Movie Review: Steve Jobs

I have thoroughly enjoyed Aaron Sorkin’s writing through the years.  Besides being a brilliant playwright and screenwriter, Sorkin seems to always “get it.”  Whether “it” is how a late night TV sports show operates, or the inner workings of the White House, or “Code Reds.”  Or a late night live comedy show. Sorkin is able to somehow grok the essence of any environment or situation and astutely present it in a compelling manner.

In his fictional writing he creates such perfectly crafted characters that the actors portraying them instinctively and seemingly effortlessly become them, and the viewers watching them instinctively and effortlessly identify with them, admire them, and love them.  I’d like my President to be Andrew Shepherd, or Josiah Bartlet.  I’d love to have friends like Matt Albie and Danny Tripp.  Or Jeremy Goodwin.  And so on.  Sorkin’s characters are endearing, enduring, and unforgettable.

When asked to recreate non-fictional characters, such as in “The Social Network,” Sorkin is somehow able to make them ring true.  Even though every single scene in his Oscar-winning adapted screenplay is a pure fabrication (as was the case with the book it was based on), watching them makes us feel like we understand the characters and their motivations.  We feel like we know all about Facebook’s origin story.  Even though we don’t.

When I first heard that Sorkin took on the adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography into a screenplay, I was beyond myself with excitement.  My favorite screenwriter, writing about a subject dear to my heart.  I couldn’t wait to see it.  Yesterday, I saw it.

And I was uncomfortable during every minute of it.

“Steve Jobs” is, without question, a major accomplishment as a motion picture.  Using nothing but character interactions and dialog, Sorkin and director Danny Boyle crafted a dramatic tour de force.  The writing is crisp, dense, and meaningful, and the actors slip into their characters brilliantly (Kate Winslet’s in-and-out Polish accent notwithstanding).  The problem is, those characters, and the scenes they find themselves in, simply don’t ring true, at least to anyone even somewhat acquainted with the facts.  

For once, Aaron Sorkin didn’t “get it.”

As Sorkin and Boyle have pointed out ad nauseum, “Steve Jobs” was not meant to be a biopic.  It is not a photograph, they have said, it is a painting.  Like “The Social Network,” “Steve Jobs” is made up of scenes that never took place.  But unlike “The Social Network,” “Steve Jobs” feels as artificial as it is.

Granted, I may feel this way simply because I am unfamiliar with the details of Facebook’s true origin story, and quite familiar with those of Apple’s.  Or maybe Sorkin nailed the essence of Mark Zuckerberg to the point that the “painting” came alive despite its infidelity with the truth.  Regardless, although “Steve Jobs” is compelling as a movie in a vacuum, it fails to capture the essence of Steve Jobs, the man, or of Apple, Inc., the company.  Maybe it would work as a film à clef, but then it should not have been named “Steve Jobs.”  “Citizen Kane” was not named “Citizen Hearst” after all.

Aaron Sorkin’s work has always made me feel comfortable, and I have always cared about his characters, fictional and nonfictional.  But, again, I was uncomfortable during every minute of “Steve Jobs,”  because I knew that everything was wrong.  And the problem was not that it was a painting instead of a photograph.  The problem was that the painting was flawed, misleading and incomplete.

As I indicated, I’m not familiar with Facebook’s true origin story.  The fabricated scenes in “The Social Network” rang true to me, whether due to my ignorance of the details, or because the scenes captured the essence of the subject matter.  “Steve Jobs,” failed to capture the essence of my personal understanding of Steve Jobs, and, because of that, I was unable to suspend disbelief at the egregious liberties the movie took with the facts. It made me uncomfortable to see all of the personal  interactions taking place in the minutes before product announcements, even though I knew it was a storytelling device, because not only did they not happen, they are implausible.  It made me uncomfortable to see John Sculley interacting with Jobs after 1985, because I know he never did.  It made me uncomfortable to see Steve Wozniak imploring Jobs to acknowledge the Apple II team in 1998, since Woz left Apple in 1985, and the Apple II was discontinued in 1993.  It made me uncomfortable to see NeXT so inaccurately portrayed as nothing but a ruse designed by Jobs to get back to Apple.  And it made me uncomfortable that the movie ended without even considering the last 14 years of Jobs’s life, which perhaps would have represented the perfect counterbalance to the 14 years portrayed in “Steve Jobs.”

