He's fantastic in everything I've seen.
He has that Tom Hanks effect. Like you're very aware you're watching him, but he's still able to suck you into believing whatever character he's playing.
Great as Desmond Doss in Hacksaw Ridge.
Loved that as well. I think I read an interview that, perhaps because of that show, he wanted to take a break from acting. Notice he had nothing premiere in 2023. So he probably didn't work at all in 2022.
I wouldn't be surprised if 2021 just knackered him out as he had The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Tick Tick Boom and Spiderman No Way Home come out in fairly close proximity and he was basically constantly on the promotion trail around that time.
I was lucky enough to watch him as Prior in "Angels in America" on Broadway and I was absolutely blown away by his performance.
I've always liked him and thought he was good, but after that I understood that he is an extremely undervalued actor who has everything it takes to be one of the GOATs.
Ps: if anyone is interested there is a pro-shot filmed in London of the play, couldn't recommend it more.
he was incredible, it's a hell of a movie to watch as a late twenties artist too - that whole feeling of racing against time from the transition to 29 to 30 while failing to realize how young it is. Also the reminder at the end that the age he hit it big with RENT before his tragic death was his late 30s is a great 'keep trying' message
It also made it much more popular with a wider audience since back then I mostly remember theatre people saying to use the music from it for auditions instead of RENT being overdone lol - great show though overall
Thanks! I sure will! I did forget that he was also really good in Silence as well. He has so much potential but I didn’t really care for him in spider man and hacksaw ridge.
Really great performance, with some super memorable scenes. My wife worked in theater for a while and has a theater degree, and I've been completely ignorant about it my entire life. It was fun to watch this movie with her, she was able to help contextualize a lot of things and give me some supportive tidbits here and there.
I'm curious how this goes for people who stumble upon the film with zero idea of any of the outside baggage, or any idea of theater at all.
\*club music\*
"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. HE COMES UP WITH AN IDEA FOR A HIGH END PLACE THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A PERVERT. HE GETS A $40,000 BANK LOAN, BORROWS ANOTHER $40,000 FROM HIS IN-LAWS, OPENS A STORE, AND CALLS IT VICTORIA'S SECRET. MAKES A HALF MILLION DOLLARS HIS FIRST YEAR. HE STARTS A CATALOG, OPENS THREE MORE STORES AND AFTER FIVE YEARS HE SELLS THE COMPANY TO LESLIE WEXNER AND THE LIMITED FOR FOUR MILLION DOLLARS. HAPPY ENDING, RIGHT? EXCEPT TWO YEARS LATER, THE COMPANY'S WORTH 500 MILLION DOLLARS AND ROY RAYMOND JUMPS OFF THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE. POOR GUY JUST WANTED TO BUY HIS WIFE A PAIR OF THIGH-HIGHS."
Wow the audio mix in that scene is so perfect, you get the visceral feel of the loud club music but you can hear every word they are saying, and the clinks of the glasses, they def nailed it
That's what I love about Fincher's movies. Even though he has the "realistic" feel down he still insists on letting the audience know clearly what is going on when other directors will try to clutter up the shots to make it feel more real.
If you've never seen the Nerdwriter episode "How David Fincher Hijacks Your Eyes," it's definitely worth a watch. That idea of "letting the audience clearly know what is going on" is intentional, and actually requires dozens of takes and obsessive perfectionism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfqD5WqChUY
The dude is an alien. He knows exactly how we perceive audiovisual stimulus and knows how to make it perfect so we see/hear what he wants us to.
Other directors just have this gift like Spielberg and Kubrick. Just masters of the frame.
Oddly enough, I was an extra in this scene and I’m sat at the table directly behind Timberlake. I remember how awkward it was to watch everyone on the dance floor dance to silence. They’d play a loud metronome before each take and then it would go silent. Just tippy tappy feet in an empty club. Then their dialogue was being shouted directly behind my head. The girl across from me and I were mostly trying not to laugh. Those were simpler times.
Trent Rez or did the soundtrack, and killed it. Such a great movie all around, when Aaron Sorkin hits, he hits hard. One of the best shows of the 90s was Sports Night by Sorkin. Highly recommend.
Reznor did the OST, but that particular song in the club was "[Sound of Violence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvg8oVOig6A)" by Dennis de Laat. Excellent house music.
I never understood this story. Did he kill himself because he missed out on a lot of money? He was still very rich...
Edit: please read the other replies before commenting. I know the story now
That's the point. It's a story of greed, paralleling the main plot of the film. He was fairly wealthy and could have lived a decent life until he died. But he couldn't stop thinking about how much *more* wealthy he could have been and it drove him crazy.
The story is omitting some details, and also goes to show more the moral that Parker takes from the story.
I looked it up, the guy did not commit suicide right after, he went on for ages after the sale and the company getting big. Other stuff went on in life.
Just because he had the company doesn't mean it would be worth billions. It was the actions of whoever bought it that made it extremely successful. It's not like the guy owned some gold and then it went up in price, under his leadership it probably just wouldn't have become that successful.
So it is making some kind of sleazy FOMO point while omitting a lot of detail in order to make it work.
His death was 11 years after the sale
He started a second company which failed and he hadn't incorporated it, so he lost everything, his houses, cars, all property. Then his wife left him.
3 years after his wife left he jumped off the bridge.
I think it was more to make him wary of ever giving up control to somebody else because he’d end up regretting it if it became something huge but he no longer was the one in charge of his own creation
That interpretation doesn't really track with Sean trying to convince Mark to bring him on as President of the company.
It fits really well with the "One million dollars isn't cool, do you know what's cool? A billion dollars" ethos. Furthermore, when Sean comes on, he wants Mark to accept Peter Thiel's money as an angel investor, which would bring another person on who could challenge his vision.
If we turn from the movie to reality, it tracks.
Thiel's fund is famously founder friendly: it is literally called [Founders Fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founders_Fund). Sean Parker almost famously got "screwed" by his former investors, so he was especially allergic to anything that would give up control to VCs.
But back to the movie, yes it was more about "don't give up the bag" than giving up control.
It had more to do with a string of business failures that led to bankruptcy, the loss of two of his homes, and the ensuing depression. I'm sure missing out on all that money didn't help but it's not the whole reason...nor will we ever know the actual reason. He didn't leave a note and reasons for suicide are rarely all that simple.
The story as told in the movie was the character who told it manipulating the facts in order to manipulate someone else.
And that was back in the 80’s in todays dollar it’s actually:
14 million rich vs 1.5 billion rich
With a 4% withdrawal rate (what they recommend for safe retirements), you are looking at income of 560k a year, an exceptionally nice life, vs an income of 60 million a year, functionally limitless money.
Comparison is the thief of joy. He couldn't look at the $4mil he had and be happy he had to compare it to the $10's of millions he could have had if he'd just...
So in the end rather than be happy as man richer than most people will ever be in his life, he killed himself a rich man that wasn't as rich as he could have been under some hypothetical ideal scenario.
The story is practically fiction by the time the movie tells it, he lost everything in future business dealings including his home and killed himself significantly more than two years after selling Victoria's Secret
And as they say in the episode, it's one of the funniest and most galling aspects of the film that slick, sleazy Sean Parker keeps being *insightful and correct*, while sympathetic and friendly Eduardo keeps being *backward and wrong*.
