Controversial 'Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine' premieres online and at limited screenings
Alex Gibney's documentary "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine," which has been heavily criticized by Apple executives, made its official debut on Friday, appearing in a limited theatrical run, as well as on a variety of online services.
The movie will show on just 65 screens in 50 U.S. markets this weekend, Deadline noted. These include theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and various cities around the Bay Area, such as Apple's home ground in Cupertino. It should come to more screens throughout September and October.
The main venues for watching the film are therefore online. Among the current options are iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, and the Windows and PlayStation Stores.
The movie had an early showing at this year's South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, where it was met by hostile reactions by some people within Apple. The company's senior VP of Internet software and services, Eddy Cue, claimed that it was an "inaccurate and mean-spirited view of my friend."
Though highlighting his achievements, Man in the Machine also delves into Jobs' darker side, like his reputation for being overdemanding and the long disownment of his first child, Lisa.
Gibney's filmography includes titles like the Scientology expose Going Clear, and Taxi to the Dark Side, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2008.
The movie will show on just 65 screens in 50 U.S. markets this weekend, Deadline noted. These include theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and various cities around the Bay Area, such as Apple's home ground in Cupertino. It should come to more screens throughout September and October.
The main venues for watching the film are therefore online. Among the current options are iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, and the Windows and PlayStation Stores.
The movie had an early showing at this year's South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, where it was met by hostile reactions by some people within Apple. The company's senior VP of Internet software and services, Eddy Cue, claimed that it was an "inaccurate and mean-spirited view of my friend."
Though highlighting his achievements, Man in the Machine also delves into Jobs' darker side, like his reputation for being overdemanding and the long disownment of his first child, Lisa.
Gibney's filmography includes titles like the Scientology expose Going Clear, and Taxi to the Dark Side, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2008.
Comments
I suppose in the interest of curiosity I may check it out but I'm more interested in the one with Fassbender
I read through Gibney's interviews from a variety of sources and he professed to know nothing about Steve Jobs before making the documentary. So basically, he's regurgitating stories and anecdotes that reflect negatively on Jobs because he thought nobody knew about these things. Gibney thought he had another exposé style winner on his hands. I encourage anyone who doubts my claim to see the film for themselves.
Having not seen the film, but having heard about it, I believe you're right. It's clear to me Gibney's intentions by the way they photoshopped the photo of Steve to make him look sinister. Anything to make a buck - that's our media's way of doing things!
Certainly whores like Gibney and the producers of this kind of marketing. Imagine what Jobs's wife and kids think of it. And Gibney wants to lecture us about Jobs's lack of compassion.
Edit: Downloading it now from iTunes. Five hours in this DSL backwater!
I have no interest in patronizing the work of bottom-feeders like Gibney (Daisey is another one that comes to mind), who live off of the 15 minutes of fame they get from trashing, exaggerating, distorting, demeaning, belittling, and generally detracting from the work of great men and great companies.
Even not worth checking.
Roflmao, Tom.
The real deal for you, seeing as you were there.
I have no interest in patronizing the work of bottom-feeders like Gibney (Daisey is another one that comes to mind), who live off of the 15 minutes of fame they get from trashing, exaggerating, distorting, demeaning, belittling, and generally detracting from the work of great men and great companies.
I personally think he's earnest, but naive.
Naive? NAIVE!?
If anything, your link -- which I recall very well, and is superbly argued and written -- reinforces my viewpoint that Gibney is a pathetic bottom-feeder.
Yours may be the best reading. The movie is worth seeing for the footage, but hopelessly inadequate to the task of understanding Jobs, Apple, the products, our relationship to them, and the new medium of communication/mind anplification that we owe to this crazy genius.
Mr. Gibney is in over his head, as are a few of his choice talking heads, Kane, Nocera, Peter Elkind, a Fortune managing editor, others. The problem is that Steve and his company are so much smarter than the filmaker.
...from which comes this classic shot from the first iPhone lineup:
EDIT: Having just completed watching this I just wanted to warn anybody else considering doing the same to avoid it.
