The Social Network

[Pas]

THIS IS A LINK TO A REALLY FUNNY PARODY OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK TRAILER MADE ABOUT YOUTUBE. THIS DESCRIPTION WILL ENCOURAGE YOU TO CLICK IT RATHER THAN BE ANNOYED BY A RANDOM LINK THAT DOESN'T INFORM YOU AT ALL ABOUT WHAT THE HELL THIS VIDEO MIGHT BE. THIS DESCRIPTION WILL GET MORE PEOPLE TO CLICK IT THAN JUST PEOPLE WHO HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN CHECK OUT UNLABELLED LINKS. THANK YOU FOR WATCHING.


admin edit: added link description

I was going to watch the trailer but the description gave away the whole thing!  So now I probably won't bother.

Haha it's pretty great though

[jtm]

damn!

p totally just owned me!

but he's right... i just threw that link out there thinking it was good enough to stand on its own, but i really should have set it up first.

[modage]

"David Fincher's Social Network is the 1st film I've given **** in 2010. It's the movie of the year that also brilliantly defines the decade" - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

First Full Review of the Film:
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/2010/revenge-of-the-nerd

[modage]

The internet says this is great too:

"9 out of 10" - CHUD

"Every now and then, a film comes along that perfectly taps into the zeitgeist.  "We blew it," in the 60s with Easy Rider, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good," in the 80s with Wall Street, and today "I'm CEO, bitch" in David Fincher's latest masterpiece, The Social Network." - Collider

"The Social Network is Fincher's best film since Fight Club, which is saying a lot considering I LOVED Zodiac. It is also my favorite movie of the year (so far)." - SlashFilm

"The Social Network will define a generation for a generation that couldn't care less about its generation, but it's as entertaining as anything you'll watch all year." - Cinematical

"I was blown away. I went in with high hopes and the movie was everything I wanted and more. Clocking it at just over 2 hours, the flick has zero fat on it. That was the biggest surprise for me. I love Zodiac to death, but there are times in that movie where it crawls. Nothing like that here." - AICN

[modage]

David Fincher conducted email interviews with several movie sites.  Here they are.

Hitfix

Rooney Mara's role in the film is pivotal, although brief.  What experience on this film led to you bringing her back in for "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"?  The moment where I felt like I saw a flash of Lisbeth was her final encounter with Mark when she destroys him quietly.  Did you have her in mind immediately, or was it a gradual realization?  

Fincher: We read her and, not surprisingly, loved all of the things about her that we'd initially loved for Erica.  She's smart and capable and works really hard.  She is ridiculously photogenic in a very interesting way -- she can be plain, or she can be exquisite in a matter of moments -- and she's a great listener.  Lisbeth is a very tough role to cast -- the audience needs to project into a mystery, so we needed a mystery for them to fill.

High praise, indeed, from this director.  The film has faced a bit of pre-release controversy, which I wanted him to address.  I wrote:  Mark Zuckerberg and the other people portrayed in the film have already started to assert that the film isn't "true," but on an emotional and dramatic level, the film has an authenticity that can't be denied.  How do you respond to Zuckerberg's claims, and ultimately, how important is an absolute adherence to every detail?  You're making a film, not a court transcript.

Fincher: You can adhere to every detail -- you cannot adhere to every single point of view, which is ultimately why people will disown it.  Our work was to be true to the time, the kind of people we were talking about, and the situation they ultimately found themselves in.  I think we were true to that.

I love the collision between Aaron Sorkin's sensibility and Fincher's chilly intellect, and I asked:  Aaron Sorkin's script is dense and wordy and features people sitting around dorm rooms or typing on computers or giving depositions.  It's not the most immediately visual read.  You've always been such a strong visual stylist, so my question is what did you respond to first, and how do approach the staging of a script like this to make it as dynamic as the final film turned out?

Fincher: I thought it was a great story.  I felt like I knew all of the people involved very personally.  I felt for each of them.  I know what it feels like to be left in the dust.  I know what it's like to tell someone an idea and feel like somehow it ended up being 'borrowed'.  I know what it's like to have to leave a friend or collaborator behind because you fundamentally disagree with where the collaboration is heading.  I loved the 'fraternity of the outsider' and I ulitmately loved the idea of 'graffiti artist' as CEO.