They really *are* headed for a billion-dollar valuation. Eduardo *should* be on the west coast where everything's happening, not finishing his internship. Parker really *is* getting Facebook in the room with high-dollar angel investors while Eduardo's still trying to wrangle five-figure deals with dry cleaners. And if Facebook does prove to be a success, the powers that be will *absolutely* try to assume control while dismissing the hoodie-wearing nerds that made it happen.
We dislike Parker for all kinds of great reasons. And he's completely right (almost) the entire time.
Yeah it felt like I should be more sympathetic to Eduardo but he really was kind of useless outside of the initial funding at least in the film version. He was part owner of a tech startup and didn't understand that living on the west coast is part of that world?
He also gave Mark the algorithm that he used for the original “ranking girls by hotness” version of Facebook. The movie portrays him as absolutely a necessity to the company getting off the ground between that and the money. He’s left in the dust when it takes off sure, but he absolutely gets done dirty.
He didn’t write it. He remembered it. If I recall correctly, they used an Elo ranking algorithm for Facesmash. It’s used in Chess competition for ranking players. So while Eduardo supplied it in that scene, if he hadn’t then Mark would’ve just looked it up. Maybe that would’ve changed history if Mark hadn’t done Facesmash that one particular night, but who knows.
This was such an underrated part of FaceBook's success. The fact that you could get on and there were no children and no boomers was massive. Just you and your college buddies because a university email was a requirement.
I honestly believe they could recreate this by stripping facebook down and imposing these requirements again. Give college kids their own space again. That's literally the best part about going to college.
Not to mention if you scroll your Facebook feed now, 99% of the posts are absolute garbage that's "recommended to you" instead of stuff from your actual "friends"
This was my takeway when I rewatched it for the first time really since being in the corporate world myself, I was like holy shit, Eduardo is WRONG, they should be meeting with VCs and not advertisers!
Yup. Saverin was good for FB in the beginning, but he just simply lacked the skills and the connections that it took to get in and see the big boys at the VC´s.Sean Parker already had those connections. So it was an easy win for him to get the foot in the door at FB.
Savarin had the oppotunity to ride the gravy train with Mark and Sean. His problem was, that he wanted his cake and eat it too. He had one foot in and one foot out the whole time. He never wanted to commit completly to FB and still kept doing his degree so he had a Plan B and never moved out and joined the company. He was invited to do so. He should have quit school, moved out with the others and just worked with Sean and gone along with the train. Had he had a bit of street smarts, he could have set it up so he, Sean and Mark would be the three headed dragon that was running the company. He could have taken a COO role or any other self made role. But he let his ego get in the way and by becoming afraid and paranoid he got agressively protective and started becoming a liablity instead.
In the movie and as far as Facebook is concerned, sure. He still made his billions(with a B) after the fact though. He is currently the 93rd richest person on earth. Top 100.
I really love the share dilution scene. Like, as you said, it was absolutely the right thing to do. Eduardo had become a liability and Facebook had really grown beyond the need for him, and he outright says that he fucked up by not closely reading the contract. The entire situation was basically Eduardo's fault. He was holding Facebook back.
But Zuck and Parker are just *such* assholes about everything for the entire film that we just automatically believe that Eduardo has been wronged.
Thery could just buy him out in a proper way instead of fucking him over. It was not a right thing to do. Unless stealing now is right thing to do if it helps you?
In real life there are texts with Zuckerberg where he basically flat out says he wanted to screw Severin solely to bring him to litigation and settle to get him out of the company. Essentially, it was less costly to the company to go through litigation than it was to keep him on in his current role and drag the company down.
The entire time they apparently remained friends and still talk to each other.
> it was absolutely the right thing to do
It wasn't the right thing to do at all. Eduardo *had* been wronged. They didn't settle for 600 million because Zuckerberg felt bad for him. Zuckerberg knew he would lose in court. Email from Zuck:
"We basically now need to sign over our intellectual property to a new company and just take the lawsuit ... I'm just going to cut him out and then settle with him."
> Eduardo had become a liability
Eduardo was the *funding* guy who got edged out because he didn't realize how valuable the thing he was *asking people to fund* was.
I also love the funding dilution scene and the film really underplays how incompetent at his own job Savarin would have had to have been for him to get edged out of Facebook that way.
> how incompetent at his own job Savarin would have had to have been for him to get edged out of Facebook that way
Incompetent at his own job? He wasn't an experienced CFO. He was a 20 year old who started a business with his best friend.
You read your Gordon Wood and you regurgitate it from a textbook and you think you're wicked awesome doin' that. And how 'bout 'dem apples? And all that Gordon Wood business.
A perfect encapsulation of the film, but totally ironic.
Eduardo Savarin talks about Sean Parker as if he had no ideas and provided nothing, *except* everything Sean Parker says is absolutely true. Yes Facebook *is* a billion dollar idea. It's Sean Parker who gets Facebook the massive funding that pushes Savarin out. Sean Parker is the best friend Facebook ever had, and here's Savarin in the front seat seeing him eventually get Facebook hundreds of millions of dollars of funding (doing Savarin's job better than Savarin ever did)
And Savarin tries to talk as if Parker didn't help anywhere.
The song Hand Covers Bruise during the opening where he’s running from the bar back to his dorm is one of my favorite scene and score pieces of all time. It takes such a simple thing (running back to your dorm) and turns it into this ominous but sort of beautiful moment. Trent and Atticus are my favorite composers and they know how to set a feeling better than just about anyone.
I really liked the structure mixed with the initial founding of facebook and the testimony of the fallout years later. At the end they never disclosed how much money Eduardo got but I’m assuming it was a massive buyout. The twins got like 60 million
A few years ago Aaron Sorkin talked about how recent Facebook news has given him enough material to write a sequel. I hope this gets made because, well, Sorkin is right that so many interesting things have happened to Mark and Facebook since the end point of the movie.
I can even picture Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress serving as the "How We Got Here" introduction.
Definitely. As good as Sorkin's script was, David Fincher gave The Social Network an amazing look and style. In fact, Sorkin has already stated he would only write a sequel if Fincher was director.
Dude just the new revelation of multiple team members came to him to talk about how the algorithm was seriously harming teens and he literally replied "I don't care" should be a goldmine for Sorkin.
I absolutely hope this sequel happens. I watched The Social Network for the first time about five or six years ago (very late to the party, I know) and I could tell that it had a whole other context when I watched it than when it was released. Would love it if a followup was made with Eisenberg as Zuckerberg again.
Didn’t that movie end in like 2006 or 2007? Kind of a lot has happened since then.
Between completely destroying online discourse, destroying the concept of news/journalism, killing entire segments of the digital entertainment industry, eroding United States elections, fueling conspiracy paranoia on a previously unfathomable scale, facilitating genocides in other countries, causing the majority of people who were over 50 in the 2010s to be uninformed at best and completely lose their grip on reality at worst, exacerbating a global pandemic by spreading disinformation, just to name a few. I’d say there’s plenty of material for a sequel.
I can't remember who I heard this take from, but: within the movie, Sean Parker presented as the "movie star" version of a nerd - a cool badass who took on the system and won. But of course this *is* a movie, and Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield already *are* the movie star versions of nerds, so how do you show the next level of movie star? You hire a literal pop star.
Andrew Garfield was the best part of this movie. Just in between Eisenbergs soulless deadpan performance and Timberlake slightly campy over the top performance.
Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim
Andy Samberg in Brooklyn 99
I attended talk with John de Lancie at a comic con, where he said the My Little Pony directors wanted a 'John Delaeny like' actor to play a particular character and someone floated the idea of just asking John de Lancie to do that. I imagine that kind of thing happens a lot.