Unlike any other Sorkin work I am aware of, “Steve Jobs” failed to capture the essence of the subject matter.  While a compelling movie, “Steve Jobs” is a gross misrepresentation of Steve Jobs.  

And that is unfair to everyone involved.

Sportsmanship

Simple question: if you are a linebacker and cleanly sack the opposing team’s quarterback, what do you do when he’s on the ground?

a, Reach out and help him up.

b. Celebrate your accomplishment by dancing around his prone body.

I recently posed that question to a millennial who I know to be thoroughly kind, decent and fair.  His answer: you dance around the humiliated quarterback in order to intimidate him further and make him more nervous (and more likely to make a mistake) next time.   Moreover, if a clean hit results in an injury to the quarterback, all the better since he will be out of commission for a few games, giving the sacker’s team an advantage.

I was absolutely flabbergasted.  Sportsmanship may not be dead, but it’s clearly on life support.

In baseball, much has been made lately about bat flips, home run admiration and celebrations in general.  Jorge Ortiz wrote a truly cringeworthy piece on USA Today where he tried to frame the issue around racial and ethnic “cultural differences.”   Left-handed pitcher C.J. Nitkowski, a former 19-year major leaguer, answered Ortiz with a much more thoughtful piece on Fox Sports.  Nitkowski’s point: major leaguers have always determined what constitutes poor sportsmanship amongst themselves, and clashes have occurred since the game began.  From his article:

I mostly discount the racial component of Jorge’s piece. Players take issue with other players all the time, regardless of where they were born. The numbers cited in that column are pure coincidence.

I agree with Nitkowski, and am offended by Ortiz’s (and many others’) patronizing attitude toward African-Americans and Latinos in sport, dismissing their particular sportsmanship transgressions as somehow related to their culture or background, as succinctly expressed in this quote from Dan Le Batard’s daily sports talk show (helpfully provided by the aforementioned millennial):

"cultures do funerals differently, weddings differently, dance differently, live differently so it makes sense they would play baseball differently too."

Racial, ethnic and cultural diversity enriches, strengthens and vastly improves any environment, whether a sport, an industry or a nation.  Yet cultural differences can be daunting.  No doubt, a so-called Jazz Funeral in New Orleans differs vastly from an Orthodox Jewish funeral in Brooklyn.  But, does Le Batard suggest that it would be OK for a New Orleanian attending an orthodox funeral to pull out a trumpet and belt out “When the Saints Go Marching In” because of his different culture?

Of course not.  You respect the culture of the wedding you attend, regardless of your own culture.  Likewise, you respect the culture, traditions and unwritten rules of Major League Baseball, which have evolved for over 140 years, gradually incorporating elements from the different cultures represented in the game, and will continue to do so.  

The underlying issue, though, is not about cultural differences, or unwritten rules.  It is about sportsmanship.  Sportsmanship transcends culture.  Showing someone up is poor sportsmanship, period.  Taunting someone is poor sportsmanship, period.  Helping up an opponent is good sportsmanship, period.

Acts of good sportsmanship rise above the artificial construct of sport and into the realm of reality.  By helping your opponent up after knocking him down, you are saying, “You are my adversary, but not my enemy.  Under the rules of this game, I knocked you down.  Under the rules of our common humanity, I’ll help you up.”  My millennial friend would argue that acts of humanity in sport denote weakness, that they lessen your chance of winning future contests.  And millions of dollars hang in the balance.

