# The Social Network (2010) | Ep. 42 - Part 1

An episode of [All The Right Movies](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1471502633), 21 Jun 2024, 1 h 28 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO9714887276.mp3

A film about people sitting at computers shouldn't be this gripping. David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin made sure it was. John, Westy, and Matt begin the story. In Part 1 we cover the film's opening, director David Fincher, the cast, and the second act — including Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg, Sorkin's machine-gun dialogue, and the dorm-room origins of a company that ate the world. The lawsuits and betrayals are still piling up. Part 2 settles the account: crew, finale, reception, legacy. Out now. Connect with ATRM: To join our fantastic community of film fans, support what we do, access our archive, listen to exclusive episodes, and a whole lot more, become an ATRM patron: Join the ATRM Community We're available on any podcast platform: Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify YouTube: Subscribe to our channelWe're across all major social channels too: Twitter: @ATRightMovies Instagram: @allthe_rightmovies Facebook: Join our movie group Bluesky: @alltherightmovies.com TikTok: @alltherightmovies Website: alltherightmovies.com

## Transcript

[0:04] All the old movies think I've come up with something.
[0:07] That looks good. That looks really good.
[0:09] I've got. 2200 hits within two hours. 22,000 you made.
[0:15] The. Facebook $1,000,000 isn't cool.
[0:19] You know what's cool? You a billion dollars.
[0:23] You're being accused of breaching security, violating
[0:26] individual privacy. Your best friend is suing you
[0:29] for $600 million. I didn't know that, tell me
[0:32] more. The Social Network was released
[0:38] in 2010 and became an instant modern classic.
[0:41] David Fincher and Aaron Saukins telling of the story behind
[0:44] social media giant Facebook. The film is an exploration of
[0:47] loyalty, status, class and power.
[0:49] My name is John, and the gentleman of Harvard with me are
[0:53] Westy. If you guys were the inventors
[0:55] of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook.
[0:57] And Matt, drop the the just Facebook.
[1:01] It's cleaner. From Harvard to Henley, all the
[1:04] right movies are talking friendship.
[1:06] Facebook and Fincher. Lawyer up, listen up because
[1:09] we're coming back for everything.
[1:32] Hello and welcome to All the Right Movies, pretentious douche
[1:36] bags in Fuck You flip flops and a podcast on classic and hit
[1:40] films. Yep, you're part of my
[1:42] attention. You have the minimum.
[1:45] Well, this episode it is a bit of a doozy.
[1:47] It is. It is.
[1:49] It's David Fincher and Mark Zuckerberg together at last as
[1:52] we talk of the 21st century thriller ride that is The Social
[1:55] Network. Indeed.
[1:57] Yep. Before we get logged on though,
[1:59] should we plug our own online endeavours on Patreon?
[2:02] Why not? Yep.
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[2:07] but yeah, yeah, not yet. Don't play your violin just yet.
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[2:15] can help support what we do by becoming an ATRM Patron.
[2:18] Patrons get access to our bonus podcast episode called Double
[2:21] Feature and access to our whole podcast archive full of bonus
[2:25] episodes and archived ATRM Classic episodes.
[2:28] Absolutely. There's more content in there
[2:31] than you can shake a stick at now.
[2:32] Yep. So if you like David Fincher, we
[2:34] have Fight Club 7 and Zodiac. Wow, I'm getting there.
[2:39] Or if you're a big fan of billionaire tech Bros, Ex
[2:42] Machina as well. It's.
[2:44] The only one, though very small. Genre.
[2:46] But we. Do cover it.
[2:48] Niche. Very niche, yeah.
[2:50] Loads of other stuff in there as well, so to find out more visit
[2:52] patreon.com/all the Right Movies or you can subscribe directly on
[2:56] Apple Podcast now as well. Yeah, you don't even need an
[2:59] exclusive Harvard e-mail. No, no, it's.
[3:01] Straight in there. Yeah.
[3:02] Just click subscribe. Great.
[3:04] We lived on farms and we lived in cities, and now we live on
[3:06] the Internet. Or we do, anyway.
[3:09] Yeah, true. Back to today though, and it is
[3:11] the social network. So why are we talking about this
[3:15] one Westy? Well, I mean, it's pretty
[3:17] important, isn't it? It's a pretty important film.
[3:19] Westy, what is that? Is that it?
[3:22] Tisk, I've got a Really. Fucking freak out.
[3:26] I thought somebody was in the room there.
[3:29] I would do with the Babadook. Anyway, yeah, it's a really
[3:32] important one this, I think it's a film about Facebook that's not
[3:36] about Facebook. Yeah, it's a film about the
[3:38] social network that's not about the social network.
[3:40] It's about human network. It's about acceptance, it's
[3:42] about change. It's about the human connection.
[3:44] It's about the human condition. It's about ambition.
[3:46] It's got all of them themes running through it.
[3:48] I think it's a really important film.
[3:50] Lots of people have said it's one of the best films of the
[3:53] 2000 and 10s, which I'm think we'll get into.
[3:55] But this one came out in 2010, so to say that it stood the test
[3:58] of time for 10 years. A film that starts with The
[4:01] White Stripes and ends with The Beatles.
[4:02] Can't go wrong. Yeah, I mean, that's straight.
[4:05] That's not really a problem. At all.
[4:07] That's how good this film is. We're going to dive into it.
[4:10] There's lots to talk about. I'm really looking forward to
[4:12] this one. Yeah, similar for me.
[4:14] I remember this being released vividly at the time.
[4:17] I mean, I'm taking notes of any David Fincher film anyway, but
[4:20] the subject matter here pulled me in even more than usual.
[4:23] I'm not surprised. Yeah, well, I mean, the Internet
[4:25] is maybe the most significant development of the last 50
[4:28] years, if not more, made the world a much smaller place.
[4:31] And maybe the part of the Internet that's impacted things
[4:34] most has been social media, for better or worse.
[4:37] And for better or worse, the biggest and most successful
[4:39] social media platform is Facebook.
[4:42] I mean, whether you think all that's a good thing or a bad
[4:44] thing is a different discussion. But what I think most of us
[4:46] probably can't agree on is that it's beyond belief that a bunch
[4:50] of 20 year old college roommates who generally barely knew the
[4:53] Rustles from their elbows managed to change the world.
[4:55] Yeah, yeah. I mean, previous generations got
[4:58] Elvis and The Beatles. We got a couple of Bill Gates.
[5:01] Yeah, we've got this shit at the end of the stick there, didn't
[5:03] we? Definitely, yeah.
[5:05] But the founding of Facebook, it is a pretty fascinating series
[5:08] of events to adapt for a movie, especially when you add in the
[5:10] character drama of friendships and lawsuits.
[5:13] And when I saw The Social Network, I did love it
[5:15] instantly, but not just because of the subject matter.
[5:17] So we're going to talk about what we like about the film,
[5:20] maybe one or two things we don't like so much.
[5:23] Maybe. Yeah, we'll see how it measures
[5:24] up to that real life story. And any Fincher production has
[5:27] some twists and turns along the way, often funny ones, so this
[5:31] should be a great one to get into I think.
[5:32] Should be let's do 99 takes of this, we'll be fine.
[5:38] And Matt, working with you was like dating a Stairmaster.
[5:40] So yes, you're the perfect guy. You talk about the social
[5:43] network. I'd use that one on him and not
[5:45] me. I would have been so.
[5:46] Upset with someone we're getting it.
[5:48] This before I came out when it was just announced I remember
[5:51] thinking why? Why make a film pub to start a
[5:54] Facebook like? Why, Yeah.
[5:57] Yeah, but then I saw the trailer, you know, the trailer.
[5:59] Was that like coral version of Creep?
[6:02] Creep. Yeah.
[6:03] And I just thought that looks so much more interesting than I
[6:06] thought it was going to. That's the first and last time
[6:08] that was cool. By the way, definitely because
[6:11] you see it and you go, right, OK, that was a very unexpected
[6:15] way to get into this story. And it is one that resonates
[6:17] with a lot of people. It is quite divisive.
[6:20] I'm divided on some aspects of it.
[6:22] Some of it really holds up. Some of it doesn't much, I
[6:25] think. But it absolutely falls into the
[6:27] category of it's a film that it was high time before we talked
[6:30] about this one. Yeah.
[6:32] So The Social Network was produced by Columbia Pictures,
[6:35] Relativity Media, Scott Rudin Productions, Michael De Luca
[6:38] Productions and Trigger St. Productions, distributed by Sony
[6:41] Pictures Releasing and released on October the 1st, 2010.
[6:45] Filmed in 23 locations across Massachusetts, California, MD
[6:49] and England, the film was directed by David Fincher,
[6:52] written by Aaron Sorkin, based on Bed Mezrick's book The
[6:55] Accidental Billionaires, and stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark
[6:58] Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Savarin, Justin
[7:01] Timberlake as Sean Parker and Army Hammer as Cameron and Tyler
[7:05] Winklevoss. Yeah, or the Winklevi, as I'll
[7:09] be calling them. Yes.
[7:10] Winklevi. Oh my God.
[7:13] Let's get wired in then, should we?
[7:14] Let's do it. Yep, it's First off at
[7:16] university 2003, as we talked, the beginning of the Social
[7:20] Network. The Social Network opens like a
[7:48] narrative runaway train doesn't let up for two hours, and we're
[7:51] starting with the opening act. The introductions to some of the
[7:54] key characters in Sean Parker and the Winklevi are coming, but
[7:57] we're starting at the start I. Can't believe this is 2 hours
[8:00] this film. I know, it's crazy.
[8:02] That's ridiculous. It's like a pint of Guinness in
[8:04] a short class. So a Massachusetts bar, The
[8:10] Thirsty Scholar, is where we meet Mark Zuckerberg, and he's
[8:13] not having a great night. No, after Erika Albright, the
[8:16] girl he's dating played by Rooney Mara, breaks up with him,
[8:19] Mark goes back to his Harvard dorm and drinks, blogs and sets
[8:22] up a website comparing the attractiveness of the girls on
[8:25] campus. Face smash as you do.
[8:28] Yeah, great idea. He doesn't take getting dubbed
[8:32] Great. To be honest, Matt, no it
[8:34] doesn't. How is the opening for you?
[8:37] I mean, I think we've all been there to some extent.
[8:39] We've all had horrendous dates. Well, maybe some extent, but not
[8:42] this extent. Well, that's it.
[8:44] You know, I was going to disqualify that.
[8:47] I haven't been a one that goes down in flames quite like this
[8:51] one does. This is why John got into
[8:53] Corden. I want to do.
[8:56] That I mean, you want this and you think this Zuckerberg fella,
[8:59] is he an alien? Because there seems to be
[9:01] nothing to him at all that indicates he's listening to
[9:04] Erica, or if he is, he's not reading the intention of what
[9:07] she's saying. And ever then she does say he
[9:10] takes us some form of either criticism or way to assassinate
[9:13] her character. Like that huge dig he has at her
[9:16] college that she's going to. Yeah, awful.
[9:19] And he clearly has no idea how to navigate human relationships
[9:23] or discussions, which is obviously just massive for her.
[9:26] Like her character goes from trying to play it nice at the
[9:30] beginning to complete bewilderment as to where the
[9:33] hell this conversation is gone, just to outright anger at the
[9:36] end. And when he goes want to get
[9:39] some food, like as if that's going to fix everything E
[9:42] etcetera. And then he says the worst thing
[9:45] you could possibly say in this situation.
[9:47] Wait, settle down. Like never ever say that in the
[9:51] middle of an argument unless you wanted to go on nuclear.
[9:53] It's the pin out of the grenade right there.
[9:55] You're in trouble. Which this one it obviously does
[9:58] go on nuclear. Yeah, it's just high confidence,
[10:00] low self esteem, isn't he? And real lack of Yeah, any kind
[10:04] of social skill whatsoever. Yeah.
[10:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, First off, how did this
[10:09] guy get this woman to go out with him?
[10:11] No, he's punching like she's like a dream and he's a
[10:14] nightmare. If ever wanted to see a prequel,
[10:16] it's Mark asking Eric out. How did he manage it?
[10:19] But. As nobody, it's just like a
[10:22] thrilling whirlwind of a break up.
[10:24] It feels like Aaron Sorkin's thought.
[10:25] I want to get all the set about the way for Mark in the 1st 5
[10:28] minutes. All of his motivations are here.
[10:30] Erica his regret over losing her is dislike of people who roar.
[10:33] Crew foreshadows the Winklevi. Eduardo gets mentioned as a good
[10:37] businessman. Marks just like a frack clubs
[10:39] gets mentioned. All of that's used later.
[10:41] So strong writing straight out-of-the-box.
[10:44] That's the direction I think Fincher plays it relatively
[10:47] simple. I mean, the lighting is
[10:49] fantastic, but over the shoulder mid shots for the most part.
[10:52] That's not a criticism because with the dialogue coming like
[10:55] 1,000,000 miles an hour, you can't do with Northern style 360
[10:58] round the actors. It'll blow your head off.
[11:00] No, but as a piece of writing from Sorkin, this is like a
[11:03] master at work. There's a musicality to the
[11:06] dialogue. I think the way that he uses
[11:07] like rhythm and repetition and real rhythm to it.
[11:10] Yeah, as I listened to a Michael song.
[11:13] Say listen to Graceland. But I love the bit when Mark's
[11:17] answering Erica's questions out of order.
[11:19] Have you seen that to Ronnie's mastermind sketch where
[11:21] especially the subjects answering the previous question,
[11:24] Yeah. Yeah.
[11:26] Really good. It looks great.
[11:28] The acting is great. I mean, if you want to set up a
[11:30] character as having an unlikable sight to their personality,
[11:32] yeah, just show them upsetting Rooney Maura don't.
[11:34] Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely.
[11:36] Unforgivable. One of the great dialogue
[11:38] opening is one of the great character in draws and probably
[11:40] one of the best breakup scenes all in one for me, yeah.
[11:43] Yeah, and I think it's really cool with Ball and Biscuit
[11:45] coming over the Universal logo and you're just like, yeah, I
[11:48] mean, this is a Fincher film and it's just like that Blues,
[11:50] right? Yeah.
[11:51] But I think there's just a loads more to that because the third
[11:53] verse of that after the guitar solo, when they actually go for
[11:56] it and start disagreeing, there's that kick off in the
[11:59] background and the guitar solo comes in.
[12:01] And then the first after that is now read it in the newspaper,
[12:04] ask your girlfriends and see if they know that my strength is
[12:07] tenfold, girl. I'll let you see it if you want
[12:10] to before you go. Lovely.
[12:12] So it's basically ask your girlfriends.
[12:13] They're going to tell you what's going on.
[12:15] It's going to be in the newspapers.
[12:16] I'm a really powerful guy because you just think, well,
[12:18] Finches put that in there for the riff at the start over the
[12:20] Universal logo just to make it cool.
[12:23] But there's so much more to it. Yeah.
[12:25] The words in that as well, it's delivered quite like stream of
[12:27] consciousness, which is kind of how Mark talks as well.
[12:30] So it fits in with that. Erika Albright, though she
[12:32] didn't actually exist, she's just created for the film.
[12:35] And the real Zuckerberg was already dating Priscilla Chan at
[12:38] this point, who we went on to marry in 2012, and they're still
[12:41] married to this day. So Sorkin created Mark's
[12:44] motivation for creating Facebook of being done by a girl.
[12:48] Right, that's interesting. Yeah, Zuckerberg said that
[12:50] Hollywood can't understand that people might sometimes build
[12:52] things just because they're like building things.
[12:55] And he's right. But that wouldn't make for a
[12:57] very compelling film, to be fair.
[12:59] Just some guy building a website.
[13:00] Yeah, just going. Over and just doing some Lego
[13:05] pissed doing the Death Star night class.
[13:09] Rooney Mara said that at 99 takes of the opening scene and
[13:12] Fincher only had her for four days so the filmed all of her
[13:15] scenes first. This was shot in the first few
[13:17] days production. I think it was the first scene
[13:19] that is in the whole production to be honest.
[13:21] Yeah, I think it was. I wouldn't have been surprised
[13:23] if you'd said it was the last scene they filmed because, I
[13:25] mean, they're both brilliant. Yeah, first day of filming.
[13:28] And Eisenberg's like wired in from the star. 99 takes.
[13:32] Comes out all guns blazing. Brilliant.
[13:34] Wouldn't you have just done 100 though?
[13:36] You would have done, surely. Just do one.
[13:38] More. One more, yeah.
[13:40] But I think Finch is just like, no, he doesn't conform to
[13:43] anything. Doesn't even conform to fucking
[13:44] numbers. He doesn't care.
[13:47] Yeah, and one of the reasons he took 99 takes is because
[13:50] Finching knew he wanted the whole scene to be exactly 7
[13:53] minutes and 22 seconds long. Eisenberg said the deal would
[13:57] take and Fincher would say brilliant.
[13:59] But it's 40 seconds too long. If you think you're going a bit
[14:02] too fast, you're not going fast enough.
[14:05] George Lucas, Faster Red Boy Ted.
[14:10] Slower and more boring. But that does kind of make sense
[14:15] because in the screenplay I think they one page usually
[14:17] equates to about one minute. Screen time doesn't.
[14:19] It a minute. Yeah, normally.
[14:20] The script for The Social Network is 162 pages but the
[14:23] film is 120 minutes, so the racing along.
[14:26] Wow, OK. This is story behind that which
[14:29] Fincher and so can sat with a stopwatch, right?
[14:31] And Fincher basically said this organ read through it and he
[14:34] timed every scene and said it needs to be 40 seconds shorter
[14:37] basically because that's what Aaron read out.
[14:39] So that's what it is. Yeah, he's directing with a
[14:41] stopwatch. It's fucking outrage.
[14:44] So I'll move on to probably one of the most Fincher parts of the
[14:48] film where he comes back, that music kicks in.
[14:50] There's a montage available. Yes, love it.
[14:53] Great. I've got a lot of my notes from
[14:56] an amazing documentary that's on YouTube called Making the
[14:58] Masterpiece. Right.
[14:59] It's fantastic. Yeah, it's.
[15:00] Lots of behind the scenes stuff and it's just fantastic.
[15:04] He walks up and he said we're going to do fifty of these,
[15:07] we're going to do 50 left and right.
[15:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really.
[15:10] Is that? Yeah.
[15:10] So the short fifty of them that. Yeah, Left, right.
[15:13] Different set up, different location.
[15:15] And you can tell because the amount that he puts into this is
[15:17] the junkster position between what Mark does and what he's
[15:21] talking about. He's talking about farm animals.
[15:22] And then you see all the girls getting cattled up and taken off
[15:25] to Harvard. He's talks about comparisons
[15:28] between 2 girls. There's two girls in every scene
[15:30] at Harvard being compared to each other over the poker table
[15:33] or dancing. He's actually socializing what
[15:36] they're doing privately. And he's put that in a montage
[15:40] and it's just basically the Harvard process for everybody to
[15:43] see. And that's why it kind of
[15:44] backfires for him. It's just the natural order of
[15:47] things and it just brings that into account.
[15:50] And just the way that he talks about Corden makes it sound like
[15:53] a fucking bank heist. It's so.
[15:54] More Yeah, it's. Amazing.
[15:56] And I can just imagine like it's his John's wet dream.
[15:59] He's like watching this one. Finally.
[16:01] I'm fucking cool. I got everything.
[16:04] Yeah. I'm just cool.
[16:05] Now I can do all this stuff and I'm not a Dick about it.
[16:11] You think this couldn't get any more nerdy?
[16:12] Right now? I'm just going to write a
[16:13] fucking equation on the window like a beautiful.
[16:16] Mind. Why is he right out the window?
[16:18] Because it's cool as fuck. Yeah, it just makes sense
[16:22] because then you can focus, pull through the window, it looks
[16:24] great. The music ramps up.
[16:25] Let's write it. Imagine that it just rides you
[16:28] something off The Simpsons. You know where all the nerds are
[16:29] sitting around that. Yeah, let's write it.
[16:31] It's. Just not cool at all.
[16:35] But finches. Look, I'm cool as fucking ice,
[16:37] Pops. You guys are all nerds, but I'm
[16:39] going to make you look cool as fuck for two hours.
[16:41] And I've got Trent Rez now. I've got out against Ross, I've
[16:44] got Aaron Sogan, I've got Jeff Cronenbo, I've got all the boys
[16:46] here. And we're going to make you look
[16:47] like fucking legends. And they're like, yeah, OK.
[16:50] It's so cool. It's so well played out, it's so
[16:53] beautifully paced, it's so energetic.
[16:55] And it's about coding a website that compares one girl against
[17:00] the other one. That's it.
[17:02] I know, it's crazy. It's fucking crazy, but it's
[17:04] fucking genius. Yeah, it's the first offend many
[17:07] montages in the film, isn't it? Yeah, they're all great, but
[17:10] this might be my favorite. I'm not surprised.
[17:16] It does set that tone that Fincher created the whole film
[17:18] having, I think. Like, you're seeing Westie a bit
[17:20] of an edge to it. Yeah.
[17:21] Like girls kissing, dancing in their underwear, playing strip
[17:23] poker. I love how he's just gone.
[17:25] A movie about Facebook. Well, I'm going to make it
[17:27] really sexy, obviously. Well, yeah, yeah, that's what he
[17:30] does. Though the lighting, superb, the
[17:31] crane shots circling over the students are great.
[17:34] And we'll talk in more detail about Trent Reznor and I guess
[17:37] Ross later. But the music, yeah, superb in
[17:39] motion. The tracks called in.
[17:41] Motion it is, yeah. We played at the Star.
[17:43] It works so well under that montage.
[17:45] Really, really banging. Yeah.
[17:47] Yeah. I mean, narratively, how marked
[17:48] with Erica is just outrageous. 34B as in barely anything there
[17:52] on the Internet written in England.
[17:54] That's unforgivable. She's.
[17:55] Insecurity, so, and Andy's immaturity as well.
[17:58] It's not vindictive, he's just not equipped to deal with it.
[18:01] No, it's just lashing out. Yeah.
[18:02] Yeah. And that shot that we gave Erica
[18:04] after she reads the blog, she got tears in her eyes.
[18:06] That hits me every time. So painful.
[18:08] Though. Yeah, it's awful.
[18:09] Launch Rooney Mara's career and she's in 2 1/2 scenes.
[18:12] I'm not surprised. She is great.
[18:14] She's fantastic. Yeah, the first time we meet
[18:16] Eduardo as well. I like how quickly they set him
[18:18] up. The first time we're seeing he
[18:19] kind of runs up the dorm stairs and then swings the door open
[18:21] it. Yeah.
[18:22] So he's like a man who wants to go places.
[18:23] Yeah. And then we'll see him with
[18:24] Mark. He doesn't want to give him the
[18:26] ranking algorithm. No, but Markley got wrapped on
[18:28] his little finger. Yeah, that never really changes.
[18:30] Yeah, but the reason he's there, so genuine, he's like, I'm here
[18:33] for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[18:34] The friends. The genuine friends, yeah.
[18:35] Yeah, I think Eduardo was more of a friend of Mark than Mark,
[18:38] this model obviously, as we'll find out.
[18:40] Yeah. Oh yeah, brilliant montage.
[18:42] Not before since has a grown man throwing his he fit on the
[18:45] Internet looked so cool. Nah, never, and it never will,
[18:48] so stop trying. So shortly after this is when
[18:54] Mark and Eduardo put Facebook Live and Eduardo says you
[18:57] praying and Sark and said Mark was devening, which is Jewish
[19:01] prayer. And he first wrote are you
[19:03] devening into the script? But thought some people might
[19:06] not know what that meant. So he changed it, right?
[19:08] I mean, that's used to me. I thought he was asleep.
[19:10] I know, yeah. Oh, let me rephrase that.
[19:14] I wish he'd been asleep. Erica doesn't exist but is based
[19:17] on a real person. On the night the real Zuckerberg
[19:20] set up Face Smash, he was blogging like in the film.
[19:23] One of his blog posts said Jessica Alona is a bitch.
[19:26] Salton said he changed it as there was no need to embarrass
[19:29] her anymore. Definitely not.
[19:30] I mean, that's fair enough. Yeah, the real Jessica Alona has
[19:33] never came forward. Really.
