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Go Home Sorkin vs. Zuckerberg

BOOKS AND ARTS OCTOBER 1, 2010

Sorkin vs. Zuckerberg

BY LAWRENCE LESSIG

In 2004, a Harvard undergraduate got an idea (yes, that is ambiguous) for a new kind of social network. Here’s the important point: He built it. He had a bunch of extremely clever clues for opening up a social space that every kid (anyone younger than I am) would love. He architected that social space around the social life of the kids he knew. And he worked ferociously hard to make sure the system was stable and functioning at all times. The undergraduate then spread it to other schools, then other communities, and now to anyone. Today, with more than 500,000,000 users, it is one of the fastest growing networks in the history of man. That undergraduate is now a billionaire, multiple times over. He is the youngest billionaire in the world.

In 2009, Aaron Sorkin (“Sports Night,” “The West Wing”) got (yes, the same word) the idea to write a script for a movie about this new social network. Here’s the important point: He made it. As with every one of his extraordinary works, Sorkin crafted dialogue for an as-yet-not-evolved species of humans—ordinary people, here students, who talk perpetually with the wit and brilliance of George Bernard Shaw or Bertrand Russell. (I’m a Harvard professor. Trust me: The students don’t speak this language.) With that script, and with a massive hand from the film’s director, David Fincher, he helped steer an intelligent, beautiful, and compelling film through to completion. You will see this movie, and you should. As a film, visually and rhythmically, and as a story, dramatically, the work earns its place in the history of the field.

But as a story about Facebook, it is deeply, deeply flawed. As I watched the film, and considered what it missed, it struck me that there was more than a hint of self-congratulatory contempt in the motives behind how this story was told. Imagine a jester from King George III’s court, charged in 1790 with writing a comedy about the new American Republic. That comedy would show the new Republic through the eyes of the old. It would dress up the story with familiar figures—an aristocracy, or a wannabe aristocracy, with grand estates, but none remotely as grand as in England. The message would be, “Fear not, there’s no reason to go. The new world is silly at best, deeply degenerate, at worst.”

Not every account of a new world suffers like this. Alexis de Tocqueville showed the old world there was more here than there. But Sorkin is no Tocqueville. Indeed, he simply hasn’t a clue to the real secret sauce in the story he is trying to tell. And the ramifications of this misunderstanding go well beyond the multiplex.

 

Two lawsuits provide the frame for The Social Network. One was brought by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, twins at Harvard who thought they had hired Zuckerberg to build for them what Facebook would become. The other was brought by Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s “one friend” and partner, and Facebook’s initial CFO, who was eventually pushed out of the company by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. These cases function as a kind of Greek chorus, setting the standards of right, throughout the film. It is against the high ideals they represent that everything else gets judged. And indeed, the lawyers are the only truly respectable or honorable characters in the film. When they’re ridiculed or insulted by Zuckerberg, their responses are more mature, and better, than Zuckerberg’s. (If you remember the scene in “The Wire” where Omar uses his wit to cut the lawyer to bits, that’s not this film.) The lawyers here rise above the pokes, regardless of the brilliance in Zuckerberg’s charge. This is kindergarten. They are the teachers. We’re all meant to share a knowing wink, or smirk, as we watch the silliness of children at play.

In Sorkin’s world—which is to say Hollywood, where lawyers attempt to control every last scrap of culture—this framing makes sense. But as I watched this film, as a law professor, and someone who has tried as best I can to understand the new world now living in Silicon Valley, the only people that I felt embarrassed for were the lawyers. The total and absolute absurdity of the world where the engines of a federal lawsuit get cranked up to adjudicate the hurt feelings (because “our idea was stolen!”) of entitled Harvard undergraduates is completely missed by Sorkin. We can’t know enough from the film to know whether there was actually any substantial legal claim here. Sorkin has been upfront about the fact that there are fabrications aplenty lacing the story. But from the story as told, we certainly know enough to know that any legal system that would allow these kids to extort $65 million from the most successful business this century should be ashamed of itself. Did Zuckerberg breach his contract? Maybe, for which the damages are more like $650, not $65 million. Did he steal a trade secret? Absolutely not. Did he steal any other “property”? Absolutely not—the code for Facebook was his, and the “idea” of a social network is not a patent. It wasn’t justice that gave the twins $65 million; it was the fear of a random and inefficient system of law. That system is a tax on innovation and creativity. That tax is the real villain here, not the innovator it burdened. 

The case for Zuckerberg’s former partner is stronger, and more sensible and sad. But here again, the villains are not even named. Sorkin makes the autodidact Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, the evil one. (No copyright-industry bad blood there.) I know Parker. This is not him. The nastiest people in this story (at least if Sorkin tells this part accurately) were the Facebook lawyers who show up in poorly fitting suits and let Saverin believe that they were in this, as in everything else they had done, representing Saverin as well. If that’s what actually happened, it was plainly unethical. No doubt, Saverin was stupid to trust them, but the absurdity here is a world where it is stupid to trust members of an elite and regulated profession. Again, an absurdity one could well miss in this film between all the cocaine and practically naked twentysomethings.

But the most frustrating bit of The Social Network is not its obliviousness to the silliness of modern American law. It is its failure to even mention the real magic behind the Facebook story. In interviews given after making the film, Sorkin boasts about his ignorance of the Internet. That ignorance shows. This is like a film about the atomic bomb which never even introduces the idea that an explosion produced through atomic fission is importantly different from an explosion produced by dynamite. Instead, we’re just shown a big explosion ($25 billion in market capitalization—that’s a lot of dynamite!) and expected to grok (the word us geek-wannabes use to show you we know of what we speak) the world of difference this innovation in bombs entails.

What is important in Zuckerberg’s story is not that he’s a boy genius. He plainly is, but many are. It’s not that he’s a socially clumsy (relative to the Harvard elite) boy genius. Every one of them is. And it’s not that he invented an amazing product through hard work and insight that millions love. The history of American entrepreneurism is just that history, told with different technologies at different times and places.

Instead, what’s important here is that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone. The real story is not the invention. It is the platform that makes the invention sing. Zuckerberg didn’t invent that platform. He was a hacker (a term of praise) who built for it. And as much as Zuckerberg deserves endless respect from every decent soul for his success, the real hero in this story doesn’t even get a credit. It’s something Sorkin doesn’t even notice.

For comparison’s sake, consider another pair of Massachusetts entrepreneurs, Tom First and Tom Scott. After graduating from Brown in 1989, they started a delivery service to boats on Nantucket Sound. During their first winter, they invented a juice drink. People liked their juice. Slowly, it dawned on First and Scott that maybe there was a business here. Nantucket Nectars was born. The two Toms started the long slog of getting distribution. Ocean Spray bought the company. It later sold the business to Cadbury Schweppes.

At each step after the first, along the way to giving their customers what they wanted, the two Toms had to ask permission from someone. They needed permission from a manufacturer to get into his plant. Permission from a distributor to get into her network. And permission from stores to get before the customer. Each step between the idea and the customer was a slog. They made the slog, and succeeded. But many try to make that slog and fail. Sometimes for good reasons. Sometimes not.

Zuckerberg faced no such barrier. For less than $1,000, he could get his idea onto the Internet. He needed no permission from the network provider. He needed no clearance from Harvard to offer it to Harvard students. Neither with Yale, or Princeton, or Stanford. Nor with every other community he invited in. Because the platform of the Internet is open and free, or in the language of the day, because it is a “neutral network,” a billion Mark Zuckerbergs have the opportunity to invent for the platform. And though there are crucial partners who are essential to bring the product to market, the cost of proving viability on this platform has dropped dramatically. You don’t even have to possess Zuckerberg’s technical genius to develop your own idea for the Internet today. Websites across the developing world deliver high quality coding to complement the very best ideas from anywhere. This is a platform that has made democratic innovation possible—and it was on the Facebook platform resting on that Internet platform that another Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, organized the most important digital movement for Obama, and that the film’s petty villain, Sean Parker, organized Causes, one of the most important tools to support nonprofit social missions.

The tragedy—small in the scale of things, no doubt—of this film is that practically everyone watching it will miss this point. Practically everyone walking out will think they understand genius on the Internet. But almost none will have seen the real genius here. And that is tragedy because just at the moment when we celebrate the product of these two wonders—Zuckerberg and the Internet—working together, policymakers are conspiring ferociously with old world powers to remove the conditions for this success. As “network neutrality” gets bargained away—to add insult to injury, by an administration that was elected with the promise to defend it—the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink. And as they do, we will return more to the world where success depends upon permission. And privilege. And insiders. And where fewer turn their souls to inventing the next great idea.

I had always hoped (naively, no doubt) that this point would be obvious to the creators of film. No field of innovation is more burdened by the judgments of idiots in the middle than film. Scores of directors have watched in horror as their creativity gets maimed by suits-carrying-focus-groups. I had thought that if only these creators would let themselves understand the ethic of Internet creativity—where the creator gets to speak directly to an audience, where an audience is brought on stage, and talks back—they would get it. And if they did, that there might actually be a chance for this understanding to be shown in one of the only ways this culture understands anymore—through film. Indeed, as I walked into this film unprimed by early reviews, I had hoped, “West Wing” fan-boy that I am, that of all the storytellers in Hollywood, Sorkin was most likely to get it.

He didn’t. His film doesn’t show it. What it shows is worth watching. But what it doesn’t show is an understanding of the most important social and economic platform for innovation in our history.

