“Steve Jobs” a Brilliant Mind But a Deficient Human Being
By Skip Sheffield
Steve Jobs may have had a brilliant mind, but as a human
being he was pitiful.
This paradox is driven home time and again in “Steve Jobs,”
a documentary film by Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “127 Hours”). The
script is by Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network,” “Moneyball”) based on a book
by official biographer Walter Isaacson, who previously did a biography on Henry
Kissinger.
“Steve Jobs” begins with a flashback video of
writer/scientist Arthur C. Clarke, speaking of a computer future. I’ll bet even
Clarke did not realize the extent computers would take over every aspect of our
lives.
The action proper begins in 1984 in Cupertino, California,
headquarters of Apple. Jobs (Michael Fassbinder) is preparing to introduce the
revolutionary iMac to the public. A perfectionist and obsessive-compulsive,
Jobs wants every minute detail perfect. There are glitches.
“We can’t run the intro,” a techie wails. “We need the
tools. It’s a closed system.”
A closed system is something completely incompatible with
any other system, such as the vastly more popular Microsoft Word. But the
graphic capabilities and quality of the Mac are dazzling, and particularly
attractive to high-level designers.
Trying to keep Jobs cool is his long-suffering assistant
(and perhaps more), Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet, almost unrecognizable in dark hair dye). Joanna best knows how to deal with Jobs’ wild mood swings, his
irrational demands and his demeaning insults.
Helping Jobs create the nuts and bolts of the Mac was his Apple
co-founder Steve Woznik (Seth Rogan). Overlooking the entire project was John
Scully (Jeff Daniels), a former PepsiCo executive.
A solid, practical business model was never Jobs’ strong suit. In
addition to being a unique product, the Mac was much more expensive than any
other computer. With 35,000 units sold instead of the 1 million projected and
two factories closed down, Jobs was fired from his own company in 1985.
There is family drama too, with a girlfriend Chrisann Brennan
(Katherine Waterston) whom he never married and who bore him a daughter Lisa
(Perla Haney-Jardine) Jobs denied fathering. No, he was not such a nice guy.
Ultimately Scully was removed as CEO and Jobs returned to
Apple and made the products even better; with the PC, Pixar Animation, iPhones,
tablet computing and digital publishing to his credit. What is left out of this
story is Jobs’ humbling by his own mortality when he was diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer. He died Oct. 5, 2011 at age 56, but not before making a kind
of deathbed confession of his regrets. You can look it up. It is very moving.
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