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Mark Zuckerberg on What Hollywood Doesn't Get About Silicon Valley

164 points by pg 16y ago

napierzaza 16y ago
Could MZ have done more damage control since the release of the social network? He's given away hundreds of millions of dollars and done myriad interviews since then. This is at least the most direct he's been about why he's around so much in the public eye. But really, come on, it's a movie.
- dsplittgerber 16y ago
  It's just a movie, for us over here at HN. For most regular people, it's the first time they ever hear about Mark Zuckerberg, who apparently is the guy running the site they spend all day using and posting personal stuff to. And the guy who runs the site they use to interact with their friends and share their photos has done some quite nasty stuff in the past, like mashing face photos together etc etc. When I went to see the movie, the whole cinema was dumbfounded when the credits appeared and it was revealed that facebook is somehow currently worth 25 billion USD. People in general don't know anything about facebook.
  - kyro 16y ago
    But I'm sure that didn't stop Jack and Jill from liking each other's statuses once they got home from the cinema to tell the world that they had just seen the movie. I don't think it really affected anyone, at least not Facebook's main demographic.
ojbyrne 16y ago
While the motivation for Facebook was probably over-dramatized, I don't think you can support for even a second the idea that Hollywood (whatever that is) doesn't understand the joy of building things for their own sake. After all, even the line "If you build it, they will come" is from a movie.
- hugh3 16y ago
  That wasn't about building things for its own sake, though, that was about building things in order to hang out with some ghostly baseball players. (Or something; I haven't actually seen the movie but I gather that's what it's about.) Doing something for its own sake (also known as doing something for the hell of it) may be a realistic reason for doing things in the real world, but it doesn't make much of a story. Drama is all about motivation, and about characters striving after the things they want, and if your character does things for no other motivation than "Meh, I was bored and I kinda felt like it, and it was sorta fun" then it's a dull story. I've got a story for you. Kevin Costner is a corn farmer, and one day he gets up and said "Y'know what? I think I'll build a baseball field in my cornfield". A few weeks later he's finished, and he says "Well, that was fun". Good story? I don't think so.
  - ojbyrne 16y ago
    Sure, but the movie was called "Field of Dreams." I.e. he was motivated by dreams.
    - edanm 16y ago
      Yes, but not by "dreams" in the abstract sense of something you wish will happen, but by actual dreams, in the fantasy sense of something talking to you in your sleep.
      - ojbyrne 16y ago
        Right, that's my point. He was motivated by a dream of bring dead baseball players back to play baseball in a cornfield. An actual dream. It's about as tenuous a motivation as a movie could actually have.
      - hugh3 16y ago
        Or maybe one as a metaphor for the other. Still, it's not a great example. I'm struggling to think of examples of movies where characters really are motivated by doing stuff just for the hell of it. The only example I've got so far is the Joker from The Dark Knight. His motivation throughout is exactly what Zuckerberg described -- doing things because he can and because it would be interesting to try. It's not exactly a positive portrayal, though.
philwelch 16y ago
Zuckerberg's point is that Hollywood screenwriters don't understand that hackers are motivated by creating things for the sake of creating things. I find this very strange because screenwriters are themselves supposed to be creative people. Their failure to recognize a creative impulse in hackers says something, but I don't know what.
- gaius 16y ago
  A Hollywood blockbuster is written by a screenwriting team who use formulae and focus group feedback to make a saleable product. They're unionized and it is just an assembly line job. Not that there aren't creative writers, mind. But those guys are making arthouse flicks, not working for Jerry Bruckheimer.
  - ceejayoz 16y ago
    I think there's a pretty big gap between folks like Sorkin and Bruckheimer.
michael_nielsen 16y ago
