{"id":7866,"date":"2015-10-28T20:07:58","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T03:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=7866"},"modified":"2015-10-29T14:50:15","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T21:50:15","slug":"the-evil-that-men-do-lives-after-them-particularly-if-hollywood-decides-to-compress-their-life-into-a-two-hour-screenplay-why-steve-jobs-came-dead-on-arrival-at-the-b-o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=7866","title":{"rendered":"HuffPost: Why the much anticipated Steve Jobs film came Dead-on-Arrival at the Box Office"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"HuffPost%3A%20Why%20the%20much%20anticipated%20Steve%20Jobs%20film%20came%20Dead-on-Arrival%20at%20the%20Box%20Office\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Michael-Fassbender-in-the-title-role.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-7956\" title=\"Michael Fassbender in the title role\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Michael-Fassbender-in-the-title-role-300x161.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"145\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Michael-Fassbender-in-the-title-role-300x161.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Michael-Fassbender-in-the-title-role.png 562w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><\/a>By Peter Lance October 29<sup>th<\/sup><\/strong>\u00a0<a title=\"HuffPost\" href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/peter-lance\/the-evil-that-men-do-live_b_8414634.html\"><strong>Huffington Post:<\/strong><\/a> I awaited few fall releases with more anticipation than\u00a0<em>Steve Jobs, <\/em>the Danny Boyle directed Aaron Sorkin penned\u00a0 film based on Walter Isaacson\u2019s best-selling biography.<\/p>\n<p>After all, as they say at Nate\u2019n Al deli in Beverly Hills, \u201cwhat\u2019s not to like\u201d about that team?<\/p>\n<p>Walter is the Harvard\/Oxford educated historian with a c.v. nearly as impressive as Bush 41\u2019s: former Managing Editor of TIME, ex Chairman\/CEO of CNN and hugely successful biographer of Franklin, Einstein, Jobs &amp; Kissinger. And as if that resum\u00e9 wasn\u2019t enough, he\u2019s the current CEO of the Aspen Institute.<\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s Danny, the brilliant Irishman by way of Manchester, whose filmography boasts the perfect nexus of indy auteur and box-office winner: <em>Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later, 127 Hours<\/em> and <em>Slumdog Millionaire<\/em>, winner of eight Oscars including Boyle for Best Director.<\/p>\n<p>And don\u2019t even get me started on Aaron Sorkin, one of the highest paid and least re-written of feature film screenwriters. He first adapted his riveting courtroom drama <em>A Few Good Men<\/em> for the screen, followed by <em>The American President, Charlie Wilson\u2019s War, The Social Network,<\/em> and <em>Moneyball <\/em>\u2013 with years of Emmy winning television in between where he seemed to write every single syllable of <em>The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip<\/em> and <em>The Newsroom.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And given the subject matter: arguably the single greatest technology innovator of the last 30 years (See <a title=\"Letter to Steve\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=6973\"><strong>Letter to Steve<\/strong><\/a>) how was it that in its first big opening weekend their collaboration took in an anemic $7.3 million?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnly a little more than the $6.7 million that<em> Jobs<\/em>, a critically derided film about the iPhone father with Ashton Kutcher made in its initial weekend,\u201d wrote Brent Lang in <a title=\"Variety\" href=\"http:\/\/variety.com\/2015\/film\/box-office\/steve-jobs-flops-1201626243\/\"><strong>Variety<\/strong><\/a>. Fewer than a million people saw <em>Steve Jobs.<\/em>\u00a0How did a film with such early Oscar buzz go so wrong?<\/p>\n<p><strong>A FEW GOOD SCENES<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>First, let me admit that the easiest thing in the world to do is sit in the dark, eat popcorn and later attack a piece of work on the order of <em>Steve Jobs.<\/em> Without insulting Mrs. Reilly who taught me how to write a sentence in the first grade, critics remind me of the dictum that \u201cthose who can <em>do,<\/em> those who can\u2019t <em>teach<\/em> and those who can\u2019t teach, <em>teach teachers<\/em>.\u201d So it can be said of critics.<\/p>\n<p>But I put in 15 years in the mean streets of Hollywood as a <strong><a title=\"pl imdb\" href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0004145\/\">writer\/producer<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>of episodic drama and I know when a scribe of Sorkin\u2019s magnitude phones-in a script.<\/p>\n<p>The first problem with <em>Steve Jobs<\/em> is that for 122 minutes of screen time we\u2019re subjected to a single \u201ccharacter\u201d storyline intercut with three product launches: the original Mac in 1984, the NeXT in 1990 following Jobs\u2019 ejection from Apple at the hands of ex-Pepsi CEO John Scully and finally Jobs&#8217; return with the triumphant introduction of the translucent, colorful iMac in 2006.<\/p>\n<p>In between, Sorkin uses Kate Winslet, playing Joanna Hoffman as his expositional touchstone and interface. Hoffman was a member of the original Mac team but Isaacson only quotes her about a dozen times in the book, noting she \u201cbriefly went to work\u201d on NeXT. In short she was a bit player in the life of Steve Jobs. Poor Seth Rogan as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak struggles for screen time even though &#8220;the Woz&#8221; played a much more pivotal role than Hoffman in Jobs&#8217; ascendancy.<\/p>\n<p>Winslet\/Hoffman is in virtually every scene with Michael Fassbender, the gifted German-Irish actor who got the lead (according to <a title=\"Variety\" href=\"http:\/\/variety.com\/2015\/film\/box-office\/steve-jobs-flops-1201626243\/\"><strong>Variety<\/strong><\/a>) after Leo DiCaprio and Christian Bale passed.<\/p>\n<p>But not having an \u201cabove the title\u201d star isn\u2019t what makes\u00a0<em>Steve Jobs<\/em> the <em>Ishtar<\/em> of the new millennium. It was Sorkin\u2019s script &#8212; a series of turgid, multipage scenes that all seem to take place in the various green rooms of the auditoriums where the real Steve launched his products to the foot stomping glee of his Mac faithful.