Your leads in the film are already being given bumps into even bigger roles, and Garfield was tapped for "Spider-Man" based on his work here, according to Sony.  One of your cast members, though, was already a superstar walking onto the set, but as a musician.  Whose idea was Justin Timberlake, and how was your experience working with him?  He's been good on film before, but never this good.  Did he model his performance after footage/research on the real Sean Parker, or did you push your actors to approach these as performances instead of impressions?

Fincher: Justin Timberlake was one of those 'do we dare?' kind of conversations -- he could easily have upset the apple cart in any number of ways... we put him through Hell shooting screentest after screentest to make sure we could walk the razor's edge of 'extremely famous person as spoke of an ensemble.'  But he's just so mercurial and fun to watch that it because an easy choice.  I needed someone who knew what it meant to seat two people at the same table and collect an annuity -- and that's a lot to ask from a twenty-something.  Justin is a record producer.  He knew exactly what I was talking about.

Slashfilm

On the surface level, many people were surprised when it was announced you would be directing a movie about the story about Facebook. Why were you attracted to this story? What about it fascinated you?

Fincher: The people, the story, the setting, and finally the notion of old world business ethics and morals (as represented by Harvard) in the information age.

How do you find a balance between honoring the true story and taking dramatic liberty with some of the events to create a compelling narrative, especially considering that little time has passed and the people still exist today?

Fincher: Well, I think you try to have a sense of who these people are to their world and to the world of the story, and you try to walk a line. I wouldn't have made the film if I didn't have great respect and admiration for the accomplishments of both Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Parker, and if I didn't feel for both the Winklevoss and Savarin camps. I don't know who said what to whom or when — for sure... But I've only ever been interested in arguments where everyone is convinced they're right.

The Social Network is in some ways about how technology is changing relationships. You seem to be a very technology-obsessed filmmaker....

Fincher: Not Obsessed, but considered.

I've seen you three times in person, and each time you've had an apple device in your hand. The other day you were carrying an iPad. You employ a lot of innovative technology and effects in your films, yet this is the first movie in your filmography that has a story delves into the field. Can you talk a bit about this and your relationship with tech?

Fincher: I think it's silly to not be using effective tools in a field that is ultimately about communication. I look at every way I can — to better be in three places at once. I think it only behooves me to have the best possible access to my collaborators.

The New York Times made claims that the screenplay and movie were both screened for Facebook, and some changes were made at their request. I was wondering if you could talk to us about how the film was altered?

Fincher: I have altered nothing for Facebook. But I have made considerable revisions for some of the requests by the MPAA.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts in the tilt/shift isolated focus you employed in the boating sequence. It is unlike anything I've ever seen on the big screen before and would love to learn what inspired it.

Fincher: We could only shoot 3 races at the Henley Royal Regatta; We had to shoot 4 days of boat inserts in Eton. The only way to make the date for release was to make the backgrounds as soft as humanly possible. I decided it might be more "subjective" if the world around the races fell away in focus, leaving the rowers to move into and out of planes of focus to accentuate their piston-like effort.

Collider

There has been a lot of talk about Facebook requesting certain changes being made to the movie. How much are you willing to listen to these requests versus trying to keep the movie as accurate as possible?

Fincher: I WAS DOWNSTREAM OF ALL THAT. YOU'LL HAVE TO ASK RUDIN.

How would you compare The Social Network to Zodiac in terms of facts versus fiction on screen?

Fincher: WELL, I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH FACTS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GET IN THE WAY OF THE TRUTH.

Most of the actors that have worked with you talk about the amount of takes you do for every scene. I've always wanted to know why so many? Also, what's the lowest amount of takes you've done for a scene and been happy?

Fincher: I'VE DONE AS LITTLE AS 3, AND AS MANY AS 107. IT'S HORSES FOR COURSES...

You always seem to use new and innovative technology in your movies.  What was the most technologically challenging aspect of The Social Network and what are audiences going to be surprised to learn?

