It's only fair to illustrate an Aaron Sorkin movie with a mouth that never stops moving

Despite being well-reviewed by almost everyone but Armond White, The Social Network has taken its share of criticism, usually for being sexist.  When it comes to criticism, there are generally two approaches — you can either accept it for what it is and attempt to explain yourself, or you can just do like M. Night Shyamalan and claim the 95% of people who thought your movie sucked just don’t get your “European sensibility.”  Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin recently responded to criticism in the comments section of a small blog, and to his credit, he seems to have take the non-Shyammy approach.

Believe me, I get it. It’s not hard to understand how bright women could be appalled by what they saw in the movie but you have to understand that that was the very specific world I was writing about. Women are both prizes an equal [sic - "prizes and equals", I think]. Mark’s blogging that we hear in voiceover as he drinks, hacks, creates Facemash and dreams of the kind of party he’s sure he’s missing, came directly from Mark’s blog. With the exception of doing some cuts and tightening (and I can promise you that nothing that I cut would have changed your perception of the people or the trajectory of the story by even an inch) I used Mark’s blog verbatim. Mark said, “Erica Albright’s a bitch” (Erica isn’t her real name–I changed three names in the movie when there was no need to embarrass anyone further), “Do you think that’s because all B.U. girls are bitches?” Facebook was born during a night of incredible misogyny. The idea of comparing women to farm animals, and then to each other, based on their looks and then publicly ranking them. It was a revenge stunt, aimed first at the woman who’d most recently broke his heart (who should get some kind of medal for not breaking his head) and then at the entire female population of Harvard.

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Looking for answers? YEEE HAAAW!  Well you’ve come to the wrong place, pardner!  Didn’t you see the question mark in the headline?  That means we don’t know, and even with our non-existent internet ethics we felt bad pretendin’.  But that don’t mean we can’t still have fun speculatin’!  Yeeee haw, now who wants to get shot in the dark?  (*fires pistols in air*)

The Social Network has famously been called a “character assassination” of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who dismissed the film as a fiction he had no interest in seeing.  He also removed Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing from his list of favorite shows on Facebook after he heard Sorkin had written The Social Network, so despite his official detached stance, there were clearly some hurt feelings.  Which is why it’s surprising that according to a few Twitterers, Zuckerberg was spotted at a screening of The Social Network last night in Seattle.  A guy wearing a suit jacket and blue shirt who looked like Zuckerberg was spotted, anyway.  One of the spotters was DVDTalk/Boxoffice.com‘s Tyler Foster, who tells me:

Walked out & my friend said “That’s Mark Zuckerberg” and a guy who looked just like him was taking a photo w/some girl.  Can’t say I spoke to him, but…it looked like Mark Zuckerberg. It would help if someone could place him in Seattle, at least.

Yes, yes it would.  The only thing I found about him being in Seattle is from 2007.  Haha, good story, Vince.  And so, I leave you with the words of Mitch Hedberg, “I got to smoke fake pot with Peter Frampton.  That’s a cool story. It’s as cool as smoking real pot with a guy who looks like Peter Frampton… I’ve done that way more.”

WAG THE DOG-ISH UPDATE: After I posted this, Tyler wrote: “Publicist called. Said studio contacted her and was vehement Zuckerberg would never wear a suit. Both she and I hypothesized that if that were true, it’d make the perfect disguise. She said they didn’t have an answer.”

From what I’ve heard, The Social Network is a great film, and with David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin working on it, I’m not surprised.  However, from the day the first trailer hit, it’s always had a strong scent of Hollywood bullsh*ttiness about it.  I mean really, children’s choirs? Drawing equations on a window?  A little melo D for a movie about a nerd who started a website, no?  Anyway, Nicholas Carlson wrote a piece for Business Insider and Gawker today which purports to tell the story of how Ben Mezrich’s book, The Accidental Billionaires, and the movie based on it came to be.

The only reason The Accidental Billionaires exists is because one of Mark’s Facebook co-founders pitched the book to Mezrich in an attempt to permanently damage Mark’s reputation. According to those sources, that cofounder and Harvard student is Eduardo Saverin. [...]