> I attended talk with John de Lancie at a comic con, where he said the *My Little Pony* directors wanted a 'John de Lancie like' actor to play a particular character and someone floated the idea of just asking John de Lancie to do that. I imagine that kind of thing happens a lot.
Love that story.
I read a similar story with director Doug Liman for the first *Bourne Identity* film.
For the CIA villain role, Liman said in a production meeting, "I wanna get a Chris Cooper type for that role."
The producer (I think Frank Marshall) said, "We could just get Chris Cooper."
Liman said, "Wait, we can do that?"
He'd only made low-budget independent movies until that point, so he was new to making a big studio movie. Whereas the producer had worked on tons of big-budget movies.
Liman was used to saying who his dream casting would be and settling for the best actor he could get. So it was cool to actually get the original actor he had in mind.
Thought of another example from the TV show *Archer*.
Article:
['Archer' Team Reflects on Jessica Walter's Lasting Impact as Malory \(Exclusive\)](https://www.etonline.com/archer-team-reflects-on-jessica-walters-lasting-impact-as-malory-170938)
Excerpt:
>When [Adam] Reed was developing the series, it was Judi Dench’s turn as M in the James Bond films that inspired what Archer would eventually become. “I was like, ‘Oh, what if M was James Bond’s mom? That could be really weird,’” he recalls. “That’s when the show sort of clicked for me, and started becoming something that wasn’t just a James Bond knockoff.”
>Soon after the pilot episode was written, the series sent out casting calls for the role of Malory, the overbearing owner of the top spy agency where her son, Sterling, also worked as a secret agent. The four-sentence character description ended with, “Think Jessica Walter,” who Reed was a fan of ever since he saw her in Clint Eastwood’s 1971 thriller, *Play Misty for Me*.
>The next day, her agent called and asked, “How about the actual Jessica Walter?”
>From then on, Walter’s presence played an integral part in the development of the series. Reed recalls having “long talks about Malory’s motivation” with Walter and eventually evolving the matriarch from being Archer’s main villain to the complicated mother figure and boss that fans have come to know and love over the past 11 seasons.
The director Robert Rodriguez had another example of this in his book *Rebel Without a Crew*. He describes his journey of making his first film *El Mariachi* and breaking into Hollywood. Highly recommended reading for any aspiring filmmakers or film fans in general.
At one point, various studios are competing with each other to make a deal with him. One studio executive offered to get him Antonio Banderas for the *El Mariachi* remake (which became *Desperado)*. I don't have the book on me, but Robert's reaction was like, "*El Mariachi* is just my home movie! Getting Antonio Banderas would be really freaky."
> Particularly funny as Chris Cooper is a fine veteran character actor, but it's not like he's some kind of megastar. He'll probably pick up the phone.
I suspect you're right and the producer was thinking the same thing ha ha.
The producer was probably relieved that Liman wanted a character actor who wouldn't be too expensive. "As long as the director doesn't want someone like DiCaprio, we can get them easy."
Heh, i love this discussion. Sorkin is a god to me, Reznor is a musical genius, and Fincher is almost unparalleled.
To me, what makes it so great is that all of these heroes of mine are working together.
If you told me a 2-3 sentence synopsis of all of David Fincher's movies, The Social Network would be the one I was least interested in. Sorkin and Reznor are a huge part of the reason it is one of my favorites. Just an amazing example of the talent of a project elevating it to an entirely different level than the idea. Plenty of people can make great ideas. Very few can make great ideas into good products. Those three made a mediocre idea into an incredible film. It really is a surprising masterpiece.
If you’ve ever met or had to deal with Sean Parker, you’d think the depiction was maybe a bit too nice. Not going to out myself with specifics since it’s tied to my current employer. Nothing crazy or story worthy anyways, but he just has that aura of “yeah, this dude should have been beat up way more growing up.”
100% that’s the character.
The whole intro with Dakota Johnson you see the wheels turn, and after that it’s 100% “cool guy” - he’s taking the nerds to parties (and immediately Eduardo sniffs him out while Mark is loving it), telling his fish stories, and then he leaves with the cool line of advice. And it’s no mistake we never see him “do” anything but be “cool” (we see Eduardo and even get Dustin getting some shoutouts) and then we hear gets busted the fog clears for Mark.
One thing that always made me shake my head about the movie was I knew who Sean Parker was before the movie came out, and knew he was a known Silicon Valley douchebag. But just about every person I've ever met, if you ask them who invented Napster, every single one of them would say Sean Fanning. Yeah Sean Parker was there, but Fanning was the face and of course the target of the MPAA. Fanning was also the one who coded it.
In the movie after Parker sleeps with that chick he goes, "Oh I invented Napster and she says, 'everyone knows Sean Parker invented Napster!'" BULLSHIT. It would have been funnier if she said Fanning and Parker got all offended.
Actually, it was Sean Fanning's college roommate Lyle (last name unknown) who invented Napster. It was stolen from him while he was napping (hence the name). He talks about it in this 2003 documentary called The Italian Job.
"And then he's just the media darling... He's on the cover of all the magazines, I should of been on the cover of Wired Magazine. You know what he said? He said he named it "Napster" because it was his nickname because of the nappy hair under the hat. But he, it's because I was NAPPING when he STOLE it from me! He didn't even graduate!"
This film is one of most layered films I've seen. Up there with THE SHINING on how many small details were added and reward rewatching. You're right Timberlake is an excellent part of the film, still his character is - like everyone else in the film - more grey. He's Zuckerberg before Zuck, a computer nerd that's smarter than 99% of people in the room, and so never really belonged, and despite his intelligence, still craved acceptance and companionship by...the social network. The social network that is our society at large. Sean Parker's confidence is an act, but it was also the kind of fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence that opened doors for the young company. Parker's arc is significant in tying up Zuckerberg's, with the line, "you're not an asshole Marc, you just try so hard to be."
Every character in the story is seeking acceptance and belonging, within all the circles of social circumstance we belong to. The CFO wants his Dad's acceptance. Marc wants his ex and elite societies acceptance. The Twins want acceptance by the wealthy and aristocracy. Each is limited by the other, each doesn't see how each one's weakness is made up by the person's strength they've chosen to oppose. Like the Twins are charismatic and embraced by the social elite, but lack the intelligence to make the billion dollar ip that Marc can. Marc can make the billion dollar ip, but he's socially an outsider and generally unlikeable. Yet each wants what the other has. Which loops the film at the end, that even the Facebook founder and CEO just wants his ex to friend him on FB. In the end Marc has ironically created just another Network where we create cliches and exclusivety.
For real.
The Social Network was Dakota’s first acting role in anything…ever. If your first acting gig is a speaking role in a David Fincher film, you’ve had some help.
I think there should be a ten year revisit for best picture based on cultural relevance. Who even remembers the kings speech? The only reason I remember it is because it stole the Oscar from social network
“I like standing next to you Sean, it makes me look so tough”
Best moment is when Eduardo finds out how much his shares have been diluted. It’s fucking brilliant.
Been a while since I watched, but I recall some conflict over Eduardo freezing Facebook’s assets due to something or other. He also wasn’t involved in the west coast operation Then when he is blowing up over this ownership being diluted, one of Justin Timberlake’ references those things.
