I attended an advanced screening of Steve Jobs in Atlanta last Monday, October 12th. It will open in wide-release this upcoming Friday the 23rd. My simple review is that it was engaging, entertaining, and I would definitely recommend seeing it. However, with that said, I am seriously concerned that many people will think that what they see on the screen is mostly accurate. As a computer historian, I am particularly well versed with the history of Apple, the two Steves, Macintosh, Lisa, John Sculley, etc., so I know the real history vs. that of Hollywood movies. However, your average person does not know these things and is likely to walk away from this recent film assuming that most of what they saw happened that way. Does it matter? Do moviemakers have any responsibility to present historical people and events accurately? With such a well-known figure as Jobs, is it OK to play with events, date-order, people’s personalities, etc.? Where should the line be drawn?

From the number of other articles that I have read online, and in comments said about them, many people argue that this is just a movie based on true events and not a documentary, so we shouldn’t expect it to be historically accurate. Is that right, really? I mean, it’s true, I don’t expect everything in a movie to be 100% accurate because movie producers do not generally have access to all of the real people. Even if they did, they can’t necessarily duplicate exact dialog, settings, costumes, or even looks. Many people think that Michael Fassbender doesn’t look like Steve Jobs, but that his performance transcends that. I agree, as early in my viewing of the film, I was able to suspend disbelief and allow Fassbender to become Jobs in my mind. His performance was excellent. He dressed like Jobs and has the same basic build, so it ultimately worked. The serious problem I have with the new movie adaptation is not with any of the portrayals, but rather that it has changed facts or misrepresented events that have been reported in the public record through magazines, books, and even in both documentary and entertainment movies. This wasn’t a person who lived as an adult fifty years ago or longer, but someone who just recently died in 2011. The three acts take place in 1984, 1988 and 1998, just 31, 27 and 17 years ago respectively. I’m OK with artistic license to a degree so that a compelling story may be told, but it doesn’t seem right to me to play loose and fast with the facts. I really don’t understand why this same style of story, set during three significant product launches, in behind-the-scenes events, couldn’t have been told while keeping most of the historical facts straight. The screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, had to have researched the details, but then purposely altered them to construct the story in a way he wanted to tell it.

There are numerous, flat-out made up things in this movie, but the most egregious one in my opinion happens during the second act, set in 1988, during the launch of the NeXT Computer. In this scene, Sorkin has Steve Jobs strongly hinting to his marketing executive, Joanna Hoffman, that the creation of NeXT is simply a clever ploy to one day sell it back to Apple so that he may triumphantly return to the company he cofounded. To anyone who has researched him and read about him through the writings of those who knew and worked for him, this is truly an insult upon his character. Right or wrong, for good or bad, Steve Jobs truly believed in both what he and his company were doing and the products they created. This isn’t a mere story contrivance, but rather a severe twisting of historical accuracy. There are a lot more of these fact/event manipulations in the movie too, and Rick Tetzeli at fastcompany.com has done an excellent job reporting on them in Steve Jobs, The Movie: 11 Things That Aren't True About The Apple Cofounder.

The other big problem I have with the characterization of Steve Jobs here is with the one-dimensional aspect of his on-screen personality. He has been reduced to two main descriptors many times before – jerk and genius, but in this movie, he becomes really just one, and it isn’t genius. There is little indication of his brilliance, but what is more disturbing to me is that he is portrayed as a borderline sociopath with little regard to anyone except himself. The film does show him display a little bit of affection for Hoffman and then finally for his daughter Lisa in the third act, which by then seems rather odd for him. Jobs was well known for lacking empathy, especially earlier in his life, but it is unfair and simply unbalanced to represent him this way.

I am also at odds with two other depictions, those of both Steve Wozniak and John Sculley. Ironically, the film gives both a voice that highlights the truth of their roles in history, which most people are unaware of. Wozniak has already stated in some interviews that he never spoke negatively as characterized in the movie, and that he never took Jobs to task about anything like what was shown. In fact, he was not even present at either the NeXT or iMac launches. As for Sculley, Jobs never spoke to him again after his ousting from the Mac team in 1985, though the movie has Sculley showing up to both the NeXT and iMac launches as well. Sorkin also has Sculley acting as more the elder father-figure to Jobs, though he wasn’t significantly older as dramatized. It would be more accurate to say that John Sculley was more like Steve Jobs’ older brother, mentor and friend, than like his father. With Wozniak, the movie actually rounds him out to show that he wasn’t just some socially awkward nerd/technical genius. That is an unfortunate stereotype applied to him over the years. Much like “the guy who fired Steve Jobs” has been the stereotype applied to John Sculley. The movie actually shows what really happened (mostly) to Steve Jobs and John Sculley in the boardroom showdown during 1985. There is a made-up scene with Wozniak telling Jobs off, and two made-up scenes that have Sculley angrily setting Jobs straight about the events of the past. It really is about time that Sculley got a reprieve from the false history of him firing Steve Jobs and then running Apple into the ground. I interviewed John Sculley in December 2011 and helped set the record straight about his tenure at Apple. Sculley was hired as Apple’s CEO, so he was hired to run the company. Jobs essentially forced him to take an adversarial position during the boardroom clash. He actually grew the company significantly before being let go himself in 1993, well before it started to seriously decline, at least in profitability.

So, I guess I’m just a hypocrite then? I liked what Sorkin did with Wozniak and Sculley, but I am uneasy with what he did with Jobs and some other well-documented events. If I had to choose though, I would wish for the movie to have just stuck to the truth. What could now make the situation better? Well, for one thing, add “inspired by a true story” to the advertising material. I think most of us see that as a signal that though based on the real stuff, some liberal artistic license has been applied. Or how about adding a disclaimer at the beginning? I do not think the general public is stupid, but I sincerely believe that a lot of people think like I do. I guess I really do expect movies made about historical people and/or events to stick with the facts, except where it doesn’t matter.

The movie is an extremely thought-provoking piece of cinema, so my hope is that it will inspire and promote many to seek out the full and true stories of the people and the events. Odd that the movie is loosely based on Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs, since reading it would certainly provide anyone with a more accurate account of Jobs’ story. I would highly recommend the book after seeing the movie, or read the excellent, Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader, co-written by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, published earlier this year.

I guess movies are like the Internet itself – don’t trust them, but verify the information with at least two other independent sources. Just like a good citizen reporter should. I generally seek out documentaries too, after seeing something portrayed in a Hollywood film. It is our burden to seek out the truth, and only in doing so can we hope to find some portion of it.

David Greelish has studied computer history and collected old computers for well over 20 years now. He is a computer historian, writer, podcaster and speaker. He was the founder of the original Historical Computer Society, publisher of the zine Historically Brewed and founder of both the Atlanta Historical Computing Society and the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast. He has published all of his computer history zines along with his own story in the book, Classic Computing: The Complete Historically Brewed. Buy the book HERE!