[19:34] I mean, I don't blame her. No, I wouldn't.
[19:36] What was his play on words? Jessica is a loner now.
[19:39] Whatever. Not even better that.
[19:41] Would have been his. Partner.
[19:42] Wouldn't it like really shit paddle like that?
[19:45] Something that isn't accurate in the film is that the film tells
[19:47] us that Face Smash had 22,000 visitors in two hours.
[19:50] It was actually more like 450, right?
[19:53] And the real Faith Marsh had men and women on it, not just women.
[19:57] So it wasn't quite as sexist as the film makes out.
[19:59] So a bit of autistic license there, right?
[20:01] OK, interesting. They had to streamline it
[20:03] somehow though. Yeah, yeah.
[20:05] And as part of that montage, there was a scene where two guys
[20:07] were on the site, and one of them says, wow, she's so hot.
[20:11] And the other says, of course she is, she's an ugly Portman.
[20:14] And Fincher cut it out as he said he preferred it being more
[20:16] vague in the deposition when Diffie says doesn't matter about
[20:20] who the movie S Harford was. Yeah, yeah.
[20:23] She was there between 1999 and 2003 studying psychology,
[20:26] Natalie Portman. And apparently, when you found
[20:28] out that Aaron Sorkin was writing a script about Facebook,
[20:31] she threw a dinner party and invited him to it so she'd give
[20:33] him lots of insider info on Harvard.
[20:36] Oh nice. Right.
[20:37] She didn't know the lads personally though.
[20:39] Mark and Eduardo no imagine it was here they took the toilet
[20:44] everybody be off setting up websites the.
[20:46] Phantom Menace indeed. And that is our opening.
[20:50] Bad breakups and music montages. We've met some of our main
[20:54] characters. Time to meet the rest, I think.
[20:57] Absolutely. Face Smash is soon taken down,
[21:01] but as a result, doors open for Mark.
[21:04] First, Thailand Cameron Winklevoss and their sidekick
[21:07] Devi Narendra asked Mark to help create their social network site
[21:10] Connect You, which Mark builds himself and calls the Facebook.
[21:13] Then along comes Napster founder Sean Parker.
[21:16] In the middle of all of it is our first sight of the
[21:18] depositions where Mark's being sued by every man and the dog,
[21:22] it seems. Another montage match.
[21:25] How's this one play out? I really like this one.
[21:28] I think there's some very good visual storytelling.
[21:30] Hey? Because it's not just the litany
[21:33] of excuses and emails that tells you how Mark is ignoring the
[21:36] winkle by, it's the fact that it gets into cut with Eduardo being
[21:39] integrated into the Phoenix club.
[21:41] So tells already like their paths are already diverging.
[21:44] Yeah. And it's basically Mark against
[21:47] everyone. And it's just typical behaviour
[21:49] of him when Eduardo turns up and he says, oh, I made the second
[21:52] cut. You should be proud of that.
[21:54] Don't worry if you don't go any further.
[21:56] I mean, yeah, thanks for that. Huge support in the evidence.
[21:59] Mean it's just mountain up against him that he's been
[22:01] playing everyone. And during that deposition, you
[22:03] seem scribbling and you presume that must be not in his defense,
[22:07] like everyone saying something he's trying to down until you
[22:10] get that job where he just casually flips the page over and
[22:12] you can say no, no notes. It's.
[22:14] Doodling. Yeah, just doodling.
[22:16] That's how much contempt he has for everything going on.
[22:20] Brilliant. Shows everyone it's great.
[22:22] Yeah, the papers so. Yeah.
[22:24] Yeah, well, the opening gave us someone rambling on the Internet
[22:27] and then here someone reading someone's emails out.
[22:29] Cancelling meetings has never been so riveting, I don't think.
[22:32] Yeah. The way they tell the back story
[22:35] of how the Winklevi got involved and they fall out with Mark by
[22:37] cutting between the present in the depositions and the
[22:40] flashbacks on the campus, that's breathtaking.
[22:42] That that's fantastic. Past years of dialogue will
[22:44] often start in one time in place and then finishing the other.
[22:47] It's done so well. They barely knows what they're
[22:49] even doing. And that kind of cross cutting
[22:51] happens all the way through the film.
[22:52] And I think you just inject such an energy into what another
[22:55] filmmaker's hands could have been.
[22:57] Really dry. Yeah, yeah.
[22:58] And I like how they suddenly show us how Mark and Edward was.
[23:00] Lies are starting to be affected, too.
[23:02] They suddenly become beer magnets when Christine Allen
[23:04] started chatting them up at the Bill Gates seminar.
[23:07] Yeah, that ground level shot when we cut to the bathroom in
[23:09] the pan with Christine Edward with legs.
[23:11] So she dragged him into the cubicle.
[23:13] That's a great shot, that brilliant.
[23:15] And the Bill Gates we see, given the speech he's played by Steve
[23:18] Sayers, who is actually a professional Bill Gates look
[23:21] like. Brilliant.
[23:22] But the voice is dubbed, it's not his own voice.
[23:25] And Sighs also appeared in two of the films, Nothing So Strange
[23:28] in 2002 and Robo Shark in 2015. Oh great for them.
[23:34] Both as Bill Gates, yeah, I want to pass me by so.
[23:37] Was the Bill Gates voice interpreter actually brought in
[23:40] to do the sound? It's really venture that, isn't
[23:43] it? Why is Bill Gates in the film
[23:45] called Robo Shark? Why not micro shark?
[23:49] I can imagine and. Then when they leave the
[23:50] seminar, Eduardo and Mark and those three fanboys are all over
[23:53] them. Seeing great job with the
[23:54] Facebook. Yeah, it's a good scene, but how
[23:56] does that guy not recognize Bill Gates?
[23:58] Yeah, yeah. Did not come in late though, and
[24:00] he didn't have a clue what was going on.
[24:01] I've. Been watching Robo shark Yeah.
[24:04] Should have recognized them then and we'll go for the, said
[24:09] Stanford. Why do you think?
[24:11] And we'll cut to that. Amazing.
[24:12] I mean, this is the best Justin Timberlake's ever been on
[24:15] screen. Easy.
[24:16] Easily. I saw this now.
[24:18] So this guy's a fucking movie star.
[24:21] He's not a pop band anymore. No, because this is James Bond
[24:24] the next morning. Isn't it really?
[24:27] It's got all the suave, it's got all the sophistication.
[24:29] It's sleazy, but he's bizarrely likable and it really works and
[24:34] all the dialogue is just really sorgent and it's fantastic.
[24:37] And a big shout out to Dakota Johnson, who plays Amelia Ritter
[24:39] in the scene. She's brilliant, she's.
[24:41] Fucking brilliant because she could have just been just
[24:44] delivering the dialogue, but she doesn't.
[24:45] She does it with such a plume and really understands that she
[24:49] has to get her point across. Really playful with it.
[24:52] And that bit when she's coming out, I could have died.
[24:53] And he's like, how that's. Really funny.
[24:57] I'd love to say. That.
[24:59] But I can't just punch you in the face.
[25:01] Also, you said there was a snake in here.
[25:03] Like, what was your latest paneer?
[25:05] I love that line. That was that fantastic.
[25:08] And it's just exactly like Napster, just like, well, Sean
[25:11] Parker. But Napster.
[25:12] Pleased to meet you. Yeah, that dialogue is cool as
[25:15] fuck. It's really cutting.
[25:16] It's really cold. Yeah.
[25:18] It's such a brilliant scene to introduce a character way.
[25:21] He was really worried about it being underage, which, again, is
[25:23] a red flag for me. I don't care if you're worried
[25:25] about it or not. You should fucking know before.
[25:27] That point but. That comes up later in the film,
[25:29] so it's important, but it's kind of swept away.
[25:32] And his importance is, can I check my e-mail?
[25:34] Because that's what matters, being online and online presence
[25:37] matters. And I'm leaving a trail.
[25:39] And you're getting into his head in less than, what, 5 minutes
[25:43] again? And it's his genius writing from
[25:45] Sagan. But I'll see it again.
[25:46] Justin Timberlake has never been better than this scene, I don't
[25:50] think. No, I agree.
[25:51] I agree. I mean, the whole scene's
[25:52] basically one big piece of exposition that introduces Sean
[25:55] Parker, but it works because it's so entertaining.
[25:58] It is brilliant for know that he's confident, he's cocky, he's
[26:01] ladies man, he's observant. All things to become key to the
[26:04] plot later. And I agree Timberlake's a bit
[26:06] of a revelation. You're Sean for me.
[26:07] I think he's really good. And Dakota Johnson, effortlessly
[26:10] brilliant. Yeah.
[26:11] I don't think there's all that much in her character there, but
[26:14] she just brings it to life. She's really, really likable.
[26:17] You don't even know my name. Is it Stanford?
[26:19] That's a great. Joke so well done, but she's so
[26:23] cool about it and she knows it's not going to last.
[26:25] And she's like, I've just slept with Sean Parker.
[26:27] You slept on Sean Parker. I just wish she would have done
[26:29] more than that 50 Shades of Grey shit because she's I think she's
[26:33] just much better than that. Yeah, she seems it.
[26:35] Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
[26:36] Yeah. And when Sean comes across
[26:37] Facebook on Amy's computer, we see the original design for the
[26:40] site. Yeah.
[26:41] But there is a difference here. The head of banner has an image
[26:44] and mark in the background. In real life, it had Al Pacino.
[26:48] It is like a big trying to pass himself off with looking like Al
[26:52] Pacino. That's not going to wash.
[26:56] And the real Sean Parker didn't come across Facebook after
[26:59] having a one night stand. He was introduced to it by his
[27:01] roommate's girlfriend and she was studying at Stanford though,
[27:04] so that part's correct. Right.
[27:06] Yeah, this is a good example of changing things for dramatic
[27:09] reasons, I think for the better. Yeah, really good scene.
[27:12] But the Stanford students really just dressing clothes at how
[27:14] Stanford written all over them like Amy does.
[27:17] Yeah, they're doing films. Those where the branded thing.
[27:20] Yeah. Easy exposition, doesn't it?
[27:22] Yeah. What's it is?
[27:24] And yes, so this is the first time they will meet Sean Parker
[27:26] in the film. And apparently the studio wanted
[27:28] Jonah Hill, but Fincher didn't, right?
[27:31] Didn't Jonathan Groff audition as well?
[27:33] Jonathan Groff. He was later in Mindhunter,
[27:35] wasn't he? Yeah, that's the guy.
[27:36] So I think Fincher puts that in the back of his head and he's
[27:38] like, maybe that guy from Mindhunter maybe, yeah.
[27:40] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[27:41] Yeah, so instead, after auditions, former Instinct
[27:45] member and Prince of Pop Justin Timberlake was cast.
[27:48] How was he in the film? I mean, this scene to Malik is a
[27:51] lot more believable than the Jonah Hill would be.
[27:53] I think with Dakota Johnson, that wouldn't fly whatsoever.
[27:56] Fucking. Hilarious.
[27:58] Come on. Absolutely no way you believe
[28:01] that. I mean, Timberlake, this, I
[28:03] mean, by the end of the film, I'd really like to see him
[28:05] punched in the face repeatedly, which I think is the intention.
[28:08] It is. It's it's a great performance.
[28:10] There's not a lot of likable people in this film, and the
[28:13] fact that Park is probably the most testable by the end, I
[28:15] think that's tribute to us Timberlake brings to the role.
[28:18] I really like this performance. Yeah.
[28:21] Yeah. I mean, to be honest, it's not
[28:22] rare that we'll see pop stars who go into acting and can do
[28:24] it. Yeah.
[28:25] I mean, as well as Timberlake, Boy, Cher, Lady Gaga have all
[28:28] been successful. I think there's clearly some
[28:30] overlap in the kind of creative, performative skills maybe in the
[28:33] performance. Yeah.
[28:34] Except maybe Ed Sheeran, if you've seen him act.
[28:37] I think Game of Thrones, isn't he?
[28:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Terrible that.
[28:41] Just sing, Ed, you'll be fine. The haircut was worse than the
[28:43] performance if I'm honest. Ideally, don't even do that.
[28:46] Yeah, just as strong as one coordinate.
[28:48] Just cut it. Fred Reznor score.
[28:51] And we do hear and sync in the film as well.
[28:54] The scene where Mark goes to a meet with Sequoia Capital in his
[28:57] pajamas on the way there and Sean's caught the radio was
[28:59] playing and then sing song called Don't Stop.
[29:02] Right. Yeah, the M sync cinematic
[29:04] universe This then. This is it.
[29:07] Very small universe. Well, that moment in the film
[29:10] where Mark meets Sequoia and his PJS, that is based on reality,
[29:13] right? So the real Sean Parker had a
[29:15] grudge against Michael Moritz, who was the chairperson of
[29:17] Sequoia. So Zuckerberg went to a meeting
[29:19] with them in his pajamas and apparently presented the deck
[29:21] titled Top 10 Reasons You Should Not Invest in Facebook, which I
[29:26] guess you had to be there. Got a sense of humor?
[29:30] Sticking to the computers. Yeah, Timberlake was a bit
[29:33] bigger than the real Sean Parker, so lost about 15 lbs for
[29:35] the role, and he ran into the real park at an event before he
[29:39] started filming and said he'd like to get a norm a little bit,
[29:42] Parker told him. Don't bother, The guy you're
[29:44] playing is nothing like me at all and I think Timberlake just
[29:49] lost the way to look younger. Well, yeah, maybe.
[29:51] Yeah. Keep from the oldest of the main
[29:52] cast, I would think. Yeah, that was his main
[29:54] motivation was to look a bit younger.
[29:56] But I remember seeing an interview with the real Sean
[29:58] Parker at the time the film came out, where he was like, I just
[30:00] wish I was not cool, to be honest.
[30:02] Yeah, Amazing. Yeah.
[30:04] I think of all the characters, the one who feels the least
[30:06] genuine and least realistic, probably a Sean.
[30:08] But it works well for the film. It does.
[30:10] Yeah. It does work really well.
[30:11] I mean, I was like, as soon as I saw Timberlake and that Elton
[30:14] John video, what was it? This train don't stop here.
[30:16] I thought, right, he's going to go and do some films, and I hope
[30:20] he does some good ones. He's got some.
[30:22] He's got some jobs, you know? Right.
[30:23] Yeah, he's on and off, but this is pretty much up there for me.
[30:27] And that is the beginning of the social network.
[30:29] We've met all of our main players in front of the camera.
[30:31] We should probably talk a bit more about the guy behind it.
[30:34] Why not the Big Finch? Definitely.
[30:36] Bloody good Rep the director. The director of The Social
[30:45] Network was, of course, David Fincher.
[30:47] This was his eighth feature film, and at the time he already
[30:50] had several classics under his belt, like Seven, Fight Club,
[30:53] Zodiac made of a turn of pace with The Social Network, though,
[30:57] Matt. So how would Fincher's work?
[30:59] Yeah, I think it's great. I think he was a lot to soak in
[31:03] in some way for how he's done this.
[31:04] Because I'm matching, on the face of it, him thinking the
[31:07] creation of Facebook, how's that appealing?
[31:10] But then when he reads that script, I imagine it's like a
[31:12] light bulb going off. And it's like, oh, that's how
[31:15] I'll make this really fast. That George Lucas again.
[31:20] Yeah, George Lucas again. Who'd have thought he was a big
[31:22] infant on Fincher? I mean, it's huge because the
[31:25] pace goes against how any kind of corporate courtroom drama,
[31:28] which is all this is, really, is generally put on screen.
[31:31] You know, that face smash sequence, the way he indicates
[31:35] the party's mark in his dorm room, Everyone looking at the
[31:37] link, it's so rapid. And then not just the way he
[31:39] intercuts the scenes, it's the way he intercuts the stories.
[31:43] It's set up that Mark has this great friendship with Eduardo.
[31:46] But then the next thing we see, we're in the middle of a
[31:48] deposition where the one opposite ends of the table and
[31:50] we don't know why. Like the pace makes it quite
[31:53] bewildering at times, but in a really good way because you want
[31:56] to know how do we get to this point?
[31:57] And it gets you there so quickly.
[31:59] And it emphasizes how out of control the situation has got
[32:02] from Mark Mean Fincher. He got a saw making music videos
[32:05] from MTV and I think this is possibly his most music video
[32:09] type film. OK, Yeah.
[32:11] I agree totally. I mean, the guys in this film,
[32:13] they're not yet classically cool young guys.
[32:15] Have you seen films in years gone by?
[32:17] There's not been many non comedies with these kinds of
[32:19] characters in the leaves, but they are.
[32:21] Yeah. Because in the 21st century,
[32:23] these are the kinds of people who've made the biggest impacts,
[32:25] like Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Laurie Page and Sergey Brain,
[32:28] who started Google. And what I love is how Fincher
[32:31] reflects that with his, like, vision for what the film is.
[32:34] It's like he's gone. There might not be stylish
[32:36] fellows in real life, but they did change the world.
[32:38] That's a pretty cool thing. So I'm going to make a film, but
[32:41] it's really cool. It's stylish.
[32:44] Like I said, it's sexy. Obviously there are a lot of
[32:46] people involved, but it's clearly Fincher calling the
[32:48] shots. I've read the script for the
[32:49] film and it is outstanding. But Fincher doesn't just direct
[32:53] what's on the page. He twists it and he makes it
[32:55] something slightly different, and he makes it cinematic.
[32:58] We'll see that in the score, which is modern.
[32:59] The whole thing is so well shot, it's ridiculous.
[33:03] Yeah. I think we should mention the
[33:04] editors as well, Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall.
[33:06] Yeah, they'd worked on five Fincher films by this point, but
[33:09] not quite like this. The editing is just superb.
[33:12] It's so slick, the way that scenes often bleed into each
[33:15] other and dialogue overlaps the transition sometimes and makes
[33:18] the whole thing just, like, rocking along.
[33:20] I mean, it's a character drama, but it has the energy of a
[33:22] thriller for me. When Eduardo writes the
[33:25] algorithm on the window, absolutely no need to write it
[33:27] on the window, but it's so cinematic to do it that way.
[33:31] I mean, I've got the X algorithm written on my window, but it
[33:33] doesn't look like that. How come we do a focus pull on
[33:35] it? It'll look great.
[33:36] Depends. What you're doing in the
[33:37] background? But from the first shot to the
[33:42] last, Finch, I've got this whole film, like, in the palm of his
[33:45] hand. Yeah, it's exactly what he wants
[33:46] it to be, an expert filmmaker for me.
[33:49] And write up there among his best work.
[33:51] For me, I think the word is refined.
[33:54] There's no fat on this whatsoever.
[33:55] Fincher doesn't want any fat on this whatsoever, and he's just
[33:58] managed to make it work. And we'll talk about the
[34:00] courtroom draw. I mean, Aaron Sorkin wrote A Few
[34:02] Good Men. This feels like A Few Good men
[34:04] on Fast forward. Yeah, it's got that similar kind
[34:07] of depth to it. But the problem with this film
[34:10] and the problem with Fincher's direction is he's putting too
[34:13] much in there. That's good that you miss loads
[34:16] of it. There's so many good lines.
[34:17] There's so many good shots. And we're talking about Fincher
[34:20] with takes. And we'll get into this now
[34:22] because everyone says our David Fincher, there's so many takes,
[34:24] right? There's 99 takes of of a
[34:26] dialogue sequence. Yeah.
[34:27] But there's a difference between doing takes and doing coverage.
[34:30] He's getting coverage of everything for his editor to
[34:33] build something later. I mean, if you have interviews
[34:36] with him, he says, you know, we've got actors come from all
[34:38] over the world, we'll put them in hotels.
[34:40] We've got 150 grand crew, we've got 150 grand cameras.
[34:43] We've got them for four hours and you want them to be over as
[34:45] quickly as possible. No, the last four hours already
[34:49] get as much from it as possible and you want them to be the best
[34:51] they could possibly be. And I think that's really,
[34:54] really brave way to make a film because he's taken every single
[34:58] cent and pushing it as far as he can do.
[35:00] He never goes over budget, but he does 99 takes because he
[35:03] knows what he wants and how he wants to do it.
[35:05] He's so meticulous, but at the same time provides them with so
[35:09] much to work with. All the ingredients are just
[35:12] perfect, and that's what he does here.
[35:14] It's just such a joy to watch how much control he's got over
[35:18] this. And I would love to have edited
[35:20] this. I would love to have been in the
[35:21] editing room and just SAP because there's two editors
[35:24] going right? Go to a wide shot.
[35:25] If I want to, I can go to a close up, I can go to a mid
[35:28] shot, I can go to an extreme close up.
[35:30] I've got everything I need to work with here.
[35:32] This is an absolute dream, and that's why the film works so
[35:36] well, because all the choices made by everybody, the way it's
[35:39] shot by Chronomath, the way it's put together, the way it's
[35:42] directed by Fincher, he knows exactly what he's doing.
[35:45] And if all the Fincher films, I do think this is the most David
[35:50] Fincher film. It's not the pinnacle of
[35:52] Fincher, but for me, if I'm going to introduce anybody who
[35:54] definitely be in the top three, it's so accomplished.
[35:57] It's brilliant. Awesome.
[35:58] If someone's saying what's David Fincher like, this is one of the
[36:01] three films you're showing them, I think.
[36:02] It has to be. It has to be in the top three,
[36:04] yeah. Well, actually, when Sorkin
[36:06] first finished the script, Columbia wanted him to direct,
[36:08] even though he'd not directed anything before this.
[36:11] But Sorkin wanted David Fincher, and he said, let's send it to
[36:14] him. If he passes, I'll do it.
[36:16] And Fincher said he read the script in five pages in the
[36:18] opening scene, was thinking, if this girl doesn't punch this guy
[36:22] in the face, I'm not doing it. But the very next page had Erica
[36:27] calling Mark an asshole and he emailed Sorkin back saying I'm
[36:30] in. Yeah.
[36:32] Imagine she had just decked him. Yeah, it's miles better that way
[36:35] though, isn't it? Because he makes it do it in a
[36:37] whisper. It's so cutting.
[36:39] Yeah, that he remembers it for the rest of his life.
[36:41] Well, we remember for the rest of the film.
[36:43] Beautiful. So Can did write and direct
[36:45] Molly's Game a few years later I didn't need.
[36:47] Molly's Game. That's right, yeah.
[36:48] Which has a great script, but in the direction not close to this
[36:51] I don't think no. No, it's not.
[36:53] Really, really, I don't think from what I've seen.
[36:55] When Fincher first met with the studio, he said he needed 40
[36:58] million to make the film. Said how about 25.
[37:00] Imagine saying that Finch. And he said, no, I need 40
[37:05] million. And they said how about 35.
[37:07] And Fincher said, look, this isn't a negotiation, this is how
[37:10] much it costs. So they gave him 40 million.
[37:14] Well, you know, you haven't all worked out.
[37:15] Warning to the dollar Course he will.
[37:17] Yeah. Exactly 40 million, that's
[37:19] great. 99 takes 39 million. Yeah, and that documentary
[37:22] you're talking about, Westie, there's some great footage there
[37:24] where Finch are soaking in. The main cast are doing like
[37:26] script workshops. Oh yeah, it's great.
[37:29] Some of the cast are like throwing out ideas.
[37:30] At one point I think Justin Timberlake comes up with a line
[37:33] and Fincher just goes no, don't like it and carries on.
[37:37] It's really exciting. So what about if I just didn't
[37:39] like No, I don't like it and see you waste me time.
[37:42] It's 40 million, no change you. Don't need anything now you
[37:44] would leave a venture, yeah. I think.
[37:49] And we've mentioned that opening scene having 99 takes and not
[37:52] basically carried on throughout the shoot army, Hammer said.
[37:54] The scene when the Winklevi and Divya in the restaurant talking
[37:57] about Mark, that scene is about 10 seconds long.
[38:00] And in that scene, Hammer has to take a bite of a burger.
[38:03] He said that by the time they'd finished, they'd done so many
[38:06] takes he couldn't eat another mouthful.
[38:09] Never eats for real in a David Fincher See, you know you're
[38:12] putting half a stored. And I spit it out.
[38:14] By the end of it. She's like spending it with
[38:16] cookies, like I'm not having that.