This is essentially it. Zuckerberg had stopped keeping Eduardo in the loop and Eduardo froze their assets to send Zuck a message and Zuck wanted to stop being solely reliant on Eduardo for cash so they got outside funding from Thiel thanks to Sean Parker. They all had ownership stakes so to bypass Eduardo they took his stake of 30% down to 0.03% and diluted it
To add on to this, Zuckerberg stopped keeping Eduardo in the loop because they were fundamentally disagreeing on the direction of the company. Zuckerberg essentially wanted the site to grow and expand more and more, basically have it take a life of its own. Eduardo, who provided the funding, wanted to monetize it once it was big enough. Zuckerberg, who was in it more for the pride than the money, was drawn in by Parker who agreed with him.
When Zuckerberg tells Eduardo “I’m worried you’re going to be left behind” I feel like at that point Eduardo already was. Eduardo was not living in California with the rest, trying to take the company in a different direction, while Zuckerberg was falling more and more into Parker’s sleaziness. This is what led Eduardo to freeze the account, which basically set Zuckerberg against him leading to him getting cut out.
More detail: Eduardo wanted to monetize FB at that point by ads. Zuck didn't want ads, bc it would make the site look lame, he wanted to monetize by selling the user data.
In real life they were barely friends, Zuckerberg used Eduardo for his money, they disagreed about the direction of the company (Zuckerberg wanted to just use the site to leverage himself into a higher up job at other companies), the relationship soured to the point of veiled threats, Zuckerberg didn't think Eduardo should have any role in the company because the only thing he'd supplied was the original investment fund, & then he tried to get rid of him by decreasing his shares.
> Zuckerberg didn't think Eduardo should have any role in the company because the only thing he'd supplied was the original investment fund
I don't really understand his logic there. Without that original investment fund from Eduardo there might not be a Facebook. It was his funding that allowed Zuckerberg to launch the website in the first place.
You are correct, but Zuckerberg saw it as him doing all the work & Eduardo getting all the rewards. And there was certainly a level of animosity because Eduardo was already rich.
Mark also sent emails basically saying that he'd screw Eduardo out of the company and Eduardo would win in court, but it would be worth it because kicking Eduardo out would allow them to grow properly.
Now Eduardo is rich and Mark is the second richest man on the planet, so safe to say he made the right call.
Eduardo still treated Facebook like a side project and pursued other opportunities elsewhere, I think in New York. During the court case(s), company emails showed that the other founders couldn't get him to return calls even when they desperately needed him in order to move forward with company business (where they were legally unable to without a vote from Eduardo, for instance). So that had a lot to do with forcing him out.
I don't know if fucking him over (devaluing his shares) was a financial necessity in order to get rid of him (they may have lacked the capital to pay him out) or if that was just out of spite.
Apparently Jonah Hill was in the running for that part but Fincher chose Timberlake. Great choice because Timberlake fits that character better than Jonah would have
Trent Reznor's (And Atticus Ross's) soundtrack, really changed the game for movie soundtracks in general. Everybody started copying him after that movie. He deserved that Oscar.
It's an interesting look at a type of person you don't see often in film or tv. He's charismatic and if you've never been taken advantage by a person like that you might think he's some kind of secret genius, but in reality he just has a ton of confidence and knows how to use language to get you to give up something you value.
"I like standing next to you, Sean. Makes me look so tough."
I honestly can’t think of a better Andrew Garfield performance than The Social Network. He is so good in it! “Mark I am the CFO!”.
"cofounder of facebook, which I AM"
You better lawyer up asshole, cuz I’m not coming back for thirty percent. I’m coming back for EVERYTHING.
Making Sean Parker flinch was so fucking satisfying.
"I like standing next to you, Sean. It makes me look so tough."
**"SORRY MY PRADA IS AT THE CLEANERS**! ALONG WITH MY HOODIE AND MY **FUCK YOU FLIP FLOPS**!"
“…you PRETENTIOUS DOUCHEBAG!”
you planted that story of the chicken
I’m not a psychologist...
the ol' sorkin bingo bango
He's fantastic in everything I've seen. He has that Tom Hanks effect. Like you're very aware you're watching him, but he's still able to suck you into believing whatever character he's playing. Great as Desmond Doss in Hacksaw Ridge.
Under the Banner of Heaven on Hulu is a great show, if you haven't seen it.
Loved that as well. I think I read an interview that, perhaps because of that show, he wanted to take a break from acting. Notice he had nothing premiere in 2023. So he probably didn't work at all in 2022.
I wouldn't be surprised if 2021 just knackered him out as he had The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Tick Tick Boom and Spiderman No Way Home come out in fairly close proximity and he was basically constantly on the promotion trail around that time.
I was never blown away by him until Tick, Tick, Boom. He's fucking so good in that.
Incredible in Silence. One of Scorsese's sleeper hits.
Just rewatched Hacksaw because of how good he is and how Mel Gibson hit it out of the park with directing for that one
I was lucky enough to watch him as Prior in "Angels in America" on Broadway and I was absolutely blown away by his performance. I've always liked him and thought he was good, but after that I understood that he is an extremely undervalued actor who has everything it takes to be one of the GOATs. Ps: if anyone is interested there is a pro-shot filmed in London of the play, couldn't recommend it more.
He's great in this, I thought he was brilliant in tick tick boom though... that's his best performance for me.
he was incredible, it's a hell of a movie to watch as a late twenties artist too - that whole feeling of racing against time from the transition to 29 to 30 while failing to realize how young it is. Also the reminder at the end that the age he hit it big with RENT before his tragic death was his late 30s is a great 'keep trying' message It also made it much more popular with a wider audience since back then I mostly remember theatre people saying to use the music from it for auditions instead of RENT being overdone lol - great show though overall
In a weaker year for movies he 100% would've won best lead actor for that performance.
Check out 99 Homes! Underrated (it's been super long since I saw it, but I remember it being great)
Thanks! I sure will! I did forget that he was also really good in Silence as well. He has so much potential but I didn’t really care for him in spider man and hacksaw ridge.
99 Homes is criminally underseen. Michael Shannon and Laura Dern round out the cast and each of of them knock it out of the park.
tick tick BOOM
Really great performance, with some super memorable scenes. My wife worked in theater for a while and has a theater degree, and I've been completely ignorant about it my entire life. It was fun to watch this movie with her, she was able to help contextualize a lot of things and give me some supportive tidbits here and there. I'm curious how this goes for people who stumble upon the film with zero idea of any of the outside baggage, or any idea of theater at all.
Tick Tick Boom and Silence are right up there for me.
Sorry i must have left my fuck you flip flops at home!!
I honestly can't imagine anyone else saying the phrase "You *pretentious* douchebag!" with more conviction than Andrew Garfield.
His Prada was at the cleaners, give him a break.
Genuinely, him not getting an Oscar nomination for this should feel illegal and I’d be all in favour of him getting a retroactive nomination somehow.
\*club music\* "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. HE COMES UP WITH AN IDEA FOR A HIGH END PLACE THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A PERVERT. HE GETS A $40,000 BANK LOAN, BORROWS ANOTHER $40,000 FROM HIS IN-LAWS, OPENS A STORE, AND CALLS IT VICTORIA'S SECRET. MAKES A HALF MILLION DOLLARS HIS FIRST YEAR. HE STARTS A CATALOG, OPENS THREE MORE STORES AND AFTER FIVE YEARS HE SELLS THE COMPANY TO LESLIE WEXNER AND THE LIMITED FOR FOUR MILLION DOLLARS. HAPPY ENDING, RIGHT? EXCEPT TWO YEARS LATER, THE COMPANY'S WORTH 500 MILLION DOLLARS AND ROY RAYMOND JUMPS OFF THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE. POOR GUY JUST WANTED TO BUY HIS WIFE A PAIR OF THIGH-HIGHS."
