The movie, that is, not the mesh of personal ties facilitated by a website on the Internet…
Next week’s NYMagazine cover story serves up 6,000 words on The Social Network, the movie about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook. For the piece Mark Harris spoke with its director David Fincher, writer Aaron Sorkin, star Jesse Eisenberg (he plays Zuck), and Justin Timberlake (he plays Napster co-founder Sean Parker, who went on to be Facebook’s first president), among others, about the film. A snippet:
Sorkin’s script, which tells the story—or rather, the contentious, conflicting stories—of the founding of Facebook, can boast more than mere Zeitgeist-y oomph. It’s yielded a remarkable rarity in contemporary studio filmmaking: a movie that could recapture for Hollywood some claim to the national cultural conversation that has, in the last decade, been virtually co-opted by television. The Social Network is a film adults can brawl over—it rips into the red meat of Art of War business ethics, the necessity of ruthlessness in bringing a new invention from concept to reality, the problematics of saying “Nothing personal!” as your shiv approaches your colleague’s ribs, and the thorny issue of just who owns an idea—whether, as the movie version of Zuckerberg puts it, “a guy who makes a really good chair owes money to anyone who ever made a chair.” In addition, The Social Network raises a number of questions about filmmaking ethics—specifically, about how much artistic license can and should be taken in turning a group of ambitious young men not far from 20 years old into movie characters. It’s smart, it’s provocative, and it’s going to be polarizing.
Meanwhile, Peter Kafka’s feeling bad for Mark Zuckerberg while Dan Gillmor is left wondering if Zuck has grown up:
Zuckerberg has told interviewers he doesn’t plan to see the movie. I hope, assuming he really doesn’t, that he’ll use the couple of hours to contemplate his outsize role in our world today, and likely tomorrow. Facebook is an awesome force at this point, and it’s still not clear that the company is being run by honorable grown-ups.
Then there’s TechCrunch reporting that “Greenpeace has released a video [link] harshly criticizing Facebook’s use of coal-fuelled electricity in its Oregon-based data center, singling out founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The organization calls Facebook a “so coal network”. (Read on for Facebook’s fairly effective response.)
As to the movie, the Oscar buzz has already started. Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood:
I saw it at the first opportunity on Monday and would have to say fairly objectively that The Social Network is Sony’s best shot at Best Picture in years, a lock for Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards. And most importantly, Oscar nominations in every major category including Director for David Fincher, Writing for Aaron Sorkin, lead actor for Jesse Eisenberg (playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg), Supporting Actor for both Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, editing and so on. It also looks like it will be a major box office hit, hitting a nerve with the young demographic that are on the front lines of moviegoers
Daily Intel has put together something of a companion piece for the mothership’s story, a slideshow of other tech wunderkinds and the misdeeds of their youth. I didn’t come away from that with any more sympathy for Zuck. And Trent Reznor is offering a free download of a five-track EP from his soundtrack to The Social Network. DO IT NOW! The offer is good for only about another 12 hours.