Fincher: THIS WAS PRETTY MEAT AND POTATOES — GET A GREAT SCRIPT, SOME AMAZING ACTORS, ENOUGH TIME, AND GET OUT OF THE WAY.

You shot the film using Sony 4K cameras. How much of a jump is the camera from previous digital cameras you've worked with?  Also, are you done using film or could you see using it for a certain type of project? Perhaps shooting certain scenes in IMAX like Nolan did on The Dark Knight.

Fincher: WE SHOT THIS FILM WITH THE RED ONE BUT WITH THE UPGRADED MX SENSORS. I DON'T LIKE BIG HEAVY CAMERAS. I USED TO WORK AT ILM AND I'VE LUGGED ENOUGH VISTAVISION FOR ONE LIFETIME...

I would love to know your thoughts on 3D and post converted 3D.  Is 3D here to stay or is it a fad?  Also, is a 3D movie in your future?

Fincher: I THINK 3D IS TO POST CONVERTED 3D AS JIM CAMERON IS TO MARK CANTON. I AM VERY MUCH LOOKING FORWARD TO MAKING A 3D FILM.

Finally....how in love are you with your iPad and what do you have on it?

Fincher: [He didn't send an answer]

Cinematical

Was there one thing that attracted you to this story right off the bat? If so, what was it?

Fincher: I wanted to make a 21st Century John Hughes film.

After spending so much time within this real-life story, how close do you feel the film is to what actually happened?

Fincher: No idea, so much has to be crushed to get anywhere near two hours ...

The marketing for this film has been a huge story so far with people loving each trailer that's been released. How much were you involved in choosing the music (ie: 'Creep' cover) and piecing these things together?

Fincher: I wanted "Creep" from the beginning, but I don't think I ever told Mark Woolen, who created the campaign. He just came up with that version on his own.

Is Mark Zuckerberg a hero or a villain?

Fincher: Antihero

A lot of people will talk about the fantastic editing in this film. Was there a method to the madness? It felt fast, as if you wanted to mimic the feeling of information traveling across the internet. Was that your intention?

Fincher: I had a 166 page script and a contract for final cut under 2 hours and 19 minutes.

If you had the chance to consult with Zuckerberg on the film, what would've been the first question you asked him? What most fascinated you about him?

Fincher: I truly identified with his anger, and his wanting to protect what was his, from the adults, from the venture capitalists, from the compromisers ...

Do you have a Facebook account?

Fincher: Shirley you jest ...

AICN

I have to start off asking about the casting. I think it was Altman who said that casting is 90% of a director's job and while I wouldn't take that literally when I see a movie like The Social Network I grasp what he's getting at. How important was it to you find this group and make sure they all worked with each other? Jesse and Andrew are fantastic together. Armie is amazing and even Timberlake knocks it out of the park. I know it's important that individually these guys need to bring it, but did you test them together before choosing them for their roles?

Fincher: WE CAST THEM VERY QUICKLY -- WE JUST WENT WITH THE BEST ACTOR'S INITIAL TAKE, KNOWING THAT WE WOULD BUILD A SCHEDULE THAT WOULD ALLOW FOR THE KIND OF "FRACTAL EXPLORATION" I WANTED TO DO WITH AARON'S TEXT. ARMIE WAS THE LAST BECAUSE WE NEEDED TO FIND ANOTHER ACTOR TO LEND HIS BODY TO THE FACE-REPLACEMENT TECHNIQUES WE EMPLOYED IN SOME OF THE TWINNING SHOTS, AND SO WE COULDN'T REALLY COMMIT TO ARMIE UNTIL WE HAD JOSH PENCE WHO WAS UTTERLY FANTASTIC AS THE "FROM THE CLAVICLES DOWN" TYLER WINKLEVOSS.

Did you get to work very closely with Aaron Sorkin on the adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book or was he off doing his own thing? If you did work closely with him, what was that collaboration like?

Fincher: THE SCRIPT WAS FINISHED WHEN I GOT IT, AND I PRETTY MUCH SHOT THE FIRST DRAFT -- MINUS A FEW TWEEKS HERE AND THERE FOR MY CYNICISM...