It starts out with promise then just turns into nothing but a hit piece/cash grab that focuses only on the negative, ignores the positive, and contains numerous cherry-picked, heavily edited facts, figures, stories and pictures only selected for their ability to depict Apple and Jobs in a negative light.
?Eddy Cue was being generous when he only called it inaccurate and mean-spirited.
A brief history of the beginning of Apple then turns into a focus on nothing but Job's bad traits, his non-payment to Woz, his failure to recognise his daughter, driving without plates and parking in handicapped spots, the Foxconn suicides, the Apple backdating incident, Tax avoidance (an utterly legal thing that all sensible people and companies should do), terrorising poor Gizmodo(!), etc, etc...
For those who want to save themselves two hours and twenty minutes, go read your average troll-infested internet forum instead. Those who also enjoy those trashy women's magazines at the local checkout may also find this right up their alley. However, for everybody else who gives a damn about Apple (or even accurate reporting) I highly recommend you go to whatever site that lists this (such as Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, Metacritic, etc...) and heavily downrate it to show your disapproval for hacks like Alex Gibney (and the many others who work in the media) who constantly fail to do their jobs properly in this day and age.
Then the second half... Attributing the poor working conditions in China to jobs? Really? What about all the other companies? Was Apple doing anything illegal in protecting its money by keeping it overseas?
I blame congress for leaving this loophole in place when they knew all to well what companies were doing!
...Lisa. Jobs just totally fucked up on how he behaved toward her in the beginning.
In the end, he did change the world for the better... and left Apple in the best hands possible (Tim Cook's)
I still think "Here's to the Crazy Ones" is likely the best commercial that I have ever seen!, ...the Richard Dreyfuss version.
The proof of the pudding to me was in the world's reaction to his death. From politicians, to media, to competitors, to fans of Apple all over the world, even to Apple-haters, the sheer outpouring of the recognition and awe for this man was unlike anything I've seen.
All that just for some asshole CEO? Small-minded and petty people like Gibney and Nocera will never get it.
It's incredible that Gibney didn't interview any well-known Apple or Jobs experts. There's no one in the John Markoff or Brent Schlender class, no one from the Apple blogging world, at all. But we get the WSJ//NYTimes/Fortune point of view over and over and over. It reminds me of the sixties when Time-Life would do special issues on the hippies and the counterculture. It's a very New York point of view, supercilious, uninitiated, naive and clueless.
Gibney makes an amateur's mistake in his selecivity. Or it's a managed hit piece (Fortune,Gawker, Samsung, etc.). Or it's just a stupid neo-anticorporate exploitation piece. In any case it's shabby and worth boycotting.
Just watched. What a piece of junk.
Nothing in this piece that I'm not already factually aware of, but the way they present it is so pathetically desperate for attention. Notice to would-be documentarians: Intercutting facts with meaningless opinions from meaningless interviewees...is not a documentary.
Somehow I got through most of it, but when the narrator started talking about how pathetic we all are because our phones sing to us from our pockets like Frodo and the ring...well it was time to turn it off.
I think it would be more effective to discuss (on whatever movie rating site you wish to vote in) the biased nature of the film and its cherry picked interviews. Don't get into any arguments with Apple haters. Just tell anyone interested what's wrong with the film. I'm sure there's a cross section of the population that would enjoy this movie for no reason other than to reinforce their biases. They would label this movie "fair & balanced" LOL.
In the spirit of Jobs' blue box beginnings, I downloaded this for free on p2p.
I thought it was excellent. I bought a mac in 1984, so a lot of the history was familiar.
Jobs was a human being not a saint. Corporations are not people, but Apple came closer than most.
Someone™ else would have eventually:
Steve Jobs did all of that.
If you're feeling butthurt from watching this, well, ok toobadsosad. Accept reality or not.
Nobody likes their saints stained or oxen gored. It's worth checking out. If you didn't see it:
"don't criticize what you cannot understand" - Bob Dylan