Zuckerberg is a rightful hero of our time. I want my kids to admire him. To his credit, Sorkin gives him the only lines of true insight in the film: In response to the twins’ lawsuit, he asks, does “a guy who makes a really good chair owe money to anyone who ever made a chair?” And to his partner who signed away his ownership in Facebook: “You’re gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?” Friends who know Zuckerberg say such insight is common. No doubt his handlers are panicked that the film will tarnish the brand. He should listen less to these handlers. As I looked around at the packed theater of teens and twenty-somethings, there was no doubt who was in the right, however geeky and clumsy and sad. That generation will judge this new world. If, that is, we allow that new world to continue to flourish.

Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School and the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics.

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64 comments

While there are obviously differences between Nantucket Nectars and Facebook as measured by obstacles to success, in an effort to mount the hobby horse of net neutrality, Lessig overstates his case here. There were gatekeepers on Facebook's march to 500 million users as well - they are called investors, and they require every bit as much convincing as do plant owners, distributors and retailers in the more pedestrian Tom and Tom story. Putting your B & B on a website, or a clever app on the iPhone store have indeed almost no barrier to entry. Reaching even 500,000 subscribers reliably with a complex service like Facebook, let alone 500 million, is impossible without a LOT of money, and since Facebook failed to generate more than it spent until late in 2009, that money had to come from folks who need a lot of convincing - and a big piece of the action as compensation. Which, of course, highlights another aspect of the Facebook story - 500 million users or not, Facebook has yet to prove that it is the hugely successful business Lessig seems to think it is. It reached the point where it is generating a positive cash flow only 12 months ago, and as nearly as anyone I've talked to in the industry can tell, that is based almost entirely on advertising revenue. That puts Facebook in a potential bind it has not yet demonstrated it knows how to solve: as the site becomes more ubiquitous and more an ordinary part of what people do every day it risks becoming increasingly just another commodity ad site, with very little control over the price of the only product it is currently selling - access to people to whom it must give away what it spends the bulk of it's income producing. I'm not one who says there is no working business model behind Facebook, but they are far from having demonstrated that there is anything like an innovative, highly profitable (a la Google's search adds, or Micosofts PC software monopolies).

- IowaBeauty

October 1, 2010 at 7:42am

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Liked the piece, but I have a petty criticism: lay off the parentheses! By the time Lessig got to explaining "grok" it felt more like a disjointed blog post than a coherent essay.

- Simon Greenwood

October 1, 2010 at 10:20am

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Please, be more sanctimonious.

- hbonynge

October 1, 2010 at 3:32pm

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I find facebook to be useless. And, to be honest, I don't believe it will be around it 20 some years as people migrate away from desktops to more and more powerful PC/cell phones/everything else. Facebook will seem so last decade. "You did what? you played on a farm half the day? You posted what you had for breakfast?" I am sorry Mr. Lessig, tis the way of the world. 25 years ago I worked for a car telephone company that installed mobile phones in cars using the car battery for power and a huge antenna for coverage. At the time it seemed so cutting edge, now it is laughable and the company long, long out of business. I am not sayng the same will happen with facebook, just that it will be a niche product.

- blackton

October 1, 2010 at 6:43pm

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Facebook has some virtues, but it can also be quite fatuous. youtube, however, is a true delight. If I had to choose which of the two I could do without, it would be Facebook without a second thought.

- skeebler

October 1, 2010 at 9:16pm

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Blackton, that's not the point of the article. Facebook may well be useless (it is to me, I never would touch it even with a very long pole) and it may soon be obsolete, but Lessig is not arguing that Facebook is the Holy Grail. What he says is that net neutrality would allow countless useful or less useful innovations like Facebook, or whatever, to flourish and wither, according to people's and the culture's needs .

- Idefix

October 2, 2010 at 1:48pm

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Dear Mr. Lessig: Thank you for your interesting set of thoughts, (albeit, as mentioned, with a few too many parentheses). I made the mistake of reading your essay—it’s not really, and is more than, a review—before seeing the movie. No doubt, I just finished watching it with some of your thoughts in mind. I have to admit when I read your essay I was not clear on what exactly the great secret was that everyone except you missed as “the real secret sauce in the story he is trying to tell.” I understand that now to be, having seen the movie and just reread your essay, the significance of the “neutral network” as manifest for one example in Zuckerberg without permissions and with ridiculously low capitalization—less than $1,000.00—getting “his idea onto the Internet”, all with that neutrality and openness being bargained away only to be made subject to old world permissions. So maybe it’s because you’re not a film reviewer and are in your essay mixing together disharmoniously some reviewing and some social policy, that I think while your social policy may be well taken, your criticism of the film for what it missed—“the secret sauce”—is not. What you cite as the film’s deep flaw—its missing fundamental ingredient—is a criticism external to the intent of the movie. That intent, I say, is to tell the story it and in doing so portray the folks involved, and particularly Zuckerberg. Neither the film’s intent nor its burden required it to belabor profound insights into the revolutionary nature of Zuckerberg’s achievement. And, contrary to what you say, why wasn’t there, smack dab in the story the film told as it did, plain for all to see the very things you say were missing: no permissions needed; what could be done with such ludicrously little funding; the amazing breeding rabbit like contagion of the site. And then the movie, telling its story, makes a big thing of what you blithely almost write off and dismiss: “And though there are crucial partners who are essential to bring the product to market, the cost of proving viability on this platform has dropped dramatically.” So in fact there is no missing secret sauce. You simply wanted a different sauce to dip your film chicken into, or wanted a differentl film chicken, perhaps, rather, a film Cornish Hen. A few other points. Firstly, I agree with this: “With that script, and with a massive hand from the film’s director, David Fincher, he helped steer an intelligent, beautiful, and compelling film through to completion. You will see this movie, and you should. As a film, visually and rhythmically, and as a story, dramatically, the work earns its place in the history of the field.” That said, I missed the “self congratulatory contempt in the motives behind how this story was told.” In fact, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. How are we to understand the motives, let alone know whose motives you mean? Sorkin’s, Fincher’s? I suggest we can’t know their motives—save to make an entertaining, commercially successful movie telling a great story about a compelling subject involving primarily a fascinating, idiosyncratic genius—Zuckerberg. I don’t see the movie being tendentious about the story it tells. And Facebook is what Facebook is, ranging from the sheerly amazing to the sheerly mind numbing: …HAdd fUN At tHE GAME WitH tHE SiS tAyy BAE,MAyA M0RRiS,MyESHiA&&M0RE..iWANt t0 SEE if tHE BAE W0N HiS GAME..iAM MAdd CUz iDiDNt GEt t0 StAyy..bUt iLy HiM Still N0 MAttA WHAt!.C00KiE&&KEViN ♥!... What Facebook is, in the spectrum of its sheernesses as a social network, apart from the achievement its creation represents, is a point apart from this movie. The achievement and human drama of its creation is its point. I see no condescension in Sorkin and Fincher’s treatment of the new world, even if they are no Tocquevilles. I also don’t think the law suits set “…the standards of right, throughout the film.” And that they don’t goes to how off the idea is of “self-congratulatory contempt”. For all his personal fallibility, quirky rudeness and sarcasm, a big point made during the depositions is that Zuckerberg is the smartest person in the room. The meritlessness of the twins’ case is made pretty apparent. So their lawyer is just another hired gun, doing his clients’ bidding, not particularly honorable or dishonorable. And he invited Zuckerberg’s cut him-to-the-quick insult when he repeatedly asked him whether he was worthy of Zuckerberg’s respect. I don’t do jury trials and they are not the primary fact finders in Canadian civil litigation as they are in the U.S. So it’s hard to imagine a Canadian lawyer during an examination, either for discovery or in trial, asking such a question. My interpretation of the lawyer asking it repeatedly of Zuckerberg was that it was just as much for personal affirmation from this dismissive, scornful boy wonder as it was to get some fodder for the eventual jury, if the case didn’t settle. And boy did Zuckerberg shmeiss him! That moment, with the lawyer impotently winking at his clients, the twins, trying to shrug off the lacerating he has just taken from Zuckerberg was briefly apposite—in this movie’s terms—to what Omar did in The Wire. That Eduardo Saverin’s case is more compelling than the twins’ highlights what a light thing the latter was. The settlements reached are consistent with that. For a guy riding on a company worth billions of dollars, himself a billionaire a few times over, $65,000,000.00 was virtual nuisance value money. The movie’s Zuckerberg understood that in principle the twins case had no principled legal point, but he wisely listened to the young associate’s advice. Clearly too, the undisclosed but assuredly significant settlement with Eduardo, whose name found its way back onto Facebook’s masthead accorded with the greater justice of his cause of action. As such it lends more rationality and less arbitrariness to the legal system, framing the movie, than you ascribe. I’ll also just briefly say that I didn’t find Sean Parker the movie’s villain, or the “evil one” as such or unmitigated so.. He was more complex than that. Undubitably flawed, and a relative fuck up, done in by his own hedonism, he successfully brings Zuckerman and Facebook along through, in your words, bringing “the product to market” and seems genuinely to like Zuckerman and have his best interests at heart. In the first scene when they meet, Parker tells Zuckerman he didn’t sell something for big bucks—I forget now what—because he just didn’t care. Money, the movie suggests, is not primarily what drove either of them. We are left, I believe to assume, that that both Zuckerman and Parker had a hand in the screwing Eduardo got, and that that was done out of variety of unlovely motives. Such is the morally complicated passing human parade as this movie has it, and not moral portraits in black and white. I’ll finish off where I started, Mr. Lessig. You end your essay as you began it, mixing together unadroitly social policy and film criticism. Your near to final complaint is that Sorkin dashed your hopes, as a “’West Wing’ fan-boy” (itself enough to make me wonder about you), that he would “get it” only to find him not having gotten it. So your social policy becomes a prescriptive criterion for aesthetic judgment. As the old aesthete said, “We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donné: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.” Sincerely and respectfully, Itzik Basman