[38:18] That oh, yeah, I'm not surprised.
[38:19] But Finch is a perfectionist, isn't he?
[38:21] I think he just wants to make sure I shot every alternative
[38:23] that you can possibly shoot. You want to see what he doesn't
[38:26] like as much as you want to see what he does like.
[38:27] That's it. It's like Stanley Kubrick.
[38:29] I think he was the same, yeah. He was the same, but I don't
[38:31] think it's necessarily about being a narcissist.
[38:33] I don't think he does much rehearsal on camera.
[38:35] He just gets it right and he's like, that is perfect.
[38:38] And he's like, I need that from like, five of the tangles so
[38:40] that he goes, right, let's do 12 of the take.
[38:42] So he gives everything to the editor, and then they've got a
[38:44] float of it. I think that's just how he
[38:46] works, yeah. I mean, you can't argue when you
[38:48] see the end product, can you? No, no, no, it doesn't harm me.
[38:50] I'm ago. No, I don't like that scene
[38:52] where I'm eating all them burgers.
[38:53] Like fuck off. It's the best you've ever
[38:54] looked. Army.
[38:56] When Fisher came on board, the script was sent to Facebook to
[38:58] try and get their blessing on certain aspects of the script.
[39:01] The producer, Scott Rude, and met with Facebook a few times.
[39:04] They said it couldn't be set at Harvard and they couldn't call
[39:06] the company Facebook rude and spoke to Fincher and they
[39:09] decided to do it anyway. What's?
[39:11] The. Point.
[39:12] Yeah, he just said that when those people from Facebook saw
[39:14] the final film, they were, in his words, appropriately
[39:17] appalled, which I think he was really pleased about.
[39:20] But I mean, the depositions and Zuckerberg's messages from the
[39:22] time, they're all public record, so they couldn't stop them
[39:25] really. Yeah, of course they couldn't.
[39:26] No. Yeah, and Harvard got in on the
[39:28] ACT too and said Fincher couldn't shoot at their
[39:30] university on the campus, so he called them fucking atrocious.
[39:36] Oh, he said that to. The faces of.
[39:38] Course he. Did so The Harvard scenes.
[39:40] They were actually filmed at Wheelock College in Boston, John
[39:43] Hopkins University in Baltimore and the University of Southern
[39:46] California, and they were just dressed up to look like Harvard.
[39:50] Yeah, lots of snow added, wasn't it?
[39:52] That's right. Yeah.
[39:53] Well, that's kind of why they couldn't shoot there, because
[39:55] when Love Story filmed there in 1970, they had lots of fake snow
[39:58] and it destroyed some of the trees.
[39:59] So apparently Harvard had a rule flying on that no film could
[40:02] shoot there, but didn't stop letting road trip in there.
[40:05] Oh, ten years earlier. Like Finch, I get out, road
[40:08] trip, get in. Come on, Tom School, get in
[40:11] there. There are some Halford shops in
[40:14] there though, like when Mark went through the Halford Square
[40:17] right at the start and Fincher got those shots by sending in a
[40:21] street mine with a cart and light on it.
[40:23] And Jeff Cornwith said that if security stopped him, the mind
[40:27] just wouldn't talk. So by the time he got him out of
[40:31] there, that happened to the shop stuck in the box.
[40:35] Like Billy Crystal and Spinal Tap.
[40:38] It's absolutely ridiculous. Fincher came up with that idea
[40:41] himself as well. It's a famous Harvard archways
[40:44] that he wanted to get. So yeah, get Marcel Marshall in
[40:47] there all the. Well, this was the opening of
[40:50] Batman Returns. There's a very subtle reference
[40:54] to another Fincher film in the scene and Mark Storm, where
[40:57] Eduardo goes on a rant about being accused of animal abuse,
[40:59] which, I mean, the amount of times he says chicken and the
[41:02] way he says chicken kind of freaks out a little bit.
[41:06] And I fed him some chicken and I had the chicken.
[41:08] It's a bit weird. But Marcus posted on Facebook to
[41:11] get content for his contemporary arts final.
[41:14] We'll see on the screen that he's posting under the pseudonym
[41:16] or the name Taylor Durden. Not exactly Durden with an.
[41:20] It's got me in there. Stirring the pot.
[41:23] There's more put. Tiny pot.
[41:29] Before we finish on David Fincher, we have our first
[41:31] patron question. OK.
[41:32] So as well as all those benefits were mentioned at the start, if
[41:35] you're saying to become an ATR and patron, we'll answer your
[41:37] questions on the show. Yeah, we have the first of those
[41:40] now and it is on David Fincher. Wow, OK.
[41:43] So Martha Quaidas is back. Hello, Marta.
[41:46] Hello, Marta. And she says hello.
[41:49] Absolutely love your podcast. Thank you very much for keeping
[41:52] me company on my morning runs. Oh, lovely.
[41:55] More than happy to keep on a morning run, surely.
[41:56] Yeah, of course. Unless you want us to physically
[41:58] accompany. Yeah, Then there's no chance.
[41:59] No, no, there's not something to happen.
[42:01] So Marta asks. David Fincher is one of my
[42:03] favorite directors. Can you guys do a top five
[42:06] movies from DF? I'm sure we can.
[42:09] What do you think, Wesley? I can do a top 4:00 every single
[42:12] time for Fincher. When it gets to five, I'm
[42:14] really, really, really, really fucking struggle.
[42:17] For me, it's always 7, which is just the pinnacle for my use of
[42:20] Fincher film. It's the fuck you to the whole
[42:23] debacle he had on Alien Three. I can make a film.
[42:25] This is a fucking film that I'm going to make and it's just
[42:28] incredible from start to finish. Zodiac is second for me.
[42:31] I think that's just an absolute master class.
[42:33] It's just, it shouldn't be as good as it is.
[42:35] Fight Club for me, I really adore that film, always have
[42:38] since the first time I've saw it.
[42:40] Social Network will be 4 for me. I just think it's incredibly
[42:43] intricate as we're talking about.
[42:44] And five, I'm always struggling because it's like, I like the
[42:47] game kind of. I like Panic Room kind of.
[42:51] I like Benjamin Button kind of. But the one I'm going to choose
[42:55] is like a definitive Fincher film for #5 it's going to be
[42:58] Gone Girl for me. I just enjoy that one.
[43:00] Very good. A lot more than the others and
[43:02] I'll watch that more. So that's my top five.
[43:05] You're very close to me, Wesley. Yeah. 5th for me is Fight Club,
[43:08] possibly the definitive Fincher film in some ways.
[43:10] Yeah, and Brad Pitt's great performance for me.
[43:13] OK, 4th. I'm going with The Girl with the
[43:16] Dragon Tattoo. Oh, nice.
[43:17] OK, Bruni, Mara, like really flexing them.
[43:20] Yeah, yeah, that trend Resnard and Karen all cover of
[43:22] immigrants on alone gets the top five that.
[43:26] She's. On my run play, play for mother.
[43:37] There you go, Mada to carry on. 3rd Zodiac.
[43:40] Super slick thriller and I've never heard Herdie Giddy Man by
[43:43] Donovan the same way since. I haven't heard it.
[43:47] Thank God. Second top two was really tough,
[43:49] but I think I'm going. The Social Network has run a
[43:51] rope. Really.
[43:53] Yeah. First place probably pretty
[43:54] obvious. Alien three, No, obviously 1st
[44:00] place is obviously 7. Love the concept, I love the
[44:03] identity it has, and that ending still knocks me for six.
[44:06] Yeah, actually for seven. Yeah, little variance in mind.
[44:11] So from 5:00 to 1:00 five, I'm going panic room, which I think
[44:15] is a bit underrated. Yeah, I've always really enjoyed
[44:17] that sad champion to the face. Excellent.
[44:19] OK four for me is Gone Girl. Nice.
[44:21] Because I'd read the book and I absolutely loved it.
[44:24] I pretty much read it and one sit and I was on a train journey
[44:26] somewhere. So when I heard Fincher was
[44:28] adapted I was very exciting and I think he pulls that off
[44:31] brilliantly. 3rd, I'm going to go with this one Social Network
[44:34] because. Nice and.
[44:36] On the face with, as I've said, it shouldn't be a great film,
[44:38] and yet somehow it is. Second for me, I'm going to go
[44:41] 7. Yep, just absolutely knocked me
[44:44] off my feet when I saw that back in the 90s.
[44:46] But number one for me is Zodiac. Because Zodiac.
[44:50] And. You a film that's nearly three
[44:51] hours long about an investigation and murder where
[44:54] you don't find out who it is. That should be the most
[44:56] unsatisfying ending ever. And yet it's the most satisfying
[45:00] ending I think I've ever seen or anything.
[45:01] And can I just say you two are far more professional at this
[45:04] and they counting back from 5:00 to 1:00 and I'm straight.
[45:08] They're like, you know what's fucking amazing?
[45:09] 7 bad. That's who I am.
[45:13] I'm Mark Zuckerberg. Fuck off.
[45:16] Well, back to The Social Network.
[45:18] And for his work on the film, David Fincher was nominated for
[45:20] Best Director at the Oscars, and the film was nominated for Best
[45:23] Picture. Yeah, lost out to the same film
[45:26] for both. Do you remember what?
[45:28] Oh, hold on, I. Think it was The King's Speech,
[45:31] the. King's Speech.
[45:32] Yeah. King's Speech and Tom Hooper.
[45:34] Correct. Tom Hooper, Best Director, The
[45:36] King's Speech for Best Picture. I mean, it's easy to bash the
[45:38] Oscars years later with hindsight, but even at the time
[45:41] it was pretty obvious this was more worthy, I think.
[45:43] Wasn't. I think so.
[45:44] Yeah, the king of the rule of thirds.
[45:46] It's a shit. Though I really don't.
[45:48] Like it? You love all those empty spaces,
[45:50] don't you? So no bigger water Fincher for
[45:52] the social network, but for us, Some outstanding direction from
[45:55] him here, definitely. Yeah, top of his game, really.
[46:02] The cast. David Fincher was already a big
[46:07] Hollywood name at the time of The Social Network.
[46:09] The same cannot be said of his cast, though.
[46:11] While all have gone on to become famous in the industry, back
[46:14] then the most well known by a distance was Justin Timberlake,
[46:17] who we've talked about. Yeah.
[46:19] Now, though, it's time for the three characters the lawsuit
[46:21] revolve around. That's Andrew Garfield, the
[46:23] Eduardo Sovereign and Army Hammer as Tyler and Cameron
[46:26] Winklevoss. But only one place we can start,
[46:29] I think. Yeah, yeah.
[46:31] So Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, a talented
[46:34] programmer with some issues. The story follows Marks, who was
[46:37] setting up Facebook with Eduardo, seeing you grow beyond
[46:39] their wildest dreams, then finding himself on the wrong end
[46:42] of multi $1,000,000 lawsuits from Eduardo and the Winklevi.
[46:46] Yeah. Do I have your attention,
[46:48] Wesley? Absolutely.
[46:49] Well, you have half of it. Thoughts on Zuckerberg and
[46:52] Eisenberg? Yeah.
[46:54] I mean, I think the only thing they've really got in common is
[46:56] the Burg. And apart from that, like
[46:59] Eisenberg like completely owns this part.
[47:01] I don't know how it works, but it absolutely works so well.
[47:05] He's one of them actors. Just seems like he's the same
[47:07] and everything, but so different.
[47:08] He's like Michael Sierra that he's got that typecast kind of
[47:11] out. And but this is just an absolute
[47:14] master class from Eisenberg. I think he just understands the
[47:17] assignment so, so well. And the thing I think that I get
[47:21] from this is so comfortable with Venture's direction.
[47:23] Yeah, yeah. And I think he's very
[47:25] uncomfortable doing things like Lex Luthor, doing things like
[47:29] big productions with two takes. And he's very, very comfortable
[47:32] having lots of things to say and a lot of time to see it.
[47:36] And I think that's where he really shines in this.
[47:38] Even the physical moments work really well.
[47:40] And there's just so many little nuances to this.
[47:43] And he makes it cool by saying despicable things by acting as a
[47:47] despicable person. But you feel sorry for him
[47:50] without feeling sorry for him. Do you know what I mean?
[47:53] You don't want to cry about it, but you don't want to punch him
[47:56] in the face. At the same time, it's like to
[47:58] change your attitude, man, because you're so talented and
[48:00] you so intelligent and you can fucking do something.
[48:03] He's I know I am. I know I am.
[48:05] I know that he had Zuckerberg's voice on a Walkman and he was
[48:08] listening to it constantly. Should have his voice in his
[48:10] head. He's trying to get into the
[48:11] character. He's trying.
[48:12] But I just think it isn't really about Eisenberg trying to be
[48:16] Mark Zuckerberg. I think this is about Eisenberg
[48:18] trying to be every single one of us in a world where you couldn't
[48:23] be a rock star anymore. You had to create something.
[48:26] You had to have an identity somehow, and it had to be
[48:28] online. And he became a rock star by
[48:31] making something that's so fucking boring and so benign,
[48:35] but he does it so well. And Fincher knows that.
[48:38] Eisenberg knows that, and it's just a joy to watch him.
[48:41] And I don't really think since this, I've never went, oh, yeah,
[48:44] Jesse Iceberg's in this. I'm going to go and say it, but
[48:47] this is perfect for it and I love it.
[48:49] He's like the sausage in the sausage roll.
[48:51] It's perfect. Yeah, I mean, like you see in
[48:54] Westfield Mark in this film, it's not the real Mark
[48:57] Zuckerberg. No, inspired by him for sure.
[48:59] But this is a character in a movie that's being used to make
[49:01] points about friendship or success, class and more.
[49:05] Aron stalking himself says that. So the Mark was see here.
[49:09] I think he's, like the ultimate and hero.
[49:11] His arc is the classic hero's journey, but like, in reverse.
[49:14] Yeah. At the start of the film, he has
[49:15] exactly what he wants. He's got Erica, this Grey Whip
[49:19] smart girl. He's got a best friend that
[49:21] respects and cares about him and Eduardo.
[49:23] Yeah. And over the course of the
[49:24] narrative, he loses both of them.
[49:25] He seems to go out of his way to get dumped by Erica.
[49:28] And by the end he's chosen Sean over Eduardo, which is a massive
[49:31] mistake. Yeah, he goes out of his way to
[49:33] get dumped by Eduardo as well. Yeah, exactly.
[49:35] Yeah, Yeah. I think Mark thinks that he
[49:37] wants social status and power, which Facebook will and does
[49:40] bring him. But what I think he really wants
[49:42] is just basic social acceptance and meaningful relationships.
[49:46] He already has that the star of the movie, but chooses to
[49:49] sacrifice them for like, yeah, the thing in this case,
[49:51] Facebook. And then once he has it, the
[49:53] final scene is him trying to use Facebook to get meaningful
[49:56] relationships. Yeah, that's some great, like,
[49:58] tragic character writing. It's wonderful and she's only
[50:01] got like 560 friends as well. I love that.
[50:03] Yeah. She's using the platform, but on
[50:05] the minimum it's like. Great.
[50:08] And this idea of going after stay some power not really isn't
[50:10] what you actually wanted was a basic connection is similar to
[50:13] Citizen Kane. So I think that must have been
[50:15] an influence on soaking, Should have had Mark whizzing around
[50:17] Harvard on a sledge. Whispers Rosebud on the final
[50:22] refresh. But Eisenberg, he just nails the
[50:28] performance. I think he's a good actor.
[50:30] Jesse Eisenberg, he's got the right kind of look for this.
[50:32] I know he said himself he's socially awkward in real life.
[50:35] But when I watched the film, I don't see Eisenberg.
[50:37] I just see Zuckerberg. I mean, you've got Fincher
[50:40] bringing his A game, you've got Aaron Thorgan bringing his A
[50:43] game. You've got Trent Reznor bringing
[50:44] his A game. These are huge names and
[50:46] Eisenberg is front and center of the whole piece, is right there
[50:49] with them. Replace them and it's a worse
[50:51] film. Honestly Oscar worthy for me.
[50:54] Oh yeah, it's fantastic performance.
[50:56] It's fantastic. Yeah, it's performed by every
[50:59] good thing I can say about him. It sounds like a backhanded
[51:02] compliment. Yeah, I know what you mean.
[51:03] I know what you mean. You know what I mean?
[51:04] Because he's angry and he's socially awkward and he's
[51:06] unbelievably arrogant nerd and and you think Eisenberg, he's
[51:10] just perfect. He's perfect.
[51:11] I know. What you mean?
[51:13] To the point we feel that's truly what he's like in real
[51:15] life. So sounds harsh.
[51:16] See him being better about not having a girlfriend?
[51:18] Yeah, of course. Exactly for that, that's just a
[51:21] compliment. How good Eisenberg is here and
[51:24] he is this big ball of contradictions because he's
[51:26] desperate to be accepted into something and to be liked, but
[51:30] he's so self-destructive at the same time.
[51:32] Like you guys have said, he ruins every possible friendship
[51:35] he could have. But at the same time you kind of
[51:38] admire that determination he has to beat everyone.
[51:41] I think it's it's a real balance and active performance and he
[51:44] judges it perfectly. And as well, Eisenberg has this
[51:47] Born Dry delivery like the funniest moment in the film for
[51:50] me when he sarcastically checks the maths if 18,000 plus another
[51:55] thousand. Yeah.
[51:56] Yes, I got the same thing. The more sarcastic mathematics
[51:59] I've ever seen that. It's fantastic.
[52:01] Really funny sarcastics. Apparently the first person
[52:07] approached to play Mark Zuckerberg was Shia LaBeouf,
[52:10] which is outrageous, but he turned it down.
[52:13] Well, imagine Le Beauf and Fincher.
[52:17] Loggerheads just. Holds like two bulls.
[52:19] Don't think they'd get on well. No, not at all.
[52:22] They pretty turn it down. So they went through the
[52:23] standard process and had audition.
[52:25] He's read from a script from The West Wing, which Organ also
[52:28] wrote. Everyone knows Fincher wanted
[52:30] Eisenberg to audition, but he actually said no because he
[52:33] thought reading from The West Wing would do him absolutely no
[52:36] favours whatsoever. But when he pulled out, they
[52:39] gave a few pages of the script and he won the part.
[52:41] Sounds a bit like the character. Surprised he didn't go off and
[52:44] write his own. Yeah, I know.
[52:45] I think, I think Eisenberg, like he did like a video, didn't he,
[52:48] with his sister or something. He kind of read a few pages and
[52:50] sent the video in and he's like forgot about it.
[52:53] All of a sudden I'm getting a call from David Fincher.
[52:55] Yeah, his sister is Holly Eisenberg.
[52:57] She was a child actress at the time.
[52:58] I think she's given it up now. But yeah, she auditioned with
[53:00] him enough for one of the part. Nice.
[53:03] An iceberg. In real life, he's been
[53:04] diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, and he said
[53:07] one of the hardest things about playing Mark was having to speak
[53:10] and behave in a way he had tried not to for his whole life.
[53:13] Right. So he said he watched every
[53:15] interview he could find of the real Zuckerberg, and he also
[53:18] read the college application where Zuckerberg had written
[53:20] about how we love fencing. So Eisenberg did a couple of
[53:23] lessons before filming. Wow.
[53:26] I mean, that doesn't sound like obsessive compulsive.
[53:30] No, yeah. I'll do that.
[53:31] I'll do that, yeah. I'll do 99 takes.
[53:33] Yeah. And I'm fine.
[53:33] I'm fine. I'm fine.
[53:34] Rooney, stick around. We should have got that in
[53:36] there. Morgan, Eduardo dueling it out
[53:38] for 30%. That would have been.
[53:41] Great. Takes his Moscow.
[53:42] It's Bruce Dickinson from Iron Man.
[53:47] I know as well that N pad, the markers were mentioned before
[53:50] that was Eisenberg or NOR pad, and he'd write down notes about
[53:53] his own performance as they were going along.
[53:55] Wow, Jesus. Just like I'm really good.
[53:59] Yeah. Speak faster.
[54:02] Speak faster. Just write that more school.
[54:04] Yeah. dot, dot, dot. So Fincher asked Eisenberg not
[54:09] to try and meet the real Zuckerberg.
[54:11] So he didn't and said he just did what felt right for the
[54:14] character based on the script. The only changed he asked for
[54:17] was the scene at the Facebook house in California where the
[54:20] employees are zip lining from the roof into the pool.
[54:23] Oh, yeah. And the script.
[54:24] Mark joined in, but Eisenberg said he should just be standing
[54:27] filming it instead because he didn't want to get, like, too
[54:29] joyous about it. And Fincher totally agree with
[54:31] that. Yeah.
[54:32] Yeah, that's the right choice, I think.
[54:33] Yeah, he's. I wouldn't be having fun.
[54:35] I don't know how to have fun really.
[54:38] For his performance as Mark, Jesse Eisenberg was nominated
[54:41] for Best Actor at the Oscars, but lost out to Colin Firth
[54:44] again for The King's Speech. The right choice.
[54:47] No, man. No, but he doesn't got over it.
[54:53] So yes, no major award, but we think Jesse Eisenberg's
[54:56] excellent is Mark and if anything, the performance it
[54:58] gets better overtime does create your best, I think I.
[55:01] Think he's amazing? Yes.
[55:03] Eisenberg is Zuckerberg is Zucker and Eisenberg.
[55:06] He's perfect. The second main character is
[55:11] Eduardo Savarin, played by Andrew Garfield, Mark's best
[55:14] friend and Co founder of Facebook.
[55:16] Eduardo was CFO of the company but finds himself ousted once
[55:19] Sean Parker comes in and on the other side of the table to Mark
[55:22] in the depositions, he's suing his best friend for $600
[55:25] million, Matt. He is house Andrew Garfield as
[55:28] Eduardo in the film. You're just so thankful he's in
[55:31] here because he's a respite from the fact that every other
[55:35] character is pretty awful. Yeah.
[55:37] He's the only one who seems to have any kind of sense of
[55:39] morality about any of this, the only one who doesn't seem to be
[55:42] consumed by arrogance or greed. And what's why he's probably the
[55:47] only person in the film who genuinely cares for Mark as a
[55:50] person. Yeah.
[55:51] Yeah. Sean looks to Mark as someone
[55:53] who's a blank check, and he's got dollar signs in his eyes
[55:55] when he looks to Mark. Eduardo doesn't.
[55:58] You're like, oh, look, there's a human being in this.
[56:01] Yeah, yeah. Wow.
[56:02] That's what I say. Yeah.
[56:03] And Mark's opinion means a lot to him.
[56:05] So that confrontation at the end, which we'll obviously talk
[56:08] about, it's not really about the money.
[56:10] It's about the betrayal. Yeah.
[56:11] By so many, viewed as his best friend.
[56:13] Yeah. So the path of America.
[56:15] Eduardo is like the one spot of humanity in the film, the one
[56:18] relatable person. And the thing about Garfield, I
[56:21] just think he saw innately likable in everything he does.
[56:25] Even in his interviews, he just seems like such a sweet guy, and
[56:28] he brings this likability and this certain naive quality to
[56:32] Eduardo, which really works. It does.
[56:35] I think the core of a lot of the film, certainly the drama, is
[56:38] the relationship between Mark and Eduardo.
[56:40] So can rice it with quite a lot of friction.
[56:42] I mean, obviously by the end, but even at the start when
[56:44] they're with Harvard and getting along, they're still bigger a
[56:47] lot. Yeah.
[56:48] Mark talks down to Eduardo about his money in the frack clubs
[56:51] quite a bit, but the sense of the cable, each other is always
[56:54] there. Even at the end of the film, I
[56:56] still feel they care about each other.
[56:57] There is this bond between the characters, which is why I think
[56:59] what happens is so sad. And in that film with these two
[57:03] actors, I'll probably be thinking how about these two
[57:05] guys, even friends? But I never think that watching
[57:08] these guys, the relationship works great.
[57:10] And I think a lot of that comes from the actors.
[57:12] The cast are all so young that there's no experienced great
[57:15] actors to fall back on. Fincher just had to cast really
[57:18] well. Yeah, and he did.
[57:19] I mean, I didn't know who Andrew Garfield was the first time I
[57:22] saw this. No, but I liked him straight
[57:23] away. Is Eduardo is likable?