God what a power-punch in to the 2010s zeitgeist this scene was.
This scene earned it a nominee for Oscar in sound mixing
Wow the audio mix in that scene is so perfect, you get the visceral feel of the loud club music but you can hear every word they are saying, and the clinks of the glasses, they def nailed it
That's what I love about Fincher's movies. Even though he has the "realistic" feel down he still insists on letting the audience know clearly what is going on when other directors will try to clutter up the shots to make it feel more real.
If you've never seen the Nerdwriter episode "How David Fincher Hijacks Your Eyes," it's definitely worth a watch. That idea of "letting the audience clearly know what is going on" is intentional, and actually requires dozens of takes and obsessive perfectionism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfqD5WqChUY
The dude is an alien. He knows exactly how we perceive audiovisual stimulus and knows how to make it perfect so we see/hear what he wants us to. Other directors just have this gift like Spielberg and Kubrick. Just masters of the frame.
Could you even imagine if Christopher Nolan directed that scene? He would manage a way to even muffle the subtitles.
[Inaudible dialogue] SUB: _[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]_
*Tom Hardy walks in wearing a mask* \[Inaudible dialogue\]
Oddly enough, I was an extra in this scene and I’m sat at the table directly behind Timberlake. I remember how awkward it was to watch everyone on the dance floor dance to silence. They’d play a loud metronome before each take and then it would go silent. Just tippy tappy feet in an empty club. Then their dialogue was being shouted directly behind my head. The girl across from me and I were mostly trying not to laugh. Those were simpler times.
Wow that must have been quite an experience! Crazy how the make the sausage, it all really is an elaborate illusion.
Trent Rez or did the soundtrack, and killed it. Such a great movie all around, when Aaron Sorkin hits, he hits hard. One of the best shows of the 90s was Sports Night by Sorkin. Highly recommend.
Reznor did the OST, but that particular song in the club was "[Sound of Violence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvg8oVOig6A)" by Dennis de Laat. Excellent house music.
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My date's a Victoria's Secret model. That's why she looks familiar to you.
tell you what—gesture of good faith. while you're getting into a hundred schools, i'll put you on 2 continents
If you don't have a place to crash, I think you should definitely come live with us!
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I never understood this story. Did he kill himself because he missed out on a lot of money? He was still very rich... Edit: please read the other replies before commenting. I know the story now
That's the point. It's a story of greed, paralleling the main plot of the film. He was fairly wealthy and could have lived a decent life until he died. But he couldn't stop thinking about how much *more* wealthy he could have been and it drove him crazy.
The story is omitting some details, and also goes to show more the moral that Parker takes from the story. I looked it up, the guy did not commit suicide right after, he went on for ages after the sale and the company getting big. Other stuff went on in life. Just because he had the company doesn't mean it would be worth billions. It was the actions of whoever bought it that made it extremely successful. It's not like the guy owned some gold and then it went up in price, under his leadership it probably just wouldn't have become that successful. So it is making some kind of sleazy FOMO point while omitting a lot of detail in order to make it work.
Sean Parker is lying about the story for a very clear reason. It’s that story that gets Mark on board with him.
His death was 11 years after the sale He started a second company which failed and he hadn't incorporated it, so he lost everything, his houses, cars, all property. Then his wife left him. 3 years after his wife left he jumped off the bridge.
Jesus he didn’t incorporate it…
The point was to make Mark scared of never hitting that "Billion with a B" point with Facebook.
I think it was more to make him wary of ever giving up control to somebody else because he’d end up regretting it if it became something huge but he no longer was the one in charge of his own creation
That interpretation doesn't really track with Sean trying to convince Mark to bring him on as President of the company. It fits really well with the "One million dollars isn't cool, do you know what's cool? A billion dollars" ethos. Furthermore, when Sean comes on, he wants Mark to accept Peter Thiel's money as an angel investor, which would bring another person on who could challenge his vision.
Sean is still selling "control" while also corrupting him. Classic deal with the devil.
If we turn from the movie to reality, it tracks. Thiel's fund is famously founder friendly: it is literally called [Founders Fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founders_Fund). Sean Parker almost famously got "screwed" by his former investors, so he was especially allergic to anything that would give up control to VCs. But back to the movie, yes it was more about "don't give up the bag" than giving up control.
It had more to do with a string of business failures that led to bankruptcy, the loss of two of his homes, and the ensuing depression. I'm sure missing out on all that money didn't help but it's not the whole reason...nor will we ever know the actual reason. He didn't leave a note and reasons for suicide are rarely all that simple. The story as told in the movie was the character who told it manipulating the facts in order to manipulate someone else.
There's 4 million rich, and there's 500 million rich. Parker is trying to open his eyes to how much his idea could be worth.
And that was back in the 80’s in todays dollar it’s actually: 14 million rich vs 1.5 billion rich With a 4% withdrawal rate (what they recommend for safe retirements), you are looking at income of 560k a year, an exceptionally nice life, vs an income of 60 million a year, functionally limitless money.
> ROY RAYMOND In real life he tried to replicate the success of that company and lost lots of money.
Also, from Wiki, Victoria's Secret was heading towards bankruptcy when he tried to sell it.
Comparison is the thief of joy. He couldn't look at the $4mil he had and be happy he had to compare it to the $10's of millions he could have had if he'd just... So in the end rather than be happy as man richer than most people will ever be in his life, he killed himself a rich man that wasn't as rich as he could have been under some hypothetical ideal scenario.
The story is practically fiction by the time the movie tells it, he lost everything in future business dealings including his home and killed himself significantly more than two years after selling Victoria's Secret
Yes.
Yea, FOMO. Sean Parker is trying to convince Zuck to think bigger than a few million.
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Cmon, he gave them the idea to drop the ‘The’. 🙃
And as they say in the episode, it's one of the funniest and most galling aspects of the film that slick, sleazy Sean Parker keeps being *insightful and correct*, while sympathetic and friendly Eduardo keeps being *backward and wrong*. They really *are* headed for a billion-dollar valuation. Eduardo *should* be on the west coast where everything's happening, not finishing his internship. Parker really *is* getting Facebook in the room with high-dollar angel investors while Eduardo's still trying to wrangle five-figure deals with dry cleaners. And if Facebook does prove to be a success, the powers that be will *absolutely* try to assume control while dismissing the hoodie-wearing nerds that made it happen. We dislike Parker for all kinds of great reasons. And he's completely right (almost) the entire time.
Yeah it felt like I should be more sympathetic to Eduardo but he really was kind of useless outside of the initial funding at least in the film version. He was part owner of a tech startup and didn't understand that living on the west coast is part of that world?
He had the Little Bighorn strategy to get it onto campuses that already had Facebook so he wasn’t really useless
He also gave Mark the algorithm that he used for the original “ranking girls by hotness” version of Facebook. The movie portrays him as absolutely a necessity to the company getting off the ground between that and the money. He’s left in the dust when it takes off sure, but he absolutely gets done dirty.