- basman

October 2, 2010 at 9:15pm

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Yes, Itzik, I agree totally with what I think you're saying. This movie was way more subtle than most people seem to realize (I won't employ the word "nuanced" because it's so overused). Zuckerberg's portrayal was not a "character assassination," as a New Yorker writer put it. He was someone I wanted to know--he'd be one of these incredibly brilliant people you'd want to stay up all night listening to. I found so many scenes exhilirating, as when he had the Harvard students auditioning to be programmers, or when you see the whole enterprise in the Palo Alto house. I've been in the middle of a creative remodeling of a magazine, and those late hours and games are exactly what it's like. And I don't think Parker's character was destroyed either. He came across as a very wily adviser who did what Zuckerberg's actual business partner should have done. Saverin just seemed so old world. And if Saverin got more than $65 million then Zuckerberg's lawyers did not do well by him. He was totally out to lunch--and how hilarious that he was out to lunch in real life at gold old-fashioned Lehman's! He just kept missing the point. Even when he gets to the house exhausted by his trip. He's complaining that Z. forgot to pick him up. What, like, you can't find a fucking cab? I do agree with the point of someone's comment above--that Facebook has yet to show us how much money it will make. But Zuckerberg so clearly didn't care about that, so for him, that's a meaningless measure of success. He'll be far more miserable when his site becomes kind of obsolete, because as Blackton says, at some point it will not be cutting edge. There's a great article somewhere on BusinessInsider.com that discusses the real players here, and it's even more evenhanded than this movie. I wish I could find it. I do agree that losing net neutrality is scary, though.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 2, 2010 at 10:03pm

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Hey Molly, one thing I'd disagree with you on as the film shows it: "And if Saverin got more than $65 million then Zuckerberg's lawyers did not do well by him." I think the movie raises a basis for thinking that for however "old world" Eduardo was, the documents he signed were such a prefabricated set up, with lawyers pretending to act for him in the midst of a terrible conflict of interest, him being screwed by deeply buried fine print allowing his shares, but nobody else's, to be diluted, being led --perhaps represented to--to have normal in the course of business expectations that were totally and probably conspiratorially and arguably fraudulently turned upside down, were eminently legally vulnerable. So if Eduardo's legal cause was just, regardless of what a drag he was on the company and out of step with it, those to my mind being legally irrelevant as the movie presents it, then my sense is that he got a settlement--a big, big one, including restoring the public acknowledgment of his co-founding Facebook--commensurate with the strength of his case. And if that's so, then the lawyers for all Zuckerman and Eduardo did a commendable job rationally compromising the claims and defences in a settlement congruent with the legal merits. I liked your comments on the movie. I just saw it a few hours ago and it's like to talking to someone about it.

- basman

October 2, 2010 at 10:29pm

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Director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin in conversation with Charlie Rose: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11223

- noga1

October 2, 2010 at 10:40pm

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Interesting interview, really interesting. Nogs, thanks for the link. I'm rethinking some of my impressions of the movie in light of it, but, more, I think, it blows the "secret sauce" thesis right out of the water.

- basman

October 3, 2010 at 1:58am

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I disagree vehemently with the insight attributed to Zuckerberg: “You’re gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?” Although the details are not fully described, having someone sign a document pretending it is in their interest while it is not is morally indefensible. I know that there are climates where such conduct is the rule and everyone acts accordingly, but the terms "partner" and "friend" take on a different meaning if that insight is proper justification for betrayal.

- Nusholtz

October 3, 2010 at 12:42pm

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Good point Nusholtz. In all my verbiage round here I glossed over too quickly that part of what Lessig wrote. Not much insight there and belied it sems by the ultimate settlement.

- basman

October 3, 2010 at 12:46pm

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Basman, did you notice how long your sentences went on? Amazing that you could do so and still be grammatically correct. I saw the movie on Friday (while my kids were at schoool) and I'm grateful you were around! I see your point about Saverin, but the guy was still a tool. Though not entirely. He did serve as some kind of conscience for Zuckerberg, who had no conscience. Some people have posited that he has Asperger's. But I've spent time around Aspies, and sometimes it's not a neurological disorder. If you read the New Yorker profile of him, you'll see that sometimes it's just that the guy is an asshole. Did you read the New Yorker article about him?

- MOLLYSIMON

October 3, 2010 at 1:34pm

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By the way, I thought Eisenberg's acting was incredible. He so nailed it.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 3, 2010 at 1:35pm

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Molly: Yeah, I do a lot of writing and tend to run on. So for more formal things, like for work, I'm always editing myself down. And so for writing that's a kibbitz, like here, it's a release to let myself go a little. I saw the movie late yesterday night with my wife--who is not prone to staying up late thinking about movies, being the normal person she is--after my daughter, son in law and grandkids took off leaving my house so quiet you coould hear a pin drop, right into one of the 8,000 kid toys littering the joint. I didn't think Eduardo was a "tool" but if he was I'm saying he was a 1989 Black and Decker hand saw. I thought he was a nice guy who moved a little slower and was slower to react than others. For example he might've broken up with his girl friend before she virtually scorch earthed his apartment. I'm not writing my medical boards for another few months so I'll take a pass on the diagnosis of Zuckerberg. Besides I'm gonna' be a Podiatrist, so even then I won't be qualified, unless his toes twitch in certain observable and recurrent patterns: Monday's lecture in fact. According to the movie Z. wasn't an asshole, just someone trying to hard to be one, to be what he was not. He's portrayed as a complex carbohydrate so he's stobbornly remorseful on how tough Timberlake is on Eduardo and he's quite wistful and sad--very unassholelike--in the final scene of him staring like a sad puppy at the Facebook page of the girl he dated from B.U. whose name I can't now remember. All the acting was great and as you rightly say "...Eisenberg's acting was incredible. He so nailed it." I was delighted too by how terrific Justin Timberlake was: I've seen him in other things. He's an estimable actor. See, for eg, Black Snake Moan. I read David Denby on The Social Network, thought it was excellent film reviewing but trailed off when he went into David Fincher's flimography. See ya': gotta' get back to the fractal ingrown toenail.

- basman

October 3, 2010 at 3:33pm

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Basman, you show off ... :-) ... that sentence was so damn long, I can't be bothered to figure out if it was grammatically correct or not.

- NR409654

October 3, 2010 at 10:00pm

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Sheesh, Facebook. That thing still around? I'm not going to see this movie for the following reasons, and so maybe someone can tell me if I should reconsider: 1. I don't give a shit about Facebook. 2. I don't give a shit about billionaire "asshole" entrepreneurs. In fact, I sort of hate them. One's thoughts turn to artists and starving people and starving artists. Generally I find concentrations of absurdly large amounts of money morally repugnant, especially when held by someone who did something other than cure cancer. 3. The story isn't even true. 4. I'm tired of Sorkin's b.s. I enjoyed The West Wing, and A Few Good Man (also, a pro-lawyer movie) is a classic. But all of his characters sound like Sorkin -- witty, ironic, etc., with frequent recourse on the one hand to sarcastic turns of phrase that sound pretty much like this -- "Yeah, you're gonna wanna, you know, not let that happen." -- and, on the other, to corny, overly insistent announcements of significance and meaning. He's clever but not so much into, you know, reality. As for Lessig, one might point out that the movie is about Facebook, not about the interwebs. I guess Lessig wanted a movie about Al Gore stealing the idea of the Internet from the late Ted Stevens, who was known to yell out "series of tubes" during night terrors on the Senate floor. With that, Gore finally had the missing ingredient for his home-made "telespecter" machine, but then he realized that Farnsworth had already invented it (or did he?), and he realized that Sorkin had already written the Farnsworth Invention, and so he knew that his movie-picture viewing device would not be used in accordance with idealistic, democracy-enhancing, West-Wing-appropriate purposes, and so he decided to invent the Internet instead, leading to the inevitable, historic marriage of Book and Face.

- JakeH

October 4, 2010 at 2:02pm

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jakeh I don't understand your post. Are you trying to suggest that you won't be taking in this flick? If so, say so.

- basman

October 4, 2010 at 2:06pm

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"Are you trying to suggest that you won't be taking in this flick?" No. He is begging for someone to MAKE him see this movie as he is simply dying to see it but he feels duty bound to pretend otherwise. If he is MADE to see the movie he can always apologize to his jeering anti-capitalist anti-lawyer friends that he was coerced, forced, left no choice but, to go see this film. Be a man, jakeh, and admit it: Am I right or am I right?

- noga1

October 4, 2010 at 3:21pm

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By the way, jakeh, are you a closet Canadian? I'm asking, so you need to tell: As in jak, eh!

