Solid interview. When asked about comments saying “a lot of the things in the movie didn’t actually happen”, Woz said:
> There’s parts of me saying, “Steve, please, please acknowledge the Apple II team”, all the way for 15 years through the movie. Like I would do that?
At the core of this is Sorkin making a movie, not a biography. Woz is saying, if you can get past that fact, it’s a great movie. Not sure I can get past that fact. I enjoyed the Social Network, thought it was a terrific movie, but I don’t have strong feelings about the subject matter in that movie.
The history behind this movie runs very deep to me, and I am intimately familiar with the players, they’ve been part of my entire adult life. It’ll be hard for me to see it and divorce myself from that reality.
I love Woz, he’s fantastic and this is a great interview. Thanks for posting it.
I think Woz has it exactly right: it’s not a documentary, it’s a dramatization of pieces of history, reworked to make a decent script and storyline. Andy Hertzfeld has said as much too.
There have been many dramatic movies about historical figures that have taken the same liberties and I don’t remember folks getting so bent up about them (Ghandi, Patton, JFK, Nixon, etc.).
I was an adult during the entire arc of this movie, working with Apple, meeting Jobs, Hertzfeld and Hoffman and I’ve followed all things Apple closely since 1983. Anyone who now says that Steve Jobs didn’t have a dark side hasn’t been paying attention, or, has taken the edges off of history since Jobs’ death.
I think it would be a shame if Jobs was only known as the business and design genius who pointed Apple in the right direction. He was a genius and he did just that. But, there were lots of bumps along the way and those too have to be part of the story. No doubt there will be a biographical piece on PBS (American Masters) that isn’t a dramatizations and goes through his life with a different kind of attention, but I’m very much looking forward to seeing Sorkin and Boyle and the actors’ work, I greatly admire all of them.
I’ve decided I’m happier with my own knowledge of events and don’t need to see the opportunists’ version(s)..
strawmen in your argument:
nobody claimed it was a documentary
nobody claimed Jobs didn’t have bad traits
but the point that is being made — this movie is a “biopic”, based on his biography. and yet it turned down reality for dramatic narrative instead. despite the real Jobs and real events being plenty dramatic already.
for example, like suggesting Woz claimed Jobs “stole” the GUI is just pure nonesense; a rehash of a very old myth. and a myth busted by the people in the room:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt
Another straw man: “despite the real Jobs and real events being plenty dramatic already.”
That supposes the point of the film is to be a biopic and not a mythology. One of the fuctions of a myth is to illuminate truths about ourselves, and that, evidently, is the purpose of the picture.
Regarding movies I’ve seen where a devoted following of the subject voices a strong opinion that the films wander from actual events, I can’t recall one where said fans didn’t sound like whiners to me, or where the film was less enjoyable for the wandering.
A fair and self-aware post. It is a shame when subject matter is close and one can’t let go…but it’s not a bad thing in and of itself. It’s prioritization, is all.
All good points but I don’t think Sorkin thinks or that Woz thought that the Lisa team stole the GUI from PARC.
I’ve not seen the movie but what I’ve seen of that scene shows Wozniak getting very worked up and ranting at Jobs about how the NeXT cube is going to be a flop (it was) and in the middle of that, talks about Jobs ripping off the GUI from PARC. To me this doesn’t perpetuate the myth (and I agree, it’s a myth) but shows Wozniak getting riled at Jobs because he’s feeling left behind and because he thinks Jobs is making a mistake with the NeXT cube. In other words, Woz doesn’t say it as fact, he says it in anger or jealousy or both.
That’s the license dramatizations take to make larger points. Yes, we all know this history well and are sensitive to it but those kinds of details are not what this movie is about, nor should it be. It’s about the relationships between all of these people. That’s what Sorkin has always done: find threads of relationships and use fast and cutting dialog to illuminate them.
Again, I’ve not seen it but in all the Sorkin-written pieces I’ve seen, I’ve given him lots of latitude to make larger points and it’s always well worth it. I look forward to seeing this one too.
Plus, it may not even be less accurate!
Yeah, I still have issues with what Shakespeare did with Henry V’s career, too. 😉