Thoughts on "The Social Network"

--Aaron Sorkin is God (he also wrote the I am God speech from "Malice", so he was right). The thing I would love to know is all of the movies he has done punch up for. Because I can't imagine anyone running a studio wouldn't bring him in for a week on anything big to do dialogue work. It sucks that he doesn't have his own show anymore and years go by without seeing his stuff (or knowing that it's his stuff we're watching).



--Which brings me to this: Screenwriters always gripe about not getting enough credit and being the low people on the totem pole. And in the past there's been fights about the "a film by" credit.

Now, I love David Fincher. He's one of my favorites. But this was not, as the credit told us at the very beginning, "a David Fincher film". It was an Aaron Sorkin film. It's his. And if you don't believe me, read the script, and tell me who brought more to the table.

--I wonder how Shawn Fanning feels about the movie. This movie has spawned a bizarre revisionist history, where all of us are suddenly supposed to pretend that Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake in the movie) was the creator and "face" of Napster. Bullshit.

I remember this pretty clearly, cause it was only a few years ago, that Napster was all about that young kid wearing the baseball hat, and his name was Shawn Fanning. He's the guy who presented at the VMA's, he's the guy Lars Ulrich was yelling at, but now all of the sudden it's all about Sean Parker. Weird.

--Rooney Mara did a nice job in her 2 scenes. She seems sweet and innocent. If she pulls off Lisbeth Salander I will be shocked, and forced to proclaim her the best actress ever.

--The whole history of Marc Zuckerberg and Facebook is fascinating, but what I find interesting is how unoriginal everything was. His first creation, Facesmash, was already being done as hotornot.com. His next, Facebook, was already friendster and myspace.

It's just kind of crazy that you could make something that's already out there, with a few tweaks, and make $10 BILLION dollars. I guess it just proves once again that myspace really, really sucked.

--Odd Rashida Jones appearance.

--I have a few friends from Harvard, and they are almost exactly like Marc Zuckerberg, only less successful - but just about everyone is less successful than that dude. So it was cool to see Sorkin nail that type of guy.

--And finally, likeability.

I have had some dalliances in the feature world. And there's always one word that gets brought up over and over and over again. It's nauseating. It's the only thing agents and executives know how to say: Likeability. As in, "your main character needs to be more likeable." "Can he be more likeable?" "Why is the audience going to root for him, is he likeable enough?"

Shut up!

This likeable thing is bullshit. And "The Social Network" proves it. Marc Zuckerberg is a lot of things, but likeable is not one of them. And guess what? He's the main character. And guess what else? The movie is a big, fucking hit that's also going to win a lot of awards.

I hate likeability, because it's complete horse shit. You know why? Because once an actor you like plays any part, he brings all of the likeability you need to the table. Even if it's not an actor you like, he usually brings likeability anyway. An example:

The God damn Sopranos. Tony Soprano. Mob boss. Criminal. Killer. Fat guy. No name actor. Likeable? Yep.

TV has figured it out. People like rooting for bad guys. If you tell us this is the dude we're following, and give him just a glimmer of humanity, we will most likely root that person.

But for some reason, this doesn't hold for movies. It should though, because I hate Marc Zuckerberg, and I love "The Social Network".