Steve Wozniak on Steve Jobs Movie | Hacker News Reader

Steve Wozniak on Steve Jobs Movie

bbc.co.uk

69 pointsDanEdge41 comments

How many Jobs/Apple movies do we need?

Seems to be nothing more than cashing in on the iPhone generation's obsession and hype with one particular brand.

Why don't we have a decent Tesla movie? His life and events surrounding his inventions are remarkable, truly engrossing. World-changing in a way that blows Apple Computers or any internal corporate bullshit story or personal Steve Jobs issues out of the park.

Yet, where's the big time Hollywood treatment? Christian Bale as Tesla would work, with a good script and big time visuals spanning the 60 odd years of his life and work. Not cool enough?

The best we have is The Prestige. Great movie, but Tesla is not the focus, only a very interesting side story in that otherwise fictitious world.

FFS Hollywood, get it done! The man had visions of AC motors and dreams of generators at the base of Niagara Falls. Then he moves to America and actually achieves those dreams against all odds.

End of rant. Now, where were we? Ah yes, slow clapping Steve Jobs, the man, the genius. When he gets kicked out of Apple, it truly knifed me in the soul. This movie will be the best thing since we saw one man code Facebook out of nothing but PHP, computers and existing network infrastructure. That too, warmed the cockles.

Any Tesla movie would probably be depressing as fuck.

Kid genius comes to America to work for his hero, but decides to strike out on his own to change the world after a disagreement over money. Ends up failing miserably and being crushed by his former hero and employer. Slowly goes insane and dies poor and largely forgotten.

Ah, but Hollywood seems to love its engineers and scientists best as victims: see Turing and Nash. And for that matter, you could count The Social Network as the same kind of narrative: has the millions, but not the girl.

No worse than the Turing movie with Bernard Cumbersnatch. Tragedy is great movie material.

"Bernard Cumbersnatch"? I take it that you are referring to celebrated British actor, Humperdinck Rumblebum? Or was it perhaps, Twiddleplink Cucumberpatch? I can never get these British names quite right.

Don't forget Tesla had zero known love interests and never married (possibly gay).

Gay like Alan Turing? Don't worry, given Hollywood's penchant for choosing drama over historical verisimilitude, Thomas Edison could be recast as a fading opera diva on whom Tesla had a boyhood crush.

That actually sounds like very interesting fodder for a hit movie.

>How many Jobs/Apple movies do we need?

I know, and mostly agree with your sentiment. But I think this one has been in the pipeline for a good while (four years [0]), and is probably the one I've been waiting for because of the Boyle/Sorkin collaboration. The others seemed rushed out just to cash in on Job's life.

That said I'm still particularly fond of "Pirates of Silicon Valley"[1], I thought Noah Wiley as a younger Jobs was a fairly good effort..

[0]: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/25/steve-jobs-movie-coul...

[1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122

The Boyle part I can get on board with, but I have a hard time coming up with a more overestimated writer than Sorkin. All of his characters are the exact same person.

Agreed on the Pirates... movie though, it was a great effort for a DTV movie.

I dunno, I like most of Sorkin's work. However I couldn't watch "The Newsroom" past four or five episodes. You're right, it seems like The West Wing's characters all re-hashed into TV news characters and it was too cloying.

I still go back and re-watch The West Wing every couple of years. Yes some of it is cringe-worthy, but as a non-US citiizen when first broadcast I learned a few things about US politics and it caused me find out more, especially from a historical point of view. He also does some nice things such as dropping in interesting educational nuggets such as the Peters Projection cartography stuff in the second "Big Block of Cheese" episode (S2E16) [0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY

> FFS Hollywood, get it done! The man had visions of AC motors and dreams of generators at the base of Niagara Falls. Then he moves to America and actually achieves those dreams against all odds.

I don't know a whole lot about Tesla's life, but those don't particularly strike me as elements of a great / saleable screenplay. Not that that necessarily matters, the established way around that is to just make shit up. I guess what I am saying is, be careful what you wish for.

btw in practice "big time visuals" means "spending a lot of money on a biography of somebody only a few nerds are interested in". It's not necessarily a selling point.