[57:25] Yeah. Eduardo knew Mark when Mark had
[57:27] nothing, and he was still his best friend.
[57:29] If Sean Parker met Mark when Mark had nothing, he wouldn't
[57:31] have given him a second look. No, definitely not.
[57:33] I think that's key to the drama and Garfield integral to it.
[57:36] The only thing for me, stop going on about that chicken.
[57:40] Well, yeah, every time you planted the story about the
[57:43] chicken, I knew it it. Was the chicken, wasn't it?
[57:46] Yeah, it was the chicken, yeah. I mean, he's new to the game and
[57:50] this isn't it. And you can see that he's got
[57:52] this kind of naivety and this real desperation to please.
[57:58] And I think that's what he wants to do as a character.
[58:00] I think I'd model needed that. And he needs to to know that
[58:03] he's got this humanity, like Matt said, he's a very human
[58:05] character. And that does come along, but in
[58:09] different hands to Andrew Garfield.
[58:11] You can see him just wanting to monetize the site that could
[58:15] have been a slanted so gonna taken where it's been like
[58:17] Zuckerberg standing on the side of everybody.
[58:20] And this guy could have come along and been sneaky in the
[58:22] background and pretended that he liked them.
[58:24] And he's talking about advertising all the time.
[58:27] But I think it's the way that it's portrayed by Garfield
[58:29] that's so genuine. I think he's he's ambition and
[58:32] he's drive is so genuine to make it work for everybody in the
[58:35] only way that he knows how, with a business mind.
[58:38] And that backfires when he meets Sean Parker, Eddie meets
[58:41] Zuckerberg and they've got creative minds and all they want
[58:43] to do is create a wall and they don't know that's going to make
[58:46] money. They just want to create stuff.
[58:47] It is about just making shit. It's about just being an
[58:50] abandoned writing a song and not caring what it's about.
[58:52] Whereas Garfield embodies that character that has to have a
[58:55] business sense and he's brilliant at that.
[58:58] He delivers it. He delivers it really well.
[59:00] I don't think he's out of his depth at all in a Fincher film,
[59:03] no. And he gives Eisenberg just that
[59:05] little bit more of on the Stepladder.
[59:08] He's just giving him a little bit of a boost going.
[59:10] This is your film. I understand that I'm going to
[59:12] have some scenes in this where I'm really going to shine.
[59:15] But on the whole, he is there just to support the film.
[59:18] And Garfield does it very, very well without any kind of
[59:23] experience at this point. He's very, very mature for the
[59:26] role. Yeah, you're right.
[59:27] I mean, they're kind of spun the real story in favor of Eduardo
[59:30] having there. But they could have easily, like
[59:31] you say, a sporting favor Mark, I mean Edward over like a bad
[59:33] guy. Easily.
[59:35] Easily, he is a sweetheart of a man and I'd like him to be one
[59:38] of me very best friends. Maybe not to got big though.
[59:42] I'm not there to got big anyway. No, I can fuck off.
[59:45] I'm not addressing about money. I just want to go off.
[59:46] It'll be me, friend. If you listen to Andrew, send us
[59:49] an e-mail. And Garfield turned up for
[59:52] rehearsals with a copy of Economics For Dummies because he
[59:56] was trying to get in the head of Eduardo, who was an economics
[59:58] major. So then Jesse Eisenberg came in
[1:00:01] with C++ for Dummies. They both said that only who had
[1:00:04] their introductions never touched them again.
[1:00:07] Yeah, yeah. Those For Dummies books
[1:00:09] everywhere. Yeah.
[1:00:10] Yeah. Have you ever read one though?
[1:00:12] No, no. No.
[1:00:14] It's really paralyzing to yourself.
[1:00:16] No, it is. No one.
[1:00:17] I saw some guy in the train once reading Near Death experiences
[1:00:20] for dummies. I don't even know what I mean.
[1:00:24] Was it Tim Robbins from Jacob's Ladder?
[1:00:27] Paris, Swayze. But I know that Garfield and
[1:00:32] Eisenberg became really big friends on the set as well, so
[1:00:34] something about them clicked, it seems.
[1:00:36] I think that seeps into the performances as well.
[1:00:38] It does. Dynamics.
[1:00:39] Great. Yeah.
[1:00:39] Because they went on and the Eisenberg was in character and
[1:00:42] he said he would talk to them as Zuckerberg, right?
[1:00:44] I think they really respected each other's process.
[1:00:46] And that really comes across. It's a wonderful thing.
[1:00:50] Playing the part of Eduardo Sovereign catapulted Andrew
[1:00:52] Garfield's career quickly. After The Social Network, he was
[1:00:55] cast as Spider Man and went on to play the leads for Mel Gibson
[1:00:58] in Hacksaw Ridge and Martin Scorsese in Silence.
[1:01:01] Yeah. And he has Eduardo Still.
[1:01:03] One of Andrew Garfield's best for us definitely still is,
[1:01:06] yeah. Yeah, he's brilliant.
[1:01:10] The final cast member we're talking about in detail is Army
[1:01:12] Hammer, who plays two parts. 2 twins in fact.
[1:01:16] The 1st is Cameron Winklevoss. The 2nd is Tyler, whose last
[1:01:20] name is the same as his brother. Ridiculous.
[1:01:22] Waiting to get yourself that it's.
[1:01:26] About the same as my brother's. Along with their pal Divi
[1:01:30] Narendra, played by Max Minghella, the brothers come up
[1:01:32] with the idea of a social platform, asked more to build
[1:01:35] it, then eventually sue him in federal court when he goes off
[1:01:38] and creates it with Eduardo. He's 65220 and there's two of
[1:01:42] them at his house. Army hammer as the Winklevi.
[1:01:45] He's the very sound of privilege itself, isn't he?
[1:01:49] There's something about that voice not in a way that's
[1:01:54] arrogant, are such a small in a way of someone who can't even
[1:01:56] conceive of the notion that they're not going to come out on
[1:02:00] top in everything, which is what Mark alludes to.
[1:02:03] That's why they're so obsessed. But what's truly remarkable is
[1:02:08] it's two performances for the price of one, and it's seamless.
[1:02:11] Like if you didn't know, you've got a Fincher, found a pair of
[1:02:14] twins who can act brilliant. Yeah.
[1:02:16] There's never one moment where it takes you out of the film and
[1:02:19] from scene to scene. I could not tell you which is
[1:02:21] the real Army Hammer and which one is Josh Pence with Hammer's
[1:02:25] face on top. Yeah, it's incredible even now.
[1:02:28] Yeah, couldn't tell you. We're never clear how to tell
[1:02:30] him about. Yeah, another actor who I didn't
[1:02:34] know at this point but has gone on to make some waves in
[1:02:36] Hollywood. Not always for acting reasons,
[1:02:38] to be honest. No.
[1:02:40] We'll focus on that, I think. Yeah.
[1:02:42] And I think he's a pretty perfect piece of casting army
[1:02:44] hammer, the way he looks, the way he carries himself as the
[1:02:47] characters. When you see the real Winklevi,
[1:02:49] they are just like this. A couple of Sloan Rangers would
[1:02:52] call them in the UK. Yes.
[1:02:54] Which he went on to do the lone. Yeah, the perfect guy.
[1:03:03] I mean, they are major characters with their own plot
[1:03:04] line, and it's a good one. I like the mini narrative of
[1:03:06] Tyler and Divya having to convince Cameron to sue Mark.
[1:03:09] Makes those scenes much more engaging.
[1:03:11] But they're really there to support the character study of
[1:03:13] Mark. They represent everything in the
[1:03:15] market. They come from money.
[1:03:17] They're sports students, not academic students like Mark.
[1:03:20] Specifically their Rowas, which is set up in the opening with
[1:03:22] Erica, so sort of in Fincher, give them real narrative and
[1:03:25] thematic value in the film. And I think Army, how he
[1:03:27] delivers. Yeah, he gets to share funny
[1:03:29] moments, mostly in the meeting with the Harvard president we're
[1:03:32] going to talk about. Yeah, yeah.
[1:03:34] It's also funny after the Henley Regatta when Prince Albert keeps
[1:03:37] telling them how close the race was.
[1:03:39] Brutally close. Have you ever seen a race that
[1:03:41] close? But really good characters in
[1:03:45] the writing and the acting and important to the film for me.
[1:03:48] Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've always found
[1:03:51] this to be a little bit too much to stomach because I don't like
[1:03:55] people like this. So I think that's a good thing
[1:03:58] because it's perfectly cast and perfectly done.
[1:04:00] He's like you know them perfectly wrapped gold lure
[1:04:03] packs that you get your breakfast.
[1:04:06] Yeah, yeah. That's.
[1:04:07] What that's? Two of them, it's what it feels
[1:04:09] like and then not. You can't spread it.
[1:04:11] Yeah, too hard. You will put me your hands to
[1:04:14] Melbourne. You try rub it.
[1:04:15] And it feels almost like he's typecast at this point without
[1:04:18] being typecast. He's perfect for the role.
[1:04:21] But I think from Army Hammers point of view, it's for me
[1:04:25] definitely the best he's ever been.
[1:04:27] Yeah, I don't think he's going to improve on this performance.
[1:04:29] And I think he's really swallowing his pride by
[1:04:33] projecting as much as he is and delivering as much as he is in
[1:04:36] this really pretentious way because it is kind of like
[1:04:39] cringe worthy. It is a little bit kind of
[1:04:43] giving him a sandwich that big, but that's the pretentiousness
[1:04:49] of the characters. Like this is what we have
[1:04:50] available. Like if you want a sandwich.
[1:04:52] It's a perfect sandwich. I would eat that 100%.
[1:04:56] But what I will say for Army Hammer and Josh Pence is that
[1:04:59] they both had to learn both parts.
[1:05:01] I think it was 25 pages of dialogue all in because they
[1:05:05] didn't know who was going to be replaced, who did.
[1:05:07] What's with That in itself is a fucking absolutely applaudable
[1:05:12] thing to do, and I think it's just everyone bringing the rig
[1:05:15] in and everyone just that prepared to put so much into
[1:05:18] this project works so well. Army Hammer is not great in this
[1:05:23] because I don't like him and that means he's excellent in
[1:05:26] this. Yeah, well, Fincher's first idea
[1:05:29] in casting the Winklevi was to hire real life twins to play
[1:05:32] them. He couldn't find anybody
[1:05:33] suitable though, so we decided to cast two different people who
[1:05:36] had similar looks. One was Army Hammer and the
[1:05:38] other was Josh Pence, who was mostly worked as a model at the
[1:05:41] time, and it was the same kind of builders hammer.
[1:05:43] So the idea at first was that Josh Pence might be in the final
[1:05:47] film. Yeah.
[1:05:48] But then Fincher spoke to Lola Visual Effects, who he'd worked
[1:05:52] with on Q use case of Benjamin Button, and they recommended
[1:05:55] face projection. So Josh Pence, he would act the
[1:05:58] scenes alongside Hammer and had motion capture markers on his
[1:06:01] face. And this scene was shot using
[1:06:03] motion controlled cameras so each take was identical.
[1:06:07] And then Finch, which is what Tiki wanted in the edit.
[1:06:09] And then Lola would digitally add Hammer's face.
[1:06:12] Mental. I mean, it looks brilliant.
[1:06:15] When I first saw the film, I didn't know.
[1:06:16] I mean, how I was, and I genuinely thought it was twins.
[1:06:18] Yeah, I did. Absolutely.
[1:06:20] Yeah, I still did up to like a couple of weeks ago until I was
[1:06:23] like, what's this again? What?
[1:06:25] The fuck? The light sculpted all the
[1:06:28] different lighting that put on his face.
[1:06:30] So no matter what situation he was in, that can manipulate his
[1:06:33] face of a different light and settle.
[1:06:34] Brilliant. It's incredibly well done.
[1:06:36] It's it's almost as good as like looking back on Jurassic Park
[1:06:40] visuals now. Yeah.
[1:06:41] And go. And they really stand up there.
[1:06:43] Really. Is that groundbreaking?
[1:06:44] I think. It is seamless, yeah.
[1:06:46] So when filming started, Finch, I hadn't decided if the Winklevi
[1:06:49] were going to be fraternal or identical twins.
[1:06:52] So like Westy says Hammer and Pence, that had to learn each of
[1:06:55] those mannerisms and movements just in case.
[1:06:57] But then when Pence got told his face wouldn't be seen in the
[1:07:00] film, he said he threw the phone of the wall, threw up and
[1:07:03] started crying. Which?
[1:07:05] Yeah. Took it pretty well then.
[1:07:07] Yeah, I mean. Instead of face mash.
[1:07:10] Yeah, but Josh Pence is seen in the film.
[1:07:15] Do you know where? He is, yeah.
[1:07:17] It's when the the ladies are cleaning up in the bathroom,
[1:07:19] right? That's right.
[1:07:20] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:07:21] He's the guy who comes over and says sweet when Eduardo says a
[1:07:24] couple of girls freshening up. Yeah, he could have made himself
[1:07:26] look a bit more obvious. He's got like his hood up.
[1:07:28] Yeah. Like you can barely say his
[1:07:30] face. Should just put on me how much
[1:07:32] face on him again. On the back.
[1:07:38] Like vanilla Sky. A Voldemort.
[1:07:44] Army Hammer and Josh Pence took up Rowan for Real to prepare for
[1:07:47] the film, and Hammer said it was the hardest thing he'd ever had
[1:07:49] to do. He had to eat loads of junk food
[1:07:52] during the shoot that. Sounds all right.
[1:07:54] Yeah, it sounds great. Keep me weird up.
[1:07:56] It's the hardest thing I have to eaten fucking burgers all day
[1:07:59] looks like. Oh, we need to boat.
[1:08:02] Maybe that's why I think I did so many takes that restaurant
[1:08:04] scene or in the Bulgam back. Yeah, Bulgam, right up, Yeah.
[1:08:08] After the Social Network Army, Hammer also went on to have a
[1:08:10] successful Hollywood career, some of his most notable roles
[1:08:13] coming in G Edgar, The Lone Ranger, The Man from Uncle and
[1:08:16] Call Me By Your Name, among others.
[1:08:18] Yeah. And here as the Winklevi does
[1:08:20] the business for us. Absolutely.
[1:08:22] Yeah, Army Hammerburger. Makes us hit him.
[1:08:25] Before we sign off on the cast, there is something else worth
[1:08:27] noting. So, Dustin Moskovitz, the kind
[1:08:30] of forgotten Facebook founder? Yeah, Pete, best of the gang.
[1:08:34] Yeah. He is in the film basically just
[1:08:36] goes Eduardo every so often. Do you know who plays him?
[1:08:41] Yeah, he's in Jurassic Park. Yeah.
[1:08:42] It's Tim from Jurassic Park, isn't he?
[1:08:44] Yeah. The actor Joseph Marcello.
[1:08:46] But I know for playing Timmy the kid in Jurassic Parker.
[1:08:48] Yeah, Couldn't believe it. Yeah.
[1:08:50] And then John Deacon in Bohemian Rhapsody.
[1:08:52] Isn't he John Deacon? He is.
[1:08:54] Yeah, brilliant in Pacific, if you haven't seen that.
[1:08:56] Oh yes, he is. Yes.
[1:08:58] So that's our main cast. We talked about Justin
[1:09:00] Timberlake as Sean Parker, and in those three leaves, Jesse
[1:09:03] Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Army Hammer, among the best work
[1:09:07] of all three for us. Oh, definitely, yeah.
[1:09:10] I would say so, yeah. Yeah.
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[1:10:28] sponsoring this episode. The middle.
[1:10:37] Heading into the middle of the social network and things are
[1:10:39] starting to heat up. We're going to be looking at the
[1:10:42] scenes where Mark sets up camp in California when Facebook
[1:10:45] starts the motor and the Henley board race where the Winklevi
[1:10:48] don't so much. But first, we've got a couple of
[1:10:51] dynamite meetings to get into. Yes.
[1:10:54] Yes, we do. So, having discovered the
[1:10:55] Facebook at Stanford University like we talked about, Napster
[1:10:58] founder Sean Parker starts to get his claws into the company
[1:11:01] when he meets Mark, Eduardo and Christie at a restaurant.
[1:11:04] At the same time, the Winklevi decided to take Mark's IP theft
[1:11:07] up with Harvard and meet with the president of the University,
[1:11:10] Larry Summers Wesley. Yeah.
[1:11:14] Punch me in the face. And punch me in the face.
[1:11:19] I think it's just it's a wonderful moment because this is
[1:11:22] where the system that they believe in so much and they even
[1:11:26] worship this system doesn't care about them.
[1:11:28] And they are just being trapped the same as everybody else.
[1:11:32] They what they're saying is he's just, I've got no time for this.
[1:11:35] I don't care about the handbook. You're not entitled to anything
[1:11:38] in the field. So entitled to this part, the
[1:11:40] film, but the meeting itself is so arduous.
[1:11:43] And you've got these the two sides of the twins that you very
[1:11:46] rarely see. You've got one who's very, very
[1:11:48] grounded, who's very, very focused on doing the right
[1:11:52] thing. And the other one who's very,
[1:11:53] very kind of vitriolic and very much like, I want to get the job
[1:11:56] done. It kind of comes across, it
[1:11:58] bleeds in. But this is that scene where
[1:12:00] he's saying, take the hand, we stay away.
[1:12:01] Fucking ass. It's just.
[1:12:03] It works so well and this is one of them sequences where I cannot
[1:12:07] differentiate between which one is Hammer, which one is not at
[1:12:11] all. And I'm like, there must be a
[1:12:13] line down the middle of this. I mean, I've seen Back the
[1:12:15] Future too. I know how this shit works.
[1:12:17] Like it's not evident to me. And it's beautifully played out
[1:12:21] because it's an emotional scene. And the way that this is cross
[1:12:24] cut, the way that this is edited to such a pace.
[1:12:27] And I love that bit when it's like, I'm sorry, you were
[1:12:29] reading the letter. I've read the letter, yeah, But
[1:12:33] the great thing about it is it shows the determination of them
[1:12:36] and their competitiveness and how they're not going to let
[1:12:39] anybody else win. Even if it is the guy who's in
[1:12:42] charge of everything they believe in, they're still going
[1:12:44] to fight against it. And I think it's a really
[1:12:46] important sequence. Yeah, this guy Laurie, so much.
[1:12:50] He's great. He's.
[1:12:51] Fucking fantastic. The most sarcastic man in the
[1:12:54] world. He's got even less time for the
[1:12:56] Winklevi's bullshit than Mark does, and I love it.
[1:12:58] I wouldn't say it's the best scene in the film, but it's
[1:13:00] definitely the funniest. The first time I watched this
[1:13:03] scene I remember being really surprised by it because it's
[1:13:05] like a comedy sketch from nowhere, but it still fits in
[1:13:08] totally with the rest of the film.
[1:13:10] The exasperation of the Winklevi is great, where one of them is
[1:13:14] like, I'm sorry President Summers, but what you just said
[1:13:16] makes no sense to me. And Larry just goes, I'm
[1:13:19] devastated by that. I really want to say that to
[1:13:24] somebody. I'm waiting for me chance.
[1:13:27] I mean, I've watched this I don't know how many times. 4 in
[1:13:29] the last week or so just for this episode.
[1:13:31] I don't think we ever see one twin without the other.
[1:13:34] Am I the only one that has no idea which winkle values which?
[1:13:37] No idea. No, no, I kind of like that.
[1:13:39] I can't tell. Yeah.
[1:13:41] I think you can tell from the attitude.
[1:13:43] Though occasionally you can, yeah.
[1:13:44] I think it's their determination to get stuff done in either the
[1:13:47] right way or just get it done. Yeah, yeah, Larry is saying just
[1:13:51] that sense that all their entitlement, all their
[1:13:54] privilege, the fact they've read the handbook, we've read the
[1:13:56] handbook counts for nothing, counts for nothing here.
[1:14:00] Nobody's read the handbook. Exactly.
[1:14:02] So what, Summers? He's excellent, and he's played
[1:14:05] by Douglas Urbanski, who was more known actually for being a
[1:14:08] producer than an actor. And before he got the role,
[1:14:11] Fincher was considering Alfred Molina for the part, which I
[1:14:14] think could have been good. That would have been amazing.
[1:14:16] He would have been great, Yeah. Change around.
[1:14:19] He's got transfers all over his back.
[1:14:21] Yeah, tell me the way. Sorry.
[1:14:26] Setting off firecrackers. But in researching this, I came
[1:14:30] across an interview with the real Larry Summers.
[1:14:32] And Sokin didn't just made this up.
[1:14:34] This is pretty much how the real meeting went, all right.
[1:14:36] Really. Yeah, this is brilliant.
[1:14:38] This is what the real Larry Summers said about the real
[1:14:41] Winklevi. One of the things you learn as a
[1:14:43] college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie
[1:14:46] and jacket on a Thursday afternoon at 3:00, there are two
[1:14:49] possibilities. One is that they have a job
[1:14:52] interview. The other is that they are an
[1:14:54] asshole. This was the latter case.
[1:14:58] Really. Have I encountered such swagger?
[1:15:00] And I responded in kind. So he's brilliant in real life
[1:15:03] as well. Fantastic.
[1:15:06] Take the president of Harvard rejecting the stereotype of
[1:15:09] Harvard. Yeah, I know.
[1:15:10] Yeah. It's really.
[1:15:12] Pretty well done. Yeah, I'm going to talk about
[1:15:15] what follows this, which is when Mark, Eduardo and Christie
[1:15:18] finally meet Sean in the restaurant.
[1:15:19] Oh, massive it is massive. Me Apple teeny.
[1:15:23] Apple teeny. Apple Teeny is around. 4 Apple
[1:15:25] Teenies. I mean, he's about to use as
[1:15:29] soon as he turns off his knee. So Slick knows the way it was by
[1:15:32] name which is always a big red flag for me.
[1:15:33] I don't like people who know the way it was.
[1:15:35] His name for some reason just overly smoke, overly self
[1:15:38] confident and everything he says.
[1:15:40] Like when Chrissy says oh you made a name for yourself and he
[1:15:42] and he discussing you or dry. Just so creepy.
[1:15:47] And those constant cutbacks to Eduardo are pretty hilarious
[1:15:51] because everyone else is enraptured in Sean's stories.
[1:15:54] Eduardo feels like a bulldog chewing a wasp, just not
[1:15:58] impressed in the slightest. And he's right because Sean is
[1:16:01] off on these paranoid rants about phone tapping, about honey
[1:16:04] traps with high class escorts, and Mark just sat there nodding
[1:16:07] along like an absolute fool. Just taking it all on face
[1:16:10] value. Yeah, the tension between Sean,
[1:16:13] Mark and Eduardo is off the scale here as this conversation
[1:16:16] progresses. It's like Mark agreeing with
[1:16:19] everything as well as yeah, that's all right, Facebook's
[1:16:21] cool is. This all right?
[1:16:22] Yeah, it's like that bit when Sean praises that particular
[1:16:25] strategy because he thinks was Mark's idea.
[1:16:28] And Eduardo does waves the spoon in.
[1:16:29] Yeah, thanks. That was mine.
[1:16:31] Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's great.
[1:16:33] That's like a brilliant moment for him.
[1:16:35] Cuts through the bullshit. Cuts through it all.
[1:16:37] With a spoon. With a spoon.
[1:16:39] And at least. I didn't use a spoon, Prince of
[1:16:45] Thieves. In.
[1:16:46] A social network Who could have done that?
[1:16:48] You, only you. And I just think it's such a
[1:16:52] funny contrast between Mark and the restaurant ways.
[1:16:54] He's practically looking at Sean with big puppy dog eyes.
[1:16:57] But then we keep cutting back to the deposition where he is
[1:17:00] silently fuming because every single bit of Eduardo's
[1:17:03] description of this meeting just some sort of how ridiculous Sean
[1:17:07] Parker was and how Eduardo was absolutely right not to trust
[1:17:10] him. Yeah.
[1:17:11] Yeah, such a cool montage as well.
[1:17:13] Isn't it though? It's a real Fincher moncharge.
[1:17:16] It's like the music kicks in and they could just have fun with
[1:17:19] it. It's great.
[1:17:20] Yeah, I think the phrase charm offensive has never been so apt.
