In the new movie about Apple Computers founder Steve Jobs with Ashton Kutcher in the lead, Jobs drops acid, eh, windowpane, with a woman he has just bed, and takes another tab for his girlfriend. You could call that '70's "rude." Cut to a blanket spread outdoors, where, between his best friend and girlfriend, he stares at the sky, thinking different. In realizing his window on the world so to speak, he will damage each of them. For every inspirational speech introducing yet a new more inventive product than the last, Jobs, so focused on his vision, loses his connection to those who love him. That is what makes him so compelling a figure, so flawed; in Joshua Michael Stern's film, he's in a league with Picasso.
Particularly good in this film is Josh Gad in the role of Steve Wozniak, the maker of the legendary motherboard in the fateful garage that was Apple. At the Wall Street Journal sponsored after party at Forty-four at the Royalton, Gad said he worried about playing this well-known character. He never even met Wozniak but studied tapes and Walter Isaacson's excellent biography of Steve Jobs, among other books. Matthew Modine stands out as a handsome, corporate suit in the role of John Sculley, a marketing genius Jobs lures away from Pepsi. Jobs lived to regret bringing Sculley in. Also notable is Ahna O'Reilly as Job's girlfriend and mother of his daughter Lisa, recently seen in Fruitvale Station.
Director Stern had some challenges: a thirty day shoot, a $9 million budget, and the desire to get the sound of Cat Stevens' "Peace Train," which he was able to acquire for a mere $15,000, he said, and Yusuf Islam threw in a new tune for the ending. In our age, As trendy subjects inspire multiples, another Jobs film penned by Aaron Sorkin is on the way.
A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.