The trailers for The Social Network have been outstanding. I think there's a nearly lost art to the teaser trailer. We don't really get trailers like we used to... A Clockwork Orange, An American Werewolf in London and The Shining come immediately to mind. How important is a trailer to you and what are some of your favorite trailers?

Fincher: I LOVE WHAT MARK WOOLLEN DID FOR "SOCIAL NETWORK" AND I THINK HE'S AS GOOD AS THEY GET RIGHT NOW. I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT "ALIEN" HAD THE MOST ELEGANT AND PROVOCATIVE MATERIALS EVER.

I loved Trent Reznor's score! This is his first feature score, right?

Fincher: I THINK SO. IT WAS A TOTAL COOP TO GET HIM, AND HE HELPED IMMEDIATELY TO PUT THE FILM IN THE PROPER PERSPECTIVE FOR ME. HE SOLIDIFIED IT. I THOUGHT HE'D BE GREAT, BUT I NEVER DARED TO DREAM HE WOULD BE THIS GOOD...

Can you talk about how you came to bring him on board, what made you think he'd be the guy to score this film and what that collaboration was like?

Fincher: HE WAS VERY TIRED WHEN I CONTACTED HIM AND INITIALLY TURNED ME DOWN, BUT I AM NOTHING IF NOT KNOWN FOR MY DIFFICULTY WITH THE WORD "NO," SO I JUST STALKED HIM. EVENTUALLY HE RELENTED.

[Just Withnail]

Hahaha, he was drunk when answering Collider.

[Pubrick]

So yeah, I'm pretty much vindicated.

[modage]

Listen to 5 album tracks here:
http://stereogum.com/514101/download-trent-reznor-emthe-social-networkem-film-score/mp3s/

[modage]

The Vulture Transcript: An In-Depth Chat With David Fincher About The Social Network
Source: Vulture

David Fincher rarely gives interviews, but for the New York cover story on his new movie, The Social Network (which opens October 1), the director sat down with Mark Harris for a long, revealing chat. Only some of the conversation made it into the article, so we're presenting their entire, in-depth talk in full below. What better way to inaugurate our new recurring feature, the Vulture Transcript: extended, revealing, and virtually uncut interviews with fascinating cultural figures. Here, Fincher dishes on the enormous difficulty of speeding up Aaron Sorkin's motormouth text ("Faster. That was my only real direction."), his surprising "enormous amount of empathy" for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and much much more.

I loved Aaron Sorkin's script, which was 162 pages, and when I went to see a screening of The Social Network, I asked how long the movie was and they said, 116 or 118 minutes, and I thought, Oh, no, they've cut all the stuff I loved. But it all seems to be there.
No, we just simply said, faster. That was my only real direction — take a minute out of that!

I don't believe that.
It's kinda true. The characters in the movie are people who need to get to the end of their thoughts before they can really focus on what it is they meant to say. And in describing it to them that way — I mean, Jesse [Eisenberg, who plays Mark Zuckerberg] actually talks like that, he can do it — but a lot of people would come in and read and say, "Wait, what is he talking about at this point?" And I'd say, "There are people who need to work their way through the kelp beds of their own thought processes on their way to the exact idea they've been trying to fucking find, to get to this word and that's the word that's he's actually been looking for." And once they got that, they took to it like ducks.

It was kind of shocking to hear Jesse Eisenberg doing Aaron Sorkin's dialogue, because you suddenly realize this is what he was born to do.
We looked and looked and looked. We read every young actor in Hollywood. And it had been rumored on blogs and stuff that we were talking to Jesse Eisenberg. And you know, I hate to be told what to do by blogs, so I was like, "Yeah, we should probably see him but I don't know if this is his thing ... " And he put himself on tape reading the first scene, and I remember getting this thing on my computer and opening this little QuickTime, and here's this kid doing Sorkin: the first person that we'd heard who could do Sorkin better than Sorkin.