- basman

October 4, 2010 at 3:26pm

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Noga, that was hilarious. And yes, you are right. I am not a Sorkin fan for some of the reasons Jake mentions, but I'm telling you, Jakey, you've got to see it. It's far more subtle than the usual Sorkin fare. Nobody comes off entirely evil or entirely good. There are no heroes here. I understand your feelings about rampant capitalism and individuals accruing obscene amounts of money, but that shouldn't keep you away from a story well told. However, the movie does address matters of greed and cut-throat ambition. Go, Jake. Just go.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 4, 2010 at 3:37pm

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This was a terrific piece of entertainment and I think quarreling over whether Zuckerberg relied on net neutrality for success is beside the point. If he did not do Facebook, he might well have matched it with something else. To me, it's another illustration of the power of obsession. Others above have used the word passion, but I think Zuckerberg's single-mindedness blew away the dilettante twins and the safe-harbor Eduardo. As one of the attorneys said, the settlements were just traffic tickets on the road to success. Justin Timberlake, by the way, matured into a fantastic actor while my back was turned. That said, I agree with those who say Facebook has not proven its lasting value. I just opened my news feed and saw zero ads. Cool don't pay the rent. Just last week, I received notice from one of my online applications, Xmarks, that they have given up on making it pay. Won't be the last.

- emccded

October 4, 2010 at 4:17pm

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Noga, ha, you're wrong! About everything! I *actually* don't want to see the movie, and didn't want to see the movie ever since I saw the stupid trailer, whereupon I thought, ugh, that looks stupid, I guess I'll miss that. Facebook? As a Sorkin character might inquire with the sort of acid wit that transports one back to the Algonquin round table, "Really?" In fact, I'm a lawyer who mainly works for The Man, most of my friends are lawyers, and I find Sorkin's lawyer-admiration to be one of his most attractive qualities. I think his sister is a lawyer or something. Sadly, I lack anti-capitalist friends. Like democracy, it's the worst system except for all the others, and, also like democracy, it has a tendency to be rather gross and depressing in practice, as it so pitilessly exposes our gutter natures. And, of course, it's not remotely fair or plausibly just, especially as we do it, but one seeks to address that, short of revolution, by electing black socialists president. Regarding the film, over which society is getting a collective zeitgeisty hard-on, let me ask those who have seen it the following: Every movie -- even escapist entertainment -- is "character driven," in the sense that you have to care about the characters in order to care what happens to them. Given my previous rants, do you think it's possible that I'll care about the prick? No good basman, I'm not a closet Canadian -- perhaps a frustrated Canadian at heart.

- JakeH

October 4, 2010 at 5:33pm

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For someone who doesn't want to see the movie jak-eh, you seem to spend an inordinate time and effort hanging about around a thread that discusses the movie you don't want to see.

- noga1

October 4, 2010 at 6:07pm

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...Every movie -- even escapist entertainment -- is "character driven," in the sense that you have to care about the characters in order to care what happens to them.... Taken one way, this is wrongly prescriptive. Raging Bull, for whatever reason, comes immediately to mind. The Bull repulses but fascinates us. He's a volcanically violent, wife beating, bullying creep (who knows nothing about issue estoppel.) But we are of course fascinatedly swept along by him in his story in his world in this classically great movie. There of course re all manner of sadistic thugs, evil creeps, psycho, socio, pastoral woodland and all other paths who will compel our attention by virtue who they are, and/or their stories and/or their films' worlds. So if you stick to caring as liking or being sympathetic to, you are led to an unacceptable, erroneously narrow conception of art. If you take caring as being interested in or, better, fascinated by, then you utter a tautology: you will care/be interested in because you care/be interested in. Caring as liking denudes art. Caring as interested in, tautologies aside, gets one to the infinite and illuminating expanses of art as the wondrous thing it is. The question to ask, I'd say, is not "Will I like the characters?" but, rather, "Is this a good movie for *any* of the reasons a movie can be good and, therefore, worth my time?"

- basman

October 4, 2010 at 6:31pm

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Jake, it's so highly entertaining you must go. There is also wit. Zuckerberg comes across as having a very acerbic (SAT word) wit. There are plenty of really amusing lines. Just go already. It's not just about the zeitgeist, it's about age and character and screwing or not screwing over the other guy and seeing where certain choices can take you, and about youth and taking chances. I don't quite agree with what emccded said about "obsession," because it implies a lack of control. Zuckerberg was entirely in control. And after I watched movie, I read e-mails from Z that prove he knew exactly what he was doing. I think passion is quite a different thing. Zuckerberg was not obsessed--he just had idea after idea. So just go already. If you hate it I'll give you the $10 you will have wasted on a ticket. To everyone else here, I haven't seen a movie this exciting in a long time. So please forgive me for going on and on and on.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 4, 2010 at 6:46pm

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Yes, Basman, like the devil in Milton. I wish I'd had you as a professor. You illuminate so much.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 4, 2010 at 6:48pm

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Just a piece of info: in the real world Eduardo wound up with 5% of the shares in the corporate structure owing Facebook and is worth in excess of a billion beans. So his case clearly had significant merit compared to the twins' case and their measly $65,000,000.00. What a world!

- basman

October 4, 2010 at 11:24pm

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When I think about it, he deserves it. Eduardo fronted Zuckerberg money when there was no good reason to do that other than that they were friends. As for the Winklevi, I agree with the fictional Summers's take.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 5, 2010 at 12:03pm

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...the fictional Summers's take... Sorry, I'm not sure what this is?

- basman

October 5, 2010 at 1:03pm

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Do you remember when the Winklevi went to Summers's office to complain that Z. had broken the Harvard code of conduct and Summers just laughed and basically took the view if the Winklevi weren't happy, they should just come up with a better idea. Because that's what Harvard's all about coming up with better ideas so deal, guys. (Please excuse my high-school level of speech here.) Though is occurs to me that the law may not agree, and that you no doubt will have an answer along the lines of Z. breaking his contract. And I guess you'd be right. But I think Z knew this, and as e-mails show, he figured he eventually negotiate a settlement with the twins. I guess I take the view that a fortune is often built on slimy doings and deeds. So I may have just thoroughly contradicted myself, but that's OK. I the think the moral ambiguity here is what made this movie so damn good.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 5, 2010 at 3:08pm

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Basman, you make good points. What do you find fascinating about the Zuckerberg character? (Just curious.) You're certainly right that being an asshole doesn't automatically preclude fascination. Richard III is a manipulative, murderous misanthrope, and yet it's a highly entertaining play. When you say that we're fascianted by Raging Bull, on the other hand, I ask, "Who's this we?" Last time I tried, I couldn't even get through it. I wasn't interested in this animalistic thug. I wasn't attracted to him on any level, nor did I find him interesting or charismatic, as I do Richard III. If a movie requires fascination with someone I just desperately want to shoot in the face, I'm probably not going to like it. I don't think that's "unacceptable." The heart wants what it wants. I can think of literary counter-examples -- cases where you should probably stick it out in order to gain great insight into the human experience. I'm sure many readers wish that Emma Bovary would have killed herself before the book began, but Sorkin is no Flaubert, so I'm not too worried about a "narrowness" of taste that might cause me to miss the blinding beams of absolute truth that flow from Sorkin's pen. Basman, truth be told, I'm getting a little impatient with assholes in middle-brow entertainment. I just went to see "The American," and I walked out half-way through because it was boring, and part of the reason it was boring was because I hated George Clooney, and I hated George Clooney because he just murders his girlfriend at the beginning of the movie! My attitude is, "Well, fuck you asshole!" I gave up on Mad Men, because one gets bored with all those fucking assholes. I watched every last minute of The Sopranos, but I didn't mind at all that Tony got shot (which is what happened, by the way), because I didn't *really* care about him. He's charismatic, and it's an entertaining show, but it relies on manipulations to make you forget for long stretches that they're really all a bunch of low-life assholes, and once one becomes attuned to that, the spell is broken, and I have zero interest in ever seeing the show again, even though I own all the goddamn DVDs. Then you've got that show about the serial killer guy (sounds great!), the show about vampires (fuck those blood-sucking assholes), polygamy (I'm sure it's really like that), meth dealers, marijuana dealers, Assholes in the Old West, Assholes in Prison, Asshole Cops, Asshole Plastic Surgeons, Asshole Lawyers, and, now, Assholes in Atlantic City in the 20's, and we're all supposed to get off on all these fucking assholes, and I'm getting a little worn out on it.

- JakeH

October 5, 2010 at 4:27pm

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Okay Molly, I'll see it. It seems to be required.

- JakeH

October 5, 2010 at 4:27pm

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I saw "The American" a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was a profoundly sad movie and George Clooney did a terrific job in portraying the utter irredeemable despair of a man who realizes way too late that he made some very bad choices in his life and can never recover from them. He reminded me, in his capacity to deliver a muted anguish which is like palpable, visual pain, of his earlier role as Chris Kelvin @Solaris. I finally and reluctantly had to concede that his is not just a pretty face with a mediocre talent.

- noga1

October 5, 2010 at 5:17pm

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Jake, You are the only other person, aside from my husband, who hates Mad Men--and for the same reasons as you do. I agree with you about Raging Bull. Though I'm not sure if it's for the same reasons. I could see how beautiful it looked, I could see Din Nero's brilliant performance. But I hate to say it's probably the only Scorese movie that bored me to death. And I agree with a lot of your judgments on assholes, but if it's amusing I'll watch no matter what. And you're right, too, about Boardwalk Empire. We watched one episode, not bad, the next one was so uninteresting we took it off our DVR to do list. But please, if you hate Social Network, just don't come after me. This is a free country and I cannot force you to watch a movie that I think is worth watching.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 5, 2010 at 5:56pm

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So, noga, it didn't bother you that he shot that girl at the beginning? He lost me there. I like Clooney too, but I'm more sad for that girl and her family, and would rather not proceed to watch Clooney, monk-like, do calisthenics and craft some super gun without a trace of precision equipment.