[1:17:23] Sean like sweeps through the scene like a hurricane, wound
[1:17:26] his way in between Mark and Eduardo effortlessly.
[1:17:28] I think it's like the definitive scene in the film, inspired by
[1:17:31] real events but certainly not 100% accurate.
[1:17:34] Develop the character drama at the core of the film.
[1:17:36] It's edited together really slickly.
[1:17:38] We do get yet another montage when Sean's got them all Downing
[1:17:41] drinks and nicking lobster. How many montage?
[1:17:44] It's like Rocky 4. It's like 4 but it makes sense.
[1:17:49] But the. Great thing about it is that
[1:17:51] it's it's almost like an interview for Sean and he
[1:17:53] absolutely bewitches everyone on the other side of the table
[1:17:56] apart from Eduardo, which is really important.
[1:17:58] I mean, there's lots of thing as as well.
[1:17:59] When Sean's like $1,000,000 isn't cool, you know what's
[1:18:02] cool? You.
[1:18:03] That's great. And then there's that cut before
[1:18:06] he says a billion. Then it cuts back to the
[1:18:08] deposition, though. Yeah, that's so good.
[1:18:11] It is brilliant, although Sean's lying.
[1:18:13] A billion dollars probably doesn't sound quite as
[1:18:14] impressive the day where billionaires seem to be 10 a
[1:18:17] penny. It sounds a bit like Doctor Evil
[1:18:18] today. Going one. $1,000,000.
[1:18:22] It's basically a business meeting.
[1:18:24] But again, Fincher makes it thrilling, the energy to bring
[1:18:27] the dry scene through, like create a filmmaking again and
[1:18:30] again. It's just astonishing to me.
[1:18:32] Edward calls it Sean a thon to venture a thon for me.
[1:18:35] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:18:36] And as we've mentioned, when Sean arrives, he orders
[1:18:38] appletini's all around for the table.
[1:18:40] But when the real Mark Zuckerberg saw this, he didn't
[1:18:43] know what an Appletini was. So he tried on and apparently
[1:18:45] loved it so much that for a while Appletini was the official
[1:18:49] drink of Facebook. Yeah, it's vodka and some kind
[1:18:54] of apple due to liqueur. I think a more hydro version of
[1:18:57] an apple sours, Right. OK.
[1:18:58] But it's great when Sean says, Christy, what do you like?
[1:19:01] And she's like apple teeny. Sean goes great for those.
[1:19:05] That's one charming motherfucking pig, that.
[1:19:10] This meeting didn't really happen, at least not like it
[1:19:12] does in the film. The real meeting between Sean
[1:19:15] Parker and Mark Zuckerberg apparently involved Travis
[1:19:17] Kalanick, who went on to found Uber.
[1:19:20] By me, all right. So Park I said they went club
[1:19:23] and afterwards, but was otherwise all made-up by Sokkin.
[1:19:27] Yeah, I know that Sokin met the real Sean Parker when he was
[1:19:30] writing the film. And Park, I said Sokin was by
[1:19:32] far the weirdest person he's ever met.
[1:19:35] You could be saying something coming from a tech bro
[1:19:38] billionaire. Yeah, did they get an Uber back
[1:19:42] though? I'll get this one.
[1:19:43] Fuck off. I don't need a surprise.
[1:19:46] This is a fabrication. I mean, turning up for a billion
[1:19:49] dollar business meeting and just getting smashed?
[1:19:51] Probably not the best tactic, no.
[1:19:52] Well, or maybe. It seemed to work.
[1:19:56] So a couple of big meeting scenes.
[1:19:57] They're both pretty different, but in different ways.
[1:20:00] Pretty great. Yeah, great.
[1:20:02] Yeah. The fallout from both those
[1:20:06] meetings is swift and significant, with Mark in
[1:20:09] California and Eduardo in New York.
[1:20:11] Sean takes more clubbing and Twist the Knife and Eduardo's
[1:20:14] back. Meanwhile, having been put in
[1:20:16] their place by Larry Summers, the Winklevi headed the UK for
[1:20:19] the Henley Regatta board race. They come off second best there
[1:20:22] too, and finally decide to meet Mark in court.
[1:20:26] So, Wesley, how's this all go for you?
[1:20:29] I mean, this is that amazing moment where you've got Mark and
[1:20:31] Sean in the club, yeah. And this is the turning point
[1:20:35] for Mark 100% because do you trust Sean?
[1:20:39] Do you know what he's saying? Is he just saying stuff because
[1:20:42] it relates to what Mark's thinking?
[1:20:44] He's just got no place to stay. It's a different girl in
[1:20:48] California. I saw the chimney.
[1:20:50] Are you waiting for the chimney? Did you sabotage the chimney?
[1:20:54] But I think this whole monologue, the whole Victoria's
[1:20:57] Secret monologue is incredible. What he does is give Mark like a
[1:21:01] second skin. He gives him an extra confidence
[1:21:04] to say I'm CEO bitch. Yeah, That's what you're going
[1:21:07] to believe in. That's what I want from you.
[1:21:09] Yeah. He's almost like he's laminating
[1:21:11] them with a friendship. It's just very superficial.
[1:21:14] It's very much on the surface. And the way he takes Eduardo
[1:21:18] down, he should be here. And you know the bit that I
[1:21:21] said, that Eisenberg looks directly at the camera.
[1:21:24] It's when he says my dad is a Victoria's Secret model.
[1:21:28] And he looked at the camera and it's a split second is that if
[1:21:31] you wouldn't need a place to stay, it's going to be with me.
[1:21:33] And he's like Sean Parker is then in, he's done, let's set up
[1:21:38] a line of shots, bang, bang, bang.
[1:21:40] And he really does sell the character here.
[1:21:42] It's a wonderful scene. Yeah, it definitely is.
[1:21:46] I mean, the moral of the story seems to be if you want to make
[1:21:48] a company with a billion dollar valuation, just keep getting
[1:21:50] hammered. There's a scene before there's a
[1:21:52] Harvard where Mark interviewing developers by having them carry
[1:21:55] out a hacking test. Like his necking shots.
[1:21:57] Ridiculous. It all just relates to him
[1:21:59] though, doing face smashing when he had a couple of drinks.
[1:22:03] This is how you do something. Emotionally, that's not really
[1:22:05] the case. And the club scene, yet again,
[1:22:07] is way more engaging than it has any right to be.
[1:22:10] That opening crane shot that moves across the dance floor and
[1:22:13] then opened over the rail to Mark and Sean.
[1:22:15] I mean, wow, one of the best shots to pull you into a
[1:22:17] conversation I've ever seen. Which you'll forget about
[1:22:20] immediately. Exactly.
[1:22:22] Yeah, And the way the conversation is shot, like loads
[1:22:25] of close-ups, the way the lighting kind of bounces off
[1:22:27] Sean's face, it's not filming like a business meeting.
[1:22:30] It's filmed more like a seduction, which is basically
[1:22:32] what it is. I think this is the moment that
[1:22:34] Sean gets Mark. Yeah.
[1:22:35] And tell you what Sean loves and like Dort, doesn't he?
[1:22:39] Every chance he gets, he's in there with the story.
[1:22:41] Yeah. Yeah, it's the Victoria's Secret
[1:22:43] one. But he's like some master
[1:22:45] manipulator. Yeah, the genius of the editing
[1:22:47] as well, and the way that he's covered this venture is that
[1:22:49] you've got a lot of over the shoulders, you've got a lot of
[1:22:52] foreground to focus on so that you're involved in the
[1:22:54] relationship. And then it cuts to close-ups
[1:22:56] when he's talking about this whole monologue.
[1:22:58] And then it goes back to a wide shot.
[1:22:59] And as soon as he's finished, it cuts back to them both and
[1:23:02] you're like, OK, it's masterfully done.
[1:23:04] It's ridiculous. Brilliant.
[1:23:06] And that Roy Raymond and Victoria's Secret story that
[1:23:09] Sean tells Mark that was actually changed a bit for the
[1:23:11] film. In real life, Raymond sold
[1:23:13] Victoria's Secret for $1 million, not $4,000,000, because
[1:23:17] the company was gone bankrupt and he killed himself after a
[1:23:19] number of failed businesses, not because he sold Victoria's
[1:23:22] Secret too early. Yeah, but that's classic Sean
[1:23:24] Parker though, isn't it? He's like he's going to cut out
[1:23:27] the fat and just go. It's because of this it's 4
[1:23:29] million and then he killed himself because she wants to get
[1:23:31] some thigh eyes. Yeah, well.
[1:23:35] Yeah, that's the point he's making, isn't it?
[1:23:36] He's telling Mark don't cash in on Facebook yet, which is kind
[1:23:39] of widewater wants to deal with all the advertising he's saying.
[1:23:41] Yeah, exactly. And when the film this nightclub
[1:23:44] scene, there wasn't any music playing on the set, which would
[1:23:47] have been an absolute nightmare for anyone who's on the sound to
[1:23:50] try and match this. The extras from mine and dancing
[1:23:53] Eisenberg and Timberlake were shouting their lines as if they
[1:23:57] couldn't really hear each other. And the Sound of Violence by
[1:23:59] Dennis Dillahat was out of in post production, which I think
[1:24:02] is a perfect song for it, Right? But there's sound balance on
[1:24:05] this. This sequence is fantastic.
[1:24:07] You wouldn't even notice. No, I know it's I'm just talking
[1:24:09] legit. Yeah.
[1:24:10] And that Music Choice is a perfect one for the scene, I
[1:24:12] think as well. Yeah, after this thought you get
[1:24:15] I think one of the most unique and memorable scenes in the
[1:24:18] film, which is the boat race. Because like whenever the actual
[1:24:21] boat race, the big famous one in this country comes around, I
[1:24:24] always think what an absolute waste of time.
[1:24:27] Like I can't think went. From a boring any sporting
[1:24:30] offend for me. Well, yeah, exactly.
[1:24:31] I feel like Wesley talking about this.
[1:24:33] Just like two teams of Poshaw splashing about in the water.
[1:24:37] Lovely. You know, class Warrior.
[1:24:39] There we go. Let's just say it like it is.
[1:24:41] Then you get this and it's like I'm watching a penalty shootout
[1:24:43] in the World Cup final. I couldn't be more invested,
[1:24:45] even though at the same time I kind of don't care because I
[1:24:48] don't really know who's in there.
[1:24:49] It's really strange, but it's just so unique.
[1:24:51] I mean, the music, it could be laughable, but it really works.
[1:24:55] Those opening shots where it looks like a model are
[1:24:57] incredible and it's the breaking point, I think, for the
[1:25:00] Winklevi. They've lost the race, pretty
[1:25:02] much get blanked by royalty, and our Facebook has gone global.
[1:25:06] I do think that line from that guy about how his daughter is
[1:25:09] now on Facebook, I think that's pretty clunky.
[1:25:11] I would set up the rest of it. It's like, oh, could not have
[1:25:15] thought something a bit cleverer for that.
[1:25:17] And I think, like, considering some of the allegations about
[1:25:20] Hammer's personal life when he says let's get the fucking nerd,
[1:25:24] that's a bit unfortunate. Oh, yeah.
[1:25:27] Well, yeah. Finchard, like let's get a ball
[1:25:29] race in there. Slow motion, out of focus, loads
[1:25:32] of close-ups, Grieg in the background and it's going to be
[1:25:36] awesome. I mean, at this point it is like
[1:25:38] Rocky Four should have been the Winklevi versus the Russians.
[1:25:42] But it's superb. The use of soft focus in the
[1:25:44] background, how the rollers go in and out of focus is the move.
[1:25:47] It's brilliant. This is how they should start
[1:25:49] doing rowing in the Olympics in the whole of the mountain King
[1:25:52] in the background. I might watch it maybe.
[1:25:56] It all looks like it's very much on the tilt and shift lens where
[1:25:59] you can choose your focus point. Right.
[1:26:02] A lot of lenses you would basically choose your focus
[1:26:04] point and then just fall off naturally.
[1:26:05] But the tilt and shift, you can really focus where that's going
[1:26:08] to be sharp, which works really well because I don't really like
[1:26:12] the look of our country in a wide shot.
[1:26:16] They should sell glasses like this.
[1:26:17] I'd buy them. Yeah, exactly.
[1:26:19] Some total shifts. Yeah.
[1:26:20] It's a Buckingham Palace. You can't see the palace.
[1:26:23] The Winklevi though, they really did roll for Harvard in the
[1:26:25] final of the Grand Challenge Cup, but they could only film 3
[1:26:29] races at the Henley Royal Ricotta and Fincher had to film
[1:26:32] the inserted Eaton and the only time they could film there was
[1:26:35] six weeks before the film is due for release.
[1:26:38] And this is one of the reasons the backgrounds are out of
[1:26:40] focus. It's a quick way to make it less
[1:26:42] obvious than not shotted the same place.
[1:26:44] All right. Nice.
[1:26:45] Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, sign of a great
[1:26:48] director. I think he takes the kind of
[1:26:49] negative and turns into a positive.
[1:26:51] Yeah. Really stylized, it looks really
[1:26:53] good. Does yeah it.
[1:26:55] Looks really cinematic. It does.
[1:26:57] It really cold. And wet.
[1:27:01] It's. Freezing.
[1:27:04] It was Fincher's idea to score the scene with in the whole of
[1:27:07] the mountain. And
[1:27:19] if you're our age, you know for a fact that means Alton Towers
[1:27:25] advert on telly and it used this and it was fucking overused.
[1:27:28] It was by Edward Gregg, he said to the composers, Trent Resner.
[1:27:31] And that goes Frost. What about this pretty I've been
[1:27:34] written by Wendy? Carlos no play.
[1:27:37] Reznor said. Like the first version of it
[1:27:39] sound like a video game, but we really worked on it and worked
[1:27:42] on it and apparently that was the hardest track on the
[1:27:44] soundtrack to get right. But I honestly think the nail
[1:27:47] this is the only version of this that I listen to and take
[1:27:50] seriously. Yeah, Wendy Carlos wrote the
[1:27:52] score for The Shining, didn't she?
[1:27:54] Yeah, she did, Yes. I guess Ross said it's a great
[1:27:56] melody but must have listened to it 20,000 times and he said if
[1:28:00] it hadn't been approved would probably have killed ourselves.
[1:28:05] From the guy who wrote closer, I mean.
[1:28:09] The arrangements, fantastic. I love it.
[1:28:11] Yeah. It is wonderful.
[1:28:12] I say. It's the only time I'm like,
[1:28:14] yeah, that's acceptable now because I'd heard it in so many
[1:28:17] different forms, but added such an edge to it, such a harshness
[1:28:21] to it. Yeah, it became like something
[1:28:23] that was like, truly evil. And I really dig that.
[1:28:31] And we've made it through the middle in one piece, a couple of
[1:28:34] business meetings and then epic sport race, and it's pretty
[1:28:37] difficult to pick out the one that's the most thrilling
[1:28:40] classic venture. Classic venture.
[1:28:42] Very classic venture. The crew.
[1:28:50] As we've been talking about, David Fincher worked very
[1:28:52] collaboratively on the social network with his crew, and it's
[1:28:55] time to talk about some of those people now.
[1:28:57] Yeah. Trent Reznor Matic as Ross's
[1:28:59] composers, are two of them, and Jeff Kroenwerth as director of
[1:29:02] photography is another. And we will talk about them.
[1:29:05] But we're going to begin with the screenplay.
[1:29:08] OK, Yeah. We've mentioned him a lot
[1:29:10] already, and the writer of The Social Network was Aaron Sorkin,
[1:29:13] already a well known screen writing name at this point.
[1:29:16] Yeah, adopting Ben Mezrich's non fiction book The Accidental
[1:29:18] Billionaires. This was Sorkin's fifth screen
[1:29:20] writing credit and he also created three hit TV shows,
[1:29:24] including The West Wing. Yes.
[1:29:26] Aaron Sorkin Westy, A genius according to some, a weirdo
[1:29:30] according to Sean Parker. Where do you stand on the
[1:29:32] writing? Well, from The West Wing, you
[1:29:38] see what it did there. I'm surprised you didn't write
[1:29:40] that one in there, John. You fucking failed.
[1:29:42] I've missed out. I will say the one thing that I
[1:29:45] get from this is that this is Fincher going up to Sauron and
[1:29:48] going, can we just appreciate each other as much as humanly
[1:29:51] possible about what we do as artists and as creatives and
[1:29:55] something going, yeah, OK. And Fincher going, yeah, OK.
[1:29:58] And they've got so much respect for each other.
[1:30:00] Oh, yeah. And the dialogue here is the
[1:30:02] plot. This screenplay was absolutely
[1:30:05] on fire when it was delivered to Hollywood.
[1:30:08] It was electric. Everybody one of the piece of
[1:30:11] it. And we say so many times, or I
[1:30:13] say so many times, and I'll put it on myself, that films are
[1:30:16] made. There's a lot of ad Lib, there's
[1:30:18] a lot of room this rewrites this, but there's no room to
[1:30:22] rewrite anything. You have to take what's written
[1:30:25] and condense it down by 20 pages.
[1:30:28] They've already got exactly what the need, and to me, this is an
[1:30:32] absolute blueprint and it makes Fincher work to the degree that
[1:30:36] he wants to work to, to the pace that he wants to work to.
[1:30:40] Tokens got such a hold on this dialogue, such a hold on this
[1:30:44] story. He knows what he wants to say
[1:30:46] and he doesn't give a fuck that it's about Facebook.
[1:30:49] It's a human commentary and he knows what he wants to say and
[1:30:52] the characters are perfect. It's something that you can
[1:30:55] relate to as a human being to any of these characters.
[1:30:58] You can plug into any of these characters from a writer's point
[1:31:01] of view and get it. It's a novel.
[1:31:04] It is a short film, it's a long film.
[1:31:07] It is classic start to finish, genius dialogue.
[1:31:12] That is cool as fuck. I mean, we went over the whole
[1:31:14] like Sean wagon up in the apartment.
[1:31:17] Nice to meet you. I mean that.
[1:31:18] Who wouldn't want to do that once in the life, just once?
[1:31:22] To. Anybody just once.
[1:31:23] And you'd be like, that was the best moment I've ever had in my
[1:31:26] life. And I'm 78 years old.
[1:31:28] And I did that once and I said it once and it was amazing.
[1:31:31] And he does that over and over and over again in this film.
[1:31:36] I don't know of a screenplay, maybe Robert Towne do in
[1:31:40] Chinatown maybe, but I don't know of a screenplay that's
[1:31:45] related to a film so well that I would just rather read the
[1:31:48] screenplay and go here, I get this.
[1:31:51] That's on the page. For me.
[1:31:53] This is his Everest, and I don't think he's done better.
[1:31:55] I don't think he will and I don't think he needs to.
[1:31:59] Yeah, I mean, the writing is brilliant.
[1:32:01] I agree. The dialogue is zinger after
[1:32:03] zinger. As a character study of Mark,
[1:32:05] it's interesting. He's a character with depth and
[1:32:08] layers and there's a rugs to riches like courtroom drama.
[1:32:11] I think it's compelling. The only criticism the film
[1:32:13] seems to come in for from a writing point of view is its
[1:32:16] accuracy. As in it's not 100% historical
[1:32:19] accurate. I understand the criticism
[1:32:21] because what happens here sometimes is true, but very
[1:32:24] often not how things played out in real life.
[1:32:26] And that bothers me not one bit to be honest.
[1:32:30] Exactly. I know it does some others and I
[1:32:32] do get why. The reason I don't mind is
[1:32:34] because talking hasn't written this as a history lesson.
[1:32:36] No, he hasn't. And there's a great line in the
[1:32:38] whole thing that people miss. And when they're sitting there
[1:32:41] and Sean turns around the mark and goes, this is where the film
[1:32:43] The Taran Inferno. Yeah, that's not the same thing,
[1:32:47] is it? It's totally different.
[1:32:48] Like we're comfortable. That is what Sorkin trying to
[1:32:50] say. It's genius.
[1:32:52] Exactly. Yeah, He's written this is like,
[1:32:53] exploration of themes like friendship and social status,
[1:32:56] and that's why he makes changes to support the points he's
[1:32:59] making or to ask a question or just to create drama.
[1:33:02] Soaking himself says this isn't about the real Mark Zuckerberg.
[1:33:05] This is about the Mark Zuckerberg in the film.
[1:33:07] So that's how I watch it, as a movie inspired by real events.
[1:33:10] It could be about any invention in the last 20 years.
[1:33:13] Exactly, Yeah. Anything.
[1:33:14] I think that's why he calls it the social network and not like
[1:33:17] Facebook begins. Or something.
[1:33:19] Facebook. Facebook rises.
[1:33:22] That's the third part. I'll start writing that now.
[1:33:26] I mean, it's not about Zuckerberg and the others as
[1:33:27] much as it is about friendship generally.
[1:33:29] It's not about Facebook as much as it is about social status and
[1:33:32] social media generally. Yeah, above all else, I think
[1:33:35] the point SO is making is that real life relationships or what
[1:33:38] matter? Like I said, Mark loses the two
[1:33:41] people who gave a meaningful relationships in favor of
[1:33:43] literally social media, and he ends up more isolated because of
[1:33:46] it. That's the message I take from
[1:33:48] it. So yeah, as a historical
[1:33:50] document, the social network doesn't have too much value.
[1:33:52] But as a piece of art, a cautionary tale on the pitfalls
[1:33:56] of social media, I think it's a stunning piece of writing on the
[1:33:59] whole, Yeah. A social relationships, not even
[1:34:01] social media, Yeah. Now how you deal with any
[1:34:04] success that comes your way, It's always been the same.
[1:34:06] It could be about anyone that's going to be like John Lennon and
[1:34:08] Paul McCartney. Yeah, it could have.
[1:34:10] It could have. It could have.
[1:34:11] It's exactly the same. It's timeless.
[1:34:13] Or Ringo and George maybe? Not so much.
[1:34:17] Yeah, 5. Percent shares.
[1:34:22] It's very, very soaking. I mean, I was a huge fan of The
[1:34:25] West Wing back in the day. So this style is a very
[1:34:28] familiar. It's a weird thing because the
[1:34:31] more familiar you are with his work, it almost becomes to its
[1:34:34] detriment because this is what he does.
[1:34:36] He makes every single character the single smartest, wittiest
[1:34:41] person ever, and it can become quite interchangeable when
[1:34:44] everyone talks the same. Like he wrote Steve Jobs a few
[1:34:47] years later. And you could swap out Erica's
[1:34:49] dialogue in this for the scene with Steve Jobs daughter in that
[1:34:53] and you would barely tell the difference.
[1:34:54] Yeah, this certainly is me saying it's bad.
[1:34:57] I mean, I just feel a little bit distant because everyone in this
[1:35:01] is this like hyper realistic machine thrown out one liners
[1:35:05] and it just loses a little bit of humanity for me along the
[1:35:08] way. I mean, it's great writing how
[1:35:10] would elevate such a potentially dry story?
[1:35:12] But I think I agree with Wesley. This is like his Everest and it
[1:35:15] is great. But once you realize he only
[1:35:18] ever does dialogue one particular way, you just start
[1:35:21] to see a little bit of the the kind of cracks in it in a way.
[1:35:25] Well slammed. Well.
[1:35:27] It's so really good. He didn't slam it.
[1:35:29] It's fine. I think the thing for me is that
[1:35:32] I hadn't seen The West Wing. I wasn't that aware of Sokens
[1:35:34] writing. And this to me is like, if this
[1:35:36] the first time you become accustomed to it, then wow,
[1:35:39] punches are right in the face. Yeah.
[1:35:41] So the roots of the film go back to The Accidental Billionaires,
[1:35:44] a non fiction book that was written by Ben Mesrick and told
[1:35:47] the story of the founding of Facebook.
[1:35:49] That is kind of Facebook begins. And Meslick said that he got a
[1:35:52] random e-mail from a Harvard student at 2:00 in the morning
[1:35:55] saying my friend Co founded Facebook and nobody's ever heard
[1:35:58] of him. He arranged a meeting with this
[1:35:59] guy's friend and then walked Eduardo Savrin, right?