But was that a language that everyone in the movie kind of had to learn?
The studio initially said, "We don't know what you're gonna cut, but you're gonna have to get it down to a reasonable time limit, you can't shoot ... " I think it was 166 pages. And Aaron and I went back to the office and I took out my little iPhone and set it down and put the little stopwatch on and said, "Start reading." And we went through it and he was done in an hour and 59 to two hours. And I called the studio and said, "No, we can do this, it's gonna be about a two-hour movie." They said, "You're crazy." And I said, "No, I think it can be done that way. If we do it the way that Aaron just spoke it, it'll be two hours. It's up to me to have dialogue that pre-laps scenes, and to be able to establish places as quickly as possible." And when I opened this little QuickTime of Jesse Eisenberg, it was the first time I said, "We're gonna be under two hours!" He can just flat-out fly. And you can see in his eyes that he is searching for the best way to articulate something in the middle of articulating two other things; he's processing where he's going.

Oftentimes, you'll say to an actor that, you know, the notion of being present is not to be thinking of the next thing you're going to say but to actually be listening. You know, a lot of people are trained to give you the "thoughtful" thing, but at the same time, they're trying to process their next line. And Jesse can be half a page ahead, and in the now. I remember turning to Aaron and saying, "Okay, have we ever seen anything this good?" He just said, "That's the guy." We brought him out to LA and he came into my office and I said, "Hey, it's a pleasure to meet you." And he said, "Great, what do you want me to read? I've prepared three scenes." And I said, "No, no, no. You got the job. We're just having you here because we wanted to meet you and say hello, but you're in the movie." That's the fun part — to be able to tell them you enjoy what they do.

The actors said the pace you set was really fast, but — and I know this isn't your favorite topic — you are known for doing a lot of takes. So how was a fast pace even possible?
No, you know, I will normally trade helicopters and cranes and the incumbent extra technicians it takes to have toys like that for more hours, more time, more days. For $39 or $40 million, whatever it ended up costing, normally you're going to get about 45 or 50 days of shooting. And we shot for 72 days, because we knew that was the kind of time it was going to take. You know, everybody had to know their lines, but we didn't necessarily know where exactly the scene was going to take place until we found the locations. There was a lot of negotiation going on with Harvard and different places in and around Cambridge that we wanted to use. And things would fall apart at the last minute, so something that was supposed to take place walking down the sidewalk would take place in a cab.

We rehearsed the notion of overlap — we rehearsed the idea of talking over one another very pointedly. The opening scene of the movie [an extended conversation in which Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend], which is nine pages in under five minutes — we had two days to shoot that. And the studio said, "That's crazy." First they said, "It's one scene! You don't need two days for one scene!" Then they said, "It's nine pages! You can't do nine pages in two days!" We said, "Okay, make up your mind, which one is it?" We got through most of the scene in the first day, and then the second day was just going in to pick up certain things in close-ups. We shot 99 takes.

Of just that scene?
Yeah. We put two cameras on it so that they could interrupt and talk right over each other. So it took an enormous amount of time to stage the background, probably close to the first half of the first day. And then we just started shooting. And then I would just go in and encourage them and say, "Here's what you're talking about here." Or: "Try to talk about this." Or: "Just get angry a little later." And the two of them are such facile creatures, they would just play. I look at it this way: You're gonna bring all this equipment, you're gonna bring all these people, you're gonna fly them all in and put them up in hotels, you're gonna run all this cable, do all this stuff, hang these lights ... Then the actors have to have their time to fall face-first into it. Rather than say, "Okay, we'll do two, and let's move on," it seems like such a waste of talent to get somebody's second or third or even fifth or sixth thought at something. Especially with this kind of dialogue, it really needs to seem to fall out of their subconscious. Because a lot of what Sorkin does is think out loud. So it has to look like thought.

One of the actors told me —
[Laughs.] Which one?