- JakeH

October 5, 2010 at 6:07pm

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Molly, no worries -- I won't blame you! This is one of those times where, best case, it will be much better than I'm expecting, and, worst case, I'll be able to denigrate it intelligently, which has its own rewards.

- JakeH

October 5, 2010 at 6:15pm

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Jakeh: Why didn't you walk out before you got to half way through the movie? The murder of the girl occurred at the very first three minutes of the movie. It didn't bother you until an hour later? Do you know how the film ended?

- noga1

October 5, 2010 at 6:51pm

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BTW, every work of fiction has got to have an asshole in it.

- noga1

October 5, 2010 at 6:53pm

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At least one.

- noga1

October 5, 2010 at 6:54pm

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fwiiw, something I wrote on the The American somewhere else: perhaps not my best "work": ...The American tries to be a character study about a lonely killer for hire who has also become a target. He's to do his last job in a small Italian village while needing to watch against “the Swedes”, whomever they are, who want to kill him. This is an incredibly deliberate film. It's driven more by suspense and paranoia than car chases and gun play. It moves extremely slowly without a lot happening--an "inaction movie", as somebody said. But it held my attention and didn't bore me. It succeeds in that. Clooney is a professional killer simply known as Jack. The earliest scenes open in Sweden. Jack escapes unknown enemies by killing them before they kill him. His boss or handler, a mysterious, somewhat grizzled white-haired man, Pavel, masculine and hardened, sends Jack to a mountain village in Abruzzo. He is to custom-make a gun for a beautiful female assassin and stay one lethal step ahead of who would kill him. That latter is made shadowy in a movie where shadow and unknowing and sudden malevolent bursts of violence have thematic resonance: living by a code informed by the kill or be killed, detached and lonely world in which Jack lives and operates. As Pavel tells him "Don't make any friends." As Jack tells the garrulous priest who befriends him, I paraphrase, "I always have a reason for what I do." In this, there is some derivative Hemingway. Jack spends a lot of time, shown in painstaking detail, building that gun. But the director, Anton Corbijn, creates taut moments out of Jack’s isolation and legitimate fear that virtually anyone he sees might kill him. Corbijn creates tension out of silence. In a small nod to Dogma, there is hardly any soundtrack music, just long silent stretches as Jack builds his weapon or sharpens bullets or walks through the village or sits warily in a café. In one scene, set in the woods, Jack and his client, the beautiful, sexy killer, test the gun. Paranoia kicks in. The audience is compelled to wonder which of them—if either—will shoot the other first. Clichés, however, undermine the movie. Jack visits a prostitute. She’s super model looking and is sympathetic. They fall in love. Jack, as noted, wants out: this will be his last assignment. And, at the end, after asking her to go away with him, so they can be together “forever”, he dies just short of dying in her arms, after having had it out, in a final shoot out, with Pavel. (Here exists one piece of stupidity in the movie. Why does Jack, shot and bleeding to death, insist to himself on driving to meet his new love, the prostitute, at their prearranged spot in the woods rather than take himself for some medical help?) By the way, of course, Jack studies butterflies as well as being tattooed with a big one, spread symetrically across his back. To the two women he’s concerned with–the prostitute and the beautiful killer—he is Mr. Butterfly. His "butterflyness", no doubt, is to contrast with the lethality he embodies and which informs the code he lives by. Within the frame of film’s stillness and really deliberate pace, the danger grows. As it does, Clooney’s face, always in the movie a grim, glaring, taut, staring mask--intense, yet stolid—grows even grimmer and even more intense as Clooney’s facial presence dominates the film. There’s nothing wrong with deliberate pace. But The American is sparseness as emptiness. Consistent with that emptiness and the noted clichés is the movie’s portentousness: portentiousness as pretentiousness. Jack is portentuously reminded that he’s an American: “You’re an American. You think you can escape history", which contrasts with the scene in which Once Upon a Time in the West plays on a bar TV. Or consider the priest who befriends Jack and tells him, with great gravitas and deep wisdom, that hell is a certainty for Jack because he's living in it, or Jack telling the priest that all men are sinners. The more I think about this movie the more diffident I am about it. On balance I liked it and would recommend it. it's interesting. I score it at 3 stars out of 5. It nods at the world it tries to depict. It doesn't explore it so much as seem to explore it. Nor does it gain real insightful purchase on it. I maintain that Clooney acts with particular skills but his acting is limited by his inability, in contrast, say, with the magnificent Sean Penn, to get beyond essentially who he is. The American, like Clooney's acting, finally, is more about cool surface than hot depth....

- basman

October 5, 2010 at 7:53pm

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Jak-eh, my frustrated Canadian wanna’ be, on a scale between interesting and fascinating, Zuckerbergof the movie is for me more interesting than the latter. Eisenberg with terrific acting nails a certain kind of young guy of 18/19—apparently quite at odds with the real life Z—who is brilliant in his way, incredibly insecure, socially striving against the constraints of his own geeky nerdiness, highly immature, but ultimately tough, self confident and resilient in his understanding of his own intellectual capacities, morally compromised, but certainly not black and white evil, not without some humanity and sensitivity and longing and driven, driven, driven, driven, driven: you don’t excel in this world otherwise. I have known iterations of these kids all my life and have taken instructions from them in some cases I litigated in the old days. When they explained the inner technicalities of what we were fighting about—more than I ever needed to know—I never knew what the hell they were talking about. But, it seems, we always got along great and we usually made out okay. I’ll leave Raging Bull for another day: the underlying point seems to be agreed upon. If you want to judge everything by the standard of classics—“Sorkin is no Flaubert”—fair enough. But by that standard, there’s not much in popular culture you’d want to be wasting your time with. For me I couldn’t live that way (though no doubt I should be spending more time with Flaubert and less time with Sorkin), I’m just not that high minded. Besides we don’t know yet what parts of popular culture will be canonical. Matthew Arnold was right about that. For me not to take in a lot of popular culture and argue about it and be immersed in it would be like being cut off from some of the air around me. One thing about Sorkin and this movie: I got sick of the West Wing pretty quickly. I thought it finally limousine liberal comfort food, smugly self reassuring for a certain platitudinous view of the world. But the script in this movie is tougher, morally un- reassuring and clever as hell. At his best, in the realm of scripts for “talky” movies I argue Sorkin is an artist and complaining about nobody at Harvard “talking this way” is, I’d argue, to misconceive his art, his purposeful stylization of talk to make his talk have thematic and intellectual resonance and sheer exuberant panache—like the talkiness in the great, I thought, Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco or stuff by Richard Linklater after Dazed and Confused, a movie I adore btw. What can I tell you? I guess I’m middle brow to the very tip of my brows. I can’t get enough of Mad Men. I devour every minute of it, even granted that it’s no The Wire, or Deadwood, the latter of which I’m still trying to comes to terms with. I put The Wire, maybe the only thing on tv I can think of in this respect, in the category of high art. I don’t watch any of the shows you latterly refer to except Dexter, which hold my attention. I gotta’ ask: how do we know “Tony got shot”? I’m still of the school of thought that thinks the ending was left up in the air.

- basman

October 5, 2010 at 8:30pm

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Basman: Did you see any of Stillman's other films? I love them all. But the actors are mannered in a way that Manet's character's are mannered. Not that Stillman's characters are low-life. Rather that the language seems stilted but that's sort of the point.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 5, 2010 at 9:43pm

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Noga, I wanted to leave earlier, but my companion was interested in sticking it out further. She probably enjoyed watching all those calisthenics. Anyway, one is generally reluctant to walk out. Maybe, one dimly hopes, it will get better. I'm here, after all, and I've bought a ticket. A plan has been made, and it just might still work as intended! Inertia is the answer. But I really couldn't stand it and finally insisted on leaving, which was not met with objection. We were by then in the phase where you make fun of the movie with whispered wisecracks, having totally lost serious interest. So, I've answered your question. You didn't answer mine, which I'll also pose to basman, who doesn't mention the incident in his review: It didn't bother you that he murdered that girl? It didn't sour you at all on the character? Why not? I'm glad he gets killed in the end. He should have been killed before the movie began. But we're not supposed to think that. We're supposed to be *moved* or, at least, interested in this asshole's life. It's what's at stake. But, if you don't care, then nothing's at stake, and you leave, having wasted an hour or whatever. Noga, you might be right that every piece of fiction has to have at least one asshole in it, but that person is usually the antagonist, not the protagonist.