Zuckerberg is flat-out wrong in his assertion that Hollywood doesn't understand people building something just because they like building things. I'm quite sure he's right when it comes to some people in Hollywood, possibly even many of the most powerful people. But I'll bet that what gets a great writer like Aaron Sorkin up in the morning is the same kind of creative impulse that drives hackers. Sorkin is a hacker - just in a different medium. None of which is to say that Sorkin's portrayal of Zuckerberg is at all accurate. In the West Wing, Sorkin once wrote: "You think I think that an artist's job is to speak the truth [but] an artist's job... is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention." I think he's quite right, but it's a heck of a philosophy if you're making a movie about someone still living.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- philwelch 16y ago
  But I'll bet that what gets a great writer like Aaron Sorkin up in the morning is the same kind of creative impulse that drives hackers. Maybe. But maybe writers don't see technical people (like hackers) as creative people. They wouldn't be the only ones. Or maybe they do understand that impulse, but underestimate their audience and assume the audience isn't going to understand the creative impulse.
- rguzman 16y ago
  Further, regardless of the writers' ability to relate to hackers they still need to write stuff that appeals to people. Most people don't enjoy just building things like hackers do.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - mturmon 16y ago
    The writers I know have a pile of unsold or uncompleted scripts and stories. They were experiments, or drafts, or betas (if you like). Often they're working on several things at once, sometimes just with friends for kicks. They're driven to create also (characters, plots). I'd say one difference is, it's easy to hold a steady job as a programmer, but as a writer you have to really work the business side. It does change the emphasis sometimes from creating to selling.
scottmp10 16y ago
I agree that building things is its own motivation for many hackers but I also know many who have other motivations. One of my friends, for instance, has a borderline irrational desire to be more successful than his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. Another is motivated purely by money and is now working in the finance industry. To say that Hollywood "got it wrong" can only be true in this specific context. While it may or may not have been the case with MZ, there are certainly hackers that are motivated to work on significant projects in order to be accepted by girls or organizations, as the movie portrays.
andrewljohnson 16y ago
What most hackers don't understand is that they do in fact have deep-seated psychological motives for all the things they want to build. I don't know if Sorkin's yarn was even close to reality, or whether Zuck's angst at the time was merely coincidental with the development of FaceSmash. But the motivation for building Facebook or anything else is always more complex than "I thought it would be cool." Hollywood may have missed the point, but they were right to look for one.
- extension 16y ago
  Any particular idea what his reason might have been? My personal drive to build things feels about as fundamental as anything.
- apl 16y ago
  I fully agree. Zuckerbergs comment obviously resonates with the startup-happy audience he was and is facing, so the reaction here as well as there doesn't surprise. But I openly doubt that the history of Facebook rests on nothing but the desire to build cool things. The first prototype? Maybe. But he took it further, much further. It's not necessarily what Sorkin decided it should be. However, I'm willing to bet money that other factors did play a role. For evidence, just remember that there were lawsuits, that there was drama, that significant amounts of money traded hands before everything became harmonious. Plus, the narration at the beginning of the movie? That is Zuckerberg.
  - borism 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure even the first prototype had much deeper psychological meaning than what's being presented. Heck, I was in a college at the time too and I think I know fairly well why so many guys tried to do their versions of "face book". "We just like to build things" excuse sounded so lame it's unbelievable it came from a person who supposedly studied psychology.
    - runT1ME 16y ago
      So, you too don't understand the desire just to build things?
bluethunder 16y ago