Edit: A Tesla / Edison feud movie in the style or Rocky or Frost/Nixon might work. You'd have to change the ending obviously.

I don't understand. The Tesla story has drama, betrayal, dreams realised, dreams broken, tragedy, near-death, exploitation, private and public feuds, genius, globally significant inventions still used today.. the list goes on.

The Jobs story has nothing more interesting, it's just current and fuelled by high-fiving consumer drones.

What next? A movie about Beats By Dre?

What we need from cinema and art is TRUTH. I'd like to see a movie centered around a completely unknown Apple factory worker in China. Film makers are such pussies going for the obvious Jobs story..

As many as they feel like, clearly.

Here is the thing, its not just about iPhones.

Apple products have, since the early Mac, had a oddly special place in media production.

I have seen a national broadcaster decide to standardize their production chain on Apple hardware and software, when the rest of the nation is basically in Microsoft's pocket.

Frankly i think Apple would have been long dead, and both the iPod and iPhone a massive flop, if this connection had not existed.

Because with it, the journalists and whatsnot end up keeping an extra keen eye on Apple because anything from there affects them directly. So when a new product shows up, even outlets that usually do not mention tech news ends up writing an article about it.

The endless articles are nothing more than echo chamber journalism. We need more comparative analysis and critical evaluation of these devices. There's too much "assumption of awesome".

Well, the question is, apart from money, what is the motivation for the movie?

For sure, Woz would like to set some things straight and tell his perspective on things. I once stumbled about a comment from Woz regarding the Steve Jobs movie. He was not very pleased with the narrative of the Jobs film.

The comment is an interesting read, and it can be found at:

https://plus.google.com/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf

I hadn't seen that, yes interesting, and the further comments from him down the page.

Well, let's hope this new movie paints a more accurate picture then. I still don't think it's worth a big screen treatment, but I never thought the Facebook movie needed to exist yet either. At least wait until it gets intro trouble.

David Bowie played Tesla (a minor, but very important part) in The Prestige.

Sadly, that's how it works. I felt that death of D. Ritchie was overshadowed by that of S. Jobs. It seems that some heroes have to accept the role of doing the "dirty" work.

I remember a meme going around that compared the two's achievements. Quite popular amongst programmers on Facebook. My response was something along the lines of everybody can understand Steve Job's achievements because he was a public-facing sales/showman. Dennis Ritchie's achievements certainly did help Job's achievements in a massive way, like any other publicly reknowned figure in computers as opposed to a reknowned figure in just the computing circle.

The problem is illustrated by when I explain unix and C to my mrs. Her eyes gloss over and I have to ask "I've lost you haven't I"?

It's a shame because emotionally I feel the injustice. I just know, logically, the reasons why. The tragedy is that I don't know a way to resolve the injustice.

The public at large are indirect users of D.R.'s achievements but they are direct users of S.J.'s achievements.

There are no blockbuster movies about plumbers but they are the backbone of civilization and utterly thankless.

This is a good succinct summary. I'll remember this, thank you :)

It feels a lot like people compare Ritchies death to Jobs as some kind of morbid team sport, especially because they died so closely together. Its incredibly juvenile and more than a little obnoxious.

> How many Jobs/Apple movies do we need?

One good one will do.

Pirates of Silicon Valley? And it even has enough content to be a Gates/Microsoft movie!

Time for a Ross Ulbricht movie maybe?

>How many Jobs/Apple movies do we need?

One good one I suppose. Made for TV movies and low budget cash-ins don't count. I love the 1980s tech era and would love to see more films handle that. Not sure if this film goes this far back but the rise of mobile is just as good of a story, and probably more relate-able to modern audiences.

>Why don't we have a decent Tesla movie?

Honestly, because it would be terrible. Tesla works as a backdrop to Edison's success but he's a bit player in almost every way. This is like asking why we don't have a Paul Allen movie. Sure, those would be interesting, but not $50m plus dollar investment interesting for a risk-averse Hollywood system.

