30 November 2010

A Tale of Two Harvards




Justin here. By now most people have either seen The Social Network, or decided you didn't want to see this year's best picture front runner. It's a great film, whether or not it follows the facts of how Facebook was created is another story that will be debated as long as Mark Zuckerberg is a private citizen. I've recently read the book which inspired the film, Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires, and noticed a few things the readers/viewers should take into account. According to the author he was never able to get an interview with Zuckerberg himself. The accidental billionaire apparently never called him back.


That may have been a mistake on Zuckerberg's part, or maybe not.There are sections of the book that are blatantly noted to be pure speculation, such as how he hacked different dorm's facebooks by breaking in and hooking up his laptop while hiding under a desk, in order to get his facemash.com site launched. Maybe the flaw with this book is that everyone who has a stake in bad PR for Zuckerberg was interviewed for this book, but no one from the Zuckerberg camp threw in their two cents. That said, this book is highly entertaining, and can be pretty funny from time to time.

More after the jump



Maybe it's Kanye's anthem Power in the trailer that makes this movie seem like a frantic hunt for power from the get go, or maybe it's Trent Reznor's score for the film along with Aaron Sorkin's rapid fire, Bringing Up Baby style dialogue that presents necessary urgency.  But that same frantic sense is mirrored in the book even though there's not a whole lot of actual dialogue except for the silent ruminations of Eduardo Severin and Tyler Winklevoss.  Mark Zuckerberg is always looked at from an outside perspective, and not even his closest "friend" Eduardo seems to really know what he is thinking.

Both are Hip Dudes
The Accidental Billionares is written in the same vein as In Cold Blood or Disco Bloodbath a.k.a. Party Monster.  The only difference here is that as far as we can see, no murders were committed during the founding of Facebook.  It's a book that is highly entertaining, and just outside the realm of reality.  But really the founding of Facebook probably wouldn't be as exciting if told absent narrative flourishes.

More and more, and this maybe more due to the Vanity Fair article on him that came out two months ago, Sean Parker is the most interesting character of the book and film.  He's portrayed as a devilish figure, tempting Zuckerberg with the possibilities of a life of excess if he will go with him down his road through Silicon Valley.  The thing is, he's a small guy, prone to allergic reactions and seemingly self absorbed and self deprecating at the same time.  He is always dressed for success in the newest fashions, and in the book and film always paranoid that shadowy corporate figures are following his every move.  That just might be true.  But this is the guy who brought us Napster 11 years ago, and if it weren't for that we probably wouldn't have iPhones today.  He's also a board member on a site/mobile app I like to use called Gowalla which I find to be more interesting and fun than Foursquare (Side note, the state of Arkansas is the first state to partner with Gowalla).

It was the spring of 2005 when my university first got theFacebook.com, which is probably why I still call it the Facebook (which people younger than me have since chided me for).  My friends at more exclusive universities had been on for several months always speaking of this thing that I didn't quite understand, I still thought Myspace was cool at that point.  Five and a half years later almost no one uses Myspace and almost everyone I know except for a few people I know of who refuse to be on it are using Facebook.  Whether or not sections of the film and book are fiction, there is still some truth to it.  Especially the sections about the Winklevoss twins, they were on the press junket for the film lauding it.

Over halfway through the book is when differences between it and the film stop to pop up and I'm not going to ruin it for those who want to read the book.  However if you're interested in cyber-entrepreneurs I suggest you watch last year's documentary We Live in Public.  I'm including a trailer here, but I must warn you there is some NSFW language.



The Winklevoss Twins Rowing Crew
These types of people are fascinating and that's why we're so interested, even if their life stories are turning more into myth.  In the 24 hour news cycle these individuals aren't going to, even with their billions of dollars, be able to create constant news from their daily lives. Even the film cuts out the uninteresting bits of the book, which is smart film making.  I didn't realize that the Winklevoss twins launched their website, ConnectU, maybe because I was already on Facebook and they were too late to the game themselves or maybe because my university wasn't even on their radar.  Allegedly Zuckerberg hacked it the summer after they launched it, according to documents found this past summer, after the book was written and production had wrapped on the film.  I assume that would have made a fun scene in the movie.

I'm going to leave you with two things to ponder:


1. The people in Hollywood Mezrich thanked at the end of his book are Dana Brunetti, Kevin Spacey, Mike Deluca, Scott Rudin and Aaron Sorkin.


2. Here is a video of the real Zuckerberg showing off his quaint house on Oprah.






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1 comment:

  1. that house is for sale
    http://gawker.com/5703971/rent-mark-zuckerbergs-house

    ReplyDelete

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