I was a bit down yesterday and when Chi told me to tell her if I needed a distraction, I asked what movie was showing. She said The Social Network was still showing in certain cinemas. I had been wanting to watch it ever since I read Mashable’s review about it, and that was a month ago.
So I was so happy that I finally found someone who also wanted to watch it, because for some reason, it didn’t appeal to a lot of other friends.
“I guess it’s because the movie is neither an action or a romantic flick,” I surmised to Chi over dinner, a plate of her favorite The Cafe Cartel Louisianna pork ribs that we went halfsies on.
“Or maybe we’re just nerds,” she replied. After all, who else would like to watch documentaries?
“Or maybe we’re just grandmas,” she added. Gah are we that old??
Well it turns out that The Social Network is not a boring documentary.
Firstly, it wasn’t boring in the least. It was full of witty lines, hilarious scenes, brilliant editing & cinematography and gorgeous twins (hahaha). It was extremely entertaining from its opening scene down to the last one which leaves you hanging and wanting to find out what happens next.
There was never a dull moment; the entire cinema was laughing sporadically throughout the screening, and I never once glanced at my watch while wondering when the movie would end (which I have been known to do in a lot of movies).
Kudos to the scriptwriters, directors and the actors, especially Jesse Eissenberg, the guy who played Mark Zuckerberg. Wait a minute… they’re both bergs?
Secondly, it’s not really a documentary in the strictest sense. Yes, it was loosely based on the real events of how Facebook was founded, but apparently certain characters (like that girl Mark was hung up on) and scenes were added to make it more entertaining. And I refuse to believe that they all came up with such witty and funny dialogues in real life.
It was still mostly true, though, and did its purpose of laying out Facebook’s story in such a captivating way that earned it an 8 out of 10 stars (currently) and a spot in the list of 250 best movies of all time (currently #119) in IMDB.
As usual, I’m not in the mood to detail the entire story, so just jump to the Mashable link I put in the first paragraph for the complete synopsis while below is the plot in a nutshell as written by Columbia Pictures:
On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history… but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications.
Here’s a couple of interesting trivia that I found on IMDB, my bestfriend.
When portraying identical twins on film different techniques are used such as creative camera angles and blocking and using special effects to artificially duplicate an actor. Both are used here. Armie Hammer is the primary actor portraying both Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss which is why he is generally credited as such. However, another actor, Josh Pence, who has a similar build to Armie, was used as a body double in scenes where both twins appeared. When the faces of both of the twins needed to be shown in the same shot, such as during the rowing scenes, or when they first approach Mark Zuckerberg, the filmmakers digitally replaced Josh Pence’s face with Armie Hammer’s.
In one scene a character remarks that Mark was the biggest guy on campus and lists several different types of impressive people who were also at Harvard at the time in order to emphasize how impressive Mark’s fame was. Included in this list is an unnamed “movie star.” The movie star may be Natalie Portman. She graduated from Harvard in 2003, the same year that Mark Zuckerberg created Facemash and a year before he launched TheFacebook. She also apparently offered the filmmakers some advice on Harvard student culture at the time.
Here are some of my favorite lines. There are a lot, I know, which just says a lot about how much I loved the script. SPOILER ALERT, obviously.
Erica Albright: Because it is exhausting. Dating you is like dating a stairmaster.
[Mark is writing a post on his blog]
Mark Zuckerberg: [voice over] Erica Albright’s a bitch. You think that’s because her family changed their name from Albrecht or do you think it’s because all BU girls are bitches? For the record she may look like a 34C, but she’s getting all kinds of help from our friends at Victoria’s Secret. She’s a 34B, as in barely anything there. False advertising.Ad Board Chairwoman: Mr. Zuckerberg, this is an Administrative Board hearing. You’re being accused of intentionally breaching security, violating copyrights, violating individual privacy by creating the website, www.facemash.com. You’re also charged with being in violation of the University’s policy on distribution of digitized images. Before we begin with our questioning you’re allowed to make a statement. Would you like to do so?
Mark Zuckerberg: I’ve…
[Mark stands up to make his statement]
Mark Zuckerberg: You know I’ve already apologized in the Crimson to the ABHW, to Fuerza Latina and to any women at Harvard who may have been insulted as I take it that they were. As for any charges stemming from the breach of security, I believe I deserve some recognition from this Board.
Ad Board Chairwoman: I’m sorry?
Mark Zuckerberg: Yes.
Ad Board Chairwoman: I don’t understand.
Mark Zuckerberg: Which part?
Ad Board Chairwoman: You deserve recognition?
Mark Zuckerberg: I believe I pointed out some pretty gaping holes in your system.Divya Narendra: We know he stole our idea, we know he lied to our faces for a month and a half.
Cameron Winklevoss: No, he never lied to our faces.
Divya Narendra: Okay, he never saw our faces. Fine. He lied to our email accounts and he gave himself a forty two day head start, because he knows what apparently you don’t, which is that getting there first is everything.
Cameron Winklevoss: I’m a competitive racer, Div. I don’t think you need to school me on the importance of getting there first. Thank you.Cameron Winklevoss: What, you wanna hire an IP lawyer and sue him?
Divya Narendra: No. I wanna hire the Sopranos and bit the shit out of him with a hammer!
Tyler Winklevoss: We don’t have to do that.
Cameron Winklevoss: That’s right.
Tyler Winklevoss: We could do that ourselves. I’m six-five, two-twenty and there’s two of me.Gage: Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention?
Mark Zuckerberg: [stares out the window] No.
Gage: Do you think I deserve it?