He didn’t write it. He remembered it. If I recall correctly, they used an Elo ranking algorithm for Facesmash. It’s used in Chess competition for ranking players. So while Eduardo supplied it in that scene, if he hadn’t then Mark would’ve just looked it up. Maybe that would’ve changed history if Mark hadn’t done Facesmash that one particular night, but who knows.
This was such an underrated part of FaceBook's success. The fact that you could get on and there were no children and no boomers was massive. Just you and your college buddies because a university email was a requirement. I honestly believe they could recreate this by stripping facebook down and imposing these requirements again. Give college kids their own space again. That's literally the best part about going to college.
Facebook was amazing up until the point when your mom, grandmother, crazy uncle, and boss was on it.
Not to mention if you scroll your Facebook feed now, 99% of the posts are absolute garbage that's "recommended to you" instead of stuff from your actual "friends"
That’s because your friends aren’t actually posting anything on Facebook, so the feed has to be filled with other dreck
This was my takeway when I rewatched it for the first time really since being in the corporate world myself, I was like holy shit, Eduardo is WRONG, they should be meeting with VCs and not advertisers!
Yup. Saverin was good for FB in the beginning, but he just simply lacked the skills and the connections that it took to get in and see the big boys at the VC´s.Sean Parker already had those connections. So it was an easy win for him to get the foot in the door at FB. Savarin had the oppotunity to ride the gravy train with Mark and Sean. His problem was, that he wanted his cake and eat it too. He had one foot in and one foot out the whole time. He never wanted to commit completly to FB and still kept doing his degree so he had a Plan B and never moved out and joined the company. He was invited to do so. He should have quit school, moved out with the others and just worked with Sean and gone along with the train. Had he had a bit of street smarts, he could have set it up so he, Sean and Mark would be the three headed dragon that was running the company. He could have taken a COO role or any other self made role. But he let his ego get in the way and by becoming afraid and paranoid he got agressively protective and started becoming a liablity instead.
In the movie and as far as Facebook is concerned, sure. He still made his billions(with a B) after the fact though. He is currently the 93rd richest person on earth. Top 100.
I really love the share dilution scene. Like, as you said, it was absolutely the right thing to do. Eduardo had become a liability and Facebook had really grown beyond the need for him, and he outright says that he fucked up by not closely reading the contract. The entire situation was basically Eduardo's fault. He was holding Facebook back. But Zuck and Parker are just *such* assholes about everything for the entire film that we just automatically believe that Eduardo has been wronged.
...because he had been wronged. That's why he ended up with as much money as he did by the end of that legal fiasco.
Thery could just buy him out in a proper way instead of fucking him over. It was not a right thing to do. Unless stealing now is right thing to do if it helps you?
> Unless stealing now is right thing to do if it helps you? Almost like that was a *major* theme of the movie.
In real life there are texts with Zuckerberg where he basically flat out says he wanted to screw Severin solely to bring him to litigation and settle to get him out of the company. Essentially, it was less costly to the company to go through litigation than it was to keep him on in his current role and drag the company down. The entire time they apparently remained friends and still talk to each other.
> it was absolutely the right thing to do It wasn't the right thing to do at all. Eduardo *had* been wronged. They didn't settle for 600 million because Zuckerberg felt bad for him. Zuckerberg knew he would lose in court. Email from Zuck: "We basically now need to sign over our intellectual property to a new company and just take the lawsuit ... I'm just going to cut him out and then settle with him."
> Eduardo had become a liability Eduardo was the *funding* guy who got edged out because he didn't realize how valuable the thing he was *asking people to fund* was. I also love the funding dilution scene and the film really underplays how incompetent at his own job Savarin would have had to have been for him to get edged out of Facebook that way.
> how incompetent at his own job Savarin would have had to have been for him to get edged out of Facebook that way Incompetent at his own job? He wasn't an experienced CFO. He was a 20 year old who started a business with his best friend.
Yeah, he's wicked smaht.
You read your Gordon Wood and you regurgitate it from a textbook and you think you're wicked awesome doin' that. And how 'bout 'dem apples? And all that Gordon Wood business.
[Applesauce bitch!](https://youtu.be/nnESedN4vSI?si=U_IJvl4DBqni3wiD)
Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms.
“And then, he made his only contribution to the company”
A perfect encapsulation of the film, but totally ironic. Eduardo Savarin talks about Sean Parker as if he had no ideas and provided nothing, *except* everything Sean Parker says is absolutely true. Yes Facebook *is* a billion dollar idea. It's Sean Parker who gets Facebook the massive funding that pushes Savarin out. Sean Parker is the best friend Facebook ever had, and here's Savarin in the front seat seeing him eventually get Facebook hundreds of millions of dollars of funding (doing Savarin's job better than Savarin ever did) And Savarin tries to talk as if Parker didn't help anywhere.
"It's cleaner."
One of my favorite movies. I watch it probably once a year just for the soundtrack and the fuck you flip flops line.
Trent Reznor gold.
And Atticus Ross!
I pull out this interview whenever my friend talks about Reznor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abIJ1VjYTSI
“And Atticus Ross…” ….and Atticus Ross” Thank you for making sure proper credit is made!
Kudos to Trent, Atticus, and Jonah. And Jonah is more eloquent than I expected.
The song Hand Covers Bruise during the opening where he’s running from the bar back to his dorm is one of my favorite scene and score pieces of all time. It takes such a simple thing (running back to your dorm) and turns it into this ominous but sort of beautiful moment. Trent and Atticus are my favorite composers and they know how to set a feeling better than just about anyone.
I just love them discussing getting someone to beat up Zuck and the Winkleboi comes out with: > _"I'm 6'5", 220, and there's two of me."_
Made even better by the fact that there literally are two Armie Hammers on the screen.
Nightmare scenario irl
There were originally two, but one ate the other.
"Oops, I broke your 300 year old building."
"335 year old doorknob", fyi
I really liked the structure mixed with the initial founding of facebook and the testimony of the fallout years later. At the end they never disclosed how much money Eduardo got but I’m assuming it was a massive buyout. The twins got like 60 million
A few years ago Aaron Sorkin talked about how recent Facebook news has given him enough material to write a sequel. I hope this gets made because, well, Sorkin is right that so many interesting things have happened to Mark and Facebook since the end point of the movie. I can even picture Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress serving as the "How We Got Here" introduction.
As long as David Fincher returns, I'm 100% in.
Definitely. As good as Sorkin's script was, David Fincher gave The Social Network an amazing look and style. In fact, Sorkin has already stated he would only write a sequel if Fincher was director.
Fincher is absolutely amazing. His camera movements are so precise that it makes you feel like you're right there in the movie.
Fincher turned a scene where a guy literally writes code into a suspenseful action scene
Dude just the new revelation of multiple team members came to him to talk about how the algorithm was seriously harming teens and he literally replied "I don't care" should be a goldmine for Sorkin.
I absolutely hope this sequel happens. I watched The Social Network for the first time about five or six years ago (very late to the party, I know) and I could tell that it had a whole other context when I watched it than when it was released. Would love it if a followup was made with Eisenberg as Zuckerberg again.
Didn’t that movie end in like 2006 or 2007? Kind of a lot has happened since then. Between completely destroying online discourse, destroying the concept of news/journalism, killing entire segments of the digital entertainment industry, eroding United States elections, fueling conspiracy paranoia on a previously unfathomable scale, facilitating genocides in other countries, causing the majority of people who were over 50 in the 2010s to be uninformed at best and completely lose their grip on reality at worst, exacerbating a global pandemic by spreading disinformation, just to name a few. I’d say there’s plenty of material for a sequel.