Eventually, sources say, Eduardo decided to attack Mark’s reputation.

He approached Ben Mezrich – the author of Bringing Down The House, a book about how a group of MIT students made it big in Vegas. Bringing Down The House makes its characters out to be rock stars and scoundrels; the Facebook book, Accidental Billionaires, does the same. The upcoming movie based on the book features cocaine, models, and dark, moody, lighting from the director who brought you Fight Club. It’s a character assassination.

So it’s not very realistic, then? All girls that go to Stanford don’t look like this?  I refuse to believe that.  Next you’ll tell me Rudy didn’t really show that good-fer-nuthin coach that hobbits can play football.

The full article is pretty long, but I did my best to condense it for you:

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With The Social Network playing the New York Film Festival on the 24th and opening wide at the beginning of next month, a New Yorker profile of the real Mark Zuckerberg is ever so timely.  I wanted to find out how the real guy compared to the Aaron Sorkin/David Fincher version, and I’ve done my best to translate the hyper-literate New Yorker piece into ape-like blog grunts and esoteric memes for you.  (*shrieks, bangs laptop with chicken bone*)

Sue me in FEDERAL court, New Yorker:

Sorkin said that creating Zuckerberg’s character was a challenge. He added that the college students were “the youngest people I’ve ever written about.” Sorkin, who is forty-nine, says that he knew very little about social networking, and he professes extreme dislike of the blogosphere and social media. “I’ve heard of Facebook, in the same way I’ve heard of a carburetor,” he told me. “But if I opened the hood of my car I wouldn’t know how to find it.”

Time out, you’re telling me a 49-year-old intellectual has a knee-jerk reaction to an online world he doesn’t understand AND doesn’t realize his Cooper Mini is fuel injected?  Please take caution, friends, do not tread on my monocle.  In my surprise it has fallen.

Sorkin insisted that “the movie is not meant as an attack” on Zuckerberg. As he described it, however, Zuckerberg “spends the first one hour and fifty-five minutes as an antihero and the last five minutes as a tragic hero.” He added, “I don’t want to be unfair to this young man whom I don’t know, who’s never done anything to me, who doesn’t deserve a punch in the face. I honestly believe that I have not done that

I told Sorkin that his TV series West Wing was one of Zuckerberg’s favorites. He paused. “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said finally.

Aw, under different circumstances, you two could’ve been friends!  That’s your story!  It’d be just like that Nazi talking about Betty Boop with the Americans in Saving Private Ryan.  …Although they did have to shoot him later…
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(Diora Baird is really open-minded)

David Fincher’s The Social Network looks like a slick, Oliver Stone-y take on the Facebook founder to the point that it borders on parody, but there’s a silver lining to that cloud: a scene where they snort cocaine of chicks’ boobs, like in Any Given Sunday. I hear your mom tried to pull the same thing with some microwave meth, but ruined it by lactating. ;-(

In an article published Friday, producer Scott Rudin told the New York Times that he has been involved in a months-long dialog with Facebook execs to assuage concerns about the film. He said he allowed certain execs to read the script and made changes to accommodate small requests. He also said he had not decided whether to cut or alter a scene depicting Sean Parker [Justin Timberlake], a Napster co-founder who played a major role in the early days of Facebook, delivering a key speech at a party while two young women offer lines of cocaine from naked breasts. One person told the Times that the Parker scene was mostly made up, though Rudin said his main concern about the scene was whether it would jeopardize a PG-13 rating.
Now sources tell THR the scene will remain in the film, set for release October 1. [HollywoodReporter]

Well it’s nice to see that film doesn’t resort to cheap sensationalism.  Also, snorting coke of a girl’s boobs?  That’s sooo passé.  Hey, Social Network, 1975 called, it wants its drug trick back.  You figure out a way to get a cherry lit on a chick’s labes and suck the smoke out her ass like a bong, then I’ll be impressed.

Sidenote: the only bigger coke fiend than Chuck E. Cheese is Chester Cheetah.