Agree totally. I realized early on that some of us are just born to build. Everything else, including making money is just secondary. For some of us the biggest part of our happiness is dependent on the meaning that we seek through our work, and more importantly, anything less than building something isnt meaning enough.
Typhon 16y ago
Meanwhile, after seeing the movie, someone else concluded not only that Zuckerberg's main motivation was building something with his mind but that he enjoyed literally nothing but coding (to put it mildly) : http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-678 http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-678 I haven't seen the movie myself.
harscoat 16y ago
The new Glamour thx to Hollywood: "I am an Entrepreneur" -Sean Parker(/Timberlake) to the girl is just slept with
nowarninglabel 16y ago
I haven't seen the movie, but I'm a bit confused by these comments. Zuckerberg signed a contract and did work for the sake of the contract, then later branching out. I don't see how you can ascribe his motives to be purely creative. Perhaps, I have missed some fact in this?
- ceejayoz 16y ago
  The movie implies that one of his motivations was to impress an ex-girlfriend.
- bloomshed 16y ago
  The movie claims that Zuckerberg created the primordial version of facebook after getting dumped and subsequently drunk. He stole a bunch of images and created a "hot or not" thing called FaceSmash. This supposedly set him on the path towards creating facebook. The weakest part of the whole film was at the end when it shows Zuckerberg alone, pitiful, refreshing his facebook page hoping his long lost ex would be his "friend" on facebook. I'm one of those people who feels insulted when filmmakers pull overt, lazy stunts like that. Sorkin hates the idea of facebook. He thinks the whole idea of a social network is a lie and he may be right. He thinks people who use facebook are wasting their time. I saw that on Colbert I think. I applaud Sorkin's candor. Not too many people say what they think these days, but I felt like he was insulting the audience with that last scene, saying, essentially, "You people do this too, and you're pitiful." He didn't have to show us what was on Zuckerberg's screen. Most people could have guessed what he was doing without seeing the screen. Sorkin decided to show the screen so people would have no doubts about what was happening. I'm reasonably certain Zuckerberg was not actually doing that during his deposition.
  - stuhacking 16y ago
    It was called Facemash, and the idea behind it (according to the movie) was that comparisons were more 'turing' than arbitrary scores as used on "hot or not." The characters' motives as presented in the movie might be fabrication or speculation (depending on your view of the true story) but they still make for a better and more tense story (imho).
dualboot 16y ago
I'm just going to say that having seen the movie I'm personally impressed with how well Zuckerberg is handling responses to what must be an incredibly surreal experience in the public. His personal technical abilities and the relative accuracies/inaccuracies of a major Hollywood movie aside. I can't imagine it being particularly fun. Kudos for laughing at it.
Tycho 16y ago
The script was very subtle and managed to portray a multitude of motivations and justifications for more than one character. From what I could tell, it never said impressing a girl was the motivation for creating Facebook, and it portrayed Zuckerberg as someone who cared more about building stuff than he cared about relationships or money. Certainly it did make the (separate) implication that his handling of people/relationships/partnerships may be a source of regret as he matures as a person beyond 'I'm CEO, bitch.'
frading 16y ago
Mark Zuckerberg is quite young, and has a movie made about himself and his life's work, so I would not expect him to be objective about this. My strong opinion, considering myself hacker and filmmaker, is that both activities share the same motivation, which is exactly creating things. The process might differ in some ways, but when I create a software or a movie, I am driven by a similar passion. I cannot imagine a movie director or writer not being fully in love with the material he or she is developing. They usually live and sleep with it, it affects their personal life very much, so it is not really something you can pretend to enjoy. If you do pretend, that shows, and you usually end up with a bad movie. I'd advice to watch this charlie rose interview of Sorkin and Fincher: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11223 http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11223 . At one point, they mention they tried to talk to Mark, in order to have a counter opinion from the one expressed in the 'accidental billionaire' book, but he turned down the offer. I am sure Sorkin, while aiming to be very entertaining, wished he could stay as close to reality as possible.