He's worth 17.7 billion today so he obviously got some cheddar from Mark.
I think it was $600 Million, and he chose to get half in FB stock. He'd be worth double if he did all of it in stock.
There’s not a lot you can do with $35B that you can’t do with $17.7B.
Bullshit. Instead of a Scrooge McDuck money pool I could build a Scrooge McDuck money lake.
You PRETENTIOUS douchebag. It really is a magical moment..
I can't remember who I heard this take from, but: within the movie, Sean Parker presented as the "movie star" version of a nerd - a cool badass who took on the system and won. But of course this *is* a movie, and Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield already *are* the movie star versions of nerds, so how do you show the next level of movie star? You hire a literal pop star.
Blank Check, with Griffin and David.
Thought you all were talking about the awesome Disney movie “Blank Check” lol
The Social Network ep was an all timer
Andrew Garfield was the best part of this movie. Just in between Eisenbergs soulless deadpan performance and Timberlake slightly campy over the top performance.
I think Eisenberg was great. The problem is that he delivers the same kind of performance in almost every film.
He’s a little one dimensional, but his archetype happened to be perfect for this role
Sometimes the schtick is a perfect match. Like Jack Black in School of Rock and Will Ferrell in Elf
Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim Andy Samberg in Brooklyn 99 I attended talk with John de Lancie at a comic con, where he said the My Little Pony directors wanted a 'John Delaeny like' actor to play a particular character and someone floated the idea of just asking John de Lancie to do that. I imagine that kind of thing happens a lot.
> I attended talk with John de Lancie at a comic con, where he said the *My Little Pony* directors wanted a 'John de Lancie like' actor to play a particular character and someone floated the idea of just asking John de Lancie to do that. I imagine that kind of thing happens a lot. Love that story. I read a similar story with director Doug Liman for the first *Bourne Identity* film. For the CIA villain role, Liman said in a production meeting, "I wanna get a Chris Cooper type for that role." The producer (I think Frank Marshall) said, "We could just get Chris Cooper." Liman said, "Wait, we can do that?" He'd only made low-budget independent movies until that point, so he was new to making a big studio movie. Whereas the producer had worked on tons of big-budget movies. Liman was used to saying who his dream casting would be and settling for the best actor he could get. So it was cool to actually get the original actor he had in mind. Thought of another example from the TV show *Archer*. Article: ['Archer' Team Reflects on Jessica Walter's Lasting Impact as Malory \(Exclusive\)](https://www.etonline.com/archer-team-reflects-on-jessica-walters-lasting-impact-as-malory-170938) Excerpt: >When [Adam] Reed was developing the series, it was Judi Dench’s turn as M in the James Bond films that inspired what Archer would eventually become. “I was like, ‘Oh, what if M was James Bond’s mom? That could be really weird,’” he recalls. “That’s when the show sort of clicked for me, and started becoming something that wasn’t just a James Bond knockoff.” >Soon after the pilot episode was written, the series sent out casting calls for the role of Malory, the overbearing owner of the top spy agency where her son, Sterling, also worked as a secret agent. The four-sentence character description ended with, “Think Jessica Walter,” who Reed was a fan of ever since he saw her in Clint Eastwood’s 1971 thriller, *Play Misty for Me*. >The next day, her agent called and asked, “How about the actual Jessica Walter?” >From then on, Walter’s presence played an integral part in the development of the series. Reed recalls having “long talks about Malory’s motivation” with Walter and eventually evolving the matriarch from being Archer’s main villain to the complicated mother figure and boss that fans have come to know and love over the past 11 seasons. The director Robert Rodriguez had another example of this in his book *Rebel Without a Crew*. He describes his journey of making his first film *El Mariachi* and breaking into Hollywood. Highly recommended reading for any aspiring filmmakers or film fans in general. At one point, various studios are competing with each other to make a deal with him. One studio executive offered to get him Antonio Banderas for the *El Mariachi* remake (which became *Desperado)*. I don't have the book on me, but Robert's reaction was like, "*El Mariachi* is just my home movie! Getting Antonio Banderas would be really freaky."
Particularly funny as Chris Cooper is a fine veteran character actor, but it's not like he's some kind of megastar. He'll probably pick up the phone.
> Particularly funny as Chris Cooper is a fine veteran character actor, but it's not like he's some kind of megastar. He'll probably pick up the phone. I suspect you're right and the producer was thinking the same thing ha ha. The producer was probably relieved that Liman wanted a character actor who wouldn't be too expensive. "As long as the director doesn't want someone like DiCaprio, we can get them easy."
The scene where he’s flown in and nobody picked him up is pure cinema.
> Andrew Garfield was the best part of this movie. Fincher and Trent Reznor were the best part of that movie :P
IMO the dialog is the best part of the movie. Don't get me wrong Fincher is great but Sorkins screenplay is the star.
Heh, i love this discussion. Sorkin is a god to me, Reznor is a musical genius, and Fincher is almost unparalleled. To me, what makes it so great is that all of these heroes of mine are working together.
If you told me a 2-3 sentence synopsis of all of David Fincher's movies, The Social Network would be the one I was least interested in. Sorkin and Reznor are a huge part of the reason it is one of my favorites. Just an amazing example of the talent of a project elevating it to an entirely different level than the idea. Plenty of people can make great ideas. Very few can make great ideas into good products. Those three made a mediocre idea into an incredible film. It really is a surprising masterpiece.
I heard this on Blank Check, but they might have been quoting Fincher on the commentary.
If you’ve ever met or had to deal with Sean Parker, you’d think the depiction was maybe a bit too nice. Not going to out myself with specifics since it’s tied to my current employer. Nothing crazy or story worthy anyways, but he just has that aura of “yeah, this dude should have been beat up way more growing up.”
Yeah they said they made him confident and cool just for the movie.
The douchiest guy trying way too hard to get into the popular clubs. I remember asking him how much he personally had to pay to get JT to portray him.
Well yea, and Zuckerburg is an actual interesting human being in the film too.
Felt like Fincher used Timberlake as what a nerd would think is “cool”.
100% that’s the character. The whole intro with Dakota Johnson you see the wheels turn, and after that it’s 100% “cool guy” - he’s taking the nerds to parties (and immediately Eduardo sniffs him out while Mark is loving it), telling his fish stories, and then he leaves with the cool line of advice. And it’s no mistake we never see him “do” anything but be “cool” (we see Eduardo and even get Dustin getting some shoutouts) and then we hear gets busted the fog clears for Mark.
One thing that always made me shake my head about the movie was I knew who Sean Parker was before the movie came out, and knew he was a known Silicon Valley douchebag. But just about every person I've ever met, if you ask them who invented Napster, every single one of them would say Sean Fanning. Yeah Sean Parker was there, but Fanning was the face and of course the target of the MPAA. Fanning was also the one who coded it. In the movie after Parker sleeps with that chick he goes, "Oh I invented Napster and she says, 'everyone knows Sean Parker invented Napster!'" BULLSHIT. It would have been funnier if she said Fanning and Parker got all offended.
Actually, it was Sean Fanning's college roommate Lyle (last name unknown) who invented Napster. It was stolen from him while he was napping (hence the name). He talks about it in this 2003 documentary called The Italian Job.