Mark Zuckerberg: [looks at the lawyer] What?
Gage: Do you think I deserve your full attention?
Mark Zuckerberg: I had to swear an oath before we began this deposition, and I don’t want to perjure myself, so I have a legal obligation to say no.
Gage: Okay – no. You don’t think I deserve your attention.
Mark Zuckerberg: I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try – but there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention – you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.
[pauses]
Mark Zuckerberg: Did I adequately answer your condescending question?Erica Albright: It didn’t stop you from writing it. As if every thought that tumbles through your head was so clever, it would be a crime for it not to be shared. The internet is not written in pencil, Mark, it’s written in ink and you published that Erica Albright was a bitch. Right before you made some ignorant crack about my family’s name, my bra size and rated women based on their hotness.
Marylin Delpy: You must really hate the Winklevosses.
Mark Zuckerberg: I don’t hate anybody. The “Winklevii” aren’t suing me for intellectual property theft. They’re suing me because for the first time in their lives, things didn’t go exactly the way they were supposed to for them.Eduardo Saverin: He’s twenty-five minutes late!
Mark Zuckerberg: He invented Napster when he was nineteen. He can be late.
Eduardo Saverin: He’s not a god.
Mark Zuckerberg: What is he?
Eduardo Saverin: He’s twenty-five minutes late.Sy: You were accused of animal cruelty.
Eduardo Saverin: Wait.
Sy: You weren’t?
Eduardo Saverin: Thi…this is not happening.
I’d gotten into the Phoenix. I’d been accepted and as part of my initiation I had to, for one week, carry with me at all times and take care of a chicken.
I did not torture the chicken. I don’t torture chickens. Are you crazy?
Sy: No and settle down please. I have here an article from The Crimson…
Eduardo Saverin: I was having dinner in Kirkland Dining Hall with Mark and I had the chicken with me because I had to have the chicken with me at all times. This was college.
And the dining hall was serving chicken for dinner so I…and I had to feed my chicken. So I…what…I took little pieces of chicken and I gave it to the chicken. Someone must have seen me because the next thing I knew I was being accused of forced cannibalism. I didn’t know you couldn’t do that. I dealt with a various animal rights groups, I dealt with the Associate Dean of the college. This was all resolved.Gretchen: Eighteen thousand dollars?
Eduardo Saverin: Yes.
Gretchen: In addition to the one thousand dollars you’d already put up.
Eduardo Saverin: Yes.
Gretchen: A total of nineteen thousand dollars now.
Eduardo Saverin: Yes
Mark Zuckerberg: Hang on.
[he starts writing on his notepad]
Mark Zuckerberg: I’m just checking your math on that. Yes, I got the same thing.Mark Zuckerberg: Your…your date looks so familiar to me.
Sean Parker: She looks familiar to a lot of people.
Mark Zuckerberg: What do you mean?
Sean Parker: A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond, wants to buy his wife some lingerie but he’s too embarrassed to shop for it at a department store. Comes up with an idea for a high end place that doesn’t make you feel like a pervert. He gets a forty thousand dollar bank loan, borrows another forty thousand from his in-laws, opens a store and calls it Victoria’s Secret. Makes a half million dollars his first year. He starts a catalogue, opens three mores stores and after five years he sells the company to Leslie Wexner and The Limited for four million dollars. Happy ending, right? Except four years later the company’s worth five hundred million dollars and Roy Raymond jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. Poor guy just wanted to buy his wife a pair of thigh highs.
Mark Zuckerberg: Was that a parable?
Sean Parker: My date’s a Victoria’s Secret model. That’s why she looks familiar to you.Christy: And when were you gonna call me?
Eduardo Saverin: Chris, it was kinda of rough trip and I was tired…
Christy: And or answer one of my forty seven texts? Did you know I sent forty seven texts?
Eduardo Saverin: I did and I thought that was incredibaly normal behaviour.
Christy: Are you mocking me?Eduardo Saverin: I was your only friend. You got one friend.
Eduardo Saverin: It said that we had to have a business meeting. That Mark and Sean had played some kind of revenge stunt on Case Equity and that Manningham was so impressed that he was now making an investment offer that was hard to turn down. So I went to California, and I went straight to the new offices. I didn’t know whether to dress for the party or for the business meeting so I kind of dressed for both. But it didn’t matter.
Gretchen: Why not?
Eduardo Saverin: Because I wasn’t called out there for either one.
Gretchen: What were you called out there for?
Eduardo Saverin: An ambush.[as Eduardo’s leaving the Facebook office]
Sean Parker: Hang on. I almost forgot, here’s your nineteen thousand dollars. I wouldn’t cash it though, I drew it on the account your froze.
[Eduardo quickly goes to punch Sean in the face but Sean flinches back]
Eduardo Saverin: I like standing next to you, Sean. It makes me look so tough.Marylin Delpy: I’ve been licensed to practice law for all of twenty months and I could get a jury to believe that you planted the story about Eduardo and the chicken. Watch what else. Why weren’t you at Sean’s sorority party that night?
Mark Zuckerberg: You think I’m the one that called the police?
Marylin Delpy: Doesn’t matter. I asked the question now everybody’s thinking about it. You’ve lost your jury in the first ten minutes.
Mark Zuckerberg: Farm animals?
Marylin Delpy: Yeah.
Mark Zuckerberg: I was drunk and angry and stupid.
Marylin Delpy: And blogging.
Mark Zuckerberg: And blogging.
Marylin Delpy: Pay them. In the scheme of things it’s a speeding ticket. That’s what Sy will tell you tomorrow.
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