- JakeH

October 6, 2010 at 12:43am

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Basman (and Molly), I don't really *hate* Mad Men. I started out resistant -- of two minds about it. Then, I got into it for a couple of seasons. Then I got sick of it. The third phase was precipitated by the dawning realization that the Draper mystique will not pay off. I'm not convinced he's real. It's like plotting a show with an elaborate mythology -- say, Lost or The X-Files -- on the fly. At a certain point, you've got to connect the dots, and one's heart begins to sink when one realizes that they can't be satisfactorily connected -- that the exercise is all titillation and no climax, as it were. I feel that way about the characters, who seem to lack a center. By the time I stopped watching, I felt that these characters should have been more thoroughly drawn. The bits of information about them we were fed increasingly seemed more random -- puzzle pieces that didn't fit -- than a matter of gradually increasing insight. Without that, the annoying sense of solemn vacuity -- which characterized The American as well, though much more so -- kicks in, and a sour taste predominates. I realize this is vague. It's been a while, so I regret I can't get much more specific about what I mean. It's just a sense I had. Notice, I didn't include The Wire on my list of shows about assholes, because The Wire is not a show about assholes. It has assholes in it, to be sure, but it's about all kinds of real life, and I agree that it's worthy, uncanny art. Give me more Wires. To be clear, I have no problem with "middle brow" entertainment. I just want it to be better and indulge less frequently in the asshole aesthetic of the moment. Also, to be clear, I'm not judging popular entertainment by the standards of literary classics. I'm merely pointing out that it's possible for great literature, which is about reality, to transcend my asshole aversion by being blisteringly and deeply true, but, in the absence of that, one seeks, and has a perfect right to seek, congenial manipulations without fear of losing out on great art that's good for you even if it doesn't go down easily. Is it really worth trying to "come to terms" with Deadwood? It's probably just not that good. Why not forget it and read something that really *is* worth coming to terms with instead, or else watch a show that doesn't demand fruitless effort? Meanwhile, I'm very much unconcerned with living in my cultural moment, which, in my estimation is -- perhaps like every other cultural moment -- mostly unattractive. Sure, you don't know what will be considered a classic, but one can wait and see, and, even then, disagree. The only purpose of up-to-the-minute cultural literacy as such is to be able to make small talk. I read something on the Internet that made a convincing case for why that last scene of The Sopranos indicates that he got shot. You can probably find it somewhere. It had to do with clues from preceding shows and in the way that the last scene was shot. There was an established rhythm in the scene, whereby you would, at a certain regular point, see things from Tony's perspective. That last moment, when the screen is black, comes at that point, suggesting that Tony sees blackness, because he's been shot by the guy who, just preceding, had gone into the bathroom (in a reference to The Godfather). Meanwhile, a bit of dialogue from a previous show talks about what it would be like to be shot and killed, and the speculation was that everything went black, just like the last moment. Add to that Chase's cryptic teaser comments that everything is there to be figured out if you pay close attention, ha ha. Anyway, enough about that. It's all sort of bullshitty, and I didn't really care for it. It's one of the spectacles of the moment -- decoding the mind of a former writer for the Rockford Files as though he's the brilliant artiste of our age.

- JakeH

October 6, 2010 at 2:30am

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"It didn't bother you that he murdered that girl? It didn't sour you at all on the character? " Not at all. I'm very used to people blowing other people's heads off when it's convenient. I find your question is weirdly illogical. There was not one person in the movie theatre who did not physically reacted to that scene in some way, either jumping in the seat or unable to control some muffled sound of shock. It's pretty clear that everyone gets the message loud and clear: so this is who we are dealing with. It's as if the director wanted to force the viewers to fully get this character, a handsome sympathetic looking man who has just killed without a thought the woman he was making love to a few moments earlier, in an atmosphere of pastoral harmony. Where can this character go to from that moment on? Who is ever going to forgive him? I get the odd feeling that you think that first scene was somehow a crowd pleaser and the only ethical response should be to give up on the character, the people who created him and walk out of the movie. BTW, "those calisthenics" as you call it by which I presume you mean the love-making scene, only last a couple of minutes and is beautifully made. It is, if possible, almost as shocking in its unexpectedness as that first scene, or rather, ESPECIALLY after that first scene. It is a sort of antidote, meant to gain for the character some modicum of respect from the viewers. We all know he is cold-blooded, efficient and brutal killer yet here he is not fucking a whore but actually making love to her. At that moment we begin to recognize that we might be willing to forgive this man, for the reason that Shakespeare articulated so nicely "... and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion." We are the giddy lot. We can be persuaded, at least theoretically. But it is "Jack" who categorically refuses to forgive himself. Neither does he allow himself to find spiritual comfort through his friendship with the priest or the girl. In the end he gets punished, maybe, not for his terrible past existence but for not allowing himself to be re-humanized. There is a sense of doom hovering over the entire denouement of the movie and I hardly think any one watching hopes that Jack might be redeemed.

- noga1

October 6, 2010 at 7:14am

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Noga writes: "It's as if the director wanted to force the viewers to fully get this character, a handsome sympathetic looking man who has just killed without a thought the woman he was making love to a few moments earlier, in an atmosphere of pastoral harmony. Where can this character go to from that moment on? Who is ever going to forgive him?" You quote Much Ado. I'll quote Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive: "I don't care!" I don't find these contrasts intriguing. Yes, the moment is a shocker, and the director is setting the guy up -- quite deliberately -- as a real asshole, whose assholiness more viewers would probably find overwhelming in the absence of puppy-dog eyes. In so doing, he simply loses me. I'm not saying that leaving in a huff is ethically required. I'm not judging the audience. I'm simply saying that I find it impossible to care on any level about what happens to this guy, given what he did in that scene. The generous love-making with the hooker with a heart of gold sounds preposterous, and the whole thing reeks of unearned seriousness. By the way, the calisthenics to which I refer are actual calisthenics -- push-ups, and so forth.

- JakeH

October 6, 2010 at 1:37pm

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"-- push-ups, and so forth." Push-ups, as far as I know, do not qualify as "calisthenics".

- noga1

October 6, 2010 at 2:46pm

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JakeH: I'm not sure it's the assholes of Mad Men you so despise but the unrelenting bleakness. It's like nobody in America in the early sixties was happy. And I can't quite tell if Weiner feels it's the times that are trapping them or human nature. My husband hates new movies because he says they're designed to make you feel bad. This he announced after watching The Squid and the Whale (which I loved, by the way). In fact, he will now only watch movies that were shot before 1980. He's a little meshugana my husband. So now, will you please get yourself to the multiplex to see social network? I need someone else to talk to dissect this move. There's a chance you'll hate it, but that'll make for good conversation.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 6, 2010 at 2:51pm

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The audience I saw the picture with loved the Zuckerberg character insulting the deposition lawyers. I really doubt we were intended to share a wink with a couple of character actors. (Maybe, if Martin Sheen had played one of them.) The lawyer that served as the Sorkin mouthpiece was the young female, and it was the most ham-handed (and "West Wing"-ish) moment in the film. In Hollywood, stardom can still trump youth, but youth trumps old guys playing litigators. Who do you think buys most of the movie tickets?

- mikhsul

October 6, 2010 at 3:16pm

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Noga, uh, yeah they do. "Calisthenics" refers to push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, jumping jacks and other exercises that use only body weight for resistance.

- JakeH

October 6, 2010 at 3:16pm

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p.s. Noga, if you thought that the word referred to sex, that's an occasional slang or ironic usage and not the primary meaning, although the Greek origin -- combining the words for beauty and strength -- might have led you astray.

- JakeH

October 6, 2010 at 3:33pm

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OK. I must have been thinking of callanetics. You win.

- noga1

October 6, 2010 at 3:34pm

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"p.s. Noga, if you thought that the word referred to sex, that's an occasional slang or ironic usage " Yes, I thought you meant it ironically. Silly me.

- noga1

October 6, 2010 at 3:35pm

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Molly, yes, the sense of bleakness becomes tiring. I didn't see the Squid and the Whale, so I can't weigh in there, though I think I appreciate your meshugene husband's comments. My favorite genre of movie is the classy suspense film, which used to be standard Hollywood fare. They hardly make any of those anymore. It's either horror or action or asshole-centric. One movie I really enjoyed this year was The Ghostwriter -- a throwback. As for The Social Network, I would love to go see it right now given your enticing offer of discussion, but, alas, I'll probably have to wait until the weekend. Make you a deal: Let's bookmark the page, and check back then.

- JakeH

October 6, 2010 at 4:54pm

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Yes, Jake. By the way, I enjoyed both movies you referred to. I love suspense, especially political suspense movies. NOga, I had to look up callanetics, and all I can say is you can still get a guide in VHS. :) Let the eighties live on!