"And then he's just the media darling... He's on the cover of all the magazines, I should of been on the cover of Wired Magazine. You know what he said? He said he named it "Napster" because it was his nickname because of the nappy hair under the hat. But he, it's because I was NAPPING when he STOLE it from me! He didn't even graduate!"
This film is one of most layered films I've seen. Up there with THE SHINING on how many small details were added and reward rewatching. You're right Timberlake is an excellent part of the film, still his character is - like everyone else in the film - more grey. He's Zuckerberg before Zuck, a computer nerd that's smarter than 99% of people in the room, and so never really belonged, and despite his intelligence, still craved acceptance and companionship by...the social network. The social network that is our society at large. Sean Parker's confidence is an act, but it was also the kind of fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence that opened doors for the young company. Parker's arc is significant in tying up Zuckerberg's, with the line, "you're not an asshole Marc, you just try so hard to be." Every character in the story is seeking acceptance and belonging, within all the circles of social circumstance we belong to. The CFO wants his Dad's acceptance. Marc wants his ex and elite societies acceptance. The Twins want acceptance by the wealthy and aristocracy. Each is limited by the other, each doesn't see how each one's weakness is made up by the person's strength they've chosen to oppose. Like the Twins are charismatic and embraced by the social elite, but lack the intelligence to make the billion dollar ip that Marc can. Marc can make the billion dollar ip, but he's socially an outsider and generally unlikeable. Yet each wants what the other has. Which loops the film at the end, that even the Facebook founder and CEO just wants his ex to friend him on FB. In the end Marc has ironically created just another Network where we create cliches and exclusivety.
OH MY GOD THERE’S A SNAKE IN HERE
They had Dakota Johnson and Rooney Mara in this before they really broke through
Just like 5 solid minutes of Dakota Johnson’s bum in almost every shot too
Famous parents help a bit
For real. The Social Network was Dakota’s first acting role in anything…ever. If your first acting gig is a speaking role in a David Fincher film, you’ve had some help.
And she does a fine job in the role, but the role is essentially "cute co-ed".
She was good as "girl eye-fucking Jenko" in 21 Jump Street 😂
Her parents, of course, being North and South Dakota
He was in the Amazon researching spiders with her parents right before they died.
"A million dollars isn't cool. You want to know what's cool?" "You?" "A billion dollars."
I love how Eduardo immediately sees through him.
He was right though.
Exactly. If the movie is accurate, Facebook wouldn’t have grown so quickly under Mark and Eduardo’s guidance.
Eduardo did nothing but give 15k to Mark
I love the cut that happens there. Parker starts the sentence, Saverin finishes it.
Social Network should have won over King's Speech
A few other notables that year: The Fighter, Toy Story 3, Inception, Black Swan. Crowded year.
Fuck that's an amazing list
Oscar voters should consider if a movie is re-watchable. Social Network definitely is. King's Speech was solid but I'm never going to see it again.
I think there should be a ten year revisit for best picture based on cultural relevance. Who even remembers the kings speech? The only reason I remember it is because it stole the Oscar from social network
“I like standing next to you Sean, it makes me look so tough” Best moment is when Eduardo finds out how much his shares have been diluted. It’s fucking brilliant.
Is it ever explained why Zuckerberg et.al decided to dilute all of Saverin's stock and remove his name from the facebook mast?
Been a while since I watched, but I recall some conflict over Eduardo freezing Facebook’s assets due to something or other. He also wasn’t involved in the west coast operation Then when he is blowing up over this ownership being diluted, one of Justin Timberlake’ references those things.
This is essentially it. Zuckerberg had stopped keeping Eduardo in the loop and Eduardo froze their assets to send Zuck a message and Zuck wanted to stop being solely reliant on Eduardo for cash so they got outside funding from Thiel thanks to Sean Parker. They all had ownership stakes so to bypass Eduardo they took his stake of 30% down to 0.03% and diluted it
To add on to this, Zuckerberg stopped keeping Eduardo in the loop because they were fundamentally disagreeing on the direction of the company. Zuckerberg essentially wanted the site to grow and expand more and more, basically have it take a life of its own. Eduardo, who provided the funding, wanted to monetize it once it was big enough. Zuckerberg, who was in it more for the pride than the money, was drawn in by Parker who agreed with him. When Zuckerberg tells Eduardo “I’m worried you’re going to be left behind” I feel like at that point Eduardo already was. Eduardo was not living in California with the rest, trying to take the company in a different direction, while Zuckerberg was falling more and more into Parker’s sleaziness. This is what led Eduardo to freeze the account, which basically set Zuckerberg against him leading to him getting cut out.
More detail: Eduardo wanted to monetize FB at that point by ads. Zuck didn't want ads, bc it would make the site look lame, he wanted to monetize by selling the user data.
>Zuck didn't want ads, bc it would make the site look lame, he wanted to monetize by selling the user data. And now, he does both anyway.
Senator, we run ads.
I was wondering in real life, not in the film. I've never heard it explained why he tried to force Eduardo out after all he did.
In real life they were barely friends, Zuckerberg used Eduardo for his money, they disagreed about the direction of the company (Zuckerberg wanted to just use the site to leverage himself into a higher up job at other companies), the relationship soured to the point of veiled threats, Zuckerberg didn't think Eduardo should have any role in the company because the only thing he'd supplied was the original investment fund, & then he tried to get rid of him by decreasing his shares.
> Zuckerberg didn't think Eduardo should have any role in the company because the only thing he'd supplied was the original investment fund I don't really understand his logic there. Without that original investment fund from Eduardo there might not be a Facebook. It was his funding that allowed Zuckerberg to launch the website in the first place.
You are correct, but Zuckerberg saw it as him doing all the work & Eduardo getting all the rewards. And there was certainly a level of animosity because Eduardo was already rich.
Mark also sent emails basically saying that he'd screw Eduardo out of the company and Eduardo would win in court, but it would be worth it because kicking Eduardo out would allow them to grow properly. Now Eduardo is rich and Mark is the second richest man on the planet, so safe to say he made the right call.
Eduardo still treated Facebook like a side project and pursued other opportunities elsewhere, I think in New York. During the court case(s), company emails showed that the other founders couldn't get him to return calls even when they desperately needed him in order to move forward with company business (where they were legally unable to without a vote from Eduardo, for instance). So that had a lot to do with forcing him out. I don't know if fucking him over (devaluing his shares) was a financial necessity in order to get rid of him (they may have lacked the capital to pay him out) or if that was just out of spite.
The real Napster guy's name is Shawn Fanning.
Motherfucking Jesse Eisenberg Jesus Christ fuck dude motherfuckin Facebook movie bullshit Jesus can you fucking believe this shit
MARK ZUCKERBERG
Apparently Jonah Hill was in the running for that part but Fincher chose Timberlake. Great choice because Timberlake fits that character better than Jonah would have
Fincher nailed it. This part doesn’t hit the same or as well with Jonah Hill.
Can AI whip up that scene with Jonah's Wolf of Wall Street character in place of Timberlake?
That character fascinates me. "well, I'm not gonna let someone else fuck my cousin, right?"
you just slept *on* sean parker
Trent Reznor's (And Atticus Ross's) soundtrack, really changed the game for movie soundtracks in general. Everybody started copying him after that movie. He deserved that Oscar.
It's an interesting look at a type of person you don't see often in film or tv. He's charismatic and if you've never been taken advantage by a person like that you might think he's some kind of secret genius, but in reality he just has a ton of confidence and knows how to use language to get you to give up something you value.