Aaron Sorkin tears into Tim Cook over 'opportunistic' comments

Posted:
in General Discussion edited September 2015
Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin slammed Tim Cook in a recent interview for comments the Apple CEO made regarding authors, filmmakers and documentarians focusing on the life and times of Steve Jobs.




When Cook appeared on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" last week, Colbert asked what he though about a spate of films about Jobs, some of which portray the tech guru in a negative light. Some label Sorkin's upcoming film "Steve Jobs" as a critical dramatic interpretation of key periods in the late Apple cofounder's life, while a recent documentary from Alex Gibney takes a definitively harsh slant on Jobs' impact on industry and those around him.

Cook, who had at the time not seen either film, said, "I think that a lot of people are trying to be opportunistic and I hate this, it's not a great part of our world."

Being framed as an opportunist apparently didn't sit well with Sorkin, who told The Hollywood Reporter that he and some of his team took pay cuts to get "Steve Jobs" made.

"Nobody did this movie to get rich," Sorkin said. "Secondly, Tim Cook should really see the movie before he decides what it is."

Sorkin reserved his most piercing barb for last, "Third, if you've got a factory full of children in China assembling phones for 17 cents an hour you've got a lot of nerve calling someone else opportunistic."

"Steve Jobs" is the latest in a string of films and books that attempt to distill Jobs' private and business personas into a single digestible work. The film, based on Walter Isaacson's official Jobs biography, stars Michael Fassbender in the title role and has so far enjoyed a generally positive response from critics. "Steve Jobs" is due for release on Oct. 9.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 128

    Definitely not seeing this movie now (wasn't planning on seeing it anyway).

  • Reply 2 of 128
    Your investors expect to make money off of this film, Sorkin. With a purported $30 million budget you're damn right people are expecting to capitalize on it and expect you to do the most as a writer/creator with this opportunity, you opportunist.
  • Reply 3 of 128
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post



    Your investors expect to make money off of this film, Sorkin. With a purported $30 million budget you're damn right people are expecting to capitalize on it and expect you to do the most as a writer/creator with this opportunity, you opportunist.



    He's a twerp.

  • Reply 4 of 128
    well thats outright slander/libel (can't tell if this was spoken or written)...factories "full" of children? nope. working for 17 cents an hour? nope.
  • Reply 5 of 128
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NolaMacGuy View Post



    well thats outright slander/libel (can't tell if this was spoken or written)...factories "full" of children? nope. working for 17 cents an hour? nope.



    Yeah, I didn't notice that last snipe. To hell with Sorkin. He's an asshat. Sorkin probably had to take a pay cut to get this thing made because have you seen the number of production companies associated with this thing?

     

     

    Source:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2080374/companycredits?ref_=tt_dt_co

  • Reply 6 of 128
    Definitely not seeing this movie now (wasn't planning on seeing it anyway).

    That's OK. Millions of people will. I will see it as well.
  • Reply 7 of 128
    What a hypocritical idiot.

    All the TV's and equipment required to watch and produce all of Sorkin's products are also made in the same factories by the same children making the same 17 cents.
  • Reply 8 of 128
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    Sorkin is just another in a long line of Hollywood attention whores. Does anyone believe the timing on his little rant in that Hollywood rag was an accident?
  • Reply 9 of 128
    dreyfus2dreyfus2 Posts: 1,072member
    Hm, since the beginning of the year assembly workers make between $2 and $2.50 per hour, almost four times the local minimum wage. How many unqualified factory workers in the US make four times the minimum wage? How many of them support their entire home town from one salary?

    And if there still are children, they have been planted there by their own parents using bribes and/or fake documents. Yes, even that must be stopped, I agree, but it's not like anybody there depends on child labor. There are more than enough adults walking hundreds or thousands of miles to get one of these jobs. For them these jobs are progress for now, our own standards won't work there for the time being. Losing these jobs would be a disaster for many.

    I have no idea what Cook actually tried to say with "opportunistic", every business is an opportunity, and movie makers making movies about things people are not interested in don't get far. I assume he wanted to say something else and held back.
  • Reply 10 of 128
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member

    I can see his point. You can't complain about the profit motive while making record profits. Apple clearly takes certain actions to remain outside the value segments and also they make sure their margins remain high. Cook is infamous for squeezing the entire supply chain in the name of profits. If it were Walmart instead of Apple we'd be complaining but somehow Apple manages to be above it all.

     

    I'm not begrudging Apple what it does but at the same time if they begrudge someone else for possibly turning an honest dollar, that seems hypocritical to me.

  • Reply 11 of 128
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SirLance99 View Post





    That's OK. Millions of people will. I will see it as well.



    Good luck. I prefer not to put food in the mouths of people whose interests run counter to mine if I can help it. The 'best revenge' will be this movie sinking like a stone at the box office. As I understand it, the movie has generally been well reviewed (with caveats), but I am not seeing any real anticipation on the part of the public to see it. It's coming very late in the Steve Jobs biopic cycle, and too close to the other recent one.

  • Reply 12 of 128
    dreyfus2 wrote: »
    Hm, since the beginning of the year assembly workers make between $2 and $2.50 per hour, almost four times the local minimum wage. How many unqualified factory workers in the US make four times the minimum wage? How many of them support their entire home town from one salary?

