Ed Catmull doesn't think the real Steve Jobs would've been pleased. Photo: François Duhamel/Universal Studios
The real Steve Jobs would have been “appalled” at being the subject of a movie biopic like Steve Jobs, claims Pixar and Walt Disney Animation president Ed Catmull in a new interview.
Check out Catmull’s comments about the unfortunate box office bomb below.
Steve Jobs with the Pixar founders. Photo: Disney
“[The filmmakers] can’t tell the story because the story’s wrong,” Catmull says. “[Steve] went through an arc in his life. There was a time the way he worked with people was not good, and I saw that when I first worked with him. But people look at that dramatic part, and they’ll make a movie about that — and that’s not the story.
That was the beginning of a more interesting and complex story because when he left Apple, he then entered into what really is the classic hero’s journey: He’s wandering in the wilderness, he’s working with NeXT, it’s not working. He’s working with Pixar, we’re failing. In that process, Steve learned some major lessons, and he changed. He became an empathetic person, and we all saw this when [the Walter Isaacson book] was being written.
Nobody’s going to psychoanalyze Steve while he was alive. That aspect of the change of Steve was missed. That’s the real story.”
Although Catmull (like other critics who knew Jobs, including Jony Ive, Tim Cook etc.) admits to not having seen the movie, the criticism does sum up many other people’s criticism of Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs.
While I, like many reviewers, enjoyed the movie as a piece of entertainment, it fails to tell the most interesting story about Jobs: how a guy whose negative impulses were arguably as damaging as his undoubtedly positive qualities became the older Steve Jobs who turned Apple around in the late 1990s and beyond.
In box office results this weekend, Steve Jobs was removed from a further 200 theaters, with a total weekend box office taking of just $81,900 — compared to $101,025,000 for box office champion The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
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“Disney president says Jobs would have been ‘appalled’ by Sorkin’s biopic”
Anyone who knew Steve Jobs or studied him is appalled. Those who enjoy dirt, and enjoy highly massaged, cherry-picked episodes of a man’s might be taken in by Sorkin’s tales, but “the rest of us” are not so easily fooled.
What a silly response. No one suggested Jobs should be “portrayed as a god”, at least I didn’t. But a more balanced view would have been better and fairer, and likely done better at the box office. Most viewers are a bit more savvy these days. •Most• viewers. Doubtless, you have not actually read much about Jobs, save for Isaacson’s biohraphy, if that.
If Jobs was once a cunt, it is valid to portray him as a cunt. Just because he was taught how to be less of a cunt in order to increase his income, which was his prime objective by the way, does not undo his past behavioural “crimes”. He put himself in the spotlight, fame seeker that he was, so any portrayal of any of his multifaceted aspects is valid.
You are completely wrong. No wandering in my post, it is completely focussed on the point. Nor is it nonsensical. Nor is it foul-mouthed. Jubs was a cunt, everybody knows that. Cunt is a word used on worldwide television in the present day so please do not comment on my posts in future if you cannot offer anything objective. Thanks.
The “C” word is considered HIGHLY offensive and derogatory towards women in the United States. Please understand this when posting on a US based message board, on a topic of a US Citizen.
big nothiNg… I’m not sure what •you• watch on television, but in the civilized world the C-word is offensive, and the user of it more so. That you don’t understand that is a testament to your youth, your ignorance, your insensitivity or, I suspect, all three.
Wow, that’s a lot of negativity. I do understand what is being said here. People who knew him are going to disagree with the drama of this movie. However, it was a good movie, that unfortunately, most people just don’t care about. Many critics loved the movie, but regular people? No one cares about Steve Jobs the man, or his life. I saw the movie, and really enjoyed it. By the end, you could see the start of Steve Job’s transformation into the man he was until his death. I really think the people who complain about the movie, and never saw it, should see it.
You don’t understand what is being said here? Some (apparently few) people believe Aaron Sorkin’s biopic of Steve Jobs is factual, and a good portrait of the highly influential inventor and entrepreneur. Other, more informed, long-time students of Jobs believe it is heavily massaged at best, and unnecessarily critical of cherry-picked aspects of the man’s life. Not much more to understand than that.