Oh, well, allow me to retort.  Magnanimous acts are marks of strength and maturity.  Dancing around a fallen opponent, admiring a home run and flipping your bat are nothing but childish braggadocio.  Sorry, Dan, culture is not relevant here.  These are universal truths.  To imply otherwise, to use someone’s culture as an excuse for his poor sportsmanship, is condescending and insulting.

By taunting, intimidating and/or humiliating fellow human beings, be it in sport or anywhere else, we are not winning.  We are losing.  Our humanity.

Aloha

Steve McGarrett speaks English?  Hawaii Five-0 is in color?  Who knew?

My love affair with television began while I was still a kid growing up in Colombia in the early ‘70’s.  Television there at the time consisted of three channels, all in black-and-white.  All U.S. shows were clumsily dubbed into Spanish, mostly in Mexico.  Apparently the dubbing budget was quite limited, as Steve McGarrett, Frank Cannon, Archie Bunker, Barnaby Jones, Arthur Fonzarelli, Theo Kojak, Columbo, and many others sported suspiciously similar, slightly Mexican-accented voices.

My favorite show from that era, which still holds a special place in my heart, is the original Hawaii Five-0, which, in the U.S., ran on CBS from 1968 to 1980.  In English.  In living color.  In Colombia, not so much.  So one summer (I wish I could remember exactly what year) my parents brought me to the U.S. for the first time.  Of course the first thing I did when we got to the hotel room was turn on the TV (a Zenith, with a Space Command remote!).  And it was in color!  And everyone spoke English!  Amazing.  But that was during the day, so the game shows, soaps and reruns were unfamiliar to me (not for long, of course).

The real shock came when I saw the gorgeous (and, in my view, still unmatched) Hawaii Five-0 opening theme (which, to the approximately 10 year-old me, was the best part of the show), in full, glorious color.  No over-zealous announcer sullying it by yelling out the opening credits in Spanish (“Con la actuación estelar de Yak Lorr como Estiv Magarre”).  The rest of the show also in color.  And English, not Spanish with a slight Mexican accent, coming out of McGarrett’s (and everyone else’s) mouth!

It was surreal.  It was enlightening.  I knew right then and there that this magical land where the cars were huge, the TV shows started on time, and television was what it was supposed to be, not some vandalized, mangled version of itself, was the place I ought to be.  Fortunately, my dream came true just a few years later, in 1978.

I thought of Hawaii Five-0 today while texting my kids about our dinner plans for tomorrow.  As I typed the place, date and time, it just came to me.  “Be there.  Aloha.”  At the end of every Hawaii Five-0 episode there was a montage of scenes from the next episode, and Jack Lord himself would end the montage with those words.  Be there.  Aloha.  Getting a bit nostalgic, I browsed over to the show’s IMDB page, where nostalgia quickly turned to melancholy:

Jack Lord, who played Steve McGarrett, died in 1998.

James MacArthur, who played Dan Williams, died in 2010.

Kam Fong, who played Chin Ho, died in 2002.

Herman Wedemeyer, who played Duke, died in 1999.

Harry Endo, who played Che Fong, died in 2009.

Zulu, who played Kono, died in 2004.

Richard Denning, who played the Governor, died in 1998.

Leonard Freeman, creator, writer and producer: died in 1974

Every key person associated with my beloved Hawaii Five-0 is gone.

Obviously this should not have come as a surprise.  The show first came on the air forty-seven years ago.  What did I expect?

But still, all of them?

Guys, I'm so sorry you can no longer.  Be there.

Aloha.

My Pleasure

If you say “gracias” (“thank you”) in Mexico, chances are you will get “de que?” (literally, “for what?”) in return; a self-deprecating response that implies, “I did nothing,” or, “whatever I did, it’s not worthy of gratitude.”  More prevalent in other Spanish-speaking countries is “de nada,” literally “of nothing,” or “for nothing,” meaning “it was nothing,” again, seeking to minimize the action prompting the expression of gratitude.  The French “de rien” is literally identical to the Spanish “de nada.”