- skinnymuch 16y ago
  Someone on HN linked to to a piece that stated Sorkin preferred good drama over the truth when it really came down to it which resulted in disagreements between him and Fincher (who supposedly wanted the truth first and foremost). And based off my own bias views of both guys, I find this to be most believeable.
  - frading 16y ago
    I cannot find the piece you mention, if you could point me to it, that d be great.
whackedspinach 16y ago
Did anyone else see that movie and feel that this had been portrayed? The Zuckerberg in the movie obviously wanted to be part of the social group, but I also got that 'building' vibe. Maybe it is just because I compared the entire movie to The Fountainhead.
- parasubvert 16y ago
  Yeah I got that from the movie too. It definitely illustrated that Mark had mixed motivations in creating Facebook, but generally it seemed to portray "building stuff" as an outlet to whatever more primordial drives (fear, angst, excitement, desire for power, status, etc.) were behind the action. the movie wasn't about reality, it was about the exaggerated reality from court depositions, qualified by counter-arguments. Made me think of Rashomon.
waterlesscloud 16y ago
You know, screenwriters study and obsess over motivations and why people do things as much as a hacker studies and obsesses over how a particular system works. Sorkin is one of the very best in the world at what he does. Top 5 or 10, easy, and he has been in that league for well over a decade now. Perhaps the character in the film is more complex than people here are portraying him to be.
dools 16y ago
That's a charismatic performance. It's an important choice of words how he says "we in silicon valley"... it really gets the audience on side. But I think he's disingenuous, and I think he's been coached. The way he pitches this; it's as if, when he was building facebook, he was like a hobby botanist marvelling at a new flower he'd discovered in his favourite meadow. That the entire exercise was just about the thrill of creation and discovery. You only have to watch the "new" section of HN for a day to see that most hackers are acutely aware of the monetary potential of their creations, and in some cases far more interested in the glamour of being an entrepreneur than the thrill and art of creating software. I'm not saying that the two are mutually exclusive - I certainly work very passionately on things I believe in and aspire to make millions of dollars as a result, but I think in this video clip Zuck is doing a little Hollywood framing of his own.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  The money is a rationalization. Its approval that many of us seek. Otherwise why tell people about it? Even evangelize about the pet project? Its a social need.
nikster 16y ago
I don't know Mark Zuckerberg and I haven't been following any gossip magazines or seen the social network. But he's just earned my respect. Great answer right there. Then the whole facebook thing - he's been getting decisions right for years on end.
olavk 16y ago
Movies does not reflect how the movie-makers understand the world. When movies show computers searching for fingerprints by displaying a series of fingerprints in rapid succession on-screen, it is not because the movie-makers actually thinks that databases works like that. It is because it is an effective way of telling that piece of story. Movies reflect how the movie-makers believe that a story can be told most effectively. And they have quite a lot of experience in this field. Dramatic storytelling requires that the protagonist has a motivation to reach a goal. "For the fun of it" is not a dramatically effective motivation, since it does not drive the story towards a climax where the goal is reached - or lost forever.
chimingin 16y ago
Its a bit of an insult to all the independent filmmakers out there who "build" from passion in a different art medium (especially documentarians) who hope to "change the world", with little chance of fat paydays. The editing process is "hacking" together reams of footage and there have long been "hackwriters" in Hollywood.

