Were David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin right about Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network?

Showing all posts tagged: Aaron Sorkin

Were David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin right about Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network?

12 February 2025

American actor Jesse Eisenberg played Meta/Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, David Fincher’s 2010 dramatisation about the founding of Facebook. The screenplay, written by Aaron Sorkin, was based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book, The Accidental Billionaires.

Despite being part fiction, Zuckerberg was not impressed with his portrayal, saying Fincher and Sorkin were only accurate with his wardrobe. Think the hoodie, and those fuck you flip-flops.

For those who have not seen The Social Network, the now Meta CEO comes across as a brash, arrogant individual, who has virtually no regard for authority, and little respect for anyone other than himself. Particularly women, and the people he called friends. But Zuckerberg’s upset was understandable; few people would relish being presented in such a light.

Perhaps Fincher and Sorkin recognised that by way of one of the final lines in the film, delivered by Marylin Delpy (Rashida Jones), a lawyer acting for Zuckerberg, who said: “You’re not an asshole Mark, but you’re trying so hard to be one.” In other words, Fincher and Sorkin were trying to give a young Zuckerberg — as someone who’d become a little too obsessed with his ambitions for the the fledgling social network — the benefit of the doubt.

Some of Zuckerberg’s recent actions however may have removed any doubts. Revising Meta’s fact checking and content moderation policies, and scaling back the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruiting programs, among them. Some people may be thinking Fincher and Sorkin had nailed Zuckerberg’s character from the get go.

Even Eisenberg, whose portrayal of Zuckerberg was, I thought, pure class, seems to be of the same opinion. Speaking recently, while promoting his new film, A Real Pain, Eisenberg said he didn’t want to be thought of as being associated with the Meta CEO:

These people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed and what are they doing with it? Oh, they’re doing it to curry favour with somebody who’s preaching hate. That’s what I think… not as like a person who played in a movie. I think of it as somebody who is married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year.

Aaron Sorkin penning a sequel to The Social Network in response to January 6

3 May 2024

I squeezed in two screenings of The Social Network — the 2010 film by David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, dramatizing the founding of Facebook — on the day it was released in Australia. I went up to the local cinema the morning it opened, so I could write about it here, then returned to the same cinema for an evening viewing.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m no fan of Facebook itself, but various trailers, and the pre-opening hype, had me excited. Facebook was once a start-up, a small business, and the dramatization of the early days promised to be a doozy. The movie sits in my home library now, and I still look forward to rolling it out once or twice a year.

Even today, I still wait in anticipation for the night-club scene, where Justin Timberlake’s character Sean Parker, utters the line this is our time. The track playing during the scene, Sound Of Violence, by Dennis De Laat, is still on my Spotify favourites playlist.

There’s no two ways: I’m a fan of The Social Network.

And news the other day that the film’s co-screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, was penning a sequel, saw me getting euphoric all over again. But I suspect the sequel, of “some kind”, will strike a far more sombre tone than the original. This because Sorkin believes Facebook played some part in the 2021, January 6 insurrection, in the United States:

Sorkin would not answer why he blamed Facebook for Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, but he teased: “You’re going to need to buy a movie ticket.” “I’m trying [to write a movie about it],” Sorkin elaborated. “Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible.”

I wonder if the original cast, Jesse Eisenberg (as Mark Zuckerberg), and Andrew Garfield (as Eduardo Saverin), among them, would reprise their earlier roles? It’d make for a great opportunity to catch up with some of the key players, and see what they’re up to nowadays. It might also add a lighter touch to what could otherwise be sullen proceedings.

As such, I see a role for the Winklevoss twins here. They’ve been busy since The Social Network days. In addition to rowing in the 2008 Olympics, they founded a cryptocurrency exchange, and a venture capital company. But that’s not all. They also formed a band, Mars Junction, which they describe as “a hard-hitting rock band”.

Check out this short clip of them performing at a gig about two years ago. Perhaps, in the proposed sequel, it could be imagined the Winklevoss’ had bought a house next door to Zuckerberg’s, and both parties find themselves in conflict again. This time though, over loud Mars Junction band practice sessions that annoy the hell out of Zuckerberg.

Of course, I can’t see that happening, but I can dream. Whatever, I’ll be looking out for the sequel once it is released.

Being the Ricardos, by Aaron Sorkin

15 December 2021

Being the Ricardos (trailer), by American playwright and filmmaker Aaron Sorkin, brings the life of late comedian Lucille Ball to the big screen. While early reviews of the film – which opened in Australian cinemas last week – have so far been mixed, Australian actor Nicole Kidman portrayal of Ball has been praised by some critics. Simran Hans, for example, writing for The Guardian, describes Kidman as “brilliant.”