PLAYING ‘STEVE JOBS’
WITH ‘UTMOST RESPECT’
Fassbender says he tried to play him as ‘somebody who was passionate about his vision’
There is a revealing moment in
Steve Jobs when the iconoclastic Apple co-founder explains how he can perfect such world-altering products and yet still clearly struggle with people.
“I’m poorly made,” says Jobs, portrayed by Michael Fassbender.
Even amid the whirlwind 182page Aaron Sorkin screenplay, Fassbender recalls the telling line highlighting the central conflict in the Danny Boyle-directed film, which opened in New York and Los Angeles over the weekend to critical adulation and awards discussion.
“Steve Jobs tried to make products that are not poorly made, but maybe that was to make up for his own shortcomings,” Fassbender says. “All of his energy goes into his work, these products he’s creating, while his own life suffers.”
Sorkin agrees that the line is “pivotal” in the screenplay, based on Walter Isaacson’s 2011 bestselling authorized biography of the same name.
“My hypothesis was that deep down, Steve believed himself to be kind of an irreparably damaged person, unworthy of being liked or loved,” Sorkin says. “But he had enormous talent and ability to make products. Or wrangle the people who make products.” That approach has brought
Steve Jobs attention and controversy as it opens through Oct. 23.
Steve Jobs experienced turmoil during production. Director David Fincher dropped out, and Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio both withdrew from talks to star. Jobs’ successor, Tim Cook, called it “opportunistic.”
“Steve Jobs is a huge public figure who’s had an enormous influence on our lives. It’s necessary that these people are not just deified,” Boyle says.
Sorkin says he based much of the dialogue on Isaacson’s book and on his own interviews with Jobs’ intimates.
“(Isaacson’s) job as a journalist was to be objective,” Sorkin says. “Mine was to be subjective, to infer things, come up with various hypotheses and dramatize them.”
Boyle sees the work as an Impressionist-like portrait. “This is not about being a Steve Jobs documentary or the definitive word on him. It’s our version of him.”
Through his flaws, Jobs’ humanity struggles to the surface.
“I played him with the utmost respect. I never tried to play him as a cruel person but as somebody who was passionate about his vision,” Fassbender says. “He pushed for the best, sometimes to the breaking point. But when you’re changing the world in such Teutonic kind of way, then maybe that’s what is required.”