164 points by pg 16y ago

Could MZ have done more damage control since the release of the social network? He's given away hundreds of millions of dollars and done myriad interviews since then. This is at least the most direct he's been about why he's around so much in the public eye. But really, come on, it's a movie.

dsplittgerber 16y ago
It's just a movie, for us over here at HN. For most regular people, it's the first time they ever hear about Mark Zuckerberg, who apparently is the guy running the site they spend all day using and posting personal stuff to. And the guy who runs the site they use to interact with their friends and share their photos has done some quite nasty stuff in the past, like mashing face photos together etc etc. When I went to see the movie, the whole cinema was dumbfounded when the credits appeared and it was revealed that facebook is somehow currently worth 25 billion USD. People in general don't know anything about facebook.
- kyro 16y ago
  But I'm sure that didn't stop Jack and Jill from liking each other's statuses once they got home from the cinema to tell the world that they had just seen the movie. I don't think it really affected anyone, at least not Facebook's main demographic.

ojbyrne 16y ago

While the motivation for Facebook was probably over-dramatized, I don't think you can support for even a second the idea that Hollywood (whatever that is) doesn't understand the joy of building things for their own sake. After all, even the line "If you build it, they will come" is from a movie.

hugh3 16y ago
That wasn't about building things for its own sake, though, that was about building things in order to hang out with some ghostly baseball players. (Or something; I haven't actually seen the movie but I gather that's what it's about.) Doing something for its own sake (also known as doing something for the hell of it) may be a realistic reason for doing things in the real world, but it doesn't make much of a story. Drama is all about motivation, and about characters striving after the things they want, and if your character does things for no other motivation than "Meh, I was bored and I kinda felt like it, and it was sorta fun" then it's a dull story. I've got a story for you. Kevin Costner is a corn farmer, and one day he gets up and said "Y'know what? I think I'll build a baseball field in my cornfield". A few weeks later he's finished, and he says "Well, that was fun". Good story? I don't think so.
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  Sure, but the movie was called "Field of Dreams." I.e. he was motivated by dreams.
  - edanm 16y ago
    Yes, but not by "dreams" in the abstract sense of something you wish will happen, but by actual dreams, in the fantasy sense of something talking to you in your sleep.
    - ojbyrne 16y ago
      Right, that's my point. He was motivated by a dream of bring dead baseball players back to play baseball in a cornfield. An actual dream. It's about as tenuous a motivation as a movie could actually have.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Or maybe one as a metaphor for the other. Still, it's not a great example. I'm struggling to think of examples of movies where characters really are motivated by doing stuff just for the hell of it. The only example I've got so far is the Joker from The Dark Knight. His motivation throughout is exactly what Zuckerberg described -- doing things because he can and because it would be interesting to try. It's not exactly a positive portrayal, though.

philwelch 16y ago

Zuckerberg's point is that Hollywood screenwriters don't understand that hackers are motivated by creating things for the sake of creating things. I find this very strange because screenwriters are themselves supposed to be creative people. Their failure to recognize a creative impulse in hackers says something, but I don't know what.

gaius 16y ago
A Hollywood blockbuster is written by a screenwriting team who use formulae and focus group feedback to make a saleable product. They're unionized and it is just an assembly line job. Not that there aren't creative writers, mind. But those guys are making arthouse flicks, not working for Jerry Bruckheimer.
- ceejayoz 16y ago
  I think there's a pretty big gap between folks like Sorkin and Bruckheimer.

michael_nielsen 16y ago

Zuckerberg is flat-out wrong in his assertion that Hollywood doesn't understand people building something just because they like building things. I'm quite sure he's right when it comes to some people in Hollywood, possibly even many of the most powerful people. But I'll bet that what gets a great writer like Aaron Sorkin up in the morning is the same kind of creative impulse that drives hackers. Sorkin is a hacker - just in a different medium. None of which is to say that Sorkin's portrayal of Zuckerberg is at all accurate. In the West Wing, Sorkin once wrote: "You think I think that an artist's job is to speak the truth [but] an artist's job... is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention." I think he's quite right, but it's a heck of a philosophy if you're making a movie about someone still living.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
philwelch 16y ago
But I'll bet that what gets a great writer like Aaron Sorkin up in the morning is the same kind of creative impulse that drives hackers. Maybe. But maybe writers don't see technical people (like hackers) as creative people. They wouldn't be the only ones. Or maybe they do understand that impulse, but underestimate their audience and assume the audience isn't going to understand the creative impulse.
rguzman 16y ago
Further, regardless of the writers' ability to relate to hackers they still need to write stuff that appeals to people. Most people don't enjoy just building things like hackers do.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- mturmon 16y ago
  The writers I know have a pile of unsold or uncompleted scripts and stories. They were experiments, or drafts, or betas (if you like). Often they're working on several things at once, sometimes just with friends for kicks. They're driven to create also (characters, plots). I'd say one difference is, it's easy to hold a steady job as a programmer, but as a writer you have to really work the business side. It does change the emphasis sometimes from creating to selling.

scottmp10 16y ago

I agree that building things is its own motivation for many hackers but I also know many who have other motivations. One of my friends, for instance, has a borderline irrational desire to be more successful than his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. Another is motivated purely by money and is now working in the finance industry. To say that Hollywood "got it wrong" can only be true in this specific context. While it may or may not have been the case with MZ, there are certainly hackers that are motivated to work on significant projects in order to be accepted by girls or organizations, as the movie portrays.

andrewljohnson 16y ago

What most hackers don't understand is that they do in fact have deep-seated psychological motives for all the things they want to build. I don't know if Sorkin's yarn was even close to reality, or whether Zuck's angst at the time was merely coincidental with the development of FaceSmash. But the motivation for building Facebook or anything else is always more complex than "I thought it would be cool." Hollywood may have missed the point, but they were right to look for one.