The most frequent Italian response to “grazie” (thank you), is “prego,” a fascinating word with many different meanings depending on context, but whose meaning when used in response to “grazie” is “please,” as in “please, how can you possibly even think of thanking me.”  Similar to “de que?” “de nada,”  and “de rien,” “prego” seeks to diminish the value of the action taken by the person receiving the thanks.

Those outwardly humble, self-deprecating responses to gratitude have always bothered me a bit, for two reasons. First, although sometimes it may be appropriate to convey that the action taken was really no big deal, many times that is clearly not the case.  Second, the responses not only minimize the action, but also take issue with the gratitude by deeming it superfluous.  “Why are you even thanking me,” they seem to contend.  If someone thanks you for something, does it make sense to argue about it?

In most English-speaking countries, the most common response to “thank you” is “you’re welcome,” short for “you are welcome to my help.”  I feel more comfortable with this response because it neither minimizes the action nor takes issue with the gratitude.  Whether the action was simple or difficult, “your’e welcome” means, “count on me, I’ll help you anytime.”  The Spanish “a la orden” (or “a sus órdenes”) is similar, meaning something like “I await further orders”, or “I’m at your service.”  

My favorite responses to “thank you,” though, are “my pleasure,” (or “with pleasure”) and the equivalent Spanish “con gusto.”   The sentiment they convey is that, regardless of the ease or difficulty of the action taken, the person thanked enjoyed being of service to the thanker.  Not “I did nothing,” or “the action is not worthy of gratitude,” but instead, “to help you brings me pleasure.”  “My pleasure” diminishes nothing, does not take issue with anything, and pays a lovely compliment to the person doing the thanking.  

So, thank you for reading.  I hope it was your pleasure!

Gaby and Marc

So we’re having lunch at Dr. Limon (best ceviche I’ve ever had).  In addition to our meal, we order a few items to take with us.  Gaby, our waitress, presents the bill, and says “I’m sorry, the to-go items came out on a separate bill.  I apologize for the inconvenience.”  No big deal, I think to myself.  But then I notice that the bill for the to-go items shows a different server name, not Gaby’s like the bill for the served items.  I ask Gaby why that is, since she served us and brought us the to-go items as well.

“Actually, to be honest, I put the to-go items on a separate bill because I didn’t want to inflate the lunch total.  It wouldn’t be fair for you to base your tip on the total amount.”

OK, so Gaby, proceeding under the assumption that people generally don’t add a tip to to-go items (false assumption in my case, but not relevant here), didn’t want to include those items in our lunch bill lest I overtip by figuring the gratuity on an amount that includes to-go items.  She would rather forego the possibility of more income to herself than, in her view, either trick or guilt the customer into paying a higher tip than he normally would.  And, had I not asked about it, her act of professionalism and generosity would have gone unnoticed.

I was touched by Gaby’s actions, particularly in light of the Kim Davis farse.

Davis is, of course, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk recently jailed for contempt of court after defying a federal court order by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, maintaining that she is against gay marriage because it goes against her religion.  Grandstanding, opportunistic demagogues Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, predictably, jumped to Davis’ defense, citing her “religious freedom,” and actively participated in a repulsive, cringe-inducing demonstration upon her release from jail.

Few things upset me more than people who preach “religious freedom” while advocating its exact opposite.  Ms. Davis, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Huckabee, if you frown upon same-sex marriage due to your religious beliefs, that’s fine, don’t marry anyone of your same sex.  Nobody’s making you do that.  But why do you believe that you have the right to impose your own faith on others?  How can you not understand that “religious freedom” means that everyone has the right to live in accordance with their own beliefs?  Their own, as in, not yours?  To you, and others of your ilk, “religious freedom” applies only to those who share your particular beliefs.  You are pushing for an American Theocracy.   Your notions are “frankly unAmerican, and belong more in Riyadh or Tehran than in Washington, DC.”  You are Ayatollah wannabes, as dangerous to America as Islamic fundamentalist terrorists.