Two of them said interesting things about your process. Andrew Garfield [who plays Eduardo Saverin] said that you had them keep in mind that in any scene, anyone who's talking always thinks he's right. And Armie Hammer [who plays Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss] said that he thought the multiple takes were really helpful in ridding them of all of the things that they'd worked out in their heads that they thought were going to be their big moments the night before.
So many Oscars are won in the tub! I'm not, like, trying to psychologically remake people, but look, it's an incredibly neurotic thing to want to do with one's life. It's incredibly hard to stand in front of a camera and be the focus of that attention and not be self-conscious. It makes you self-conscious, and to get beyond that self-consciousness, I absolutely want people to have their idea of what the scene is about, to have an idea of what their moment is. And then I want to take them through that process to a point where they've literally forgotten their own names. I want to take them past the point where they go, "But I had it all worked out." If it's still there but you're doing it a little bit later or doing it a little bit flustered. You know, it's an interesting thing: It happens very rarely, but invariably, when an actor's in the middle of a take and they go, "Uh, hang on a sec, sorry, my fault, can we start again?" always it's the best take. Always the best take before they cry uncle, before they go, "Wait a minute, I've lost my train of thought." And I can show them on the monitor: "Look at you here, that is you at your most present, when you're falling-down ill, like Dudley Moore in Arthur, ass-over-teakettle trying to remember where you were in the thing, that's when you are stunning and real and amazing." Little things happen. There's this moment at the beginning of the movie where Rooney [Mara, who plays Zuckerberg's girlfriend] interrupts him and says "Mark!" And Jesse did this thing where he leaned forward in a very prodding way and said "Erica!" Oddly condescending. She gets really pissed off — and he'd never done it before. It was kind of great. I went up to him and he said, "Do you want me to do it again?" And I said, "No, but I bet you it's going in the movie." That's the kind of stuff you want to find.

Let's go back to when you read the script. I feel like a lot of directors of your caliber, honestly, might have read it and said, "It's great, but there's not much for me to do here." I'm fascinated that you saw interesting directorial challenges in it.
I think telling a good story is always an interesting directorial challenge. I read it and thought, "Oh my God, this is how I feel about the notion of the Internet and communication, and so much about the loneliness that characterizes much of modern interpersonal communication." I also loved the idea of old-world business ethics put to the test by new-world ability to beta-test and iterate. I thought it was an amazing idea. Harvard is this 300-year-old institution built by people who understood business and innovation as: You find a place to cultivate a workforce and train them and create a factory or an assembly line, and you build a product and it comes out and everyone in this little village is rewarded by that. And that's innovation. Then there's this new world where somebody goes: If I've got DSL and enough Red Bull, I can prototype this thing! And then I can get it onto 650 desktops and then eight years later I can get in on 600 million desktops! That is a new paradigm.

The movie seems to put two different kinds of ruthlessness in competition with each other.
I don't know. You said ruthlessness? I don't know. I have an enormous amount of empathy for Zuckerberg. I felt like it was easy to do the Revenge of the Nerds version of this, but there was something more compelling about his wanting to do it his way. Because he was right. It shouldn't be done using an advertising model. The ultimate communication tool needed to be devised by someone who doesn't have the best communication skills. You see him with Lesley Stahl, you kind of go, "I'm not sure this guy should be speaking on his own behalf." But I thought it was amazing that this was the guy who figured out how hundreds of millions of people would want to connect with each other. I thought that was a great, ironic notion. It may indeed be dramatic license, but I thought Aaron did it beautifully.

Do you mean dramatic license in terms of Sorkin's decision to shape him as that kind of guy?
We know that Zuckerberg took out some of his vitriol on a woman in his blog, but I don't know that he continues to pine for her today. As a director, it doesn't seem to me that you should. There's a lot of directors out there who think, Oh, this'll be great, I'm gonna get to go to Rome. Or: This'll be fun, I've never shot the London subways. Or whatever. But I was just looking for a story and I thought, Well, it's not The Paper Chase and it's not Breaking Away and it's not Fight Club, but it's a little bit of a lot of these things, and in an interesting way.