extension 16y ago
Any particular idea what his reason might have been? My personal drive to build things feels about as fundamental as anything.
apl 16y ago
I fully agree. Zuckerbergs comment obviously resonates with the startup-happy audience he was and is facing, so the reaction here as well as there doesn't surprise. But I openly doubt that the history of Facebook rests on nothing but the desire to build cool things. The first prototype? Maybe. But he took it further, much further. It's not necessarily what Sorkin decided it should be. However, I'm willing to bet money that other factors did play a role. For evidence, just remember that there were lawsuits, that there was drama, that significant amounts of money traded hands before everything became harmonious. Plus, the narration at the beginning of the movie? That is Zuckerberg.
- borism 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure even the first prototype had much deeper psychological meaning than what's being presented. Heck, I was in a college at the time too and I think I know fairly well why so many guys tried to do their versions of "face book". "We just like to build things" excuse sounded so lame it's unbelievable it came from a person who supposedly studied psychology.
  - runT1ME 16y ago
    So, you too don't understand the desire just to build things?

bluethunder 16y ago

Agree totally. I realized early on that some of us are just born to build. Everything else, including making money is just secondary. For some of us the biggest part of our happiness is dependent on the meaning that we seek through our work, and more importantly, anything less than building something isnt meaning enough.

Typhon 16y ago

Meanwhile, after seeing the movie, someone else concluded not only that Zuckerberg's main motivation was building something with his mind but that he enjoyed literally nothing but coding (to put it mildly) : http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-678 http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-678 I haven't seen the movie myself.

harscoat 16y ago

The new Glamour thx to Hollywood: "I am an Entrepreneur" -Sean Parker(/Timberlake) to the girl is just slept with

nowarninglabel 16y ago

I haven't seen the movie, but I'm a bit confused by these comments. Zuckerberg signed a contract and did work for the sake of the contract, then later branching out. I don't see how you can ascribe his motives to be purely creative. Perhaps, I have missed some fact in this?

ceejayoz 16y ago
The movie implies that one of his motivations was to impress an ex-girlfriend.
bloomshed 16y ago
The movie claims that Zuckerberg created the primordial version of facebook after getting dumped and subsequently drunk. He stole a bunch of images and created a "hot or not" thing called FaceSmash. This supposedly set him on the path towards creating facebook. The weakest part of the whole film was at the end when it shows Zuckerberg alone, pitiful, refreshing his facebook page hoping his long lost ex would be his "friend" on facebook. I'm one of those people who feels insulted when filmmakers pull overt, lazy stunts like that. Sorkin hates the idea of facebook. He thinks the whole idea of a social network is a lie and he may be right. He thinks people who use facebook are wasting their time. I saw that on Colbert I think. I applaud Sorkin's candor. Not too many people say what they think these days, but I felt like he was insulting the audience with that last scene, saying, essentially, "You people do this too, and you're pitiful." He didn't have to show us what was on Zuckerberg's screen. Most people could have guessed what he was doing without seeing the screen. Sorkin decided to show the screen so people would have no doubts about what was happening. I'm reasonably certain Zuckerberg was not actually doing that during his deposition.
- stuhacking 16y ago
  It was called Facemash, and the idea behind it (according to the movie) was that comparisons were more 'turing' than arbitrary scores as used on "hot or not." The characters' motives as presented in the movie might be fabrication or speculation (depending on your view of the true story) but they still make for a better and more tense story (imho).

dualboot 16y ago

I'm just going to say that having seen the movie I'm personally impressed with how well Zuckerberg is handling responses to what must be an incredibly surreal experience in the public. His personal technical abilities and the relative accuracies/inaccuracies of a major Hollywood movie aside. I can't imagine it being particularly fun. Kudos for laughing at it.