    And if there still are children, they have been planted there by their own parents using bribes and/or fake documents. Yes, even that must be stopped, I agree, but it's not like anybody there depends on child labor. There are more than enough adults walking hundreds or thousands of miles to get one of these jobs. For them these jobs are progress for now, our own standards won't work there for the time being. Losing these jobs would be a disaster for many.

    I have no idea what Cook actually tried to say with "opportunistic", every business is an opportunity, and movie makers making movies about things people are not interested in don't get far. I assume he wanted to say something else and held back.

    It's sort of sad commentary on the state of journalism when folks in the comment section put more effort into investigating the facts presented in a story than any of the journalists writing it or sourced in the writing of it.
  • Reply 13 of 128
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dreyfus2 View Post



    Hm, since the beginning of the year assembly workers make between $2 and $2.50 per hour, almost four times the local minimum wage. How many unqualified factory workers in the US make four times the minimum wage? How many of them support their entire home town from one salary?



    And if there still are children, they have been planted there by their own parents using bribes and/or fake documents. Yes, even that must be stopped, I agree, but it's not like anybody there depends on child labor. There are more than enough adults walking hundreds or thousands of miles to get one of these jobs. For them these jobs are progress for now, our own standards won't work there for the time being. Losing these jobs would be a disaster for many.



    I have no idea what Cook actually tried to say with "opportunistic", every business is an opportunity, and movie makers making movies about things people are not interested in don't get far. I assume he wanted to say something else and held back.



    On the other hand, I don't agree that child labor should be automatically a disqualifier for Chinese companies. So long as they can prove that the kids are not being forced to work there, factory work is the only means to a fast way out of crushing poverty for much of the Chinese population. Child labor in the US used to be common. It's just a part of the economic growth curve. As workers with greater skills become necessary and wage rates start to rise across the board due to labor shortages, the use of child labor diminishes significantly. In fact, in the US wages had already risen significantly and the use of child labor was on the wane before unions became dominant. They took advantage of the rising economic power available to an in-demand labor force. Unions did not cause all of the mythical "good" with which they are credited.

     

     

    http://tomwoods.com/blog/who-benefits-from-labor-unions/

     

    https://mises.org/library/forgotten-facts-american-labor-history

  • Reply 14 of 128
    trumptman wrote: »
    I'm not begrudging Apple what it does but at the same time if they begrudge someone else for possibly turning an honest dollar, that seems hypocritical to me.
    I think that's the point. A lot of what's been portrayed has been anything but honest.
  • Reply 15 of 128

    Good luck. I prefer not to put food in the mouths of people whose interests run counter to mine if I can help it. The 'best revenge' will be this movie sinking like a stone at the box office. As I understand it, the movie has generally been well reviewed (with caveats), but I am not seeing any real anticipation on the part of the public to see it. It's coming very late in the Steve Jobs biopic cycle, and too close to the other recent one.

    There are literally hundreds of people that worked on this film. You're going to let one guy who has absolutely no ill affect on you get to you that much? These are millionaires exchanging words. Both of them are opportunistic.
  • Reply 16 of 128

    Ms. Sorkin Thing just threw a hissy fit

  • Reply 17 of 128
    "I think that a lot of people are trying to be opportunistic and I hate this, it's not a great part of our world."

    Where did he say anything about getting rich? Being opportunistic doesn't mean money necessarily... Its Sorkin's problem that he jumped to this conclusion right away....

    And yes i find it disgusting too that poor Steve died and everybody tries to skin every last bit of his memory asap. Money, fame,...
  • Reply 18 of 128
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by trumptman View Post

     

    I can see his point. You can't complain about the profit motive while making record profits. Apple clearly takes certain actions to remain outside the value segments and also they make sure their margins remain high. Cook is infamous for squeezing the entire supply chain in the name of profits. If it were Walmart instead of Apple we'd be complaining but somehow Apple manages to be above it all.

     

    I'm not begrudging Apple what it does but at the same time if they begrudge someone else for possibly turning an honest dollar, that seems hypocritical to me.




    It's not the profit motive per se. I'm sure that from Cook's point of view Apple is both making a profit and advancing the state of humanity. In the case of this dreadful film based on a terrible book, it doesn't nothing to make anyone better off. How do I know the movie is bad? Let's just say how much insight do you expect someone who lies twice in the same sentence to have? Nobody working on iPhones in China is making less than 10 times the wage he claims, and there are no factories that are "full" of children.

  • Reply 19 of 128
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SirLance99 View Post





    There are literally hundreds of people that worked on this film. You're going to let one guy who has absolutely no ill affect on you get to you that much? These are millionaires exchanging words. Both of them are opportunistic.



    The hundreds of people who work on films are already paid. They are called "below the line" workers.

     

    The ones who are risking capital and their reputations are the "above the line" people, like Sorkin.

     

    And you failed to mention the many, many more thousands of people who work with and for Apple whose reputations are tarnished with Sorkin's bullshit. What about them?

  • Reply 20 of 128
    I was planning to see the film.
    Now I can go buy myself nice burrito instead.

    What's hilarious, is that Sorkin might have been right on those first two points. But then he turns and does EXACTLY what Cook was talking about with the last point. A complete and utter distortion. Totally oportunistic.

    Over and out...
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