- MOLLYSIMON

October 6, 2010 at 8:05pm

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Okay, Molly, just saw it. Sadly, I did not think it was great, mostly because I think my four reasons for not wanting to see it were on the mark. I thought the movie depended on being impressed on some level with the Facebook phenomenon, which I'm not, and being fascinated on some level with Zuckerberg, which I'm not, and not being annoyed by Sorkin's signature style -- a bag of tricks, a collection of tics -- which I was, and not being bothered by its perhaps tenuous relationship with the reality it purports to portray, which I was. It has its moments, and we didn't walk out this time. (The very young couple next to us did, however, because, I sensed from their lack of reaction, they were bored.) Sometimes it's kind of fun, I laughed at the best jokes, I appreciated the cleverest lines, I dug the Summers scene, and I *loved* the very first scene. Truly, I was ready, after that scene, to chuck all of my preconceived notions. But then, the rest of the movie happened, and my watch got many a glance. Let's address the "asshole" issue. Zuckerberg as portrayed in the film is indeed an asshole, mainly because he screwed his close friend out of a third of the company. Morally, though perhaps not legally, it's theft. It doesn't matter that Saverin brought little to the table. The point is that Zuckerberg gave him a share in the company, and then took it back through trickery, and for petty, childish reasons. Kind of an "asshole" move, no? Now, maybe we're not getting the whole story, and maybe the story we are getting is fabricated, but, as portrayed, Zuckerberg's behavior in relation to Saverin is quite dickish. Yes, the twins -- whom I found entertaining, along with their pissed-off buddy -- seemed to have less of a legal and moral argument than Saverin, and no moral or legal right to their big payday. Lessig has a point here, though Sorkin does pointedly acknowledge an "absurdity" of our legal system that allows such "extortion" -- that being, the vagaries of legal theater in front of a jury that may, upon hearing unflattering facts, turn in a verdict of asshole in the first degree. Lessig's focus is on IP law, which, I gather, he thinks shouldn't be so ambiguous as to permit a case like the twins' to get so far in the first place. It should be plain as day, he seems to say, that the social network idea was not in fact IP at all -- it shouldn't even be close. Yes, Zuckerberg didn't perform the services which he was asked to perform and said he would perform, instead putting the twins off as he ran with the notion on his own -- dickish, but not $65 million dickish. I can't really weigh in there. I gather that Lessig is not a friend of American IP law, and, for all I know, he could be right. But that's neither here nor there, movie-wise. To continue with Zuckerberg's assholiness: During that first scene I loved, he says things that are blunt and mean, but not intentionally so, as though he's speaking without an editor. It was exhilarating to watch the two of them trade barbs and then immediately analyze what the other had just said. I got the sense that Zuckerberg was maladroit and clueless, but devilishly smart and even sensitive in his clumsy way. I was ready to like him, even as I appreciated why the girl would say "enough, we're through." This is highly skillful manipulation of the audience's sympathies. Then, Zuckerberg goes home, pops open a beer, pops open his laptop, and indulges in an orgy of deplorable online crassness and cruelty that, in contrast to his in-person unfiltered fumbling, is pretty hard to take and seems to be the real character in action. It's not as bad as Clooney's shooting his girlfriend at the beginning of The American, but it had a similar effect on my attitude toward the character. I proceeded to see him less as a person and more, to quote the girl, as a "computer person" who was indeed an "asshole" woefully deficient not merely in social graces, which is hardly a sin, but in fundamental qualities of character. So, no, "decent" people should not hope that their kids "admire" Sorkin's Zuckerberg, as Lessig does. What, exactly, are his admirable qualities? His Facebook-inventing? I don't think so. He seems rather pathetic, and undeserving of the pretty lawyer's generous attitude at the end. Sorkin softens Zuckerberg mainly by having him feel bad at having messed up in such a big way with the girl. In the last moment, we're meant to sense that he's haunted, that he wants her approval -- she who, despite having a Facebook page, like everyone else, is singularly unimpressed with his "video game" -- she who, in short, is normal and represents normal values from which he's alienated or which he never even had, perhaps because he's got ten different kinds of mental problems. For all this to be poignant, as it's supposed to be, I think we need to have a sense of tragedy -- that there's something knocking around in this computer person that's worth redeeming and that it's sad that redemption is out of reach. Is that how we think about it? Or do we just think he's kind of a petty jerk with mad computer skills? So, I lost interest in Zuckerberg, the computer person. Now, let's stop a moment to ponder Facebook, which is not amazing, not spectacularly worthy. This isn't the phone or the car or the car (cell) phone or, to take another Sorkin subject, the television, or, indeed, the microchip, the personal computer, the modern operating system, or the Internet. It's not, as Lessig alludes to, the bomb. The jury is still out even on its ultimate business value. Saverin is portrayed as thinking small. He wants to see real revenue early, which means advertising. Zuckerberg wants to keep it cool -- i.e., no ads -- but not forever. (Sorkin's Farnsworth Invention involves a character -- an early head of NBC -- who similarly imagines keeping TV free of ads.) That would be impossible. Facebook has to actually make money, as distinct from attracting investors, at some point. Parker's notion, stripped of its cutting edge verbal trappings, is merely to make it very, very big, attracting venture capital along the way, and only later cashing in by selling out. So, the great business achievement is to build a gigantic, instead of merely big, platform for ad space on the Internet, which will, no doubt, in time flame out -- maybe sooner, maybe later. Big whup. We're not really changing the world here. We're basically writing fancy email software. Sorkin is a breathless enthusiast about trivial things. He's attracted to prestige, style, surface trappings. He wants us to find it very neat, for example, that the Harvard administration building is older than the country -- as though a secretary would utter such a Sorkinian observation. He has his characters give us interminable history lessons in the mode of Paul Harvey -- as in, I see you notice my hot companion, so let me tell you a little story about a little guy who started a little lingerie store, and that little lingerie store turned out to be Victoria's Secret, and so now you know, as Harvey used to say, the rest of the story. And, just so its clear why I went off on that tangent, my hot companion is a Victoria's Secret model. We're supposed to get goose bumps. Meanwhile, the fact that what we're seeing may bear little relationship to the facts is, I think, a serious problem. Some people apparently have no problem with this sort of film -- one that portrays real, living people doing and saying ugly things they may not have done or said, or else paints a picture that is misleading or woefully incomplete. I do have a problem with it. Morally, though perhaps not legally, it's defamation. Yes, Parker is portrayed as a vapid, tedious asshole. A human soul was not in evidence. I saw a self-involved child who loves to hear himself spout cliches about the brave new world in between drinks, drugs, and little girls. If I were Parker, and I did not resemble Timberlake's unflattering portrayal, I would be pretty steamed about this movie, and rightfully so.

- JakeH

October 9, 2010 at 3:09am

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i, Jake, Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. I only just read your reply this morning. And I have to say I feel so incredibly undeserving of such a thorough and complete analysis. I was so amazed I e-mailed it to my brother-in-law; he and I were talking about it last night. He loved it as much as I did, so I can't wait to hear from him. The thing is, I completely agree with every point you make, I see the flaws you describe and yet I still loved the movie. The better, and more ethical, thing to for Sorkin and the director to have done would have been to loosely base the characters on the real people, what Orson Welles did for Citizen Kane, I suppose, because in that sense you would have made a more honest movie, one about American ambition and striving. But then no one would have gone. As it is, there is a central flaw to the movie in that the reality was nothing like that. But if you realize these characters are loose interpretations, you can still enjoy the moral ambiguity. Someone else said it was like Rashomon, where every side gets their chance to tell the story. And in then end, the movie makers succeeded. No one will ever know what really happened. Because the truth will always be impossible to tell. So I watced this like I watched Citizen Kane--and I'm not suggesting this movie reaches that level of brilliance. On the other hand, I do think it was pretty brilliant. And even succeeds in making me empathize with the devil. About Sorkin's fascination with style and surface, I agree on that, too. But I happen to think that there are people and institutions that are inherently more glamorous. Observing that does not make you a slave to image; it makes you an observer of facts. I agree with you about Parker's character. It was taken too far, and that's where Sorkin got fooled. Though he was also shown as someone who was completely able to squeeze out Serevan with no compunction about screwing someone else out of his deserved fortune. And I didn't mind his speech about Victoria's Secret. It showed his cunning and sleazyness at the same time. But I do agree that Sorkin didn't go far enough. Also, the more I think about it, I think you're about the Sorkin's star-fucking of Harvard. When I think about that scene with President Summers, I can see that the director and writer missed a chance to satire a man who's known for being very pompous and who is partially to blame for the economic mess we're in now. I'm sure he was right about intellectual property Zuckerberg did create something of amazing value. He got half a billion people involved in a network that nobody before had done. I recall something network called "tight circle" and other such things. But they never went anywhere and did not provide nearly any of the bells and whistles of Facebook. Zuckerberg got there first, he kept it going when others might have run out of money and given up, and I think you're wrong about the value of the company. You have half a billion eyeballs that you can guarantee, unlike google--whose eyeballs depend on people making the right search. I'm not so certain that this company is going to be left in the dust. For all the failures out there, there are a few winners. And in internet-land, they stuck because they were consistent and they were first and they delivered a great product. Although great product isn't always an ingredient to the success. Think about Micro Soft. Again, I really appreciate your taking time to write such a thoughtful and intelligent analysis. I'm not deserving, but I'm glad you did it anyway. I'm only sorry you were so disappointed.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 10, 2010 at 1:56pm

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I went to see the movie yesterday (as my daughter was in another hall watching "You again" with a bunch of her friends) and I have not been able to stop talking about it. I am not in the mood for analyzing the film but I will tell you this, I thought it was Shakespearean in the depth and broadness of its themes and in the characters who were each open simultaneously to censure and admiration. There was something about Zuckerberg that was larger than life: all that single minded energy, the driven curiosity and need to learn what this new phenomenon he stumbled upon could be developed into. At the same time, Sorkin's barely concealed clues of a deeper motivation buried within his protagonist, the eternal underdog, the excluded who refuses to be included, the urge to punish snobbery, privilege, upper class morality, it was all there , yet you would have hard time exposing it because it was just a sidebar, an aside, a whispered solliloquy, to the main torpedo-like engine that was driving him. I was trying to explain this to my son (20 years old) and he said: It's as if he is sitting astride a rocket propelled forward into who knows where and he is not afraid! He is agog to get there and to see, what the future will be like. Well, he has not seen the movie and I'm trying to make him see it. He needs to learn a bit about the fearlessness of youth.

- noga1

October 10, 2010 at 5:03pm

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"[T]he fearlessness of youth." Yes, after I watched Social Network I felt so old. When you're that age, you don't have a mortgage or kids, so you can spend a summer living in another city, not getting paid, and believing that the only people you need are working in that cubicle free house. Anybody else and they're else is an outsider. By the way, Noga, I'm not surprised to hear about your son. Apparently this movie did great among older people. Maybe the younger ones out there already know this phenomenon. Maybe you have to be older to appreciate how ground breaking Zuckerberg was/is. It's probably like airplanes or typwriters or the railroad.