Tycho 16y ago

The script was very subtle and managed to portray a multitude of motivations and justifications for more than one character. From what I could tell, it never said impressing a girl was the motivation for creating Facebook, and it portrayed Zuckerberg as someone who cared more about building stuff than he cared about relationships or money. Certainly it did make the (separate) implication that his handling of people/relationships/partnerships may be a source of regret as he matures as a person beyond 'I'm CEO, bitch.'

frading 16y ago

Mark Zuckerberg is quite young, and has a movie made about himself and his life's work, so I would not expect him to be objective about this. My strong opinion, considering myself hacker and filmmaker, is that both activities share the same motivation, which is exactly creating things. The process might differ in some ways, but when I create a software or a movie, I am driven by a similar passion. I cannot imagine a movie director or writer not being fully in love with the material he or she is developing. They usually live and sleep with it, it affects their personal life very much, so it is not really something you can pretend to enjoy. If you do pretend, that shows, and you usually end up with a bad movie. I'd advice to watch this charlie rose interview of Sorkin and Fincher: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11223 http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11223 . At one point, they mention they tried to talk to Mark, in order to have a counter opinion from the one expressed in the 'accidental billionaire' book, but he turned down the offer. I am sure Sorkin, while aiming to be very entertaining, wished he could stay as close to reality as possible.

skinnymuch 16y ago
Someone on HN linked to to a piece that stated Sorkin preferred good drama over the truth when it really came down to it which resulted in disagreements between him and Fincher (who supposedly wanted the truth first and foremost). And based off my own bias views of both guys, I find this to be most believeable.
- frading 16y ago
  I cannot find the piece you mention, if you could point me to it, that d be great.

whackedspinach 16y ago

Did anyone else see that movie and feel that this had been portrayed? The Zuckerberg in the movie obviously wanted to be part of the social group, but I also got that 'building' vibe. Maybe it is just because I compared the entire movie to The Fountainhead.

parasubvert 16y ago
Yeah I got that from the movie too. It definitely illustrated that Mark had mixed motivations in creating Facebook, but generally it seemed to portray "building stuff" as an outlet to whatever more primordial drives (fear, angst, excitement, desire for power, status, etc.) were behind the action. the movie wasn't about reality, it was about the exaggerated reality from court depositions, qualified by counter-arguments. Made me think of Rashomon.

waterlesscloud 16y ago

You know, screenwriters study and obsess over motivations and why people do things as much as a hacker studies and obsesses over how a particular system works. Sorkin is one of the very best in the world at what he does. Top 5 or 10, easy, and he has been in that league for well over a decade now. Perhaps the character in the film is more complex than people here are portraying him to be.

dools 16y ago

That's a charismatic performance. It's an important choice of words how he says "we in silicon valley"... it really gets the audience on side. But I think he's disingenuous, and I think he's been coached. The way he pitches this; it's as if, when he was building facebook, he was like a hobby botanist marvelling at a new flower he'd discovered in his favourite meadow. That the entire exercise was just about the thrill of creation and discovery. You only have to watch the "new" section of HN for a day to see that most hackers are acutely aware of the monetary potential of their creations, and in some cases far more interested in the glamour of being an entrepreneur than the thrill and art of creating software. I'm not saying that the two are mutually exclusive - I certainly work very passionately on things I believe in and aspire to make millions of dollars as a result, but I think in this video clip Zuck is doing a little Hollywood framing of his own.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
The money is a rationalization. Its approval that many of us seek. Otherwise why tell people about it? Even evangelize about the pet project? Its a social need.

nikster 16y ago

I don't know Mark Zuckerberg and I haven't been following any gossip magazines or seen the social network. But he's just earned my respect. Great answer right there. Then the whole facebook thing - he's been getting decisions right for years on end.

olavk 16y ago

Movies does not reflect how the movie-makers understand the world. When movies show computers searching for fingerprints by displaying a series of fingerprints in rapid succession on-screen, it is not because the movie-makers actually thinks that databases works like that. It is because it is an effective way of telling that piece of story. Movies reflect how the movie-makers believe that a story can be told most effectively. And they have quite a lot of experience in this field. Dramatic storytelling requires that the protagonist has a motivation to reach a goal. "For the fun of it" is not a dramatically effective motivation, since it does not drive the story towards a climax where the goal is reached - or lost forever.

chimingin 16y ago

Its a bit of an insult to all the independent filmmakers out there who "build" from passion in a different art medium (especially documentarians) who hope to "change the world", with little chance of fat paydays. The editing process is "hacking" together reams of footage and there have long been "hackwriters" in Hollywood.