I actually saw the movie and I didn’t think it was very good. But I don’t think people get to criticize it if they haven’t seen it. I understand the impulse of Tim Cook and others around Steve Jobs wanting to preserve his legacy but 1) it’s just a movie and 2) their comments would have more credibility if they had screened it first. I’m sure Tim, and others at Apple, hate it when people say how bad a new Apple product is, and those people haven’t even used it, or seen it, yet. The fact that this movie wasn’t very good, and that you can allow audiences to get there on their own, is proof that people understand inherently what is wrong with it. Steve Jobs had faith in people to choose the better product – why doesn’t Tim and everyone else?
15 responses to “Disney president says Jobs would have been ‘appalled’ by Sorkin’s biopic”
“Disney president says Jobs would have been ‘appalled’ by Sorkin’s biopic”
Anyone who knew Steve Jobs or studied him is appalled. Those who enjoy dirt, and enjoy highly massaged, cherry-picked episodes of a man’s might be taken in by Sorkin’s tales, but “the rest of us” are not so easily fooled.
Sorry he wasn’t portrayed as a God to continue feeding his ego into the grave?
What a silly response. No one suggested Jobs should be “portrayed as a god”, at least I didn’t. But a more balanced view would have been better and fairer, and likely done better at the box office. Most viewers are a bit more savvy these days. •Most• viewers. Doubtless, you have not actually read much about Jobs, save for Isaacson’s biohraphy, if that.
“Sorko”‘s unique objective is to increase the value of the number representing the contents of his bank account, ‘no holds barred’.
If Jobs was once a cunt, it is valid to portray him as a cunt. Just because he was taught how to be less of a cunt in order to increase his income, which was his prime objective by the way, does not undo his past behavioural “crimes”. He put himself in the spotlight, fame seeker that he was, so any portrayal of any of his multifaceted aspects is valid.
@bIg hIlL… “Behavioural [sic] crimes?” The only crime is your wandering, nonsensical and foul-mouthed post.
You are completely wrong. No wandering in my post, it is completely focussed on the point. Nor is it nonsensical. Nor is it foul-mouthed. Jubs was a cunt, everybody knows that. Cunt is a word used on worldwide television in the present day so please do not comment on my posts in future if you cannot offer anything objective. Thanks.
And you’re a dick bag.
The “C” word is considered HIGHLY offensive and derogatory towards women in the United States. Please understand this when posting on a US based message board, on a topic of a US Citizen.
big nothiNg… I’m not sure what •you• watch on television, but in the civilized world the C-word is offensive, and the user of it more so. That you don’t understand that is a testament to your youth, your ignorance, your insensitivity or, I suspect, all three.
Are you a shitcunt?
I asked yesterday but my comment has disappeared, therefore once more I question: Are you a shitcunt?
Wow, that’s a lot of negativity. I do understand what is being said here. People who knew him are going to disagree with the drama of this movie. However, it was a good movie, that unfortunately, most people just don’t care about. Many critics loved the movie, but regular people? No one cares about Steve Jobs the man, or his life. I saw the movie, and really enjoyed it. By the end, you could see the start of Steve Job’s transformation into the man he was until his death. I really think the people who complain about the movie, and never saw it, should see it.
You don’t understand what is being said here? Some (apparently few) people believe Aaron Sorkin’s biopic of Steve Jobs is factual, and a good portrait of the highly influential inventor and entrepreneur. Other, more informed, long-time students of Jobs believe it is heavily massaged at best, and unnecessarily critical of cherry-picked aspects of the man’s life. Not much more to understand than that.
I actually saw the movie and I didn’t think it was very good. But I don’t think people get to criticize it if they haven’t seen it. I understand the impulse of Tim Cook and others around Steve Jobs wanting to preserve his legacy but 1) it’s just a movie and 2) their comments would have more credibility if they had screened it first. I’m sure Tim, and others at Apple, hate it when people say how bad a new Apple product is, and those people haven’t even used it, or seen it, yet. The fact that this movie wasn’t very good, and that you can allow audiences to get there on their own, is proof that people understand inherently what is wrong with it. Steve Jobs had faith in people to choose the better product – why doesn’t Tim and everyone else?