Accuracy takes back seat to fiction for Apple co-founder
Dialogue in clip from biopic is not him, but that’s OK, Steve Wozniak says
LOS ANGELES— Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said he doesn’t recognize himself in the new trailer for the coming biopic Steve Jobs, but he doesn’t mind — it’s Hollywood.
In the clip released Wednesday, Wozniak, who is played by Seth Rogen, confronts Jobs and accuses his partner of hogging the credit for their creations, and those of others. That never happened, he said.
“I don’t talk that way,” Wozniak said in an emailed response to questions.
“I would never accuse the graphical interface of being stolen. I never made comments to the effect that I had credit (genius) taken from me.”
His quibbles won’t stop Wozniak from seeing the movie.
He said he liked the trailer and it presents a more or less accurate impression of Jobs, who died in 2011. Some parts, he said, made him want to cry.
Wozniak said he will watch the Universal Pictures movie, which hits theatres on Oct. 9.
“The lines I heard spoken were not things I would say but carried the right message, at least partly,” he said.
“I felt a lot of the real Jobs in the trailer, although a bit exaggerated.”
Universal took over production of the film from Sony Pictures last year, after executives at the Sony Corp. studio battled with its producer over casting and its budget.
It is based on the Walter Isaacson biography and written by Aaron Sorkin.
A spokeswoman for Sorkin wasn’t immediately available for comment. Representatives of Universal and producer Scott Rudin declined to comment.
The first full trailer for the film depicts a tyrannical Jobs, played by Michael Fassbender, who disavows his daughter and gets fired while lording over his employees and taking credit for their work.
“What do you do? You’re not an engineer,” Rogen’s character says in the clip.
“You’re not a designer. You can’t put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board. The graphical interface was stolen. So how come, 10 times in a day, I read Steve Jobs is a genius? What do you do?”
Wozniak said he consulted with Sorkin, who won an Oscar for The Social Network, before the Jobs script was written, met the cast briefly and had dinner with Rogen, though he never asked to see the script.
“I do not think that would be appropriate,” Wozniak said, adding that he was honoured to be portrayed by a popular actor like Rogen. “It is the creative work of the producer and writer and actors and director and others.”
He said the trailer has reawakened feelings from his time at Apple working with the legendary Jobs, who was 56 when he died. The film tackles Jobs’s less attractive side, including disavowing his daughter Lisa.
“It was hard on me, even being quiet, when Jobs refused to acknowledge his child when the money didn’t matter, and I can almost cry remembering it.”
He said films about Apple rarely depict the real events accurately — even people who were there have different memories — although the overall meaning is often correct.
“Accuracy is second to entertainment in a movie like this.”