What connects Jurassic Park and The Social Network?
Actor Joseph Mazzello played the young boy in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster and Dustin Moskovitz in David Fincher’s 2010 drama.
But for computer geeks, what this really shows is how we have come from UNIX:
…to status updates on Facebook:
> Jurassic Park and The Social Network at the IMDb
> UNIX and Facebook at Wikipedia
Sean Parker has given a revealing interview where he gives his views on The Social Network and his tensions with the filmmakers.
In the film, which charts the founding of Facebook, Parker (Justin Timberlake) becomes an important adviser to founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) before being let go after an incident at a party.
Zuckerberg has already disputed aspects of the film but in an interview with Slate, Parker not only reveals his feelings but discloses how Sony showed him an early cut of the film.
“Sony screened the film for me and a couple of friends, which was nice of them, given that they knew I’d hate it. My friends were up in arms at the end. They were screaming and one of them got drunk and started yelling at the woman from Sony, ‘He’s going to sue you! He’s going to sue you!’ and I’m like, ‘Shut the f**k up! Be quiet please. Let’s be dignified here.”
He then talks about director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin:
“I’m watching it and thinking this is really interesting. This character is definitely not me. It is a plot device created by Aaron Sorkin to tell the story that Aaron Sorkin wants to tell. At the same time I’m looking at David Fincher’s work [the film’s director] and saying this is brilliant and this guy has an obsessive devotion to accuracy.”
It seems there were tensions with Sorkin:
“My interactions with Sorkin were agonisingly weird. He is by far the weirdest person I have ever met. I had dinner with him and a few hours before I got an e-mail from his assistant saying, ‘Sean, this does not need to be a long conversation. Aaron is only going to use it to win your trust.’ ” He laughs loudly. “I went, ‘What? What is this guy thinking?'”
[The dinner turned out to be] “like the most phony, stilted conversation … It was as if he had scripted our conversation and when I deviated from the script, he came back to it.” I am laughing too much to eat as Parker builds up to his story’s punchline. “He was also twitching through the entire meal. Like uncontrollably twitching. Shaking in fact … I don’t think he won my trust.”
In addition he also gave an interview at the DLD conference in Germany with author Paulo Coelho where he talked about how his character was portrayed in the film:
> Review of The Social Network
> Mark Zuckerberg’s opinions on The Social Network
> /Film on the truth of The Social Network
> More on Sean Parker and Facebook at Wikipedia
One of the most impressive elements of The Social Network was the visual effects that allowed one actor to play twins.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were the twin brothers who claimed that Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) stole their idea for Facebook.
However, director David Fincher had a problem when he couldn’t find a pair of twins that matched the real world Harvard rowers.
So, a solution was hatched where a combination of visual effects and another fill-in actor (Josh Pence) was used to create the illusion.
A visual effects team from Lola (a company that specialises in human face and body manipulation) essentially painted a digital version of Hammer’s face on to Pence’s.
This video shows how they did it:
> Detailed explanation of the process at FX Guide
> Buy The Social Network on Blu-ray or DVD from Amazon UK
BAFTA have posted a series of backstage interviews from last nights awards, including backstage chats with Colin Firth, Tom Hooper, David Seidler, Aaron Sorkin and Sir Christopher Lee.
N.B. The sound in some of these clips isn’t exactly awards worthy as Edith Bowman’s microphone doesn’t appear to be working properly.
Just click on the following links:
DVD & BLU-RAY PICKS
The Social Network (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment): The story of the creation of Facebook and the subsequent legal battles between founders Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), Eduardo Severin (Andrew Garfield) and Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake).
Directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, it is one of the outsatanding films of the past year and comes with an array of in-depth features. [Read the full review here]
The Illusionist (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment): Director Sylvian Chomet’s latest animated film is based on an unproduced script by Jacques Tati and is about a struggling magician in 1950s Scotland who meets a young woman convinced he is a real magician.
Superbly crafted, it features some wonderful visuals, including a gorgeous period recreation of Edinburgh. With hardly any dialogue it plays like a silent movie and the elegiac tone is incredibly moving. (Sadly there is no Blu-ray release in the UK just yet).