Aaron Sorkin told me that on the set, you were more insistent on the accuracy of small details than he was, that when there was push and pull between you, you wanted to hew closer to the record.
Well, I don't know. I always think that if you have a bit of research, you can go, I think it'd be cooler if the person wore this. But if you have a photograph of him from that period of his life, you go, Really, a T-shirt over a dress shirt with a tie? That's such an odd thing, and yet there's something about that that speaks to who that person is. I feel like if you have something that in some way is real, it informs things in a different way. It's easy to make stuff look good or slick or cohesive, but I also think that if you're dealing with stuff that's real ... I mean, it broke my heart that we couldn't shoot at Harvard. And yet by the time we were done with all the bureaucracy, I was happy to go to Johns Hopkins. They were so helpful. They were so much easier to deal with that I didn't really care that it wasn't the real Kirkland because it was such a pain in the ass to deal with. And in those cases you just go, "Well, they shot a lot of interiors of The Paper Chase at USC, so screw it." But I do think reality informs things in a different way. Oftentimes it doesn't make things as clean in terms of storytelling, but it's almost always better in terms of character. Is [Sorkin] talking about the beer and stuff? [Indeed, there was a dispute over whether Zuckerberg should be drinking a beer or a screwdriver while he hacked into Harvard's databases.]

He was. Small stuff like that.
Yeah, originally, he'd written this thing about making a screwdriver, and I was like, "That's great, except we have a blog. And in the blog it says, 'Here I am and I'm drinking Beck's.'" It felt like, well, he's a Beck's guy. I liked what it said: A 19-year-old guy with a case of Beck's in his dorm room. It doesn't say the same thing as Smirnoff and OJ.

So were most of your disagreements on that scale rather than about, say, character?
We almost never disagreed about intent. Remember, Aaron comes from a world where he generates a kind of page count on a daily basis that I can't even imagine, and he accomplishes an enormous amount. In his previous discipline, television, Aaron is used to thinking fast and making bold decisions. He works with a meat ax. The words are the important thing because it's what you're getting paid for. In television, you don't have the time to pick gnat shit out of pepper. But in the movies, my whole thing is, everything that we put on the screen is going to be debated and scrutinized in some way. So it's not even that there's an opportunity here to do more. It's that it's incumbent upon us, if we're going to put a prop next to somebody's hand and they're going to do three pages of dialogue with it, that prop is going to get a lot more important than it would in a two-page scene on television. It's going to be seen and scrutinized more, so we need to make sure it's not saying something we don't want it to say or undercutting anything about the environment or where they are in their head space.

Do you feel comfortable with the idea that people will walk out at the end of this movie with differing opinions about whether Mark Zuckerberg is a good guy or a tragic hero or a bad guy? You've left a lot of room for people to disagree with the Rashida Jones character's assessment of Mark as someone who's not an asshole but is trying so hard to be. Some people will watch the movie and say, "No, actually, he's an asshole."
Look, it's not my intention to crucify Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg is a guy who accomplished an enormous amount at a very, very young age. And I, not in the same way, not in the same world, but I know what it's like to be 21 years old and trying to direct a $60 million movie and sitting in a room full of grown-ups who think you're just so cute, but they're not about to give you control of anything. It's just, "Great — look how passionate he is!" I know the anger that comes when you just want to be allowed to do the things that you know you can do. In order to accomplish what he's accomplished, you have to have not only a great deal of drive, you have to have an unshakable, freakish confidence. A lot of people will look at that and wonder what kind of hubris does it take to know what it is that you want at 21?

So I feel it would be irresponsible to say this is the story of a guy who betrayed his friends. I think Eduardo had a real failure of imagination, and I've been in those situations before. I've had companies where the partners were all in it for the right reasons at the beginning. And then four or five years down the line, when it's a commercial endeavor that's throwing off a lot of cash, you go, "I think you need to go in this direction." And other people say, "Everything's good just the way it is, let's just keep it here." You reach a point when you say, "We're working at cross-purposes, we're no longer aligned, you need to go do your thing and I need to go do my thing."

And I've been in situations where people say, "Look, it's best for everyone if this person is marginalized." Those things happen. So I have an enormous amount of empathy for everyone involved. I didn't want the Winklevosses to be the "Haves" who were surly and stupid. Cameron really has a strong sense of what it means to be a Harvardian. He's not joking. He was raised right.