[1:36:02] And when he told him the story, Meswick was shocked at how
[1:36:05] dramatic it was. And in a world where drama is
[1:36:08] everything, that is the thing. Yeah.
[1:36:14] Yeah, and as soon as Mesrick's publisher read his treatment,
[1:36:17] they knew it could be big and started sending around film
[1:36:20] studios. While Mesrick was writing the
[1:36:21] book. Mesrick had also written a book
[1:36:23] called Bringing Down the House, which had been adapted into a
[1:36:26] film called 21 and that was produced by Kevin Spacey's
[1:36:29] production company, Trigger St. Productions.
[1:36:32] He loved the treatment and he brought in the other companies
[1:36:34] who worked on 21, which was Columbia, Michael De Luca
[1:36:37] Productions and Relativity Media, right?
[1:36:40] Right. And Relativity Media, they just
[1:36:43] worked on Charlie Wilson's War, also written by Aaron Sorkin,
[1:36:46] went by Sorkin. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:36:47] So that's how he got the treatment right?
[1:36:50] And after reading 3 pages he was like, this is like Shakespeare.
[1:36:55] 3 pages. But he also said luckily
[1:36:56] Shakespeare wasn't available, so they asked me instead.
[1:36:59] Amazing, yeah. Sultan's first trip was 178
[1:37:03] pages long and the studio told me how they cut it out by at
[1:37:06] least 30 pages when he got it down to 162.
[1:37:11] And then Fincher came in and said he wanted to keep all of it
[1:37:14] and told the student he would film it and come in at like 2
[1:37:16] hours. How on earth?
[1:37:19] 162 pages? That's a minute a page, right?
[1:37:21] I'm, I'm bringing that into two hours, sorry.
[1:37:24] And he did that by directing the actors talking very quickly,
[1:37:26] like we said with the stopwatch thing, Aaron.
[1:37:29] So he's going to read it out. OK, It's going to be 40 seconds
[1:37:31] quick out. OK, Well if Jesus Christ, the
[1:37:33] confidence of this guy is amazing.
[1:37:36] I mean, there's only the off the lips, off the time, the actors.
[1:37:39] You want absolute speed talkers. I think me and you would fit in.
[1:37:41] Yeah. West yeah, I reckon.
[1:37:42] Yeah, I think we would not acting.
[1:37:45] No, probably not. And because Mesrick and Sorkin
[1:37:48] were writing at the same time, Sorkin took some artistic
[1:37:52] licence. We've been talking about the
[1:37:53] real story as we go on. We've talked about some changes,
[1:37:55] but some of the other ones include the story about Eduardo
[1:37:59] and the chicken is initiation into the Phoenix club that
[1:38:02] didn't happen. Good.
[1:38:03] The Harvard Crimson did publish an article about chicken torture
[1:38:06] in the club, but it had nothing to do with Eduardo.
[1:38:10] You'd be furious, wouldn't you? Would like make him look like a
[1:38:12] lunatic obsessed with the chicken.
[1:38:15] So I had a chicken and they had chicken and I fed the chicken to
[1:38:19] the chicken. I'm hearing too much chicken.
[1:38:22] Chicken for two weeks. Cannibalism.
[1:38:24] A. Detail that is true though is
[1:38:26] the line where the Winklevise say they're going after Mark is
[1:38:28] like the Cobra Kai and The Karate Kid.
[1:38:30] Oh, nice, yeah. Yeah, that was something the
[1:38:32] real Winklevise said to Ben Mesrick when he interviewed
[1:38:34] them. All right, nice.
[1:38:37] That's the only frame of reference.
[1:38:38] Yeah. Brilliant.
[1:38:42] In the film, Mark drops out of Harvard to move to California
[1:38:45] and work on Facebook. This is true, but Harvard gave
[1:38:48] him an honorary degree in 2017. Yeah.
[1:38:51] And Mark's Facebook house in Palo Alto really did have a zip
[1:38:54] line running from the roof to the pool.
[1:38:55] Apparently. Nice.
[1:38:57] Would you fancy one of those in your garden?
[1:38:58] Not sure I would. To be really small zip line,
[1:39:01] yeah. It's going to say you'd hit the
[1:39:04] ground very quickly. Into a paddling pool.
[1:39:08] The moment where Eduardo goes to the bank and fees is the
[1:39:11] Facebook account. That did really happen as well.
[1:39:13] And it was around the time that Peter Thiel did make his
[1:39:16] $500,000 investment. Terrible timing from Eduardo
[1:39:21] that oh, it is like, isn't it? But I'm meeting with Peter
[1:39:25] Thiel. That's my kind of meeting.
[1:39:26] No nonsense. Mark walks in, he just goes,
[1:39:28] Congrats, we're giving you half $1,000,000.
[1:39:30] He doesn't even sit out straight in.
[1:39:32] Brilliant. Yeah.
[1:39:35] Real Zuckerberg really did get a 1600 SAT score like he says in
[1:39:38] the film, and he really did have a business card that said I'm
[1:39:41] CEO bitch. Yeah, nice.
[1:39:44] I mean a perfect SAT score and a terrible business card.
[1:39:49] I'm CEO comma bitch. It's awful, yeah.
[1:39:52] I wonder what Padre Bateman to make of that.
[1:39:55] Discarded immediately. I can't believe Bryce prefers
[1:39:58] Zuckerberg his card to mine. That's blue.
[1:40:05] That font is Sansoriff, and Sorkin has a cameo as well.
[1:40:12] He plays the ad executive who meets with Mark and Eduardo when
[1:40:15] they talk about advertising on Facebook.
[1:40:18] He had coming on his own films before this one.
[1:40:21] But. This was, this wasn't his idea,
[1:40:24] he said. The Fincher was insistent that
[1:40:26] he played the part. And I think he's really good in
[1:40:28] it. He's like, what is that?
[1:40:30] What are you doing? And it's a way to shot as well.
[1:40:33] It's shot so beautifully. They're reflected in the glass
[1:40:35] and he's completely clear that he doesn't understand what
[1:40:38] they're talking about. Like it's, it's a great team.
[1:40:41] Yeah, there's behind the scenes footage of that.
[1:40:43] I think it might be in that documentary where see where
[1:40:45] they're filming the scene and then after each take Fincher
[1:40:47] just like. Faster.
[1:40:48] Go faster. Faster, faster.
[1:40:49] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[1:40:53] You read it faster. And the last shot filmed DM
[1:40:57] production was one of the shots for the face smash montage Shane
[1:41:01] and that was directed by Sorkin. Fincher told him he was leaving
[1:41:04] and Sorkin had to get the last shot.
[1:41:06] And Sorkin thought he was joking until he saw Fincher get in his
[1:41:09] car and drive away hard enough. Yeah, that's it taking too long.
[1:41:14] Yeah. I think that's a beautiful
[1:41:16] sentiment from Venture. Yeah.
[1:41:17] And that shot that he does is like, what's it 2 seconds if
[1:41:21] that if that 3 seconds. And talking did 2 takes of it
[1:41:25] and Bob Wagner who was the assistant director said no, no,
[1:41:28] if we only get 2 takes, David will kill us.
[1:41:31] So they shot the exact same thing about eight times in
[1:41:34] Finch. That's great.
[1:41:37] Yeah. For his work is right around The
[1:41:40] Social Network. Aaron Sorkin was nominated for
[1:41:42] and won Best Adapted screenplay at the Oscars.
[1:41:45] No complaints on that from us. I don't think no.
[1:41:47] No, no, King's Speech, come fuck off.
[1:41:55] Aaron Sorkin hadn't worked with David Fincher before, but the
[1:41:57] same wasn't true of the composers on the film.
[1:41:59] The score for The Social Network was written by Trent Reznor and
[1:42:02] Atticus Ross. Reznor started as the lead
[1:42:05] singer and songwriter of American rock band 9 Inch Nails
[1:42:08] before moving into movies. This was his first film credit
[1:42:11] and I guess Ross had been a producer for various artists,
[1:42:13] including Nine Inch Nails, and this was his third film credit
[1:42:16] after New York, I Love You and The Book of Eli.
[1:42:19] That's. Right.
[1:42:20] Right, Reznor and Ross together in movies at last night.
[1:42:23] How was their music? Yeah, I mean, I think this music
[1:42:26] just really knits everything together.
[1:42:28] And it's strange because it's not a soundtrack I'd have a
[1:42:31] listen to on its own, but. Oh, really?
[1:42:34] Yeah, I don't. I don't think it would.
[1:42:36] Listen to it daily. Well, you do.
[1:42:38] Of course you do on violence. Yeah, I do.
[1:42:41] It's. Amazing.
[1:42:42] I mean, it's a film of meetings and depositions and geeks
[1:42:45] crowding around over laptops. None of this is exciting.
[1:42:48] None of this is sexy stuff. But the scar really juices the
[1:42:52] film open. And you've said it, John, it
[1:42:53] does make the film sexy. The music's so integral to that.
[1:42:56] It's so pounding. You'll go back to the restaurant
[1:42:58] scene with Sean, like as a montage doesn't really do
[1:43:02] anything by itself, but you put the music on the top of that and
[1:43:05] it's just a complete seduction. It's the same when Mark gets it
[1:43:08] spreading around campus and it's gone viral again.
[1:43:11] The music just pounds and it just pulses its way through
[1:43:14] scenes and it makes you sit up and pay attention.
[1:43:17] I think it's absolutely fantastic.
[1:43:19] I totally agree. I mean, Trent Reznor, Atticus
[1:43:21] Ross, stranger names, but very good writers and brilliant
[1:43:25] producers. For me, I mean, the electronic
[1:43:27] music to reflect the world of digital we're in is a fairly
[1:43:30] obvious thing to do, but it's executed extremely well.
[1:43:34] Yeah, the score stands out in the film, like instantly and
[1:43:37] constantly for me. After the opening, when markets
[1:43:40] dumped by Erica, he's running back to his dorm and the music's
[1:43:42] got this like recurring deep motif.
[1:43:49] It's like, oh, see, we look at this guy.
[1:43:51] It's got that feel. I think of it almost like a 21st
[1:43:54] century Bernard Herman. It's ominous.
[1:43:57] It's ominous. It's like The Shining as well.
[1:43:59] Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.
[1:44:01] It's powerful. Well, I hear about the
[1:44:02] soundtrack, and I guess this comes from Reznor and Ross
[1:44:04] starting in bands, is that the tracks have got actual titles.
[1:44:07] Yeah, They're not called like Deposition Scene 3.
[1:44:10] They call things like Penetration and Magnetic.
[1:44:13] Malcolm's dead, yeah. Exactly.
[1:44:16] Qui Gon's noble death. Yeah.
[1:44:21] But yeah, like I said before, Fincher doesn't just direct
[1:44:23] what's on the page, and then Reznor and Ross don't just write
[1:44:26] what's on the screen. It's so artistic, but not
[1:44:28] remotely pretentious. Until it's important to the
[1:44:31] storytelling, it's essential. One of the best scores this
[1:44:34] century for me. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree.
[1:44:37] I love 9 Inch nails. I thought they'd be right up
[1:44:39] yours. Three, yeah.
[1:44:40] Down Much Spiral is one of my favorite albums never made.
[1:44:43] He's just got such a handle on this real depth in this
[1:44:49] industrial sound that he brings to this, but he also brings
[1:44:52] something to it that's so soft. I think Anika Squash has a lot
[1:44:55] to do with that. But to me, this is really about
[1:44:59] the synthesizer using that computer sound.
[1:45:02] It's against lies and truth, ambition versus loyalty, and
[1:45:06] what we get a lot of the time in soundtracks.
[1:45:08] We've got a piano, right? And then you'll get a cello.
[1:45:12] It's kind of against each other and it plays against things.
[1:45:15] But it's just the way that he relates that.
[1:45:17] And it's very, it's very Fincher esque.
[1:45:19] And for this to be his first foray into this whole
[1:45:23] soundtrack, I think it's very 9 inch Nils.
[1:45:26] But it's not. It's very accessible.
[1:45:28] It's very exciting. It's very, very good.
[1:45:31] And there's always the two sides to everything.
[1:45:33] If Trent Reznor did it by himself, I don't think it would
[1:45:36] have been as good. I think he needs Atticus Ross to
[1:45:37] go. Yeah, I'm the piano, you're the,
[1:45:40] you're the metal, and I'm the rules.
[1:45:42] You're the young. Yeah, this year and young, this
[1:45:45] kind of black and white with this light and dark, this Charis
[1:45:48] cure that always just works with the soundtrack.
[1:45:50] And this week I put it on and I've listened to it driving to
[1:45:53] and from work and going to like the supermarket and coming back.
[1:45:57] And I'm like, I'll get everything done a lot quicker.
[1:46:01] And I feel a little bit better about it.
[1:46:03] And I don't quite know why. And I think that's the whole
[1:46:05] point. It just really reinforces the
[1:46:07] whole narrative of the film. But it's a wonderful thing.
[1:46:11] Well, Resna had worked as music producer on Natural Born Killers
[1:46:15] and Lost Highway, and he'd also written a score for One Hour
[1:46:18] Photo, but that got rejected by the studio.
[1:46:21] So he said it was a surprise when Fincher called him just out
[1:46:23] of the blue. And he from off was surprised
[1:46:25] when he taught them in films about Facebook.
[1:46:27] But he said, I mean, this is a recurring theme.
[1:46:30] Within a few minutes of reading the script he decided to do it
[1:46:33] and he brought in Atticus roster work with him.
[1:46:35] Nice. I would have fucking loved to
[1:46:37] hear a score on One Hour Photo. My favorite films of all time.
[1:46:41] Yeah, that would be an incredible.
[1:46:42] Would have changed it completely.
[1:46:44] Yeah, yeah. Well, Finch already.
[1:46:45] He was closer by 9 inch nails on the opening tails of seven.
[1:46:48] Seven, Yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah.
[1:46:50] He's directed some soft. Yeah, he directed the video for
[1:46:53] only another song by 9 Inch Nails.
[1:46:55] Yeah, Yeah, it sounds like he's a fan.
[1:46:57] And yeah, it seems like it was a matter of time before the road
[1:46:59] score for. Yeah, it's good job I didn't get
[1:47:01] Madonna in there. That would have been a bit
[1:47:06] different. I did Vogue divided on the
[1:47:08] soundtrack for a social network, so the music plays of the
[1:47:14] opening titles is called Hand Covers Bruise.
[1:47:16] It's played two other times during the film during
[1:47:19] deposition scenes. For each time it was used,
[1:47:21] Reznor recorded the piano further away to make it sound
[1:47:24] more ecui as Mark started to become more isolated.
[1:47:27] So what it is, it's like it's this dark and rich combination
[1:47:31] of things and he's losing his self into this Internet world
[1:47:36] and I think it's just wonderful how they the emotions removed
[1:47:39] and the money takes over and these lovely piano notes just
[1:47:42] disappear throughout the film. It's wonderful.
[1:47:44] Yeah, it's maybe the most well known piece from the score.
[1:47:47] I think so, yeah. Starts with like the distorted
[1:47:50] chaotic strings, and then that piano comes in plays like you
[1:47:56] say, over the titles and over some of the big plot points add
[1:47:58] dramatic heft. Every time we hear it, it's like
[1:48:01] a musical grenade, That piano. Every note, it's a bang.
[1:48:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Fincher had originally
[1:48:08] planned to use Beyond Belief by Elvis Costello of the organ
[1:48:10] titles Lovely, but he changed his mind when he heard hand
[1:48:13] covers boots. So would.
[1:48:18] I And he was so impressed by the score that during the edit he
[1:48:21] started cutting the film to match the music.
[1:48:23] I mean, that's amazing. Yeah.
[1:48:25] I mean, the type of filmmaker Fincher is, he's like to the
[1:48:27] millimeter to get him to go back and change things.
[1:48:30] It's already decided upon. You've got to be bringing some
[1:48:32] serious quality to the table, I think.
[1:48:34] Yeah. And when Fincher was listening
[1:48:36] to the soundtrack originally listening to as he was kind of
[1:48:39] in his office and it was this, he said it was the 7th track
[1:48:42] that was sent over by Trent Resnet.
[1:48:44] And he's like, not that's definitely the opening sequence.
[1:48:46] Yeah. Right.
[1:48:47] And they thought it was just going to be somewhere in the
[1:48:49] middle of just whatever else, he said.
[1:48:50] No develop that. Works so well, doesn't it?
[1:48:52] Perfect. It's a synth and piano, he said.
[1:48:55] That's the jump to position between his whole mindset and
[1:48:59] who he needs to be. For their music on the Social
[1:49:02] Network, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were also nominated
[1:49:05] for and also won an Oscar. They beat out Hans Zimmer for
[1:49:08] Inception, no less. Wow.
[1:49:10] Oh wow. I mean, that's.
[1:49:11] That's impressive. That's a fight, OK?
[1:49:14] It really is. Imagine The King's Speech had
[1:49:16] beaten both them. Yeah, I'm Johnny Moore.
[1:49:18] Johnny Moore's furious. I think we agree though.
[1:49:23] Outstanding score here. Oh, it's worth, yet outrageously
[1:49:26] good. Yeah, it's honestly it's it's
[1:49:28] superb. Do you come as to David Fincher
[1:49:33] films in the writing and the kind of in the music then?
[1:49:36] But that wasn't the case with the cinematography.
[1:49:38] The director of photography was Jeff Cronenworth.
[1:49:41] This was his Fifty Chairs, DP and 2nd collaboration with
[1:49:44] Fincher having a shot Fight Club 11 years earlier.
[1:49:47] Yes. The visuals and Wesley how did
[1:49:49] Jeff Cronin with do? Oh.
[1:49:54] Wesley's just frozen. Froze and you know how how rich
[1:49:58] this is, how dog it is? It's just like caramel.
[1:50:02] It's just like shadowy caramels and it just, it just flows
[1:50:07] around and it's just like didn't give a fuck If you can't see
[1:50:10] anything. It doesn't care.
[1:50:11] The cameras just shut the fuck up.
[1:50:13] This is what I'm looking at. There's nothing immature about
[1:50:17] the way this film shot. It's the most mature film that
[1:50:20] I've seen shot for the most immature content possible.
[1:50:24] Yeah. And that is what makes it work.
[1:50:26] And Jeff Crum brings everything to this.
[1:50:30] It's just what angle do you need it from?
[1:50:32] You've got it. Do we need a reveal of the
[1:50:34] camera just moving around here? Do you want anything special?
[1:50:37] No. Do you want the digital work to
[1:50:39] be invisible? Yep.
[1:50:40] I just want you to just. Fucking go in there and.
[1:50:43] Create something. It's so palatable that for
[1:50:47] anyone to watch it go, this looks like I'm sprinting through
[1:50:51] a fucking art gallery. It like you're sprinting through
[1:50:54] the Louvre and you're just looking at stuff left and right
[1:50:56] at midnight before anyone catches you.
[1:50:58] It's so dark, it's so rich, it's so beautiful.
[1:51:01] I don't think it could look any better.
[1:51:03] And if I ever, ever create anything that's 10 minutes that
[1:51:07] looks as good as this two hours, I'll die a happy man.
[1:51:10] It's a beautiful piece of work. It absolutely is.
[1:51:13] I think one of Fincher trademarks for me is like that
[1:51:16] kind of ultra precision in how his films tend to look.
[1:51:19] He knows exactly where the shadows need to be.
[1:51:22] Yeah, but Kronomath knows that. Fincher knows like it's already
[1:51:26] there. And Vinchers walking a bit.
[1:51:27] That's one thing I don't have to worry about.
[1:51:29] Yeah, I guess he must have known he could do that, having worked
[1:51:32] with him before. So he's kind of brought him back
[1:51:33] for that reason. But I always think there's a bit
[1:51:35] of a Stanley Kubrick kind of influence in his visuals in that
[1:51:38] way, and what Fincher and Cronin with do here with what they have
[1:51:41] to work with. I think it's fantastic.
[1:51:43] I mean, Harvard's a really old college.
[1:51:44] It's been around since 1636 or 1638, according to the Phoenix
[1:51:49] Club. And the lean into it.
[1:51:51] There's so much texture and depth in the Harvard scenes.
[1:51:53] Yeah, it feels really modern. In fact, I think it has a kind
[1:51:56] of near future feel to it. Yeah, Find cinematic visuals
[1:52:00] where most couldn't. I think the moment that were
[1:52:02] mentioned before where Eduardo freezes the account, that shot
[1:52:05] when he walks into the bank, he's in the distance, out of
[1:52:07] focus, then in focus as he gets closer.
[1:52:10] But there's no focus, Paul. I don't think he walks into
[1:52:13] focus. I love that shot.
[1:52:14] Yeah. And the deposition scenes, there
[1:52:16] must be 20 different camera angles in that room.
[1:52:19] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:52:20] And those kind of vivid, striking images are on the
[1:52:22] screen all the way through the film.
[1:52:23] I saw an interview with Fincher where he said there was no set
[1:52:26] up that took them more than 20 minutes to light, which I
[1:52:28] couldn't believe because that's not how it looks, you know?
[1:52:30] It's all so exact that I imagine setups taking like I was and
[1:52:34] then no, do it again. See, to me that the reason I
[1:52:38] really love this, it's because if the simplicity of it, it does
[1:52:41] seem like this just one light on on a character, or maybe one
[1:52:45] light and then a little bit of kicker in the background.
[1:52:46] Yeah. They're trying to make it look
[1:52:48] stylized without it being stylized, whereas Fight Club did
[1:52:51] that. But I would imagine that took
[1:52:52] longer. Yeah.
[1:52:53] Yeah. This feels like I don't have any
[1:52:56] anxiety watching it and thinking about the setup.
[1:52:58] It's so well shot it's fucking outrageous.
[1:53:02] It is. And since this came out, surely
[1:53:04] just about any filmmaker at any level who's shooting somebody
[1:53:07] typing on a laptop. It's look at the social network
[1:53:09] to see how they did it first. Yeah, exactly.
[1:53:11] It's never been done better. It's all right, isn't it?
[1:53:15] I'm. Getting away with it too dark.
[1:53:19] No, I'm very much class this alongside how effective the
[1:53:22] music is because again, on the page it's not the most cinematic
[1:53:26] of ideas. I would have thought the
[1:53:28] temptation is to make it seem quite dry, to make it look like
[1:53:31] all the presidents men, but the don't don't go for that almost
[1:53:35] documentary kind of look. Instead it's got this really
[1:53:38] rich colour palette. I think the lighting is real
[1:53:41] stand out how all those offices and meeting rooms and things
[1:53:44] that ordinarily you think they're just going to look dull,
[1:53:47] but they don't hear, so it's not film.
[1:53:50] I think the cinema trophy is great because it looks packed
[1:53:54] full of iconic imagery. For me, it's great because, like
[1:53:57] the music, it's not what I expect a film of this topic, of
[1:54:01] this genre to look like. It's constantly surprising.
[1:54:04] Yeah, that's what I love about it.
[1:54:06] Yeah. Looks fantastic.
[1:54:08] So Fincher was already a champion of shooting on digital,
[1:54:11] and it shot parts of Zodiac and the Curious Case Benjamin Button
[1:54:14] that way. But this was the first time we
[1:54:16] shot a whole film digitally, said They used the Red One
[1:54:19] digital camera, which had the new chip that allowed for
[1:54:22] greater color spectrum. So it was a little bit
[1:54:25] experimental for them. But I mean, I'm talking about
[1:54:27] 2010. I've used cameras that are miles
[1:54:29] better than this, right? And the images are miles worse
[1:54:32] than this, right? So it doesn't matter what camera
[1:54:34] you're using, it's just how good you are at creating that image.
[1:54:37] Yeah, I mean, you always used to be using state-of-the-art
[1:54:39] technology. I think maybe that could play a
[1:54:41] part now as films always have such a modern look to them.
[1:54:44] Yeah, I mean, Red did create the Xenomorph.
[1:54:47] It's basically just an Alien head.
[1:54:49] As a camera. It.
[1:54:52] Must cause a right headache for the camera crew though.
[1:54:54] There must be like can we not just use something we know how
[1:54:57] to use already just once? No, it's an alien head.
[1:55:00] Put on the tripod and shut the fuck up.
[1:55:03] There's nine of them, by the way.
