a part of the "new" Apple after Jobs returned and seeing the references on the big screen brought back such great memories of the past.
Steve Jobs the movie, continues the conversation of this extremely complex genius of a man who continues to shape the world today four years after he is gone. No director or person will ever know what is was truly like to be Steve Jobs or where would we be today if he were still around.
However, the movie strays from reality, but I would not put this all on the director Sorkin. Lisa Brennan Jobs and Steve Wozniak contributed to these "facts". Apple, Laurene Powell Jobs, Tim Cook and other Apple confidants refused to provide the insight from their perspective of Steve.
Steve obviously was not the greatest Dad, but he supposedly became closer to his daughter because of an an "abstract" painting she created in MacPaint is purely fictitious. Jobs, "I play the Orchestra" while Wozniak is simply considered a musician? The ongoing requests by Wozniak to recognize the Apple II team at every intro. Chrisann Brennan and John Sculley behind the scenes at every event? Wozniak having a public shouting match and keeping a reporter on stage to hear everything? The stretch of the truth plays out throughout the film.
Many of the people in the audience were from the iGeneration in their teens or twenties who barely remember the introduction of the iPod and know Steve Jobs for the iPhone. While the facts many not be accurate, I did feel it was a personal time capsule for myself reliving the (albeit semi-accurate) moments of the past 30 years of Apple and Jobs.
I was an original 128k Mac owner which still sits in my attic today, I saw Steve Jobs at the 1997 keynote at Boston MacWorld announcing the Microsoft partnership. Attended various San Francisco and Boston MacWorld Expos and after parties on both coasts, I was able to use the early successful Mac products getting keyed into early vendors such as Macromedia and Adobe who owe their livelihoods to Apple, I used MacWrite and MacPaint before spellcheckers existed or a PC had Windows, I was involved in purchasing and developing on the first NexT at $12,000 into the company The New York and New Jersey Macintosh User Groups were in my blood. Just being a part of the "new" Apple after Jobs returned and seeing the references on the big screen brought back such great memories of the past.
Steve Jobs the movie, continues the conversation of this extremely complex genius of a man who continues to shape the world today four years after he is gone. No director or person will ever know what is was truly like to be Steve Jobs or where would we be today if he were still around.
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I thought the Ashton Kutcher movie was very entertaining—flawed, but it kept my interest and didn't feel like it was taking itself too seriously. This movie reeks of it though, even just this one scene feels so freakin' self-important and contrived. This looks like it's in the slow process of disappearing up its own backside.
For my money, all these latest movies can take a leap though. The Pirates of Silicon Valley did it first and did it right. That movie exaggerated the living s**t out of this stuff and played up the mythology for everything it was worth. It makes it fun and funny and insightful, without ever once taking itself too seriously.
Wow, amazing comment.
Please advise Apple if a TV series is made of Jobs! The best thing would be a multi-part documentary based on existing footage.
vs
vs
Safe to say Kutcher was the perfect Jobs
Agreed.
And I think a good candidate for Woz would be Sam and Dean Winchesters' father from Supernatural.