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-28-at-7.53.18-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-7867\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-10-28 at 7.53.18 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-28-at-7.53.18-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"289\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-28-at-7.53.18-PM.png 655w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-28-at-7.53.18-PM-300x254.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Steve Jobs<\/em> was a $30 million opportunity to capture the selfish genius of the man who rocked the planet with the Macintosh, the iMac, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, the iPad, Apple Stores, Genius Bars and the Apple TV \u2013 the visionary who built Pixar, the world\u2019s first great animation studio (sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion) but Sorkin decided to spend two hours reminding us of the shameful period in Jobs\u2019 life when he was an effective deadbeat dad to his daughter Lisa.<\/p>\n<p>While Jobs\u2019 early denial of his fatherhood, despite a 95%+ paternity test confirmation and on-again\/off-again relationship with his daughter were deplorable, one has to ask: Aaron, why select-out that limited portion of Isaacson\u2019s bio as the central focus of this film?<\/p>\n<p>And why end it as you do with a scene moments before the iMac launch in which Fassbender\/Jobs notices the Walkman on Lisa\u2019s hip and tells her that he has an idea that will put \u201c1000 songs\u201d in her pocket? The iPod is never mentioned and the film pretty much ends there: 1998, whereas Jobs life after that \u2013 the 13 years he spent growing Apple into the world\u2019s largest tech company, despite multiple bouts with pancreatic cancer \u2013 is ignored.<\/p>\n<p>Now that\u2019s the stuff of drama.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cYOU CAN\u2019T HANDLE THE TRUTH\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Why did Aaron Sorkin, the man who gave us one of the most iconic lines in film history, choose to leave out what Anthony Bourdain would call \u201cthe good stuff?\u201d This is what he told <a title=\"Steven Levy\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/backchannel\/this-isn-t-the-steve-jobs-story-ea016107cace#.h1ixb967y\">Steven Levy<\/a>, the ex-Newsweek tech writer who admitted that he \u201chad a difficult time watching the movie,\u201d because he \u201cknew Jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sorkin:<\/strong> \u201cI wanted to do a new take on Steve Jobs, since a biography is available in a number of forms, whether it was Walter\u2019s book,\u00a0Alex Gibney\u2019s documentary\u2026\u00a0any number of articles written by you and any number of other journalists. I didn\u2019t want to do something strictly journalistic because that\u2019s not what I\u2019m good at and that\u2019s not why you would come to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Can we believe that from the show-runner of <em>The Newsroom,<\/em> who lifted virtually every beat of that series, which ran for three seasons on HBO, from the headlines? I don&#8217;t think so. Then in that same interview, Sorkin gets falsely self-effacing, asking us to believe that he is \u201csort of faking\u201d his \u201cway through movies and television.\u201d He finally gets honest and admits that \u201cAs a playwright I like claustrophobic spaces.\u201d Later, discussing a pivotal scene in the film he says \u201cI don\u2019t mind making (it) up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-28-at-7.59.26-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-7868\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-10-28 at 7.59.26 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-28-at-7.59.26-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"337\" height=\"185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-28-at-7.59.26-PM.png 650w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-28-at-7.59.26-PM-300x164.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 337px) 100vw, 337px\" \/><\/a>Well Aaron, not that you\u2019ll ever read this, but when you enter the million dollar-a-screenplay ranks, as you have, a Writers Guild member like you has a responsibility \u2013 not just to the studio but to the people who plunk down their cash at the multiplex.\u00a0A responsibility to serve the medium you\u2019re working in \u2013 and then maybe, as an afterthought \u2013 the memory of the man you\u2019ve decided to debase.<\/p>\n<p>As I walked out of Steve Jobs I thought to myself, imagine spending your life creating so many tools that have exponentially advanced the capacity for self expression. You die young and one of the world\u2019s great biographers tells your story in book form. It\u2019s optioned by a major studio (originally Sony) and two of the most talented filmmakers alive set it to film. Then in 122 minutes your legend, your memory, is forever distorted because the screenwriter\/playwright decided to go dark with your life.<\/p>\n<p>What revenge do you have?<\/p>\n<p>Shakespeare, or whoever wrote his plays, was one of those must-have-come-from-another-planet geniuses. But he had a good 250 year run before the Anti-Stratfordians began to question his authorship of the plays and sonnets. Still, he understood how fragile fame can be. \u201cThe evil that men do, lives after them,\u201d says Marc Antony in Caesar\u2019s funeral oration. \u201cThe good is oft interred with their bones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aaron Sorkin is another kind of genius and I hope he lives to be a hundred. But when his obit is written, his biography published, and some writer adapts it for the screen, he should &#8220;only be so lucky,\u201d as they say at Nat\u2019n Al, to have that film honestly and truthfully reflect his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"HuffPost%3A%20Why%20the%20much%20anticipated%20Steve%20Jobs%20film%20came%20Dead-on-Arrival%20at%20the%20Box%20Office\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>By Peter Lance October 29th\u00a0Huffington Post: I awaited few fall releases with more anticipation than\u00a0Steve Jobs, the Danny Boyle directed Aaron Sorkin penned\u00a0 film based on Walter Isaacson\u2019s best-selling biography. After all, as they say at Nate\u2019n Al deli in Beverly Hills, \u201cwhat\u2019s not to like\u201d about that team? Walter is the Harvard\/Oxford educated historian [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[949,953,952,955,948,896,891,893,892,951,954,887,950,946,956,947],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7866"}],"version-history":[{"count":86,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7881,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions\/7881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}