[1:55:06] As with the writer and composers on the film, Jeff Cronin with
[1:55:08] was also Oscar nominated for The Social Network.
[1:55:11] He didn't win though. You know who won best
[1:55:13] cinematography that year? Who did Inception?
[1:55:18] Wesley was at Fister. Who was Fister did Inception but
[1:55:21] he didn't win. He did.
[1:55:23] It was Wally Fister for Inception.
[1:55:24] Did he? OK.
[1:55:25] All right. But again, some brilliant work
[1:55:28] from Jeff Cronin. Worthier for us.
[1:55:30] Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah, it's perfect for me.
[1:55:37] The end. The final act of The Social
[1:55:41] Network sees Fincher turning the screw and really ratcheting up
[1:55:44] the character drama. The climax where we get
[1:55:47] resolutions to Mark's relationships with Eduardo and
[1:55:49] Sean is coming. But first, we're talking the big
[1:55:52] moments with Eduardo that lead up to that fallout.
[1:55:55] Yes. Yeah, Heartbreakers.
[1:55:57] Yeah, so having quit his New York internship on his first
[1:56:00] day, Eduardo finally decides to head to California.
[1:56:03] But it's kind of too late. First, Eduardo turns up in Palo
[1:56:07] Alto to find Sean living there rent free, and then goes through
[1:56:11] a break with his own when Christie tries to burn the
[1:56:13] department down. Yeah.
[1:56:16] The walls are on. Eduardo are crumbling, Westie.
[1:56:18] They are. What do you make of it?
[1:56:20] Bong hit. That's what I make of it.
[1:56:26] Brilliant. How?
[1:56:27] That's just staged in the background.
[1:56:29] Yeah. It's never really addressed.
[1:56:30] Pop Midwater. Like, how old are they, Sean?
[1:56:32] I've read some things and Sean's come back here and the delivery
[1:56:35] from Timberlake is wonderful. You know how much I've heard
[1:56:38] about you? Nothing.
[1:56:39] Yeah, I. Kind of hate him, but I kind of
[1:56:43] wish I could do that, you know what I mean?
[1:56:45] What a what a fucking Dick move. But it is cool at the same time.
[1:56:49] Just as Mark walks in and Mark's like, yeah, all right, yeah, he
[1:56:52] knows the power shift and the power play is definitely there.
[1:56:55] And Fincher knows how to do that so well.
[1:56:57] But I feel so sorry for Eduardo here.
[1:56:59] And I think you're supposed to, but I think I'd be far more
[1:57:03] pissed off being stood there. The airport, he's supposed to
[1:57:05] pick us up. Then all you've got to show for
[1:57:07] it is the wall. Is that it?
[1:57:09] Is that what? You're doing.
[1:57:10] The wall I'm not. Interested in that.
[1:57:13] It's a great, great moment where they're just talking, but he's
[1:57:16] completely gone. Mark's completely gone over to
[1:57:18] the dark side and he's like saying to Edward, this is where
[1:57:21] we're headed, this is what we've done.
[1:57:22] I've made the decision. It's like a break up, this scene
[1:57:25] almost. It's like, you know?
[1:57:26] Yeah, it's the early stages of a breakup, isn't it?
[1:57:29] It absolutely is and it's played that way and I think it's played
[1:57:32] beautifully by both actors. I think they both bring exactly
[1:57:35] what they need to bring to it and keep it very believable.
[1:57:38] Could be really over the top. There could be a lot of things
[1:57:40] thrown around. Tell the girls to get out of,
[1:57:42] you know, smashing the place up. And it's not played that way.
[1:57:44] It's played very human. It's played very much like nerds
[1:57:46] would have a disagreement because I am one, so I know
[1:57:49] this. It works for me on every level.
[1:57:53] I think it's a great, great sequence.
[1:57:55] Yeah, Eduardo turns up at the house, and Sean's made himself
[1:57:57] right at home. He's got the girls, they're
[1:58:00] doing bongs, he's making mojitos, he's bossing Dustin
[1:58:03] about, which is outrageous. It is outrageous when he puts
[1:58:06] the mojitos on the laptop I have a fuck panic attack every
[1:58:09] single. Don't put them on the computer
[1:58:10] man. You've got like no respect for
[1:58:12] the technology either. He just wants the money.
[1:58:13] It's brilliant. Exactly.
[1:58:15] And Eduardo standing there like a drowned rat in the rain.
[1:58:17] I'd be furious as well. And that argument between Mark
[1:58:20] and Eduardo is pretty telling. Where Mark seems like terrified
[1:58:23] of Sean, where he's like, please don't tell him I said that.
[1:58:26] Yeah, with this little licorice whip or whatever it is.
[1:58:28] Yeah. Grew up man.
[1:58:30] And when he says I need my CFO, I think what he really needs is
[1:58:34] I need my friend because deep down, you know, Sean isn't his
[1:58:37] friend. Yeah.
[1:58:38] I mean, knowing what's to come, I find it quite tough to watch
[1:58:40] the argument. And yeah, Sean's think that
[1:58:42] Eduardo, know what I've read about you?
[1:58:44] Nothing. Throw that guy in the pool,
[1:58:47] Eduardo. Yeah.
[1:58:48] But it is great drama. Yeah, definitely.
[1:58:50] Yeah, I'm going to go from one break up to another, which is
[1:58:53] Eduardo with Christie. Except this one's quite
[1:58:56] justified though, isn't it? Well, yeah, it is a little.
[1:58:59] Bit I mean, it obviously Hawks back to the early on with Mark
[1:59:02] and Erica because again, everything Eduardo does or says
[1:59:05] here is just completely the wrong thing.
[1:59:08] You know, why does he stay as his single on your Facebook
[1:59:10] page? I mean, that's a question you
[1:59:12] don't have a good answer to, especially if you're, like, CFO
[1:59:15] of Facebook. Yeah, What is the answer to
[1:59:17] that? And again, when he just says
[1:59:19] calm down. Oh, don't say that way.
[1:59:21] And then also telling him what a present is before she even opens
[1:59:24] it. Yeah.
[1:59:25] Like, to be fair, he is quite a rubbish boyfriend.
[1:59:28] I mean, jump into attention as soon as Mark rings.
[1:59:30] I'm not quite sure about the writer Christie at this point
[1:59:33] because she's kind of gone from this like shallow groupie almost
[1:59:37] now being like a borderline cycle stalker.
[1:59:40] That writing doesn't quite sit well with me just because I
[1:59:42] think it's such a boys club of a movie.
[1:59:44] I think she could be a bit stronger, but it is pretty funny
[1:59:47] when she sets that scarf on fire because it's that great visual
[1:59:50] gag of that's happening in the background while Eduardo's
[1:59:53] trying to put out like the metaphorical fire with Mark over
[1:59:55] the phone. Yeah, that works really well,
[1:59:57] Yeah, But I just don't know how much this relationship with
[2:00:00] Christie adds to the story or adds to the characters.
[2:00:02] I would have loved it to be. She introduces Sean to them
[2:00:04] both. And then they turn the backs on
[2:00:07] her, and then she has a quiet word going, I introduced you,
[2:00:09] Sean. I made this.
[2:00:10] Don't forget about that. And then shuts the door.
[2:00:12] But I think just that overreaction is just a little
[2:00:14] bit cliched. Yeah, yeah.
[2:00:16] That's what I think. Yeah, Yeah, I agree.
[2:00:18] It probably is, But I think isn't it a great scene where
[2:00:20] there's kind of two things going at once, but this time they're
[2:00:22] all happening in the same time frame?
[2:00:24] You've got Eduardo and Christie arguing in the bedroom while
[2:00:27] Eduardo was arguing with Mark on the phone about the bank
[2:00:29] accounts. I know when they recorded this
[2:00:31] scene, Jesse Eisenberg was on the set reading his lines to
[2:00:34] Andrew Garfield had something to react back to, which works well.
[2:00:37] Love when they do that. And there's a good gag there
[2:00:38] when Christie has a go at Eduardo for not changing his
[2:00:41] Facebook relationship status. And Eduardo was like, I promise
[2:00:44] you, the Silicon Valley slots don't care what anyone's
[2:00:46] relationship status is on Facebook.
[2:00:49] That's really funny. And really true, probably.
[2:00:52] Yeah. And Christie, she's played by
[2:00:54] Brenda Song, who at the time she was mostly known for working on
[2:00:57] the Disney Channel. And apparently Disney tried to
[2:00:59] tell her she couldn't do this role because of that bathroom
[2:01:02] sex scene early on, but she just did it anyway.
[2:01:06] Yeah, I think you're right, Martin.
[2:01:07] The writing of Christie probably is a bit simplified, but I think
[2:01:10] Brenda Song is really good. Are playing that part.
[2:01:13] Oh, she is. Yeah.
[2:01:13] She's really funny when she's like, do you know I said 47
[2:01:16] texts as if she's in the right. That's great.
[2:01:19] Yeah. And do you know who her partner
[2:01:21] is now in real life? Brenda Song.
[2:01:23] No. I don't it's Macaulay Culkin.
[2:01:26] All right. Yeah.
[2:01:26] Wow. She's married now, isn't she?
[2:01:28] They've got a kid. I think I'm there.
[2:01:29] Yeah, I think they have, yeah. I think they have, yeah.
[2:01:31] All right. Yeah, lovely.
[2:01:33] As for the film, some big decisions made by Eduardo and
[2:01:36] we're about to find out their consequences.
[2:01:39] Yeah, definitely. The climax of the Social Network
[2:01:44] is where it all goes off. Sean kind of does what Sean does
[2:01:47] and gets arrested for cocaine possession.
[2:01:50] But not before Eduardo was called into the new Facebook
[2:01:52] officers where, after inadvertently signing his own
[2:01:55] death certificate of being kicked out of the company, he
[2:01:57] has a showdown with Mark. Yeah.
[2:02:00] It's an ambush mat. It is.
[2:02:01] How does it all play out so satisfyingly?
[2:02:06] This is my favorite scene in the film, when Eduardo finally snaps
[2:02:10] because you just think, thank God, finally stand up for
[2:02:13] yourself. Yeah, it's massive.
[2:02:15] It's massive. It's so invigorating, and it's
[2:02:17] so much what comes down to that editing and how sharp it is.
[2:02:20] Back and forth from the deposition.
[2:02:22] Eduardo's dialogue didn't know to dress for a party or a
[2:02:25] business meeting until he realized it didn't matter
[2:02:27] because it's an ambush. And then bam, you're properly
[2:02:30] into this scene. And The thing is, because these
[2:02:32] guys are geeks. They're not the physical
[2:02:34] athletes. They don't roar.
[2:02:35] They're not the winkleby. When Eduardo picks up that
[2:02:38] laptop and smashes it, that's just as much impact as if he'd
[2:02:42] smacked Mark right in the face. Yeah.
[2:02:45] What I love, though, is Sean finally gets what's coming to
[2:02:48] him because he's been so snidey in this scene.
[2:02:51] Yeah, it's almost unbearable, these little comments he throws
[2:02:54] in. Yeah, he tries to give him the
[2:02:56] check. So I love it when Eduardo just
[2:02:58] fakes that punch and he makes some flinch in the dialogues we
[2:03:02] had. Yeah, I like something next to
[2:03:03] you. Sean makes me look so tough,
[2:03:05] brilliant. And Eduardo just leaves with
[2:03:07] that bit of dignity which is so important.
[2:03:09] Sorry, I'm going. That's a fast swallow of pride
[2:03:12] that like yeah, I don't know if I'll be able to do it.
[2:03:14] I don't know if me ego would definitely went out definitely
[2:03:18] not hitting Zuckerberg where it hurts by smashing his laptop,
[2:03:20] not his face that. Hurts.
[2:03:22] Even more. Yeah, as character drama goes,
[2:03:25] this two or three minutes where it all comes to a head, I think
[2:03:27] it's about as good as it gets. The cross cutting between
[2:03:30] Eduardo and Mark in the Facebook office and the two of them
[2:03:32] across the deposition table, that's superbly put together.
[2:03:35] The tone of the scenes is totally different, but the
[2:03:37] transitions are seamless. And like, seeing you're talking
[2:03:40] about Matt between Eduardo and his lawyer is just devastating.
[2:03:44] What was Mr. Zuckerberg's ownership share diluted down to?
[2:03:48] It wasn't. What was Mr. Moskovitz's
[2:03:51] ownership share diluted down to? It wasn't.
[2:03:54] What was Sean Parker's ownership share diluted down to?
[2:03:57] It wasn't. What was Peter Thiel's ownership
[2:04:00] share diluted down to? It wasn't.
[2:04:02] And what was your ownership share diluted down to .03%?
[2:04:11] Talk about dramatic drops. Yeah, never before someone
[2:04:14] saying a number to two decimal place has been so upsetting.
[2:04:17] Yeah. And that look between Eduardo's
[2:04:19] lawyer and Marks, where even the lawyers like.
[2:04:21] Yeah, I know. Yeah.
[2:04:24] Massive. Even he's sorry that he's such a
[2:04:26] Dick. And I think.
[2:04:28] The great thing is as well, going back to that documentary
[2:04:30] that I've spoke about, the amount of smashed laptops that
[2:04:33] are on there. I can't imagine.
[2:04:35] There's about 50 smashed laptops on there with God knows how many
[2:04:39] times he did that. It was actually 40 takes of this
[2:04:42] argument between Edward one Mark.
[2:04:44] It was 40. 40 and Garfield said he was so exhausted he was just
[2:04:48] sitting on the floor, worried about how many more he could
[2:04:50] manage. Apparently Fincher picked him
[2:04:52] up, shook his hand and said, moving on.
[2:04:55] Oh, perfect. Yeah, I think it's one of the
[2:04:58] best argument scenes in any film I've seen.
[2:05:00] Yeah, yeah, the moment the Eduardo comes through the doors
[2:05:02] and starts pacing towards Mark. That track and shot.
[2:05:05] No one's looking away at that point.
[2:05:07] Yeah, and Garfield's brilliant and equal measure.
[2:05:09] I get that Eduardo's raging with anger but also he's massively
[2:05:13] hurt and it's really sad for me. It's the delivery by As he's
[2:05:16] walking, it says Mark twice. Yeah, yeah, Mark.
[2:05:19] Then it's Mark. It's like he realizes what's.
[2:05:21] Like John Doe and seven. Detective.
[2:05:25] Cheap on his fingers. Yeah.
[2:05:29] It's printering. The way to get rid of Eduardo by
[2:05:34] creating new shares to dilute his overall ownership is how it
[2:05:37] happened in real life. In reality, the way Eduardo
[2:05:40] shares were reduced to 10% not nought point nought 3 and
[2:05:43] Zuckerberg's plan wasn't to leave him with nothing like it
[2:05:46] is here, It was to reduce his control and give him a huge
[2:05:49] payoff at the end of it. Right.
[2:05:51] Yeah, and the reason was that apparently Sovereign had agreed
[2:05:53] to do certain things and not done them, and apparently he'd
[2:05:56] been working on his own business instead of Facebook.
[2:05:58] Yeah, still not great, but not quite as ruthless as it's
[2:06:01] portrait. Yeah.
[2:06:01] What's he done? Since he's had 30% of Facebook,
[2:06:04] he's away a couple of weeks, right?
[2:06:05] Yeah. I mean, you've got to be the
[2:06:07] devil himself to reduce your best made at no point, no degree
[2:06:10] of anything. Exactly.
[2:06:11] Yeah, well, just in case anyone is as crushed by this scene as I
[2:06:15] am, the real Eduardo Sovereign is now worth $26 billion.
[2:06:18] So don't feel too bad for him. So he's all right, really.
[2:06:22] Yeah. Basically every major character
[2:06:24] in the film is now a multi billionaire, including the
[2:06:26] Winklevi. Even Chris Hughes has half a
[2:06:28] billion. He's only in two scenes.
[2:06:32] So like Matt says, Sean gets his come up and and rightly so.
[2:06:35] And it's in a place where he shouldn't be and he's just
[2:06:38] really flexing the muscles that he's trying to flex that he has
[2:06:40] done all through the film. And this really shows his
[2:06:43] paranoia and this really shows his weakness because when the
[2:06:46] police get a hold of him and the strip his identity and what's
[2:06:48] that? It's an EpiPen parts in here
[2:06:50] also. You're physically weak.
[2:06:53] You haven't got that about you. It's all just a performance.
[2:06:56] And I love the flashlights here. And this is so seven and
[2:06:59] probably the same to them. Police officers like you, like
[2:07:01] the scene, like the seven. Let's just have a little
[2:07:03] playback to that, which always works.
[2:07:05] But he's always blaming other people.
[2:07:08] Did they put the cork there? Because it was there?
[2:07:09] It's not my fault I didn't do this.
[2:07:11] And he's so weak when it comes to the actual crunch that he
[2:07:14] just hides behind everything. And this is really great when
[2:07:16] you see that power shift and the visual takes here, they're
[2:07:20] implied by Fincher and the production department are
[2:07:22] wonderful. As soon as Marky as the news,
[2:07:25] all the lights grow behind him in the Facebook office as if it
[2:07:28] all shuts down. And I think that is just really,
[2:07:31] really powerful. And then seeing that card, that
[2:07:34] final cutaway at that close up of I'm CEO Bitch is just
[2:07:38] heartbreaking because he was almost there.
[2:07:40] And I think if he'd kept Eduardo on board, it all would have
[2:07:43] worked out, I think. Yeah, I mean, the party, it's
[2:07:46] like the smokiest house ever. They must all be absolutely
[2:07:49] baked off the map. Yeah, I mean, we've been to some
[2:07:52] uni parties back there. Very.
[2:07:54] Similar. That's all I know.
[2:07:56] Never got busted though, not yet.
[2:08:00] Yeah, well, Sean gets busted. He calls Mark.
[2:08:02] Mark's still in the office, and he says, go home, Sean, go home,
[2:08:05] Mark. They're all by himself.
[2:08:08] And when Sean gets rumbled at the party, the policeman, like,
[2:08:10] pulls his hand out. He's got coke all over his
[2:08:12] fingers. And he just goes, that's not
[2:08:15] mine. Brilliant.
[2:08:16] That's not going to fly. Doesn't really matter, doesn't
[2:08:19] it? It's on your hand.
[2:08:21] But you won't get his come up. And narratively, it had to
[2:08:23] happen. I think it's just a shame we
[2:08:24] don't get to see Edward's response either.
[2:08:26] Be loving it. Yeah.
[2:08:27] He would have been. Yeah.
[2:08:28] Get the chicken out. Fix the chicken up.
[2:08:30] That's not mine. Cool all over.
[2:08:33] It's big. Yeah, in this party sequence,
[2:08:37] this is the only part of the film that's filmed with a
[2:08:39] handheld camera and Fincher said he did that to reflect the fact
[2:08:43] that Sean is drunk and high here.
[2:08:44] But the scene had to be re edited to avoid an R rating and
[2:08:47] they had to remove a shot of the girl on the table with coke on
[2:08:50] her body as the snoddled offer. Well, yeah, that'll make another
[2:08:55] change earlier on as well for the ratings.
[2:08:56] When marks in Class A girl passes a no.
[2:08:59] But the woman that says you Dick?
[2:09:01] Yeah. Yes, but originally didn't say
[2:09:03] Dick it was a sea bomb. Oh really?
[2:09:05] So that had to change it to get APG 13?
[2:09:07] Yeah. That would have been heard.
[2:09:10] The roll, the note. That would have been mad.
[2:09:12] I love to see Bone. I love to see Bone.
[2:09:15] From there, it's the final scene of the film.
[2:09:17] Mark and his attorney's assistant, Marilyn Delpy, played
[2:09:20] by Rashida Jones, are in the office.
[2:09:22] Yes, we find out what happened to all the gang.
[2:09:24] And as we fade out, Mark has left alone with his laptop on
[2:09:27] Facebook, requesting to be friends with Erica.
[2:09:30] So how was this for a way to end everything?
[2:09:33] I don't think Mark has ever looked more of a kid than he
[2:09:35] does here. He doesn't seem big enough for
[2:09:37] that chair. Like when he realizes Marilyn
[2:09:40] has only had a salad. It's the first time he seems
[2:09:42] human and genuinely concerned for someone else, but it's just
[2:09:46] all too late from the whole thing.
[2:09:47] It's like, you know when you were a kid and you were ever
[2:09:50] taken to like, your mum and dad's place of work because that
[2:09:52] no one will look after you and they're just, it's in the corner
[2:09:55] playing the Game Boy. Read your book.
[2:09:56] That's what they're saying. It's like it's the first time he
[2:09:58] seems human, but he's just a kid.
[2:10:01] Yeah. I think it ties into what I was
[2:10:02] saying earlier about Mark sacrificing the things he really
[2:10:04] wants to get something that he thinks he wants.
[2:10:07] The thing that he gets is Facebook, and he tries to use it
[2:10:09] to get what he really wants, like meaningful connection.
[2:10:12] And it's got him a lot of Facebook, but it can't get him
[2:10:14] that. I mean, what an ending for me.
[2:10:17] When Sorkin wrote that he must have thought shit, just got to
[2:10:20] retire now. Never going to be that.
[2:10:22] He hasn't. It's a visual metaphor, so good.
[2:10:26] I'm not even sure it's a metaphor.
[2:10:28] The message of the film is literally what's happening in
[2:10:30] front of us. There can't be many films with
[2:10:31] such a perfect final scene. It's like the whole movie in one
[2:10:34] shot. I'm kind of in awe of it.
[2:10:36] And then just when you think I can't get any better, Fincher
[2:10:39] goes and credits. Here's The Beatles.
[2:10:42] Yeah, bombs going off all over the place.
[2:10:45] It's like the end of Doctor Strange.
[2:10:46] Love. Fincher is Cooper.
[2:10:48] It's just wonderful how this all comes together.
[2:10:51] The fact that he asks if she wants something to eat, that's
[2:10:53] kind of all he's got. And that's what he said to Erica
[2:10:55] at the start to try and stop the situation from happening.
[2:10:57] Do you want to get something to eat?
[2:10:58] Yeah, She actually reinforces what Erica said.
[2:11:01] You're not an asshole. You're just trying to be.
[2:11:03] I mean, Rashida Jones is wonderful in the scene.
[2:11:06] Always like her, yeah. Absolutely brilliant.
[2:11:09] Quincy Jones, daughter Richard. Yeah, baby, you're a rich man.
[2:11:12] Like you said, John is by The Beatles.
[2:11:14] But I believe that that song's about being emotionally rich.
[2:11:17] And I think that is lost on a lot of people because that's why
[2:11:20] he's put that in at the end. Money's not going to get it.
[2:11:23] And that's reinforced by that beautiful moment.
[2:11:26] And this is so Fincher. And this is just how I'd won
[2:11:28] every film to finish. Just not getting the answer you
[2:11:31] want. Just that refresh.
[2:11:33] Just that refresh. And it's just saying, you know,
[2:11:35] he's the youngest billionaire in the history of the world, and
[2:11:39] he's still not happy. Did you go and see this film
[2:11:41] with somebody that you love? Then you're richer than Mark
[2:11:44] Zuckerberg. Lovely.
[2:11:46] And with that, we get some title cards telling us Facebook has
[2:11:49] 500 million members and is valued at $25 billion today.
[2:11:53] It has 3 billion monthly users and in 20/21 was valued at $1
[2:11:57] trillion. So turned out well for the real
[2:12:01] guys. And in terms of the movie, a
[2:12:03] good ending for us, the audience too.
[2:12:05] Yeah, it's spot on this end. Yeah, it's great.
[2:12:07] Yeah. Reception and awards.
[2:12:15] So that is the story of the Social Network and it opened in
[2:12:18] cinemas in October 2010. How do they do when it's
[2:12:21] release? Well, one of the Silicon Valley
[2:12:23] sluts is he had to tell us. So Matt, take it away.
[2:12:28] Absolutely outrageous. You've never mentioned my
[2:12:31] relationship status on Facebook. I'll be honest with you, Thanks.
[2:12:35] So as we've mentioned, production budget of $40 million
[2:12:38] and it grossed $224.9 million worldwide, absolutely massive.