Also, general audiences won't be too impressed with the guy who failed at a lot of things even though his technical achievements are impressive. Tesla is also a very unlikeable person from the writings we have of people who have met him. He doesn't have the Jobsian charm we're going to see in Apple movies. He doesn't have a Jobsian narrative. He was a stern and asocial weirdo and most likely would be somewhere on the autism spectrum today. It also doesn't help that his ideas went full wack-town towards the end. In a desperate attempt to make money things like death rays, perpetual energy, bullshit medical devices, etc became his norm. Not to mention his vision of wireless energy was ultimately a non-starter as it would pollute the spectrum enough to make things like TV or cell phones impossible.

On a related note, I think creatives struggled with telling Alan Turing's story, but at least with Turing we have all his influence, published papers, his victimhood, and his amazing WWII experiences. Even then, the Imitation Game wasn't very historically accurate. Tesla doesn't have any crowd-pleasing themes of overcoming adversity and his dark side is really dark - endless advocating eugenics, wanting to sterilize the poor, never having any sort of romance, becoming bitter, ultimately failing at his dreams, etc. He isn't this kindly grandfather type his fans make him out to be. He's a mess, honestly. A smart mess, but a mess nonetheless. I think any movie that makes him look relatable or a "hero" would ultimately be dishonest. By the business standards of the time, he was treated fairly. He just couldn't launch his own businesses successfully.

  Why don't we have a decent Tesla movie?

Because we have yet to make one. How do you and your friends like making movies?

  Yet, where's the big time Hollywood treatment?

That isn't a story they want to tell. __period__ Why would they? What benefit of mass entertainment would it serve? Hint: Look at the etymology of `entertain`.

> "That isn't a story they want to tell. __period__ Why would they? What benefit of mass entertainment would it serve? Hint: Look at the etymology of `entertain`."

Tesla was an interesting character and had an interesting life. If you're concerned about whether his story could be dramatised, it's worth remembering we had films about Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing last year, both of which were successful at the box office. I see no reason why we couldn't do the same for Tesla.

The issue is as much "is there an established audience" as "could the story be dramatised". I probably have a biased perspective because Turing, Hawking and I are British, but my guess would be a lot more people at least recognise their names than would recognise Tesla's (aside from as an electric car).

Really? I feel like most people outside of CS/Mathematics have little to no idea who Alan Turing is. Tesla, on the other hand, has a seemingly large cult following due to the strange, almost mythological details of his life and inventive process. I've known plenty of people who knew more about who Tesla was than they even did about Hawking.

I think most people would at least have heard of the Turing test.

I don't know, I recognize that this is purely anecdotal but I still feel like more people are familiar with things like the Tesla coil, I mean there was even a fairly popular hair band named after him.

In my experience advances in the field of AI have only in the past 10-15 years shown a noticeable rise in awareness of the Turing test. Am I in some sort of minority and haven't realized it?

Hmm... there was a successful movie about John Nash, and I'm pretty sure that Tesla is more widely-known than Nash.

Wow, how off mark.. I should've searched first, rather than going off history alone:

http://cinemanerdz.com/the-unbelievable-number-of-tesla-film...

I wonder how well these independent studios can do and what angle these commercial studios will use.

Why isn't there a Microsoft movie? I would watch it.

As I mentioned in another comment "Pirates of Silicon Valley"[0] is worth a watch and.... (with tongue firmly in cheek) "Antitrust"[1] :) .

[0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122

[1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817

Pirates of the Silicon Valley is as much about Microsoft as it is about Apple.

Some interesting discussion by Woz and Robert Scoble on the topic: https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/posts/1015356891824965... Marc Benioff and John Sculley on the thread too.

REally hope this gets archived.

Probably singing to the choir, but Founders at Work[1] has a great interview with Wozniak that gives an interesting glimpse into some stories about Jobs in the early days of Apple. In true Woz fashion it also focuses a lot on the hardware he designed back then, which is also a real fun read.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98233.Founders_at_Work

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