Now we come full circle to Marc Ambinder, editor-at-large for The Week and contributing editor at The Atlantic.  In his column today, Ambinder argues that Davis was treated unfairly by Judge David Banning, who threw her in jail for contempt.  Ambinder:

I find the government's conduct more offensive to my sense of justice than I do Davis' refusal to comply with the law. And I say this as a dude who had to wait years to marry another dude.

In any moral universe, her crime should not justify a total deprivation of her civil rights.

Unlike Kim Davis, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz (and so many others), Gaby and Marc Ambinder are able to step outside of themselves and see things from an objective perspective.  They understand other points of view.  They look after the interests of others, even when those interests conflict with their own.  They strive to say and do what’s right, period, full stop, not necessarily what benefits themselves.

Too bad neither of them is running for president.

Blessed

Picture this: Beyoncé wins yet another Grammy award.  In her acceptance speech she says “I am gorgeous, stunningly sexy, and extremely talented.”  She would obviously be telling no lies, but she would just as obviously come across as conceited, arrogant and offensive.   But if she says, “I’m blessed,” it would not reflect badly on her at all, even though, ironically, it’s a much more boastful claim!

“I’m blessed.”

On the surface, such a humble expression.  Meaning, “I didn’t really do anything to deserve all these wonderful things in my life, I’m just a humble person, but I have them because God loves me.  So I’m blessed.”

The problem is that the expression is actually the opposite of humble.  It’s arrogant and offensive.  I am by no means calling all those who use the expression arrogant and offensive, because I don’t think they necessarily intend to be anything but humble.  However, the expression itself is arrogant and offensive when taken to its logical conclusion, despite its utterer’s intentions.

As a non-believer, the expression has no place in my vocabulary.  However, those who use it are, by definition, believers in God.  So when a believer says, for example, that he’s “blessed” to have a wonderful life, he is stating that his life is wonderful because God chose to make it that way.  God chose to give him a wonderful life.  God chose to “bless” him, because God loves him.

So what about those whose lives are not so wonderful?  Have they been ignored by God?  Punished by God?  Does God not love them?  If you attribute something good in your life to God’s machinations, then necessarily something bad in someone else’s life must be also be attributed to his machinations, or else to his inaction.  So why did God choose to make your life wonderful?

The use of expressions like “I’m blessed” is similar to athletes thanking God  when they make a good play, or people in general suffixing descriptions of good things happening to them with “thank God,” such as answering “how are you” with “I’m doing very well, thank God.”  Again, humble on the surface, but arrogant when analyzed.

In the athlete’s case, let’s say we’re talking about a baseball player who hits a home run.  By thanking God, he is (inadvertently, to give him the benefit of the doubt) effectively stating that God likes him better than the pitcher who just served up the gopher ball.  And the person who appends “thank God” to expressions of good fortune is basically saying that God makes a point of taking care of him, as opposed to, presumably, others.  

Interestingly, I’ve never seen a batter blame God when he strikes out, or a person answer the question “how are you” by saying, “I’m having a terrible day, curse the Lord.”  But that obvious contradiction is the subject of another essay.

It seems natural to temper statements of personal wellness or good fortune with humility, lest we come across as conceited or entitled, or like we’re taking things for granted.  To say, for example, “I have wonderful children” would sound conceited without some added modesty.  Maybe words like “fortunately,” or “luckily,’ would properly express the fact that one does not necessarily feel worthy of one’s good fortune.  And I’m sure in most cases, people who say they are “blessed” intend to express the same humble sentiment.  But they don’t.  They express the opposite, and the expression grates on me every time I hear it.

To allow others to speak well of you and not boast about yourself is just plain good manners.  So, if you believe that God is the creator and manager of the entire universe, what can possibly be more boastful than to claim out loud that this unfathomably powerful and awe-inspiring entity has selected you to bestow its good fortune upon?

Talk about a humblebrag!