[2:12:44] And also did well at the Oscars. In total, 8 nominations, winning
[2:12:48] three of those Reznor and Ross for Best Original Score, Salk
[2:12:51] and as we've said for Adapted Screenplay, and Angus Wall and
[2:12:54] Kirk Baxter for Best Film Editor.
[2:12:57] All massively deserved, I think. Definitely.
[2:13:00] Yeah, Definitely. Yeah.
[2:13:01] I saw me that one for writing, music and editing and was
[2:13:03] nominated for cinematography. That's like the building blocks
[2:13:06] of filmmaking right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[2:13:09] Really is. And someone else that deserves
[2:13:11] to mention here is Neil Keller House, and he was the designer
[2:13:14] who created the poster and he was only given a couple of head
[2:13:17] shots of Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg.
[2:13:20] He came up with the tagline. You don't get 500 million
[2:13:23] friends without making a few enemies.
[2:13:24] Oh wow. That's a great tagline as well.
[2:13:26] It is a great tagline. Well, all the shots out of
[2:13:28] focus. Imagine that.
[2:13:32] That's what I do for a living. Me just there's three shots of
[2:13:34] Jesse Eisenberg. Two of them are out of focus.
[2:13:37] Do something with that. And he did?
[2:13:39] Yeah. Well, apparently it was 300
[2:13:41] million at first, but Facebook was growing that fast by the
[2:13:44] time the film came out that to change it to 500 million.
[2:13:46] All right. OK.
[2:13:48] It's got a good ring to it, though.
[2:13:49] It's more rounded, isn't it? 500 million?
[2:13:51] Yeah. And you buy it.
[2:13:52] You buy it. And when the film was released,
[2:13:54] the real Mark Zuckerberg paid for Facebook employees to go and
[2:13:57] see it. And he said he was amused by how
[2:14:00] far off it was from what actually happened.
[2:14:02] Though he did say he was surprised by how accurate his
[2:14:05] clothes were. And he said that apparently
[2:14:06] Jesse Eisenberg was wearing some clothes he had actually owned.
[2:14:11] I mean, that flip flops and socks combination is possibly
[2:14:14] the most offensive thing he does in the film.
[2:14:16] So that one to myself, to be honest.
[2:14:18] No one as well. It's outrageous.
[2:14:21] Must be the billionaire still shopping a gap.
[2:14:25] Well, on to the critics. And we'll start, we usually do
[2:14:27] with Roger Ebet. The big Raj so.
[2:14:30] What did Big Raj make of the film?
[2:14:31] Do we think? Oh.
[2:14:32] I don't know, This is quite divisive and either really got
[2:14:35] it or it really didn't give a fuck about it.
[2:14:38] And so I'm going to say 4. I'll go three.
[2:14:42] It was a whopping 4 stars out of four.
[2:14:45] And he said Finches film has the rare quality of being not only
[2:14:49] as smart as a brilliant hero, but in the same way it is
[2:14:52] cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively
[2:14:55] perceptive. It makes an untelable story
[2:14:58] clear and fascinating. Yeah, I'm sure he would have
[2:15:00] appreciated the craft behind it as well.
[2:15:02] Definitely, yeah. I think impatience is a good
[2:15:04] word. It's like Finch.
[2:15:05] I couldn't wait to get home every night watching the film.
[2:15:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Next Scene.
[2:15:09] Next Scene. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone
[2:15:12] also gave the film the full four-star treatment, and he said
[2:15:15] The Social Network is the movie of the year.
[2:15:17] But Finch and Salk and triumph by taking it further.
[2:15:20] Lacing their scathing weight with an aching sadness, they
[2:15:23] define the dark irony of the past decade.
[2:15:26] Nice. Yeah, witty, sad and scathing.
[2:15:28] I think it is all those things. It is.
[2:15:30] Yeah. Not quite.
[2:15:32] Full marks from Empire magazine. They rated the film four stars
[2:15:35] out of five and said a rich, understated character drama that
[2:15:39] gleefully exposes the petty playground politics at the
[2:15:42] center of one of the Internet era's most bitter court cases.
[2:15:46] Petty playground politics? That's your subtitle?
[2:15:48] Lovely, surely? Yeah.
[2:15:49] Yeah, yeah, that's really good. But I mean, four out of five for
[2:15:52] Empire. It's no Phantom Menace, is it?
[2:15:54] Let's be honest. So today on Rotten Tomatoes,
[2:15:58] Social Network has a very big 86% audience approval rating and
[2:16:03] an even bigger 97% from critics. And on IMDb it's 7.8 out of 10.
[2:16:09] Yeah, huge scores there, especially from the critics.
[2:16:12] I guess they admiring that filmmaking craft.
[2:16:15] Definitely. Yeah, definitely.
[2:16:17] So The Social Network was released as a pretty instant
[2:16:19] David Fincher classic. Huge box office hit, success at
[2:16:22] the Oscars, great reviews at the time and still highly thought of
[2:16:25] now. Not quite a once in a generation
[2:16:28] holy shit idea. Maybe, but it's OK for itself.
[2:16:32] Very much so, yeah. We'll see.
[2:16:33] We'll see. It might come around again.
[2:16:38] Sequels and influence. David Fincher has never made a
[2:16:43] sequel to any of his films, so no surprise there hasn't been
[2:16:46] one for The Social Network, although Fincher said he and so
[2:16:49] can have discussed it. But he said it's a can of worms,
[2:16:53] whatever that means. Would you like a sequel to The
[2:16:56] Social Network? Nah, I don't think so.
[2:17:00] I think there's a lot happened with Facebook since the film
[2:17:02] came out, like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Mueller
[2:17:04] report. So there are stories to tell.
[2:17:06] I'd only want to see if it was Fincher, Salk and the original
[2:17:09] cast back though I think. I think it would be good if it
[2:17:12] was called the social networks and then it was about Instagram,
[2:17:15] Twitter, next Mosque was in there.
[2:17:18] Who's playing him? Let's think Nicolas Cage.
[2:17:25] Nicolas Cage would be good. He's got the hairline.
[2:17:29] I think that would work. I'd enjoy that.
[2:17:32] Well, at this point in our episodes, we usually talk about
[2:17:34] the legacy and influence of the film in question, but I'm going
[2:17:37] to hand over to one of our patrons, Dean Josey, as he has a
[2:17:40] great question in that vein. Hello, Dean.
[2:17:42] Hello, Dean. Dean says hey fellas, wanted to
[2:17:45] thank you for the good work as always.
[2:17:47] Thank you for that. It's.
[2:17:47] Very nice. Oh, thanks, Dean.
[2:17:50] With social media at the core of this film, I wanted to ask a
[2:17:52] general question. Do you believe that the rise of
[2:17:54] social media has had a positive or negative effect on filmmaking
[2:17:58] and the nature of films in general over the past 10 to 15
[2:18:01] years? Check out the big Brain on day
[2:18:04] that's. A great question.
[2:18:06] That's the kind of worms you were talking about?
[2:18:08] It is, yeah. What do you think about the
[2:18:10] influence of social media or specifically as film, if you
[2:18:13] like, on the film industry? Social media, on the film
[2:18:16] industry, I have to see. I would come down on the side
[2:18:18] with being pretty bad overall. I think the way that let's just,
[2:18:23] you know, say who they are. Angry nerds will now descend on
[2:18:26] a film en masse in the kind of harass it stars until something
[2:18:31] which should be fun, where you can interact with fans.
[2:18:33] It becomes just a cesspit instead.
[2:18:35] You know, the abuse that Leslie Jones got for the Ghostbusters
[2:18:38] remake, what Kelly Marie Tran got for The Last Jedi.
[2:18:41] Just nothing but fit you all in here because people didn't like
[2:18:44] those films. Appalled in that.
[2:18:46] Yeah, there's part. It's just like, grow up, you
[2:18:48] know what I mean? Perfectly entitled and not like
[2:18:49] the film, but don't blame it on the actors.
[2:18:52] And I think the worst thing about it is social media let's
[2:18:55] these people get organised and start creating negative
[2:18:58] feelings. Months and advancing.
[2:19:00] They'll call it review bomb and Dawn there where they just pick
[2:19:02] a film. Yeah, that they're going to say
[2:19:04] no, we're going to sync this one and they're just descend on it.
[2:19:06] So that happened with Ghostbusters.
[2:19:08] Captain Marvel I think happens as well.
[2:19:10] There we go. That's it.
[2:19:11] Let you know. Let's face it, this is quite
[2:19:12] appropriate constant what we see in this film, but it's almost
[2:19:15] always angry young men wanting to destroy any genre film with
[2:19:19] female leads so. Yeah, Wasn't this something to
[2:19:21] do with the Dark Knights? IMDb, They try to bring that
[2:19:23] down. Yeah, well, they were trying to
[2:19:25] make that number 10. They were trying to bring it up.
[2:19:28] It was trying to beat the Godfather, wasn't it?
[2:19:30] Yeah. And then I think just the knock
[2:19:32] on effective as you get film makers who will start listening
[2:19:35] to these people instead of just making the film that they want
[2:19:37] to make, the saw, making the films of the fans.
[2:19:40] And I don't think that's a good way to make a film, to be
[2:19:42] honest. Yeah.
[2:19:44] I mean, on the back of this film, there were a spate of,
[2:19:46] like, real life dramas set in the modern day.
[2:19:48] Steve Jobs, Moneyball, the Big Short Spotlight.
[2:19:51] So Fincher, maybe open the door for those kind of films for a
[2:19:54] bit. Yeah.
[2:19:55] As for the wider question, the general impact of social media
[2:19:58] on movies, I mean, social media has had a massive impact on just
[2:20:00] about everything, and Hollywood's no different.
[2:20:03] One of the biggest impacts has maybe been on marketing.
[2:20:05] I think a good example is Marvel Studios where you have huge
[2:20:08] films with a younger audience demographic and they're all on
[2:20:11] social media. And with a new film, Marvel
[2:20:13] release trailers that are exclusive to YouTube.
[2:20:16] They're released behind the scenes footage during the
[2:20:17] production that are exclusive on Instagram.
[2:20:19] They have somebody making real time updates from the set on
[2:20:22] Twitter or X on a new Avengers film and things like that.
[2:20:25] I mean, these go out and get millions of views at a time and
[2:20:27] the cost tiny compared to TV spots or trailers.
[2:20:30] I mean, that's giving fans great insight into the films they
[2:20:32] love. So that I think is a good thing
[2:20:35] and negative, though obviously, like you're saying, much
[2:20:37] revolves around the fandom toxicity you often get on social
[2:20:40] media. Was it Fantastic Four where the
[2:20:42] film was recut after a backlash to clips on social media?
[2:20:46] I mean, fans shouldn't have that much power, no.
[2:20:49] For me, if I had that in the past, half the films we talked
[2:20:52] about was classics probably wouldn't exist.
[2:20:54] That wouldn't exist at all. Imagine that The Exorcist came
[2:20:57] out. Yeah, we don't go and say this
[2:20:58] film. Exactly.
[2:20:59] Yeah. I mean, you could write a book
[2:21:00] about social media or movies. So I mean, there's a Fincher, so
[2:21:03] I can see what I like to see. Larry so much taken down, all
[2:21:05] the Internet douche bags. I'll be brilliant.
[2:21:08] That'd be great, yeah. Against Harvey Knowles.
[2:21:11] I mean, I agree with both of you.
[2:21:12] I think it has got positive elements and I think it has got
[2:21:15] negative elements and I think the positive elements were
[2:21:17] brought out when it first just the Internet.
[2:21:19] I mean, look what happened with Blair Witch and had that website
[2:21:23] and it was like, oh, I can find out more here.
[2:21:24] Yeah. That was brilliant, although.
[2:21:26] Yeah, and that's genius if you're going to go for the
[2:21:28] marketing point of view. But I think it's gone too far.
[2:21:30] And what it's done is it's creating content that isn't what
[2:21:35] we would deem to be like a classic in the cinema anymore.
[2:21:38] What they're trying to do is make a classic on Netflix so
[2:21:41] that people talk about every episode and they're starting to
[2:21:43] make something to make people have an opinion on it.
[2:21:46] Everything needs to roll with the punches, and I understand
[2:21:48] that. And we all know for a fact that
[2:21:51] this is a business at the end of the day.
[2:21:53] But I do think it is very, very detrimental how everyone thinks
[2:21:57] to know what the fucking talking about when it comes to
[2:21:59] everything. Jesus Christ.
[2:22:01] Just do some research, listen to other people.
[2:22:04] I think that's the main take away of social media is don't
[2:22:07] talk. Listen, because somebody you
[2:22:09] don't know who it is might just know a little bit more than you
[2:22:12] and you might be able to learn something.
[2:22:14] And that's a great platform to learn so much about cinema and
[2:22:17] film and the history of it. I mean, our Facebook groups
[2:22:20] great because people could mention a movie and we're like,
[2:22:22] oh shit, I didn't even think about watching that, but I'm
[2:22:23] going to give that a go now. So I think the main take away
[2:22:26] from social media is use it to your own advantage.
[2:22:30] Dive into the information and get involved in it and really
[2:22:33] appreciate the art form. So there haven't been any
[2:22:35] sequels to The Social Network as yet, but hey, who knows someday.
[2:22:39] And the influence of the film, and more so social media
[2:22:42] generally, has been huge at Hollywood.
[2:22:44] Some for good, but certainly not all of it.
[2:22:47] Yeah, I'm going to have to copyright that social networks
[2:22:50] idea. The more I'm thinking about
[2:22:51] that, the more I'm going to do. I like that, yeah.
[2:22:57] All the right movies ranking. And we've done it.
[2:23:01] The Social Network completed. Now it's time for our very own
[2:23:05] face MASH, where we each rate the film out of 10.
[2:23:09] Compared to what? So.
[2:23:10] Ask you, what do you think your summary and score for the Social
[2:23:13] network? It is a masterpiece of craft for
[2:23:16] me. It's a personal masterpiece.
[2:23:17] It's ambitious, it's better than people think it is.
[2:23:21] It's going to be ready for the next generation to hook on do,
[2:23:25] and I'm not going to get left behind by that.
[2:23:27] I think it's one of the last great studio thrillers that
[2:23:30] we've had. The studio was kind of when
[2:23:32] we're going to put a lot of money into this, but we're going
[2:23:33] to trust the film maker. And I think there is a
[2:23:35] generation coming up, specifically my kids, who might
[2:23:38] watch this in like 1015 years time and go.
[2:23:41] Where did Facebook come from? Where did all this shit start?
[2:23:45] And yeah, it's not factually correct in every single regard.
[2:23:48] But then again, it's not fucking Braveheart.
[2:23:50] It's got everything in there to make you think.
[2:23:53] I cannot fault the craft of it. I think the ending is perfect.
[2:23:56] I think the opening is perfect. I think everything in between is
[2:23:59] paste so perfect. It's our generations, all the
[2:24:02] president's men. So I'm going to give it all the
[2:24:05] president's 10. Wow.
[2:24:07] Huge. Yeah, I have to.
[2:24:09] It's that good. Well, yeah, a lot to get into
[2:24:12] with this film, and hopefully we've covered it.
[2:24:14] And my views, as I've said throughout, is that this is
[2:24:16] filmmaking of the highest level. Yeah, from Aaron Sorkin's
[2:24:20] writing, where the dialogues really show up in the nonlinear
[2:24:23] narrative is hugely engaging, complemented by the dynamite
[2:24:26] editing from Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter.
[2:24:29] The cast are all Gray, especially for me.
[2:24:31] Jesse Eisenberg, the best I've ever seen him.
[2:24:33] Yeah, easy. The music from Trent Reznor,
[2:24:35] Maticus Ross elevates the film and I think is among the best
[2:24:38] scores of the century. And the guy with the overall
[2:24:40] vision pulling it all together is David Fincher.
[2:24:43] Yeah. I mean, this is just a master
[2:24:44] filmmaker at work for me. What could have been a dry
[2:24:47] subject matter, he turns into like a dramatic thrill ride to
[2:24:50] me. It moves like a rocket.
[2:24:52] The dramatic moments go off like bombs.
[2:24:54] And it's slick. It's cool.
[2:24:56] It's sexy as hell. It's a far better film about the
[2:25:00] building of a website that anybody has any business making.
[2:25:03] Yeah, there's no right for it to be this good.
[2:25:05] No way. No way.
[2:25:07] Combined with the fact I have an interest in the subject matter,
[2:25:09] that makes me love the film. A contender for my favorite film
[2:25:12] in the 21st century and I'm wired in.
[2:25:15] It's 10 out of 10 for me as well.
[2:25:16] Nice. If you'd got 9.5 there, would
[2:25:19] have lost. Shit.
[2:25:21] And marching in smashing your laptop.
[2:25:23] John. John.
[2:25:25] And Mark finishes off, then your submarine score no.
[2:25:28] Pressure, bro. I mean, Fincher here, he really
[2:25:31] does elevate something that on the surface should be so dry,
[2:25:34] should be so straightforward into something really slick,
[2:25:37] hugely entertaining. And the fact that all the films
[2:25:39] that have come after this that are obviously influenced by to
[2:25:42] the Steve Jobs film, BlackBerry film couple years ago, Big Short
[2:25:46] even they're good. See, I don't think they stand up
[2:25:48] like this one does, which pays tribute to this.
[2:25:50] And it really is a film of Korea best performances from pretty
[2:25:54] much everyone involved. But at the same time, that
[2:25:57] slickness, it kind of disguises the fact that is this much more
[2:26:02] than you can do courtroom drama with a very shiny coat of paint
[2:26:06] like it does touch on ethics and betrayal and class and
[2:26:09] privilege. It just doesn't quite get under
[2:26:11] the skin enough for me. And when it takes so many
[2:26:14] liberties with the truth, I just end up feeling a little bit of
[2:26:17] unsure of therefore, what is the point of this?
[2:26:20] Like, what is the story you tell me if it's not the actual story
[2:26:22] that's, you know, so prevalent today?
[2:26:25] So, you know, and there's no right or wrong answer with
[2:26:27] historical accuracy in films. I think it's just a case by case
[2:26:30] basis in this one just doesn't sit quite right with me.
[2:26:33] So very much enjoy it. It's just got a little bit of
[2:26:36] hollowness at the center. So I can only give it a nine.
[2:26:39] That's fair enough. I see where you're coming from.
[2:26:41] Yeah. Well, we also put this out there
[2:26:43] to our Twitter or X followers to get their thoughts.
[2:26:46] OK, no comments from Mark Zuckerberg nemesis seal on Musk.
[2:26:49] Unfortunately, though he does follow us, which is a bit weird.
[2:26:53] Does he? Oh, that's weird.
[2:26:54] Now the feedback was generally positive, but there was some
[2:26:57] negativity as well. So in the interest of balance,
[2:26:59] I've got 2 positive, two negative comments.
[2:27:02] OK, that makes sense. So ART at yes I Rap one said one
[2:27:07] of the best edited movies of the 20 Tens with probably my
[2:27:10] favorite ending of Fincher films outside Fight Club Peak Andrew
[2:27:14] Garfield. Fincher doesn't know how to drop
[2:27:18] a needle at the end of a film. He does the Pixies at the end of
[2:27:20] Fight Club, isn't it? It is.
[2:27:21] Yeah, I think 7's better than like, I mean, come on.
[2:27:27] So ART did like it. However, James Link at RP Guy 16
[2:27:31] said for a very linear and unimaginative biopic.
[2:27:36] It's one of the most imaginative films I've ever seen about a
[2:27:39] fucking website that you try to do it bro it's impossible.
[2:27:43] And it's not a biopic. Yeah, once.
[2:27:44] It's biopic now. It's not any of those things.
[2:27:48] Back to the positivity and one of our patrons, Troy Gilbert
[2:27:51] said everything about this movie is perfect.
[2:27:54] The acting, directing, writing, cinematography, special effects.
[2:27:58] The music alone is a gift. Flawless film.
[2:28:01] I can watch it anytime, anywhere.
[2:28:03] Background or foreground films in the background.
[2:28:06] Is this you, Wesley? That's me.
[2:28:09] I'm going to take that. The music is a gift.
[2:28:11] That's a nice line. I'm taking that the
[2:28:13] cinematography is a fucking gift, yes.
[2:28:17] And another one of our patrons, Christine, who guilt said.
[2:28:20] I recognize that it's a very well made film.
[2:28:23] I've just found zero connection with any of the characters or
[2:28:25] the subject matter, so I can't give it more than six out of 10.
[2:28:29] That's a real heartbreak of that.
[2:28:30] When you recognize the genius of it, though, you can't.
[2:28:33] You can't actually connect to it.
[2:28:35] Like I've had that with certain films where I can see how good
[2:28:38] it is, but it's just not resonating.
[2:28:40] And that that's a really brave thing to say, to be fair.
[2:28:42] I mean, you could. It is, yeah.
[2:28:44] Yeah, it's fair enough from Christine.
[2:28:45] The subjective parts don't land with you.
[2:28:47] It doesn't matter how well put together it is really just.
[2:28:49] Watch it again, Christine. Watch it again.
[2:28:53] So positive leaning but mixed opinions from our followers and
[2:28:56] patrons and altogether they rated the film as What do you
[2:28:59] think I would attend? It's going to be a nine, isn't
[2:29:02] it? Yeah, I've got 9.
[2:29:03] Pretty popular. It was 8 out of 10.
[2:29:08] So in total, that gives the social network how much out of
[2:29:12] 40? Well, we are 29. 37, hang on,
[2:29:18] I'm just checking your mouth on that.
[2:29:20] Yes, I got the same thing. I got the same 37 out of 40 for
[2:29:24] the social network and that's just done on the social network.
[2:29:28] Hopefully it hasn't made you want to burn down your bedroom.
[2:29:31] No. Or someone else's.
[2:29:34] But next time out, Luke, Westy and Matt are getting their
[2:29:37] leather boots and trunks out as they talk Darren Aronofsky,
[2:29:40] Mickey Rourke and The Wrestler. Yeah.
[2:29:43] We are first Aronofsky we've covered.
[2:29:45] I believe it. Is.
[2:29:47] Which is a surprise to stay in this wild get room, but
[2:29:50] definitely deserves the attention.
[2:29:51] It definitely does. I can't think of another one to
[2:29:53] introduce Aronofsky to be honest.
[2:29:55] I'm not going to do Pile. Rather the wrestler than Noah,
[2:29:58] that's for sure. No, but I am looking forward to
[2:30:00] it. It's a great turn for Mickey
[2:30:01] Rourke. It's a great film.
[2:30:02] I'm looking forward to talking about that one, yeah.
[2:30:04] Well, in the meantime, to find out more about becoming a
[2:30:06] patron, supporting what we do, and accessing our archive and
[2:30:09] bonus episode, please visit patreon.com/all the Right Movies
[2:30:14] or click the subscribe link on Apple Podcasts.
[2:30:17] Socially, you can keep up with all the Right Movies on Twitter
[2:30:19] or X where we are at. AT Right Movies, we post threads
[2:30:22] on there that tell the stories behind classic films.
[2:30:25] Everything we post has been said by somebody involved in the
[2:30:27] production or comes from three separate sources, which is the
[2:30:30] same as on our podcast. So check that out.
[2:30:34] You can find us on YouTube at youtube.com/all the Right Movies
[2:30:38] on Instagram and Threads. We are at all the under score
[2:30:41] Right Movies on Blue Sky. We are at all the Right
[2:30:43] movies.com. After this, you have to join our
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[2:30:50] made you delete your account, that is.
[2:30:53] We've got 500 million followers on there and a few enemies.
[2:30:59] No $600 million lawsuits in there, just lots of friendly
[2:31:02] movie chat. Yes, invite people too.
[2:31:03] The more the merrier. Yeah.
[2:31:05] Yeah, exactly. And our website, full of great
[2:31:07] features, is all the right movies.com.
[2:31:10] Yeah. We're all off now to see if
[2:31:12] anybody wants to buy all the right movies.com for $1 trillion
[2:31:17] or the nearest offer. Not greedy, and then just call
[2:31:21] it all right Movies. We'll drop to the cleaner.
[2:31:24] Cleaner. But come back for the wrestler.
[2:31:27] And as always, thanks for listening everyone.
[2:31:29] Thanks. So we've even had part of your
[2:31:31] attention, you know, the minimum amount.
[2:31:32] Good. Luck with your video game.

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