The idea of being gentlemen is very meaningful to them.
Yeah! When we were shooting the phone call [to Cameron Winklevoss's father] I told him I wanted him to say, at the end of the call, "I love you, Dad." It's not in the script but that's the kind of kid this guy is. It should be surprising that this six-foot-five, 220-pound kid says that. And I don't know the Winklevi, but they'd somehow gotten a hold of the script because it was on the fucking Internet ...

You don't sound like you're much more of a fan of the Internet than Aaron Sorkin is.
I just resent the whole ... I hate the idea of pre-auditioning clay pigeons for people. I really resent the idea of people reading screenplays that have yet to be produced. In any case, the Winklevosses got to us and said, "You know, that's not my dad's name." Aaron had changed the name originally. That was the one note we got. Little things like that were important to me. We were just trying to make the world as realistic as we could. There were times Aaron Sorkin and I would turn to each other and say, "What are we doing here?" And I said, "It's the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies." Sean Parker is half of Jedediah Leland, and Eduardo is the other half, the hurt half. It's not, "If I hadn't been so rich I might have been a truly great man." But: "If I'd known then what I know now, three years later ... "

[socketlevel]

No, you know, I will normally trade helicopters and cranes and the incumbent extra technicians it takes to have toys like that for more hours, more time, more days. For $39 or $40 million, whatever it ended up costing, normally you're going to get about 45 or 50 days of shooting. And we shot for 72 days, because we knew that was the kind of time it was going to take.

This is my favorite thing about fincher; Kubrick was the same way. they get flack for shooting many takes, but they never go over budget. simply put there is so much excess on a set, that if you're willing to whittle it down, you can be a feasible perfectionist.

[RegularKarate]

I saw this last night.  Aaron Sorkin, Jesse Eisenberg, and Armie Hammer were there for a Q&A afterward.

There's no question that this is a great film.  It is an exploration of character and drive that reminds me more of Zodiac than, say, Fight Club.

The screenplay is VERY MUCH an Aaron Sorkin script.  From the opening scene, you immediately recognize the writing style.  This movie is Fincher taking a great screenplay and using his visual style to strengthen the script's voice rather than over-power it with his own.

There is very little action.  The characters are sitting down throughout almost the entire film yet somehow, Fincher manages to visually match the fast paced dialogue.  The editing is astounding. 

Fincher pulls back on this one enough to let it breathe, but not so much that you can't tell it's a Fincher movie (you just have to look a little harder).  There are two scenes that I can think of that have his prints all over them and he uses one actor to play twins so well that you might be mad at me for pointing out that it's just one actor.  Outside of that and the Trent Reznor soundtrack, I'd call this an amazingly executed Aaron Sorkin movie. (a result of Fincher being such a great director in this case).

I'm still taking this one in.  Sorry for the rambles.

Also, Eisenberg is really that nervous in real life.  He dresses like Zuckerberg
To be honest, I still liked Zodiac better, but this makes up for Button.

[matt35mm]

Seriously, how do I get in on screenings like this?

[RegularKarate]

Seriously, how do I get in on screenings like this?

As much as it pains me to say this, you should read Aint It Cool News if you live in Austin.
That and the alamo blog.

I lucked out with good timing.  I usually forget to check AICN.

side note: I just realized that I say "To be honest" way too often.  Why hasn't anyone ever told me?  I feel like I've been walking around with a really dumb shirt on and people are laughing behind my back.  Somebody Stop Me! (Jim Carey, The Mask)

[matt35mm]

I see.  Thanks.  I've only been checking the "Austin Alamo Drafthouse" and "Austin Film Society" pages on Facebook.  They do regularly post about free/advanced screenings, and some are even Facebook exclusive (uh, there's a free advanced screening of It's Kind of a Funny Story tonight, if anyone's interested), but I'll have to start looking at AICN as well.

Anyway, it's good to hear that you liked the film!

[modage]

Can I just say how annoyed I am at the New York Film Festival for charging $40 for tickets and booking this as the "World Premiere" and then Sony having screenings for every critic weeks/months before that and screening it in Austin 3 days before.  Can I say how fucking annoying that is?  The ONLY movie I really want to see at this festival and they already showed it to everybody else.