- MOLLYSIMON

October 10, 2010 at 6:41pm

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Molly: 3.75// 5 Richler did satire and black humour right up until Cocksure. Therefore, he had in his fiction a mordant world view. St. Urbain’s Horseman right up until Barney’s Version saw him returning to verisimilitude and so to a view of the world leavened by possibility particularly by way of love and family. But essential to that view of the world is a kind of modernist negative capability: we are, he says, necessarily morally flawed inhabiting at best a world of moral gray and rife with compromise and ambiguity and personal ambivalence. So who makes out in such a world by Richler’s lights: those with some decency, more or less true to themselves, who see things for what they are, but also what is great and worthwhile—love and human excellence when that latter can be found such as in great art, reject inauthenticity and phoniness, and are engaging. To be scorned: the up tight, the phonies, the sanctimonious and holier than thou, the arrivistes, the crass and money grubbing, the essentially cruel and unkind, and those unable to see what is great and worthwhile. Richler wrote a short account of his travels in the Israel. He described bargaining for something with a shrewd Arab merchant, who, at the end of their bargaining—I’m remembering this from decades ago—winked or smiled knowingly to Richler with a firm understanding of men’s folly. In him, in what he understood and knew, Richler saw the best hope for Israel and Arab alike. So Barney for Richler is a deeply flawed character who makes out, sort of. His “version” isn’t just his account of the death of Boogie, nor even just his own iteration of his life. It is, rather, more largely, his version of life itself, life according to how he lived it. So with all his raunchy, funny cruelty at the expense of Blair, with all his cruelty and emotional infidelity to Minnie Driver, for all his inattentiveness and selfishness in the face of Miriam’s trying to make a life for herself beyond him—but including him, for all his compromises with the great and worthwhile, completely captured by “totally Unnecessary Productions, despite his son calling him a “selfish prick”, he is, I argue, in the novel and the movie undoubtedly redeemable and redeemed in Richler’s eyes. That is evident I Miriam after being away for a week resolving that she loves him and wants to continue with him and wants immediately to make love with him until tshtf. And he is redeemed by the very apt words of a Toronto critic that caught and captured my eye, Liam Lacey: …What really sells it as a story is star Paul Giamatti's boisterous, wide-ranging and seductive performance. As a screen presence, Giamatti has a secret weapon beyond the obvious balding pate, paunch and bugged-out eyes: His voice, a mellifluously elegant instrument, suggests an inner refinement and contradicts what meets the eye. He’s the soul of a poet trapped in the shape of a clown, and to that extent a perfect Barney… There is a Mad Men aspect to the movie. Barney is a version of a sensibility of about two generations ago: man the provider; man the drinker and smoker finding truth in his own bonhomie with his buddies, woman the accessory to such men being housewives, raising the children, being there to be nurturing as against a more modern sensibility of women having the respect of their “partner” in their self fulfillment, of more sensitive—quiche eating, vegan?—men as manifest who is both ludicrous and attractive—even if he is a a member of Al-Qaeda I could go for years about this movie, but, perversely, I’ll note what I didn’t like so much: 1. the movie at times dragged; 2. It was often too synoptic, with too much stuff crammed in although it was wonderful in the way it covered a lifetime of living from, in Barney’s case, bohemian youth to the onset of old age; 3. I didn’t buy the whole courtship of Miriam, the wooing of her, the getting of her love. I found that contrived. But the movie was wonderful in presenting their marriage over the decades. And I thought Rosamund Pike after my initial concerns over the contrived soul mate, courtship thing, was excellent as Barney’s long suffering, loving and always lovely wife. 4. Wife 2 was way too broad, a caricature that was attempted emotional theft. We’re meant to despise her as a crass, stupid, materially obsessed woman and reject her as does Barney. But she is not given a fighting chance in her uni-dimensionality. That’s cheap movie making. 5. I didn’t believe the break up with Miriam. After a marriage that long and that complicated things just don’t turn on such a small, thin dime from love to separation and divorce. I know the movie sets it up in their courtship by his promise never to cheat on her as her father did to her mother, but I just didin’t buy it when it happened. It felt contrived. 6. Finally, maybe most irritating and exasperating, I thought the whole scene leading to Boogie’s death too long and wholly dramatically unconvincing and contrived resting on a psychologically unpersuasive foundation of events. And I thought that Giamatti and Speedman were playing at being drunk and drunks in that scene. I didn’t believe in their drunkenness. They couldn’t, for me, transcend their acting, so atypical for the overall terrific acting in the movie.

- basman

December 29, 2010 at 3:56pm

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Here is a slightly edited version of the before post that I entered elsewhere. It's better than the above and cleaned up some. Richler did satire and black humour right up until Cocksure. Therefore, he had in his fiction a mordant world view. St. Urbain’s Horseman right up until Barney’s Version saw him returning to verisimilitude and too to a view of the world leavened by possibility particularly by way of love and family. But essential to that view of the world is a kind of modernist negative capability: we are, he says, necessarily morally flawed, inhabiting at best a world of moral gray and rife with compromise and ambiguity and personal ambivalence and ultimately delimited by decline, withering away and death. So who makes out in such a world by Richler’s lights: those with some decency, more or less true to themselves, who see things for what they are, but also what is great and worthwhile—love and human excellence when that latter can be found such as in great art--who reject inauthenticity and phoniness, and are engaging. To be scorned: the up tight, the phonies, the sanctimonious and holier than thou, the arrivistes, the crass and money grubbing, the essentially cruel and unkind, and those unable to see what is great and worthwhile. Richler long ago wrote a short account of his travels in the Israel. He described bargaining for something with a shrewd Arab merchant, who, at the end of their bargaining—I’m remembering this from decades ago—winked or smiled knowingly to Richler with a firm understanding of men’s folly. In him, in what the merchant understood and knew about folly, Richler saw the best hope for Israel and Arab alike. So Barney for Richler is a deeply flawed character who makes out, sort of. His “version” isn’t just his account of the death of Boogie, nor even just his own iteration of his life. It is, rather, more largely, his version of life itself, life according to how he lived it. So with all his raunchy, funny cruelty at the expense of Blair, with all his cruelty and emotional infidelity to Minnie Driver, for all his inattentiveness and selfishness in the face of Miriam’s trying to make a life for herself beyond him—but including him, for all his compromises with the great and worthwhile, the compromises completely captured by Totally Unnecessary Productions, despite his son calling him a “selfish prick”, he is, I argue, in the novel and the movie undoubtedly redeemable and redeemed in Richler’s eyes. That is evident in Miriam, after being away for a week, resolving that she loves him and wants to continue with him and wants immediately to make love with him until tshtf. And he is redeemed as set out in the very apt words of a Toronto critic that caught and captured my eye, Liam Lacey: …What really sells it as a story is star Paul Giamatti's boisterous, wide-ranging and seductive performance. As a screen presence, Giamatti has a secret weapon beyond the obvious balding pate, paunch and bugged-out eyes: His voice, a mellifluously elegant instrument, suggests an inner refinement and contradicts what meets the eye. He’s the soul of a poet trapped in the shape of a clown, and to that extent a perfect Barney… There is a Mad Men aspect to the movie. Barney is a version of a sensibility of about two generations ago: man the provider; man the whiskey drinker and relentless cigar smoker finding truth and sanctuary in his own bonhomie with his buddies, women the accessory to such men, being housewives, raising the children, being there to be nurturing as against a more modern sensibility of women having the respect of their “partner” in their self fulfillment, of more sensitive—quiche eating, vegan?—men as manifest in Blair who is both ludicrous and attractive—even if he is a a member of Al-Qaeda I could go on for years about this movie, but, perversely, I’ll note what I didn’t like so much: 1. the movie at times dragged; 2. it was often too synoptic, with too much stuff crammed in although it was wonderful in the way it covered a lifetime of living from, in Barney’s case, bohemian youth to the onset of old age; 3. I didn’t buy the whole courtship of Miriam, the wooing of her, the getting of her love. I found that contrived. But the movie was wonderful in presenting their marriage over the decades. And I thought Rosamund Pike after my initial concerns over the contrived soul mate and courtship, was excellent as Barney’s long suffering, loving and always lovely wife. 4. Wife 2 was way too broad, a caricature that was attempted emotional theft. We’re meant to despise her as a crass, stupid, materially obsessed woman and reject her as does Barney. But she's not given a fighting chance in her uni-dimensionality. That’s cheap, evasive movie making. 5. I didn’t believe the break up with Miriam. After a marriage that long and that complicated things just don’t turn on such a small, thin dime from love to separation and divorce. I know the movie sets it up in their courtship by his promise never to cheat on her as her father did to her mother, but I just didin’t buy it when it happened. It felt contrived. 6. Finally, maybe most irritating and exasperating, I thought the whole scene leading to Boogie’s death too long and wholly dramatically unconvincing and contrived resting on a psychologically unpersuasive foundation of events. And I thought that Giamatti and Speedman were playing at being drunk and drunks in that scene. I didn’t believe in their drunkenness. They couldn’t, for me, transcend their acting, so atypical for the overall terrific acting in the movie.

- basman

December 29, 2010 at 4:19pm

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Isn't it just the darnedest thing that Professor Lessig is so much smarter than, well, everybody else? It must feel very lonely to be the only person in the whole world to see and understand everything.

- westendorf

February 27, 2011 at 5:01pm

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